The book of Jonah is one of my favourite prophetic books. It's "short and sweet", poignant, and has fantastic dynamics. I always loved it as a child... the "belly of the whale" story has great rapport with children. The message that I always was taught about the story was "don't run from what God has in store from you" or "don't defy God or you will end up in trouble like Jonah". I believe these are both fully credible messages and, now that I've read the story as an adult, I believe that there are also much deeper messages to the story. These messages also give a more in-depth look at the reason that Jesus referred to the prophet in His own prophesying.
It's recorded in Matthew 12, Matthew 16, and Luke 11 that the Pharisees came to Jesus to ask Him to show signs and wonders. Jesus sternly replies to 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 Jonah; for as Jonah 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. The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, a greater than Jonah is here."
This quote gives the entire message behind the book of Jonah; it is the message brought by Jesus and John the Baptist - one clearly noted in a prior post - "Repent ye; for the kingdom of God is at hand". But Jonah's own repentance from his defiance of God is not the main focus of what Jesus says here - it is the Ninevites that had to repent. And there is something very special about their repentance.
To go any further, some ground work should be laid for the setting of Jonah. It's believed that the story was written before any of the other books of the prophets (that is to say, from Isaiah to the end of the Old Testament). It is believed to have been written in about 690 B.C. That's about 90 years before Israel (the ten northern tribes, but not Judah and Benjamin) went into captivity and about 40 years before Isaiah began to prophesy. Jonah is mentioned in 2 Kings 14:25, but the prophesies attributed to him there are not the same ones as the message in the book of Jonah.
The name Jonah is a Hebrew word meaning "dove". Jonah's father's name is Amittai which is a Hebrew word meaning "my firm truth". Now the dove, in spiritual imagery, is symbolic of the spirit; but more importantly here, it is symbolic of God's own Spirit, the Holy Spirit, which is the Spirit of truth. By the end of the book of Jonah, it is apparent why his name is connected to the Spirit of truth.
Nineveh at the time of Jonah's writings was the capital of Assyria - that is to say, they were the enemy of Israel. Assyria was the country that captured Israel in about 600 B.C. And then, about 200 years later, the Babylonians overthrew Assyria and captured Judah. The word Nineveh means "the home of Nina". Nina was an Assyrian goddess. She was the patron goddess of fishermen and was in fact a fish (or looked like a fish). The fact that the Ninevites worshipped a fish is very important to this story, as you will see.
My next few posts will go through Jonah chapter by chapter, but the one thing that I want to point out now that is important to the message of Jonah is that the people that God tells Jonah to go preach to, the Ninevites, were "the enemy" in the story. They were symbolic of the "wicked and adulterous generation" that Jesus spoke of above because they worshipped many different gods, none of which were our God; however, the distinction is that, where the Ninevites repented of this after Jonah's coming, there are those in the generation that Christ prophesied about that will not repent, and those are spoken of in the Book of Revelation.
So, sit back and enjoy the Book of Jonah. God bless.
