(dove)
The naughty Jew, Jonah, was reluctant to pronounce judgment upon the Gentiles and disappointed when God graciously spared them. God had to teach His self-important, disobedient and jealous Jewish prophet-of-judgment-to-the-Gentiles, by the hard way, out of the depths, that “salvation is of the Lord,” that God may mercifully spare whomsoever He pleases, in spite of Jonah’s displeasure, who feared that God’s being gracious would impair his own reputation! Our corrupt nature would rather misuse God’s gifts to exalt ourselves! nevertheless “Mercy glories over judgment,” and Nineveh was spared for about 256 years. See Nahum.
Jonah the Galilean (3 miles from Nazareth) is a type of the Lord’s rejection, death, resurrection and testimony of both grace and judgment to the Gentiles (Matt. 12:39-4139But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: 40For 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. 41The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here. (Matthew 12:39‑41); Rom. ]1:11-15), also of Israel disobedient, cast out, in distress, then delivered and missionaries to the Gentiles.
B.C. 862. Jonah was one of the earliest prophetic writers.