A reluctant prophet and a merciful God: the book of Jonah

Jonah son of Amittai was a prophet from Gath-hepher in Galilee who prophesied in the reign of Jeroboam II of Israel (about 793 to 753 BC). The only other mention of him outside this book is 2 Kings 14:25, where he announces that Israel's borders will be restored, a message of good news for his own nation. The book of Jonah, the fifth of the Twelve, tells a very different story: the LORD sends him to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, the empire that would conquer the northern kingdom in 722 BC.

The book itself does not name its author, and it is unusual among the prophets in that it is almost entirely narrative, with only one short prayer and one short prophetic sentence. Jewish and Christian tradition has often held that the book comes from the eighth century and goes back to Jonah's own account. Many modern scholars date it later, to the Persian period, citing features of its Hebrew and the way it speaks of Nineveh as a great city of the past (3:3), and see it as a story shaped to teach Israel. The class does not rest on the date. The book is read in Jewish worship at the afternoon service on the Day of Atonement.

Nineveh, on the east bank of the Tigris, became the royal capital under Sennacherib around 700 BC and was destroyed in 612 BC. The prophet Nahum later announced its fall. Tarshish, where Jonah tried to flee, was a distant place at the far west of the known world, often identified with southern Spain. Joppa was the port from which he sailed.

Jonah is Hebrew narrative, and in its plot, repetition and irony it is among the most carefully made stories in the Bible. Narrative teaches by what is repeated, who speaks, who changes and what is left unsaid. The book has two matching halves. In each the word of the LORD comes to Jonah (1:1; 3:1), he is told to go to Nineveh, a group of outsiders responds, and Jonah faces God. The word 'great' recurs: a great city, a great wind, a great fear, a great fish, a great displeasure. The verb 'go down' marks Jonah's descent, to Joppa, into the ship, into the hold, and finally into the sea. The pagan sailors and the Ninevites pray, fear and repent, while the prophet does not.

The genre is debated, and the class names the views. Many Jewish and Christian interpreters, ancient and modern, read the book as historical narrative that includes miracles. Others read it as a didactic story or satire, shaped to teach and not intended as a plain report, in the way Jesus's parables are stories that teach. Some critical scholars treat it as fiction from the Persian period. The book itself does not state its genre. The reader should notice both its concrete anchors, a named prophet and a real city, and its irony, such as a king who puts sackcloth on cattle. Jesus refers to Jonah and to the people of Nineveh as real in Matthew 12:41, which most readers take as support for historicity, though some hold that a teacher may refer to a story as he would to a parable.

The book ends with a question, not a statement, and the class leaves it open as the book does.

Chapter 1

The word of the LORD comes to Jonah: go to Nineveh and cry out against it because its evil has come up before me. Jonah gets up, but to flee to Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD. He goes down to Joppa, finds a ship, pays the fare and goes down into it. Then the LORD hurls a great wind on the sea. The verb 'hurl' returns for what is done to Jonah himself (1:5, 12, 15). The pagan sailors cry out, each to his own god, and throw cargo overboard. Jonah is asleep in the hold. The captain wakes him and asks him to pray. The sailors cast lots, and the lot falls on Jonah. Questioned, he says he is a Hebrew who fears the LORD, the God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land, which is a confession his actions have just contradicted. The sailors are terrified. Jonah tells them to throw him into the sea. They row hard to avoid it, then pray to the LORD not to hold them guilty of innocent blood, and throw him in. The storm stops, and the men fear the LORD, offering a sacrifice and making vows. The outsiders have become worshippers.

Chapter 1:17 to 2:10. The LORD appoints a great fish to swallow Jonah, and he is in its belly three days and three nights. The text does not name the creature. From inside, Jonah prays a psalm, mostly a thanksgiving in the language of the Psalms. He describes the depths, the waves passing over him and the sense of being driven from God's sight. He called from the belly of Sheol, the realm of the dead, and the LORD heard and brought up his life from the pit. He contrasts himself with those who cling to worthless idols. The prayer ends with a vow and the confession that salvation belongs to the LORD. The irony is that the prayer is one of thanks, offered while still inside the fish and before any change in Jonah's behaviour. The LORD speaks to the fish, and it vomits Jonah onto dry land.

Chapter 3

The word of the LORD comes a second time, with the same command. This time Jonah goes. Nineveh is so large that it takes three days to go through it. Jonah has walked only one day in when he cries out: forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown. The Hebrew verb for overthrown (hafakh) is the one used of Sodom and Gomorrah, and it can also mean to turn. The people believe God and proclaim a fast, from the greatest to the least. The king gets off his throne, takes off his robe, covers himself with sackcloth and sits in ashes. His decree extends the fast to the animals and calls each person to turn from evil and violence. He ends with a hope, who knows, God may relent, the same phrase as in Joel 2:14. God sees what they do, and he relents from the disaster he said he would do. The city was overthrown in the sense that it turned.

Chapter 4

Jonah is greatly displeased and angry. The Hebrew says it was a great evil to him, which uses the same word that has been used for Nineveh's wickedness and for the disaster God spared them. He prays, and now the reason for his flight comes out: he knew that God is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and relents from disaster. These are the words of Exodus 34:6, also used in Joel 2:13, but here they are an accusation. Jonah did not fear failure. He feared success. He asks to die. God answers with a question: is it right for you to be angry? Jonah goes out and sits east of the city to see what will happen. God appoints a plant that shades him, and Jonah is delighted. Then God appoints a worm, which kills the plant, and a scorching east wind. Jonah wishes to die again and says he is right to be angry about the plant. Then comes the last speech: Jonah pities a plant he did not make or tend, which came up in a night and perished in a night. Should God not have pity on Nineveh, the great city, with more than 120,000 people who do not know their right hand from their left, and many animals? The book ends there.

Jonah teaches that God's mercy reaches beyond Israel to the nations, including a nation that was Israel's enemy. This is not a new idea in the Bible. The promise to Abraham was that all the families of the earth would be blessed through him (Genesis 12:3), and Solomon's prayer asked God to hear the foreigner who prays toward the temple (1 Kings 8:41-43). Jonah is the Old Testament's most vivid illustration. It also teaches the freedom of God to relent. A prophecy of judgment may be conditional, as Jeremiah 18:7-8 says: if a nation turns from its evil, God will relent. This does not make him changeable; he is consistent in his mercy, and it is Jonah who wants him to behave otherwise.

The book teaches God's rule over all things: wind, sea, fish, plant, worm and heat all do what he appoints. It shows the Ninevites turning on a short sermon that carries no promise of mercy. And it exposes the prophet, and any community of faith, who accept God's mercy for themselves and resent it for others. The picture of the God who cares for more than 120,000 people and their animals belongs with Psalm 145:9, which says that the LORD's compassion is over all he has made.

The canon also holds Nahum, whose oracle announces the fall of the same city. The repentance of Nineveh did not last. God's mercy is real, and so is his judgment.

Jesus himself makes the connection, in the form of promise and fulfilment. When some scribes and Pharisees ask for a sign, he answers that no sign will be given except the sign of the prophet Jonah: as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea creature, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth (Matthew 12:38-40). The sign is his death and resurrection. He goes on to say that the men of Nineveh will rise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and something greater than Jonah is here (Matthew 12:41; Luke 11:29-32). Jonah is a prophet who is delivered from the deep. Jesus is the greater one who is raised from the dead, and who preaches to the nations.

There are further echoes. Jonah asks to be thrown into the sea so that the storm will end, and it stops (1:12, 15). That anticipates Jesus's willing death for others, though the Gospels do not make the comparison, so it is an echo only. Mark's story of Jesus asleep in the boat and rising to calm the storm (Mark 4:35-41) is also like Jonah's, with the contrast that the sleeper there is the Lord of the storm. The disciples are filled with great fear, as the sailors were (Jonah 1:16).

The book's last question also points toward the Gospels. In the parable of the prodigal son, the elder brother stands outside and will not come in (Luke 15:28-32), and the story ends open, as Jonah does. The mercy that Jonah resents becomes a mission to the nations in Acts, where the church concludes that God has granted repentance to the Gentiles (Acts 11:18), and Paul speaks of the Gentiles glorifying God for his mercy (Romans 15:9). Peter says the Lord is patient and does not want anyone to perish (2 Peter 3:9), an echo of Jonah 4:2.