Jonah
Author: Jonah
Jonah is sent to Nineveh, flees toward Tarshish, and is angry when the city repents.
Outline
The flight (1)
Jonah boards a ship for Tarshish, a storm falls, and the sailors throw him into the sea.
The fish (2)
From the belly of the fish Jonah prays, and the fish vomits him onto dry land.
The preaching (3)
Nineveh believes the warning, from the king to the cattle, and God relents.
The anger (4)
Jonah wants to die because mercy came, and God asks him about the city and a plant.
Key verses
Jonah 1:3
Jonah rises to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.
Jonah 2:9
In the fish he says salvation belongs to the Lord.
Jonah 4:11
The Lord asks whether he should not pity Nineveh, with its people and its cattle.
Jonah is a narrative about a prophet who knows the Lord’s character and does not want that character used on Israel’s enemy. The word comes: arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it, for their evil has come up before me. Jonah goes the other way. He finds a ship at Joppa bound for Tarshish, pays the fare, and goes down into the sides of the ship. The book will keep using the word down. A great wind comes. The sailors cry every man to his god, throw the cargo overboard, and find Jonah asleep. They cast lots. The lot falls on him. He tells them he fears the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land, and that he is fleeing from that God’s presence. The sailors, who do not share his covenant, row hard to save him and then pray not to be charged with innocent blood. They throw him in. The sea ceases. They fear the Lord exceedingly and offer a sacrifice. The first converts in the book are the men Jonah involved in his escape.
A great fish swallows him, and he is in its belly three days and three nights. The prayer in chapter 2 is not a request to be spared the fish so much as a psalm from inside it. The waters compassed him. He went down to the bottoms of the mountains. When his soul fainted he remembered the Lord. Those who regard lying vanities forsake their own mercy. Salvation belongs to the Lord. The fish vomits him out on dry land. The word comes a second time, and this time he goes.
Nineveh is a city of three days’ journey. Jonah preaches a short sermon: yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. The people believe God. They proclaim a fast. The king rises from his throne, covers himself with sackcloth, and orders man and beast to cry mightily and to turn from violence. God sees the works and relents of the evil he said he would do. The warning did what warnings are for. The prophet who delivered it is displeased exceedingly. He tells God this is why he fled. He knew God was gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and repenting of the evil. He asks to die. God asks whether he does well to be angry.
A plant grows and comforts Jonah, then a worm kills it, and the sun beats on his head. He faints and asks again for death. God asks him to feel the disproportion. You had pity on the plant, which you did not make grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night. Should I not spare Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left, and also much cattle? The book ends on the question. Jonah is not given a speech of agreement. The reader is left with the Lord’s pity for a violent city and with a prophet who would rather keep the mercy inside Israel. The story is the argument.