Jonah
A reluctant prophet and a merciful God: salvation offered to the Gentiles, and the sign of death and resurrection.
God told Jonah to go to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, and cry against it. Jonah went the other way, boarding a ship at Joppa bound for Tarshish. God sent a great wind; the pagan sailors prayed to their gods while Jonah slept. When the lot fell on him, Jonah confessed and told them to throw him overboard. The sea grew calm, and “the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah” (1:17).
From the belly of the fish—“out of the belly of hell”—Jonah prayed, and the fish vomited him onto dry land. The word of the LORD came to him the second time, and he went to Nineveh with an eight-word message: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown” (3:4). The whole city, from the king down, believed God, fasted, and turned from its evil way, and God spared it.
Jonah was angry. He had known all along that God was “gracious... and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness” (4:2), and he did not want mercy for Israel’s enemy. The book ends with God’s question to the sulking prophet about a gourd, a worm, and a city of more than 120,000 children: should not I spare Nineveh?
Writer: Jonah
Written: About 862 BC in the traditional chronology, near the events of Jonah’s ministry.
Name: Dove
Title and authorship
Yonah means “dove.” Jonah son of Amittai was a prophet from Gath-hepher in Galilee (2 Kings 14:25).
Jonah is the author, writing about himself in the third person, as Moses often did. The book’s candor about Jonah’s failures suggests an author who learned the lesson.
Historical background
Joppa, the Mediterranean Sea, and Nineveh during the reign of Jeroboam II, when Assyria was a rising and brutal power, about 862 BC in the traditional chronology.
Israel, shown God’s compassion for the Gentiles and rebuked for its narrow nationalism.
Nineveh
Nineveh lay on the east bank of the Tigris. It became Assyria’s capital under Sennacherib, whose palace excavations revealed reliefs of conquest. The city and its surroundings formed “an exceeding great city of three days’ journey” (3:3), and it was notorious for its cruelty.
A time for repentance
Assyria suffered plagues, revolts, and a total solar eclipse in 763 BC during the first half of the eighth century. Such signs, regarded by Assyrians as omens, may have prepared Nineveh to hear a foreign prophet announcing doom.
Jonah in history
Second Kings 14:25 names Jonah the son of Amittai, of Gath-hepher, as the prophet who foretold Jeroboam II’s restoration of Israel’s borders. Christ spoke of Jonah and the Ninevites as real persons who will rise in the judgment (Matthew 12:41).
Key passages
Jonah 1:17
The LORD prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah; he was in its belly three days and three nights.
Jonah 2:9
“Salvation is of the LORD.”
Jonah 4:2
Jonah knew God was gracious and merciful—and resented it.
Jonah 1:2
The Lord sends his prophet directly to the wicked city.
Jonah 3:2
The renewed commission places the same responsibility before Jonah after his deliverance.
Outline
1 · Running from God
Jonah flees, the storm exposes his disobedience, and the prepared fish receives him.
2 · Praying to God
From deep distress Jonah calls on the Lord and is delivered.
3 · Preaching for God
The renewed commission brings a warning that Nineveh receives with repentance.
4 · Resisting God’s mercy
Jonah’s anger and the lesson of the gourd expose misplaced compassion.
Original language
דָּג גָּדוֹל (dag gadol, H1709) — “great fish”
The Hebrew says simply “great fish”; the Greek word in Matthew 12:40, ketos, means a sea monster. God “prepared” it—the first of four things God prepared in the book.
מָנָה (manah, H4487) — “prepared”
To appoint or ordain. God prepared a great fish (1:17), a gourd (4:6), a worm (4:7), and a vehement east wind (4:8)—all to teach His prophet.
שְׁאוֹל (sheol, H7585) — “hell”
The place of the dead. “Out of the belly of hell (sheol) cried I” (2:2). Christ connected Jonah’s three days with His own time “in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40).
יְשׁוּעָתָה (yeshuatah, H3444) — “Salvation”
“Salvation is of the LORD” (2:9). The noun yeshuah is related to the name Jesus. The verse is the theme of the whole Bible.
Doctrinal study
The sign of the prophet Jonas
When the Pharisees asked for a sign, Christ said no sign would be given but the sign of the prophet Jonas: “as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40). Jonah’s experience is a type of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection.
God’s mercy to the Gentiles
Nineveh’s repentance was genuine enough for God to turn from His announced judgment (3:10). God’s final question (4:11) shows His compassion even for children and cattle. The book is a testimony that God loves the whole world (John 3:16).
Repentance and the character of God
God “repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them” (3:10). God’s threats of judgment have an implied condition: if the nation turns, He turns (Jeremiah 18:7–8). His character does not change; His dealings change when men change.
Commentary notes
Four chapters, four prophets
Chapter 1: the prodigal prophet running from God. Chapter 2: the praying prophet running to God. Chapter 3: the preaching prophet running with God. Chapter 4: the pouting prophet running ahead of God.
Three books Satan hates
Genesis predicts the incarnate Christ as the Seed of the woman; Daniel predicts His glorious Second Coming; Jonah pictures His death and resurrection. It is no surprise that these three books are among the most attacked in the Old Testament.
God’s initiative toward the heathen
God sent Joseph and Moses to Egypt, Elijah and Elisha to Syria and Phoenicia, Jonah to Assyria, and Daniel to Babylon. He has always reached out to the nations.
Christ in the book
- Jonah’s three days and nights—the burial and resurrection of Christ (Matthew 12:40)
- The preacher to the Gentiles—“a greater than Jonas is here” (Matthew 12:41)
- Jonah cast into the sea to save the ship—one dying so others may live (1:12–15)
Applications
Historical
- Jonah refuses to preach to Nineveh, is disciplined and delivered, then preaches judgment. The Gentiles repent, and Jonah is angry at God’s mercy.
- Jonah is a historical prophet identified in Kings; the narrative presents his mission as an event, not merely a moral fable.
- Unlike many prophetic books, Jonah records chiefly what happens to the prophet and how he responds, rather than a long collection of sermons.
Doctrinal
- Jonah is a type of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ (Matthew 12:40). He is also a type of Israel, swallowed up among the nations and supernaturally preserved, and then sent to the world—as the 144,000 Jewish witnesses will preach to the Gentiles during the Tribulation.
- Jesus identifies Jonah as a sign connected with his own death, burial, and resurrection.
- Jonah also supplies a prophetic picture of Israel’s preservation and eventual witness to the nations after discipline and deliverance.
Devotional
- How God deals with believers who choose self over His mission; man’s apathy toward the lost; and God’s love for a lost world, including those we consider enemies.
- Jonah’s resistance demonstrates that obedience includes accepting God’s mercy toward those whom the messenger regards as enemies.
- God repeatedly takes initiative: command, storm, fish, renewed commission, gourd, worm, and wind all serve his instruction.
Answering the critics
Liberal scholars treat Jonah as myth, allegory, or parable; some conservatives regard it as symbolic because it seems to imply Jonah died and was raised; and popular culture treats the “whale” story as a fish tale.
Every attack on Jonah is ultimately an attack on the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, because He staked the sign of His resurrection on Jonah’s experience (Matthew 12:38–41; Luke 11:29–32). The book presents itself as history, 2 Kings 14:25 names Jonah as a historical prophet, and Christ said the men of Nineveh will rise in the judgment. Jesus believed Jonah; so do we.