Jonah

Narrator: Chris Genthree
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Son of Amittai and the prophet of Gath-hepher (in Galilee, compare John 7:52). His prophecy is in the main the history of himself. It shows that the prophet embodied in himself the testimony of God through Israel to the Gentiles (Compare Matt. 24:14), and also the important fact that God regards the contrition and turning from evil of a city or nation. Jonah was directed to go and cry against that great city Nineveh; but instead of obeying, he fled from the presence of the Lord. He himself tells us why he fled—he knew Jehovah was gracious: if he foretold the destruction of the city, and God spared it, he would lose his reputation (Jonah 4:2). It was the same with Israel: they could not bear grace being shown to the Gentiles (compare Acts 13:45; 1 Thess. 2:16). Jonah was God’s servant, but unfaithful: his unfaithfulness brought him into the depths of judgment, but he then embodied in his own person the truth of the testimony he proclaimed, and yet while proclaiming the judgment, he was unprepared for the extension of mercy to the Gentiles. God stopped him in his course, and though he slept, the sailors called him to account. After praying to their gods, they drew lots and the lot fell on Jonah. He had to confess he was fleeing from Jehovah, the God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land. Thus Jehovah was made known to those Gentile seamen. They cried unto Him not to lay the blood of Jonah upon them, and they cast him into the sea. They feared Jehovah exceedingly, offered a sacrifice to Him, and made vows. In like manner the obduracy of the Jews only opened the door wider for grace to go to the Gentiles.
Jonah 2. God prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah, for he was His servant. When in the depths he cried to Jehovah, “out of the belly of Sheol:” as the remnant of Israel will plead when they feel that the sentence of death is passed upon them. Salvation is of the Lord. Jonah was raised out of death, as the Lord was raised after being in the grave; and as Israel will arise out of the dust of the earth (compare Dan. 12:2).
Jonah 3. A second time Jonah receives his commission. God will not set His purpose aside because of the failure of His servant. Jonah now obeyed, and proclaimed “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” The king called for a fast, put on sackcloth, and ordered all to do the same, and even to clothe the beasts with sackcloth, and he commanded all to turn away from their evil ways. God saw that the repentance was real, and He turned from the destruction that was predicted. See NINEVEH.
Jonah 4. God’s clemency greatly displeased Jonah, and he was very angry; what would become of his reputation? In his prayer he repeated what he had at first said to himself about the grace of God. He asked God to take away his life: how could he be a prophet to such a God? Alas, he was filled with his own importance. As he watched to see what would become of the city, God prepared a gourd to give him shade from the heat of the sun, and he rejoiced over the gourd; but the next day it withered, and under the power of the sun and the east wind he fainted, and again asked to die. He said to God that he did well to be angry about the gourd, but God condescended to reason with him, saying that as Jonah had had pity on the gourd which cost him nothing; so God had had pity on Nineveh, a city with more than 60,000 inhabitants who knew not their right hand from their left, besides very much cattle.
We may hope that Jonah humbled himself before being used by the Spirit to write his own history—a history which shows what the heart of even a servant of God was, and the means employed by God to teach him. Jonah is once spoken of elsewhere as having prophesied of events which came to pass in the days of Jeroboam II. This places Jonah as one of the earliest of the Minor Prophets (2 Kings 14:25). He is called JONAS in the New Testament where a contrast is drawn between the Ninevites repenting at the preaching of Jonah, and the Jews not repenting though a greater than Jonah was then among them. Allusion is also made to Jonah being in the fish’s belly as a type of the Lord’s burial “in the heart of the earth” (Matt. 12:39-41; Matt. 16:4; Luke 11:29-32).