Book of Jonah

The Book of Jonah, in the Old Testament of the Bible, is one of the works of the Minor Prophets. Unlike the other prophetic books, it is not a book written by a prophet but is a narrative about a prophet. Jonah seems to be the prophet mentioned in 2 Kings 14:25 who lived during the reign of Jeroboam II (c. 785 BC). The book is anonymous and was probably composed during the 4th century BC.

A short novella, the book describes how Jonah sought to evade God's command to go to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, to preach repentance. He booked passage on a ship to Tarshish, only to have his flight brought to an end by a divinely ordained storm. Thrown overboard and swallowed by a great fish, Jonah was vomited up on shore after three days and nights. He then obeyed God's command and preached in Nineveh. When the population responded to his preaching and repented, God changed his plan to destroy the city. Divine mercy was thus shown to possess a distinctly universal dimension. The purpose of the book, then, was primarily didactic, dramatizing God's care for Jews and Gentiles alike. It was a polemic against the exclusivism that was beginning to dominate Judaic theology, depicted so clearly by Jonah himself.

George W Coats

Bibliography
J Ellul, The Judgment of Jonah (1971); A / P La Cocque, Jonah (1990); H Martin, The Prophet Jonah (1952).

Book of Jonah

Brief Outline

Jo'nah

Jonah, a dove, the son of Amittai of Gath-hepher. He was a prophet of Israel, and predicted the restoration of the ancient boundaries (2 Kings 14:25-27) of the kingdom. He exercised his ministry very early in the reign of Jeroboam II., and thus was contemporary with Hosea and Amos; or possibly he preceded them, and consequently may have been the very oldest of all the prophets whose writings we possess. His personal history is mainly to be gathered from the book which bears his name. It is chiefly interesting from the two-fold character in which he appears, (1) as a missionary to heathen Nineveh, and (2) as a type of the "Son of man."

Book of Jo'nah

This book professes to give an account of what actually took place in the experience of the prophet. Some critics have sought to interpret the book as a parable or allegory, and not as a history. They have done so for various reasons. Thus (1) some reject it on the ground that the miraculous element enters so largely into it, and that it is not prophetical but narrative in its form; (2) others, denying the possibility of miracles altogether, hold that therefore it cannot be true history. Jonah and his story is referred to by our Lord (Matt. 12:39, 40; Luke 11:29), a fact to which the greatest weight must be attached. It is impossible to interpret this reference on any other theory. This one argument is of sufficient importance to settle the whole question. No theories devised for the purpose of getting rid of difficulties can stand against such a proof that the book is a veritable history.

There is every reason to believe that this book was written by Jonah himself. It gives an account of (1) his divine commission to go to Nineveh, his disobedience, and the punishment following (1:1-17); (2) his prayer and miraculous deliverance (1:17-2:10); (3) the second commission given to him, and his prompt obedience in delivering the message from God, and its results in the repentance of the Ninevites, and God's long-sparing mercy toward them (ch. 3); (4) Jonah's displeasure at God's merciful decision, and the rebuke tendered to the impatient prophet (ch. 4). Nineveh was spared after Jonah's mission for more than a century. The history of Jonah may well be regarded "as a part of that great onward movement which was before the Law and under the Law; which gained strength and volume as the fulness of the times drew near.", Perowne's Jonah.

Book of Jonah

There is only one instance of Jonah's prophesying to his own people of Israel, 2 Kings 14:25. There he made a prediction concerning the restoration of the coasts of israel, which was fulfilled in the reign of Jeroboam II about 800 B. C., showing that he lived earlier than that date. Of his personal history nothing further is known than what is found in this book.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

The evidence for it is found: (1) In the way it is recorded, there being not the slightest intimation in the book itself, or anywhere in the Bible, that it is a parable. (2) In the evidence of tradition, the whole of the Jewish nation, practically, accepting it as historic. (3) The reasonableness of it (see the remarks under chapter 3.) (4) The testimony of Christ in Matthew 12:38, and parallel places. There are those who read these words of the Saviour in the light of the argument of which they form a part, and say that they allude only to what He knew to be a parable, or an allegory, but I am not of their number. Jesus would not have used such an illustration in such a connection, in my judgment, if it were not a historic fact. (5) The symbolic or prophetic character of the transaction (see the remarks under chapter 4.)