In other articles in this magazine, we have considered Jonah both as a servant and also as a type of the nation of Israel. Both characters of Jonah afford us real insight into the wonderful ways of God, whether with His servants individually or with His earthly people collectively. But doubtless the most precious type depicted in Jonah is his reflection of Christ Himself.
At first glance, we can scarcely think of one so unsuited to being a type of Christ. Christ was the perfect, obedient servant; Jonah was willfully disobedient. Christ said, “Lo, I come to do thy will, O God” (Heb. 10:9); Jonah clearly did his own will. Christ came in love and mercy to those who were His enemies; Jonah would rather have seen the destruction of thousands of people, as well as animals, rather than “lose face.” Christ never did one thing to please Himself; Jonah’s heart was occupied with himself.
In Death and Resurrection
Yet our blessed Lord Himself, while on earth, was pleased to compare Himself with Jonah in one distinct way, and in this one way, Jonah shows us a remarkable illustration of the work of Christ. If Jonah’s natural character and behavior were far removed from that of our blessed Lord Jesus, yet in this one way he is a type of the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
When our Lord was about to reject Israel and reach out to the nations, He could remind “that evil and adulterous generation” that “there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas” (Matt. 12:39). Jonah was a sign to the nation of Israel in two ways. First of all, he was a sign in his preaching to Nineveh. Our Lord reminded the Jews that “they [the Ninevites] repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here” (Luke 11:32). Jonah preached only one short sermon for one day, yet it resulted in the repentance of hundreds of thousands of people. Yet the continuous preaching of the Lord Jesus over 3½ years brought about the repentance of relatively few in Israel. However, our Lord was also a sign to them in His death and resurrection. He could say to them, “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matt. 12:40). (Some may argue that our Lord was not that long in the grave, but in making this comment about Himself, the Lord Jesus simply adhered to the Jewish way of reckoning time, that counted part of a day as an entire day.)
Faithfulness and Willfulness
Jonah was an unfaithful and willful servant, and it was only through the bitter experience of being in the whale’s belly that he learned obedience to his Lord’s will. But there was One who came into this world, not only in obedience to His Father’s will, but in glad obedience. He suffered too, far more than Jonah did, yet He suffered for the sins of others. It was because of His obedience and suffering on Calvary’s cross that God could act in grace, not only toward Jonah, but also toward the thousands in the city of Nineveh. Thus it was that Jonah, while undergoing what seemed like a hopeless imprisonment in the whale’s belly, could illustrate the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus.
Jonah in the whale’s belly corresponds to our blessed Lord under the sentence of death, and thus the Spirit of God gives Jonah expressions in his circumstances that far exceed any mere human terminology. For example, he says, “Out of the belly of Sheol cried I” (Jonah 2:2 JND); our blessed Lord could say, “Thou wilt not leave my soul in Sheol” (Psa. 16:10 JND). Jonah could say, “The floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves passed over me” (Jonah 2:3); our Lord said prophetically, “All thy waves and thy billows are gone over me” (Psa. 42:7). Jonah could say, “My prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple” (Jonah 2:7); our Lord said, “As for me, my prayer is unto thee, O Lord, in an acceptable time” (Psa. 69:13). All of these expressions, and others, were doubtless ordered by the Spirit of God, as being suitable to one who was a type of our Lord Jesus.
Contrasting Comparisons
Jonah resembled the Lord Jesus in other ways too. With reference to Jonah, there could be no fruit—no blessing—from the first man. Jonah, acting in the flesh, fled from the presence of the Lord and refused to go to Nineveh and preach the message given to him. It was only after going through the storm at sea and spending those awful days in the whale’s belly that he was ready to preach to the people of Nineveh. It was only, figuratively speaking, after death and resurrection, that he was able to give a message which resulted in blessing to thousands. So it was also with our blessed Lord. He could say at the end of His earthly ministry, “I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened until it be accomplished!” (Luke 12:50). So also he could say to some Greeks who wished to see Him, “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” (John 12:24). Our Lord did indeed “instruct many in righteousness” (Isa. 53:11 JND) during his earthly ministry, but it was only in His death that He was able to “bear their iniquities” (Isa. 53:11). All blessing, whether in heaven or on earth, flows from the death and resurrection of Christ; Jonah’s time in the whale’s belly, and his subsequently being vomited out on dry land, is a picture of this.
The Power of God
Finally, Jonah recognized that if he was to be delivered, it must be by the power of God Himself. After all the expressions in his prayer in the whale’s belly—expressions that, as we have seen, resemble the prophetic language of our blessed Lord—Jonah finally says, “Salvation is of the Lord” (Jonah 2:9). So also did the Lord Jesus. As a divine Person, He could say, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). As the perfect, dependent Man, He could say, “Save me from the lion’s mouth” (Psa. 22:21), and, “Take me not away in the midst of my days” (Psa. 102:24). His resurrection was the seal that God His Father had been fully satisfied and glorified in His work on the cross.
In being portrayed as a type of the Lord Jesus, Jonah joins a number of Old Testament believers whose failures are also recorded for us. Men like Isaac, Moses, Aaron, Samson, David and Solomon, to name a few, are all a picture of Christ in some way or other, yet failure, and sometimes serious failure, is recorded in the life of each of them. All this only magnifies the grace of God, while showing us that God looks for what is of Christ in each of His own, and He loves to record it!
W. J. Prost