Prophet: Jonah

God had created all mankind, but He’d chosen one special nation as His own: Israel. Through Israel, all the nations of the earth would be blessed (Genesis 12:3). Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, and a place of great wickedness. So the Lord tells a prophet named Jonah to “Arise, go to Nineveh, and cry against it” (Jonah 1:2).

But Jonah boards a ship and sails off in an effort to avoid this God-directed task. The Lord sends a storm after him that threatens to destroy the vessel. Jonah confesses to the sailors that he is a Hebrew, and that he is trying to escape Yahweh’s presence.Jonah instructs them to throw him into the sea, and when they do so, the sea calms—and all the sailors recognize the God who spared them.

Jonah is then swallowed by a “great fish.” He prays from within the fish, and God has it vomit him onto the land. At that point God again tells Jonah to arise and go to Nineveh, and this time Jonah obeys. He walks through the evil city, heralding Nineveh’s impending doom Unexpectedly, he Ninevites repent. God relents in his plan to destroy the city, angering Jonah.

Jonah is perhaps the best known of the Minor Prophets. While most of these book were written to the people of Israel and Judah, Jonah, Obadiah, and Nahum are more concerned with surrounding nations.

Interestingly, Jesus referred to Jonah as a sign of the Messiah: "Just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." Jesus also extolled the repentance of Nineveh when he was dealing with 1st century Jews who failed to do the same...“The men of Nineveh will stand up with this generation at the judgment, and will condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.” (Matthew 12:40–41)

Jonah is certainly about repentance, but it is also a story of God’s compassion for all peoples, not just Israel. God has compassion for Nineveh when they repent, but their repentance is not permanent and they return to violence and wickedness. Nineveh becomes so wicked that the Lord chooses another prophet, named Nahum, to speak against it.