Theopedia

Book of Jonah

“For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”

— Matthew 12:40

Overview

The Book of Jonah is one of the twelve Minor Prophets, but unlike the others it is written almost entirely as narrative rather than as a collection of oracles: it tells the story of a prophet sent to preach against a Gentile city, not a record of what he preached to Israel.1 God commissions Jonah to warn Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian empire, of coming judgment; Jonah flees by ship instead, is thrown overboard in a storm, and is swallowed by a great fish that returns him alive to dry land after three days (Jonah 1-2). He then preaches to Nineveh, the city repents, and God relents from destroying it (Jonah 3). The book closes not with the city’s rescue but with Jonah’s own anger at God’s mercy and God’s rebuke of him for it (Jonah 4).

Author and Date

Jonah is identified as “the son of Amittai,” from Gath-hepher in the territory of Zebulun, the same prophet named in 2 Kings 14:25 as having predicted the territorial recovery Israel achieved under Jeroboam II.2 Since a fulfilled prediction of this kind is ordinarily not far removed in time from its fulfillment, Jonah’s ministry is most naturally placed in the reign of Jeroboam II, in the eighth century BC, contemporary with Amos.3 The book itself does not name its author, but the narrative is most naturally referred to the prophet himself.4

The book’s historicity, and specifically the great fish that swallowed Jonah, has drawn skepticism since it involves an event no natural explanation accounts for.5 Jesus himself treated the episode as true history rather than as parable or legend, pointing to Jonah’s three days in the fish as the pattern for his own three days in the grave and to the Ninevites’ repentance at Jonah’s preaching as a standing rebuke to his own unbelieving generation (Matt. 12:39-41; Luke 11:29-32).4

Historical and Literary Context

Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian empire, the “head and metropolis” of a power famous for the strength and thickness of its walls and the multitude of its defensive towers.6 Assyria was Israel’s enemy in the fullest sense: God used its armies as a scourge against his own people, and by their hand Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom, later fell, its people carried captive to another land.6 Jonah, an Israelite prophet, is sent to warn this particular enemy city of judgment, and its repentance becomes the occasion for God to spare it. That is why the book reads differently from the other prophets: not a message delivered to Israel, but an account of God’s dealings with a Gentile power hostile to Israel.4

Structure

The book falls into four short units, each occupying one chapter:

  1. Jonah’s flight and the storm (chap. 1). Jonah is commissioned to preach against Nineveh, flees toward Tarshish instead, and is thrown overboard by the ship’s pagan crew once they discover the storm is God’s judgment on his disobedience.
  2. Jonah’s prayer from the fish (chap. 2). Swallowed by a great fish God had appointed to receive him, Jonah prays from within it and is vomited out onto dry land after three days.7
  3. Nineveh’s repentance (chap. 3). Jonah preaches Nineveh’s coming overthrow; the city, from its king down, fasts and repents, and God relents from the disaster he had declared.
  4. Jonah’s anger and God’s rebuke (chap. 4). Jonah is displeased at Nineveh’s deliverance; God appoints a plant to shade him, then a worm to destroy it, and uses Jonah’s grief over the plant to rebuke his lack of compassion for the city.

Major Themes

God’s mercy extends to Gentile nations. Jonah’s mission to Nineveh foreshadows God’s purposes of mercy toward the heathen world, coming at a point in redemptive history when Israel’s own history was about to be drawn into lasting contact with the great pagan monarchies of the earth.4 The threat of destruction Jonah proclaimed was not an unconditional decree but a conditional warning, consistent with God’s declared pattern throughout Scripture of showing mercy to those who repent: what looked like an absolute statement, “yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown,” carried an implied condition, and upon the city’s repentance the sentence was deferred.8

Jonah resents the mercy he was sent to proclaim. Rather than rejoicing at Nineveh’s repentance, Jonah is “very angry because God was gracious, and spared Nineveh, on their repentance”; in his fit of passion he asks God to take his life, justifying his own anger rather than the mercy that provoked it.9 His own words in Jonah 4:2 show he had suspected all along that God would relent if Nineveh repented, since he knew God to be “a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love”; the mercy he preached against his will is the very mercy he resents receiving elsewhere than on Israel alone.8 Later in the same chapter, when God appoints a plant to shade Jonah and then a worm to destroy it, Jonah’s anger over the loss of the plant exposes what Charnock calls an attempt to make God take his measures from Jonah’s own passions, wanting God’s mercy or judgment dispensed according to what suited the prophet rather than according to God’s own wise disposal of his creatures.10

God’s sovereignty extends over creation itself. The storm that overtakes the ship, the great fish that swallows and preserves Jonah alive for three days before casting him onto dry land, and the plant and the worm that afflict it in turn are each ordered by the same providence that governs every other created thing, however far outside the ordinary course of nature the outcome: as ravens were made to feed Elijah and lions were restrained from harming Daniel, so a great fish was appointed by providence to receive Jonah and return him safely to land.7 Jonah’s own preservation in the fish for three days, and his subsequent expulsion onto dry land, can be accounted for only by the immediate power of God, with whom nothing is impossible.5

Christ points to Jonah as a sign of his own death and resurrection. Jesus compared himself to Jonah as part of his own awareness, from early in his ministry, of the mission and death appointed for him: “the comparison of himself to Jonah (Matt. 12:40) and to the bronze serpent in the wilderness (John 3:14)” is one of several ways the Gospels show Jesus anticipating his death well before Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi.11 As Jonah spent three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish before his deliverance, so Christ foretold that the Son of Man would spend three days and three nights in the heart of the earth before his own (Matt. 12:40).

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Elijah Porter Barrows, Companion to the Bible (New York: American Tract Society, 1867), 339-340. ↩

  2. Barrows, 338-339: “We learn from 2 Kings 14:25 that Jonah, the son of Amittai, was of Gath-hepher… and that he predicted the successes of Jeroboam II.” ↩

  3. Barrows, 339. ↩

  4. Barrows, 340: “In Matt. 12:39-41; Luke 11:29-32 the Saviour refers in explicit terms to events recorded in this book as being true history; nor can the historic character of the narrative as a whole be denied except on the ground that all records of the supernatural are unhistoric.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  5. Barrows, 339: “That there exist in the Mediterranean fish capable of swallowing a man entire is a well-attested fact… his preservation alive in its body for the space of three days, and his subsequent ejection upon the dry land, can be accounted for only by reference to the immediate power of God, with whom nothing is impossible.” ↩ ↩2

  6. Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, ed. William Symington, 2 vols. (New York: Robert Carter & Brothers, 1853), vol. 2, “Discourse XIV: On God’s Patience,” 472. ↩ ↩2

  7. Thomas Ridgley, A Body of Divinity, vol. 2, ed. James P. Wilson (Philadelphia: William W. Woodward, 1814), 49: “a whale was provided, by providence, to receive and bring the prophet Jonah to land, when cast into the sea.” ↩ ↩2

  8. Matthew Barrett, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2019), chap. 6, “Does God Change? Immutability.” ↩ ↩2

  9. Thomas Ridgley, A Body of Divinity, vol. 3, ed. James P. Wilson (Philadelphia: William W. Woodward, 1814), 548: “Jonah; who was very angry because God was gracious, and spared Nineveh, on their repentance; and in this fit of passion, he desires that God would take away his life, justifies his anger.” ↩

  10. Charnock, vol. 1, “Discourse IX: On the Wisdom of God,” 591-592. ↩

  11. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 15, “The Servant Savior: Christ’s Humiliation.” ↩