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Home , Book of Jonah

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An Introduction to the Book of

“Arise, go to , that great city, & proclaim to it the message that I tell you” (:2)

Place in the

The book of Jonah is fifth in the list of , after Obadiah & before Micah. The book contains four chapters.

Date & Author

The exact date of composition is not known, but Tobit refers to Jonah, so the book must have existed before the fourth century B.C. The Hebrew is like that of Ezra & Nehemiah, so it was probably written in the fifth century around 450 B.C. Nothing is known about the author except his name. There is mention of a Jonah, son of Amittai, in :25 (see Jon 1:1), but he was not the author of the book.

Theme

The theme is God’s compassionate love for all people, Jew & Gentile. The author tries to reassure his fellow Jews that the divine oracles against their pagan neighbours, especially those contained in Isaiah, Jeremiah & Ezekiel, were conditional i.e. conditioned by their repentance & conversion. God does not hate any of the people God has made.

Summary

Jonah is unlike any of the other prophets, for the book does not contain oracles. It is an interesting & sometimes humorous story about a reluctant prophet who is called by God to go to Nineveh, the capital city of Assyria, which has always been hostile & cruel to Israel, to preach conversion to them & faith in , the God of Israel. Jonah does not like the call, so he tries to flee from God by taking a Gentile ship to , a place far away in Spain. God pursues him with a great storm; the pagan sailors discover that Jonah is the reason for the danger, so they throw him overboard. Immediately he is swallowed by a big , & the storm stops. After three days the fish disgorges him on the shore near Nineveh. Jonah goes to Nineveh & preaches repentance. All the people, including the king, do penance & are converted. Jonah leaves the city & climbs a nearby hill to see whether or not God will destroy the pagan city. God spares the city out of mercy & compassion.

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Theology

The meaning of the book of Jonah depends on its literary form. Basically the question is: Is the book of Jonah factual history, or is it a parable, or some kind of story made up with the idea of teaching some divine truth? Opinions on this matter are divided.

1. Until the twentieth century, for about 2500 years, Jews & then Christians understood Jonah to be a historical account. It is so much a part of Western culture that virtually everyone has heard about “Jonah & the .” Evangelical & Fundamentalist Christians hold that it is a true historical account of events that actually took place. The weight of history is on the side of this interpretation. The plus side of this view is that it avoids pitfalls involved with a “symbolic” or “mythical” view of historical events related in the Bible, which, in the hands of some interpreters, destroys the historical value of the Bible & makes it all “myth.” The problem with this interpretation is that it ignores the literary form of “parable”, which is present in both the OT & NT – Jesus himself frequently used it in his teaching (e.g. the parables of the good Samaritan, the prodigal son, Mt 13 & so on).

2. Liberal Protestant interpreters in the twentieth century, & currently most Catholic biblical scholars, interpret the book of Jonah as a parable or “didactic fiction”, or even as allegory. They may interpret it differently, but they all agree that it is not a historical account. This view raises difficulties with some of the words of Jesus, because he seems to quote from Jonah as if it were a historical account, saying that just as Jonah was in the belly of the big fish for three days so would the Son of Man be in the underworld for three days, & then he would rise again from the dead, just as Jonah was deposited on the shore by the fish.

But what does the book of Jonah mean? The main point was expressed above under Theme: God’s love & compassion extend to all human beings, Jew & Gentile. Jonah himself is an example of the narrowness & particularism found among many Jews of the time. This means that they thought God loved only Israel & had mercy only on it; they thought that God hated their pagan neighbours & had only punishment in store for them. So the book is a rejection of that type of Jewish narrowness. In this sense, the book of Jonah is a giant step forward in biblical religion, seeing that God’s love & salvation are meant for all of humanity but comes to them through Israel, the Chosen People.

In the NT, Jesus makes reference to “the sign of Jonah” as a type of his three days of death before his Resurrection (see Mt 12:39 & Lk 11:30).

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Outline

I. Jonah’s first mission (1:1 – 2:11) A. Jonah’s flight from his call onto the Gentile boat (1:1-16) B. His prayer for life & deliverance from the fish (2:1-11)

II. Jonah’s second mission (3:1 – 4:11) A. Jonah preaches & the pagan city of Nineveh repents (3:1-10) B. His prayer for death; deliverance by the tree (4:1-11)

Reflection

‘I called to the LORD out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of I cried, and you heard my voice. (:2)