Jonah
God raised up certain "prophets" who were His mouthpieces.
They would speak out against their sin and idolatry and would
continually warn of God's judgment. Some of the prophets spoke
out in the North and some in the South, but God was faithfully
warning them of certain catastrophe if they would not turn to
him.
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The Book of Jonah (Hebrew: Sefer Yonah) is a book in the
Hebrew Bible. It tells the story of a Hebrew prophet named
Jonah ben Amittai who is sent by God to prophesy the
destruction of Nineveh but tries to escape the divine
mission.[1] Set in the reign of Jeroboam II (786-746 BCE), it
was probably written in the post-exilic period, sometime
between the late fifth to early fourth century BC.[2] The
story has an interesting interpretive history (see below) and
has become well-known through popular children’s stories. In
Judaism it is the Haftarah for the afternoon of Yom Kippur due
to its story of God's willingness to forgive those who
repent...
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This little roll of four short chapters has given rise to
almost as much discussion and difference of opinion as the
first four chapters of Genesis. It would be presumptuous to
think that one could, in a brief article, speak the final
word on the questions in debate.
I. Contents of the Book.
The story is too well known to need retelling. Moreover, it
would be difficult to give the events in fewer words than
the author employs in his classic narrative. One event grows
out of another, so that the interest of the reader never
flags.
1. Jonah Disobedient, Jonah 1:1-3:
When the call came to Jonah to preach in Nineveh, he fled in
the opposite direction, hoping thus to escape from his
unpleasant task. He was afraid that the merciful God would
forgive the oppressing heathen city, if it should repent at
his preaching. Jonah was a narrow-minded patriot, who feared
that Assyria would one day swallow up his own little nation;
and so he wished to do nothing that might lead to the
preservation of wicked Nineveh. Jonah was willing to
prophesy to Israel; he at first flatly refused to become a
foreign missionary.
2. Jonah Punished, Jonah 1:4-16:
The vessel in which the prophet had taken passage was
arrested by a great storm. The heathen sailors inferred that
some god must be angry with some person on board, and cast
lots to discover the culprit. When the lot fell upon Jonah,
he made a complete confession, and bravely suggested that
they cast him overboard. The heathen mariners rowed
desperately to get back to land, but made no progress
against the storm. They then prayed Yahweh not to bring
innocent blood upon them, and cast Jonah into the sea. As
the storm promptly subsided, the heathen sailors offered a
sacrifice to Yahweh and made vows. In this part of the story
the mariners give an example of the capacity of the Gentiles
to perform noble deeds and to offer acceptable worship to
Yahweh...
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jo'-na (yonah, "dove"; 'Ionas):
(1) According to 2 Ki 14:25, Jonah, the son of Amittai, of
Gath-hepher, a prophet and servant of Yahweh, predicted the
restoration of the land of Israel to its ancient boundaries
through the efforts of Jeroboam II. The prophet lived and
labored either in the early part of the reign of Jeroboam
(790-750 BC), or during the preceding generation. He may
with great probability be placed at 800-780 BC. His early
ministry must have made him popular in Israel; for he
prophesied of victory and expansion of territory. His native
village of Gath-hepher was located in the territory of
Zebulun (Josh 19:13).
(2) According to the book bearing his name, Jonah the son of
Amittai received a command to preach to Nineveh; but he fled
in the opposite direction to escape from the task of
proclaiming Yahweh's message to the great heathen city; was
arrested by a storm, and at his own request was hurled into
the sea, where he was swallowed by a great fish, remaining
alive in the belly of the fish for three days. When on his
release from the body of the fish the command to go to
Nineveh was renewed, Jonah obeyed and announced the
overthrow of the wicked city. When the men of Nineveh
repented at the preaching of the prophet, God repented of
the evil He had threatened to bring upon them. Jonah was
grieved that the oppressing city should be spared, and
waited in the vicinity to see what would be the final
outcome. An intense patriot, Jonah wished for the
destruction of the people that threatened to swallow up
Israel. He thought that Yahweh was too merciful to the
heathen oppressors. By the lesson of the gourd he was taught
the value of the heathen in the sight of Yahweh.
It is the fashion now in scholarly circles to treat the Book
of Jonah as fiction. The story is said to be an allegory or
a parable or a symbolic narrative. Why then did the author
fasten upon a true and worthy prophet of Yahweh the stigma
of rebellion and narrowness? On theory that the narrative is
an allegory, J. Kennedy well says that "the man who wrote it
was guilty of a gratuitous insult to the memory of a
prophet, and could not have been inspired by the prophet's
Master thus to dishonor a faithful servant."
(3) our Lord referred on two different occasions to the sign
of Jonah the prophet (Mt 12:38-41; Lk 11:29-32; Mt 16:4). He
speaks of Jonah's experience in the belly of the fish as
parallel with His own approaching entombment for three days,
and cites the repentance of the Ninevites as a rebuke to the
unbelieving men of his own generation. Our Lord thus speaks
both of the physical miracle of the preservation of Jonah in
the body of the fish and of the moral miracle of the
repentance of the Ninevites, and without the slightest hint
that He regarded the story as an allegory.
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(dove), the fifth of the minor prophets, was the son of
Amittai, and a native of Gath-hepher. 2Ki 14:25 He
flourished in or before the reign of Jeroboam II., about
B.C. 820. Having already, as it seems, prophesied to Israel,
he was sent to Nineveh. The time was one of political
revival in Israel; but ere long the Assyrians were to be
employed by God as a scourge upon them. The prophet shrank
from a commission which he felt sure would result, Jon 4:2
in the sparing of a hostile city. He attempted therefore to
escape to Tarshish. The providence of God, however, watched
over him, first in a storm, and then in his being swallowed
by a large fish (a sea monster, probably the white shark)
for the space of three days and three nights. [On this
subject see article WHALE] After his deliverance, Jonah
executed his commission; and the king, "believing him to be
a minister form the supreme deity of the nation," and having
heard of his miraculous deliverance, ordered a general fast,
and averted the threatened judgment. But the prophet, not
from personal but national feelings, grudged the mercy shown
to a heathen nation. He was therefore taught by the
significant lesson of the "gourd," whose growth and decay
brought the truth at once home to him, that he was sent to
testify by deed, as other prophets would afterward testify
by word, the capacity of Gentiles for salvation, and the
design of God to make them partakers of it. This was "the
sign of the prophet Jonas."
Lu 11:29,30 But the resurrection of Christ itself
was also shadowed forth in the history of the prophet. Mt
12:39,41; 16:4 The mission of Jonah was highly symbolical.
The facts contained a concealed prophecy. The old tradition
made the burial-place of Jonah to be Gath-hepher; the modern
tradition places it at Nebi-Yunus, opposite Mosul.
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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.
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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."
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