Jonah doesn't like his duty, so he tries to flee from God on a ship. You can follow him on Twitter. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon this content non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. Summaries Courtesy of the Ultimate Bible Summary Collection. Jonah 3:1-10. •    Chapter 2-3, After God had the fish cough him up, three days later; Jonah obeyed God and went to Nineveh to fulfill his mission. Early interpretations of the book often suggested that God was trying to show Jonah that people are more important than plants. Jonah 1:1-3The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: "Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me." We have also been recommended for educational use by the following publications: Ancient History Encyclopedia Foundation is a non-profit organization registered in Canada. It is also retold in the Quran. Jonah, the captain, and crew of the ship he sailed on, the king and citizens of Nineveh. [25] Jonah, now being exposed to the full force of the sun, becomes faint and pleads for God to kill him. Nineveh’s repentance must have been short-lived; it was destroyed in 612 B.C. before Assyria conquered Israel’s Northern Kingdom.

Key personalities include Jonah, the captain and the ship’s crew and the people of Nineveh. the Septuagint). Jonah was a well-known prophet during the reign of the Israelite King Jeroboam ben Joash of the northern kingdom of Israel (c. 786-746 BCE). [8] The sailors refuse to do this and continue rowing, but all their efforts fail and they are eventually forced to throw Jonah overboard. https://www.ancient.eu/article/1170/. [18] The entire city is humbled and broken with the people (and even the animals)[19][20] in sackcloth and ashes.

The final aspect of the tripartite theme of Jonah, compassion, reveals a theodicy within this prophetic narrative. Due to Jonah shirking his divine mission, God sends forth a storm to hinder Jonah’s flight. In the final chapter (Chapter 4) of the book, Nineveh is spared and Jonah is still depicted as dissatisfied with God’s decision to save the Ninevites.

Limiting YHWH’S compassion within an Israelite boundary would only disrupt God’s universal control, which is a major theology in prophetic literature. Through his typological interpretation of the Book of Jonah, Jesus has weighed his generation and found it wanting. Laie, B. T. (2018, January 09). "[35] The lesson taught by the episode of the tree at the end of the book is that comfort is a deep human need that religion provides, but this need not obscure the role of God. This ongoing frustration in Israel is also reflected in the prophet Jonah’s refusal to bring YHWH’S plan of forgiveness to Nineveh because they will eventually repent. Purpose of Writing: Disobedience and revival are the key themes in this book. Nineveh’s repentance must have been short-lived; it was destroyed in 612 B.C. By concluding the narrative with a set of rhetorical questions (4:9-11), it suggests in part that despite Israel’s attempts to uphold their part of the covenant, God changes his mind. In his 1534 translation, William Tyndale translated the phrase in Jonah 2:1 as "greate fyshe", and he translated the word ketos (Greek) or cetus (Latin) in Matthew as "whale". cetyl alcohol, which is alcohol derived from whales). citing Peter W. Parshall, "Albrecht Dürer's Saint Jerome in his Study: A Philological Reference," from The Art Bulletin 53 (September 1971), pp. Some have pointed to a place in Lebanon; others have argued for a location in Spain; and others have pointed out the correspondence of the name Tarshish to the Greek term tarsos, “oar.”, After Jonah refused to obey God’s call to go to Nineveh, God hurled a great wind upon the sea, which resulted in Jonah being thrown into the deep waters and was swallowed by a dag, “fish” and was in the belly, ‘meeh’ in Hebrew (literally – intestines) for three days and three nights. christianity, judaism and modern bible study . Unlike the remainder of the minor prophets, whose content records sundry oracles, Jonah’s book rather is composed mostly of a “prose narrative about the prophet’s mission to Nineveh and its aftermath.”1 In view of this, what can then be said of the Book of Jonah and its prophetic nature and summons for the people of Israel? [12] God then commands the fish to vomit Jonah out. The historicity of the city of Nineveh is also helpful in discerning the historical value and context of the Book of Jonah. An overview of the Book of Jonah leads one to determine two prominent sections, namely, “Jonah’s abortive voyage to Tarshish (Jon 1–2) and Jonah’s journey to Nineveh.”18 Hastily avoiding his commission from the Lord God, Jonah, in the first section, devises a journey to Tarshish. domain assumptions and societal models in … He is a God who freely gives second chances.

Copyright © 2020 The Gospel Coalition, INC. All Rights Reserved, Paul Tripp on 12 Leadership Principles for the Local Church, John Piper on the Collapse of Mars Hill and the Failure of Christian Leadership, You Don’t Know Roe: A Visual Guide to the Landmark Supreme Court Decision of Roe v. Wade, The Case Against Pro-Lifers Voting for Joe Biden, The Elegant Simplicity of the Pro-Life Issue, Amy Coney Barrett and Anti-Catholicism in America. [39] Tyndale's translation was later followed by the translators of the King James Version of 1611 and has enjoyed general acceptance in English translations. A Historical Overview. Since 1900. (4:2). A wide consensus reveals that a majority of scholars regard repentance to be a prominent theme in the Book of Jonah. "The Gloss on Jonah relies almost exclusively on Jerome’s commentary on Jonah (c. 396), so its Latin often has a tone of urbane classicism. In early translations of the Hebrew Bible, Jewish translators tended to remove anthropomorphic imagery in order to prevent the reader from misunderstanding the ancient texts. Overall, if the exiled-community would only repent of their mistakes, YHWH would immediately intervene just as he had done to Nineveh following their repentance. A reluctant prophet, Jonah originally ran from God before delivering a message of repentance to the nation of Nineveh. If YHWH’s compassion was extended on non-Jews, it must also be reflected through Jerusalem. Submitted by Benjamin T. Laie, published on 09 January 2018 under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. God requires genuine repentance. License. For modern readers, when encountering confliction in evidence, one’s interpretation of the book of Jonah must not be extracted exclusively from the symbolic meanings of ‘yonah’ and ‘amittay’, but on meticulous synchronic and diachronic analyses. Privacy.