Jonah 1- Go Preach!

Photo by James Tracy

Jonah means “Dove” while Amittai means “truthful.” Jonah is also mentioned in 2 Kings 14:25 prophesying to King Jeroboam II of Israel (753-712BC). He was from the tribe of Zebulon.

Nineveh was a city founded by Nimrod shortly after The Great Flood and was made the capitol of the Assyrian Empire by Sennacherib who made it one of the most beautiful cities of the time. The wall surrounding the city was 40-50 feet high and ran two-and-a-half miles along the Tigris River and eight miles around the inner city. It had fifteen main gates. It fell to the Chaldeans and Medes, in about 529BC.

Chapter 1- Go Preach!

1 Now the word of the I Am came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying,

2 "Get up and go to Nineveh, that great city, and prophecy against it; because I see their wickedness." 

Jonah is the only minor prophet written in the third person. It is believed that he penned it after his return to Israel.

God is not only concerned with Israel, but with the salvation of all people. Here, Nineveh’s wickedness was so great a just God will have to destroy them. But since He loves them, He wants them warned and given a chance to repent.

3 But Jonah ran away from the presence of the I Am to Joppa, where he found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare, and got on board, to go with them to Tarshish away from the presence of the I Am.

Joppa is one of the oldest port cities in the world and has been incorporated into modern day Tel Aviv.

Tarshish is not known for certain. Some believe it could have been in Spain (The Septuagint translated it as Carthage). Others note that when Solomon traded with Tarshish, the items he received were all natives of India. It may also have been a city in Asia Minor (possibly the same city the Apostle Paul was born in; Tarsus, on the southern border of Turkey). Tarshish is also a term describing large trade ships that traveled long distances. All of these would have the same meaning in the book of Jonah; “Take me as far away from God as possible.”

4 But the I Am sent a great wind on the sea, and there was a mighty storm, so that the ship was likely to be broken up.

5 Then the sailors were afraid, and cried every man to his god, and threw out the cargo that was in the ship into the sea, to lighten it. But Jonah had gone down into the hold of the ship and lay down and he was fast asleep.

This was some storm to scare the seasoned sailors so much! They did everything in their power to survive and it wasn’t working. Yet Jonah is sound asleep. He may have been in deep depression, one symptom of which is excessive sleep. Running form God is a common cause of such depression.

6 So the ship captain came to him, and said, “Why are you sleeping? Get up! Call on your God! Maybe that God will think about us, so that we won't die!”

These people believed in a multitude of gods, with each person worshiping his own favorite. They don’t know which god is doing this, but they hope Jonah’s is the one since all of theirs have failed.

7 And they said to each other, “Let's roll the dice to see why this evil has happened to us.” So they rolled the dice and it landed on Jonah.

8 Then they said to him, “Tell us, Please! why is this happening to us?! What is your occupation? And why are you here? What is your nationality?”

The lots only told them who could give them an answer, not who the gods were actually mad at. God made sure the lot fell on the one who could answer their questions.

9 And he said to them, “I am an Hebrew; and I fear the I Am, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”

Jonah’s God was THE God. He was more powerful than any other “god” because He had made the whole universe.

10 Then the men were vary afraid and asked, “Why have you done this?” Because he had told them he had run away from the presence of the I Am. 

11 Then they asked him, “What should we do to you so that the sea will calm down?” Because the sea was very bad and stormy.

12 And he said to them, “Pick me up, and throw me into the sea; then the sea will be calm for you: because I know that its my fault this storm is happening to you.”

Was Jonah nobly sacrificing himself? Or was he still running from God? Would the storm have quit if he had said “Take me back to Joppa so I can go to Nineveh?” Probably.

He appears to have a death wish. However he can’t just jump overboard because that would be murder (of himself) and he would go to hell. If he talks the sailors into murdering him by throwing him overboard, he can still go to heaven. This is rather silly since he is already in rebellion to God, heading him straight to hell no matter how he dies.

13 Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring the boat to land; but they couldn't because the storm was so bad. 

14 So, they cried out to the I Am, “We beg You, O I Am! We beg you not to kill us because of this man or because we kill him, because You, O I Am, have done just what You wanted to.”

15 So they picked up Jonah, and threw him into the sea: and the sea quit raging.

16 Then the men feared the I Am exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice unto the I Am and made religious vows.

They now believed on God. These sailors were Jonah’s first converts in this story.

17 Now the I Am had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

The word rendered “great fish” comes from a Hebrew word that is translated as whale, dragon, or sea monster elsewhere in the Old Testament. The word Jesus used to disscribe it means big fish, whale, sea serpent, or sea monster in the New Testament.

The idea that the whale is not a fish is fairly modern and part of man’s classification of animals, not necessarily God’s. God appears to classify animals more by their habitat than their physical characteristics. Thus, any creature in the sea would be a fish. Any very large creature would be a sea monster.

This particular animal could have been a whale as we know it. There is a story of an 18th century whaler falling overboard and disappearing. The next day his shipmates caught a whale and cut it open to find the man inside, still alive; totally insane, but still alive. 

Or he could have actually died and God brought him back to life later.

This "great fish" could also have been a basking shark, whale shark, or some creature that is now extinct (short neck plesiosaur?). It doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that God gave this particular animal the special job of catching and preserving Jonah.