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Book 32 of 39 · Minor Prophets

Jonah

The Reluctant Prophet
Narrated book coming soon

Overview

Jonah is unlike the other prophetic books. It is almost entirely a story about a prophet, and his whole recorded message to Nineveh is five Hebrew words: "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown" (3:4). Jonah son of Amittai, from Gath-hepher in Galilee, is the prophet who foretold Jeroboam II's expansion of Israel's borders (2 Kings 14:25), so the story is set around 780–750 BC. Nineveh was a great city of Assyria and later its capital. Assyria was the brutal empire that would destroy the northern kingdom in 722 BC.

The book has four chapters in two matching halves. In chapters 1–2 Jonah runs from God, the pagan sailors fear the LORD, and Jonah is rescued from the sea. In chapters 3–4 Jonah obeys, the pagan city repents, and Jonah sulks over God's mercy. Some readers take the book as straightforward history. Others read it as a didactic narrative or parable, and suggest dates up to the Persian period. Jesus refers to "the sign of the prophet Jonas" and to the repentance of Nineveh (Matthew 12:39–41).

Part 1 — Flight and Rescue (chapters 1–2)

The call and the flight (1:1–3). "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it." Jonah instead "rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD", heading west to the far end of the known world, when Nineveh lay to the east. He goes down to Joppa, pays the fare and boards a ship. The narrator repeats the word "down" as Jonah keeps descending.

The storm (1:4–10). "The LORD sent out a great wind into the sea." The sailors each cry to their own god and throw the cargo overboard, while Jonah sleeps in the hold. The captain rebukes him: "Arise, call upon thy God." The lot falls on Jonah, who confesses: "I am an Hebrew; and I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land."

Overboard (1:11–16). Jonah tells them to throw him into the sea. The sailors first row hard for land, then pray not to be held guilty of innocent blood, and throw him in. "The sea ceased from her raging." The pagan crew "feared the LORD exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice… and made vows."

The great fish and the psalm (1:17–2:10). "The LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights." From inside it Jonah prays a psalm of thanksgiving: "Out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice… the weeds were wrapped about my head… yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption." It ends: "Salvation is of the LORD." The fish vomits Jonah onto dry land.

Part 2 — Nineveh and the Angry Prophet (chapters 3–4)

The second call (3:1–4). "The word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time," and this time he goes. Nineveh is "an exceeding great city of three days' journey". After a single day's walk into it, Jonah cries, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown."

A city repents (3:5–10). "The people of Nineveh believed God", proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least. The king rises from his throne, covers himself with sackcloth and sits in ashes. He decrees that man and beast must fast and "turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent?" God sees their works and relents from the disaster.

Jonah's anger (4:1–4). "But it displeased Jonah exceedingly." Now he gives his real reason for running away: "I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness" (echoing Exodus 34:6). "Take, I beseech thee, my life from me." God asks him gently, "Doest thou well to be angry?"

The plant, the worm and the wind (4:5–11). Jonah sits east of the city in a shelter to watch what will happen. God appoints a plant (qiqayon, perhaps a castor-oil plant, traditionally "gourd") to shade him, and Jonah is "exceeding glad". At dawn God appoints a worm that kills the plant, then a scorching east wind, and Jonah begs to die. God makes his point: "Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured… And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?"

Key themes, and the bridge to Micah

  • No escape from God. The LORD of sea and dry land commands wind, fish, plant, worm and east wind. Jonah cannot outrun him.
  • Mercy for outsiders. The pagan sailors and the people of Nineveh respond to God faster than his own prophet does.
  • Repentance and relenting. A sentence of doom can be withdrawn when people turn, because God's warnings are meant to bring them back.
  • The prophet's heart. Jonah is glad of mercy for himself and angry at mercy for his enemies. The book holds up a mirror to the reader.
  • God's compassion. The closing question widens God's concern to 120,000 people and even their animals.

The book ends with God's question unanswered. We never learn whether Jonah came to share God's compassion, and each reader is left to answer for themselves. Micah, a contemporary of Isaiah, comes next. Assyria now threatens Samaria and Jerusalem. Micah echoes Jonah's confession of God's character in his own closing words: "Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity… he delighteth in mercy" (Micah 7:18).