The Book of Jonah

The Book of Jonah

Jonah 1:9-12 - And he said unto them, I [am] an Hebrew; and I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry [land]. Then were the men exceedingly afraid, and said unto him, Why hast thou done this? For the men knew that he fled from the presence of the LORD, because he had told them. Then said they unto him, What shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us? for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous. And he said unto them, Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you: for I know that for my sake this great tempest [is] upon you.

Jonah 4:10-11 - Then said the LORD, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night: 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?

The Old Testament - A Brief Overview

Summary of The Book of Jonah

The book of Jonah gains its title, of course, from its chief character. The son of Amittai (1: 1), Jonah was a native of Gathhepher, a village of the tribe of Zebulun. Hence, he was a prophet of Israel. If he is to be identified with the Jonah of 2 Kin. 14:25, he lived in the time of Jeroboam II ( the first half of the eighth century BC) and had played some role in helping that king to regain lost territory (2 Kin. 14:25). He was evidently well known and probably held quite a respected place in the Northern Kingdom.

There is no way of telling who was actually the author of the book or at what time it was written. The story itself is one of the most familiar of the Old Testament. Jonah, a prophet of God, is called to deliver a message of repentance to Nineveh, the capital city of the Assyrians. Since Nineveh was already in the process of destroying the Jews, Jonah sought to avoid discharging his commission and boarded a ship bound for Tarshish. He was cast overboard by the sailors in the midst of a storm and swallowed by a great sea monster which the Lord had provided for this purpose.

After being released from the fish, Jonah preached his message to Nineveh and was able to bring about their repentance. Because of his hostility toward this Gentile nation, Jonah began to brood God, by the lesson of the gourd, showed Jonah that he was concerned for other nations besides Israel.

There has been considerable speculation as to the motives of God in sending Jonah to the Ninevites. One generally accepted idea is that God sought to rebuke the parochial spirit of the Jews by offering his favor to the Assyrians, thus demonstrating the capacity of the Gentiles for salvation. In keeping with this suggestion, it is interesting to note that Jonah's place of embarkation was Joppa, the same city from which Peter was called to deliver the gospel to the household of Cornelius, the first Gentile Christians. It has also been suggested that the purpose of Jonah's message was to forestall the Assyrian captivity of Israel by causing the Ninevites to repent of their lust for conquest. A third interpretation which some have preferred is that the key to understanding Jonah lies in Christ's reference to him in Matt. 12:40-41; that is, that Jonah was an antitype of Christ and that the central event of the narrative is the escape from the belly of the great fish on the third day (1:17; 2:10), just as the central event in the life of Christ was his resurrection from the dead on the third day.

Jonah
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