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Introduction
Jonah is one of what are called the twelve minor prophets: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi. His book is the only one of the twelve that consists primarily of a narrative – a story. The rest are compromised primarily of the words – prophecies, speeches, sermons, etc. – of the prophets named. Jonah is both the author and the protagonist of this book.
Elsewhere in the Bible, we read this of Jonah himself:
2 Kin 14:23 In the fifteenth year of Amaziah the son of Joash king of Judah, Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel became king in Samaria, and reigned forty-one years.
2 Kin 14:24 He did evil in the sight of the LORD; he did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which he made Israel sin.
2 Kin 14:25 He restored the border of Israel from the entrance of Hamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the LORD, the God of Israel, which He spoke through His servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was of Gath-hepher.
As for Gath-hepher, Josh 19:10-16 says it is in the relatively small territory that was assigned to the tribe of Zebulun. This area was west-southwest of the Sea of Galilee, near where the town of Nazareth would one day be situated. In Jonah’s time, he was a prophet to Israel (the Northern Kingdom), also called Samaria. (The Divided Kingdom).
James Ussher’s chronology dates the events in the book of Jonah at “about” 862 BC. This is about 150 years before Israel (the northern kingdom; also called Samaria) fell to Assyria in 722 BC. Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian Empire. Therefore, Jonah was calling to repentance the capital of the empire that would one day crush his own country. For comparison purposes, and again using Ussher for the dating, the events in the book of Jonah took place roughly between the events recorded in 2 Kgs 12 and 2 Kgs 13. As we saw above, Jonah himself was mentioned in 2 Kgs 14. And as for the ultimate conquest of Israel by Assyria (Nineveh) in 722 BC, those events are recorded in 2 Kgs 17.
Israel’s prophets primarily called their own country to repentance, but here is one of the occasions that they called another country to repentance. This foreshadowed God’s abiding interest in the Gentiles – that is, any and all human beings who were not Jews. God established the descendants of Abraham not so that He could exclude the rest of the world, but to pave a way for the rest of the world. In this regard especially, Jonah was a type of Christ because he took God’s message of righteousness to the broader world – even if was only in a very limited way. All a type has to do is foreshadow reality – not be the full reality.
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Jonah 1
Jonah’s Avoids His Calling
Jonah 1:1-17
Jonah 1:1-3 – Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, located about 500 miles northwest of northern Israel. Although that was a long way for Jonah to go, the Assyrian Empire reached much closer to Israel (and eventually conquered it in 722 BC). Jonah was being sent that far to reach the capital of that growing empire. Tarshish, on the other hand, was about 2,500 miles to the west. It was the equivalent of modern Spain or at least an area of southern Spain. Therefore, Jonah was getting as far away from his assignment as he could.
It wasn’t so much Nineveh that Jonah was avoiding – it was the presence of the Lord. Jonah just didn’t want to be obedient. Jesus, on the other hand, wanted to be obedient. Therefore, He fled the presence of the Lord in heaven and came far away to earth…to save us. #FJOT
Jonah 1:5 – We don’t picture Jesus seeking to avoid the presence of the Lord, but we are accustomed to seeing him sleeping on a boat while everyone else on board was scared out of their wits. #FJOT
Mark 4:35 On that day, when evening came, He said to them, “Let us go over to the other side.”
Mark 4:36 Leaving the crowd, they took Him along with them in the boat, just as He was; and other boats were with Him.
Mark 4:37 And there arose a fierce gale of wind, and the waves were breaking over the boat so much that the boat was already filling up.
Mark 4:38 Jesus Himself was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke Him and said to Him, “Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?”
Jonah 1:9 – What a calling card!
Jonah 1:12 – The storm came on everyone else because of Jonah’s disobedience. In our case, the storm (scourging, humiliation, crucifixion) came on Jesus because of everyone else’s disobedience. The sea becomes calm for us because Jesus took the fall for us. #FJOT
Jonah 1:13-15 – To the men’s credit, they did not jump at the chance to throw Jonah overboard. They put off that decision as long as they dared.
Jonah 1:16 – Already Jonah’s ministry is having a good effect – and he’s nowhere near Nineveh. The Lord loved all Gentiles and wanted them to repent – not just the ones in Nineveh. Nevertheless, missions to the Gentiles were rare in Old Testament times. It was in the New Testament that the wide door of faith in Messiah would be opened up to them. The apostles spoke often of how the coming of Israel’s Messiah changed the focus of God’s work from the descendants of Abraham to the descendants of Adam (including Abraham).
Acts 14:16 “In the generations gone by He permitted all the nations to go their own ways;
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Acts 17:30 “Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent,
Acts 17:31 because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.”
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Acts 14:27 When they had arrived and gathered the church together, they began to report all things that God had done with them and how He had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles.
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Acts 15:7 After there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “Brethren, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles would hear the word of the gospel and believe.
This is another way that Jonah foreshadowed Messiah – the one sent to and for the Gentiles as well as the Hebrews. The one who would be storm-tossed along the way. #FJOT
Jonah 1:17 – Do you think I’ve been stretching the analogy between Jonah and the Christ? What then do you think of what Jesus said?
Matt 12:39 But He answered and said to them, “An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign; and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet;
Matt 12:40 for just as JONAH WAS THREE DAYS AND THREE NIGHTS IN THE BELLY OF THE SEA MONSTER, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
Matt 12:41 “The men of Nineveh will stand up with this generation at the judgment, and will condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.
Nor was this the only time Jesus spoke of Jonah foreshadowing Him.
Matt 16:4 “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign; and a sign will not be given it, except the sign of Jonah.” And He left them and went away.
Jesus thought Jonah foreshadowed Him long before any of us did. #FJOT
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Jonah 2
Jonah’s Prayer
Jonah 2:1-10
Do you struggle to believe that a great fish swallowed Jonah, that he was kept there for three days and three nights, that he prayed from within it, and that, in answer to his prayer, he was then vomited onto dry land? Jesus believed it. If Jesus believed it, is that not enough for us? Do we think we are smarter than Jesus?
Jonah 2:2 – The ancients knew that “Sheol“ was the place to which everyone descended at death – whether good or bad. In God’s messianic plan, Sheol (also called Hades) was a temporary holding tank for the dead, that Messiah might one day bring them back to God. The great fish illustrates that the deep was not the end for humanity, but just the place to wait for Messiah. If this is new to you, see the essay Everyone Is Going to Heaven and the book to which it links.
Jonah 2:9 – “That which I have vowed I will pay”
Per Ussher’s Chronology, the prophet Nahum would have a word for this same city of Nineveh. He, too, would make mention of vows.
Nah 1:15 Behold, on the mountains the feet of him who brings good news,
Who announces peace!
Celebrate your feasts, O Judah;
Pay your vows.
For never again will the wicked one pass through you;
He is cut off completely.
When prophets are sent to preach, they do not always know how their hearers will respond. Nevertheless, preachers must keep their vows to preach even when they think it will be useless. It’s not what they think that counts; it’s what the one who sent them thinks that counts.
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Jonah 3
Nineveh Repents
Jonah 3:1-10
Jonah is back on track now. Like a non-judgmental GPS voice, God repeats His instruction to Jonah about Nineveh as if Jonah had never heard it before.
Jonah 3:4-5 – After his experience in the sea, Jonah’s preaching to Nineveh’s citizens probably carried more conviction than his previous sermons. In any case, the people took his message to heart and repented. Mission accomplished. Jonah had made things take so much longer and be so much more difficult than they needed to be.
Jonah 3:6-9 – Jonah describes for us how repentance ran deep and wide in Nineveh. And the king’s pronouncement that they would hope for, and not presume, God’s forgiveness of their sins and the holding back of the judgment about which Jonah had warned them was the perfect way for them to think of their repentance. They truly humbled themselves before God.
Jonah 3:10 – And God did relent concerning the calamity He had been planning to bring on them. Jonah should have been thrilled and this should have been the last chapter of his little book. But it’s not.
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Jonah 4
Jonah’s Displeasure Rebuked
John 4:1-11
Jonah 4:1-3 – Jonah says he saw all this coming, and it’s why he initially set out for Tarshish instead of Nineveh. He knew that if he came and preached to these people that they should repent, that they would repent, and that God would relent. Jonah knew the drill and didn’t like it. Sort of like the prodigal son’s older brother (Luke 15).
Jonah 4:4 – God asks Jonah a reasonable question to which Jonah offers no reasonable answer.
Jonah 4:5-6 – God comforts a pouting Jonah with a plant to give him shade. Jonah is happy about the plant but shows no signs of appreciation. That is, he gives no thanks to God for the help it provides.
Jonah 4:7-11 – God then uses a worm, the sun, and a scorching wind to show what life could be like for Jonah without that little plant. God then asks Jonah to realize that if he cared about a lost plant, how much more God would care about a lost city, a lost empire – even a lost human race. The Old Testament centers its attention on the people of Abraham, and rightly so. But this attention was not for the purpose of saving just that portion of the human race. Rather, Abraham’s descendants – especially the one who would be called Messiah – were chosen as the means of reaching all of humanity.
There were many prophets in Israel in Jonah’s time, including the great Elijah and Elisha. Most of these prophets conducted their ministries east of the Mediterranean, west of the Jordan River, south of Dan, and north of Beersheba – that is, within the promised land. The book of Jonah is one of the exceptions to that rule. It is intended to foreshadow God’s plan to reach the entire world through a chosen messenger. And that chosen messenger would be God Himself in the flesh – the one Isaiah called Immanuel.
Matt 1:22 Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
Matt 1:23 “BEHOLD, THE VIRGIN SHALL BE WITH CHILD AND SHALL BEAR A SON, AND THEY SHALL CALL HIS NAME IMMANUEL,” which translated means, “GOD WITH US.”
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Is 7:14 “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel.
This one will not be disappointed when people repent in response to His preaching.
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