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Jonah

Jonahchapter 1

17 verses · BSBJonah book hub →

Speaks with:Luke 11×3Joshua 7×3Psalms 107×22 Kings 14×1Genesis 18×1Genesis 10×1

Summary

Chapter summary

'Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it'. And Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of Jehovah, the wrong direction with a paid ticket. Everything after is downward: down to Joppa, down into the ship, down into sleep. Jehovah hurls a great wind; pagan sailors pray and jettison cargo while the prophet snores, until the captain wakes him: 'What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy God.' The lot exposes him and his own confession convicts him: 'I fear Jehovah, the God of heaven, who hath made the sea and the dry land.' Thrown overboard, the sea stills, and a prepared great fish swallows him three days and three nights.

Context

Prophecy · Jonah — Jonah overview

  • A. 1–3 Go to Nineveh — and he paid the fare to Tarshish
  • B. 4–10 A storm, a sleeping prophet, and lots that fall on him
  • C. 11–16 Thrown into the sea, and the sea grew calm
  • D. 17 A great fish prepared, and three days in its belly

The outline

  1. A.Go to Nineveh — and he paid the fare to Tarshishvv. 1 to 3

    Read vv. 1 to 3 →

  2. B.A storm, a sleeping prophet, and lots that fall on himvv. 4 to 10

    Read vv. 4 to 10 →

  3. C.Thrown into the sea, and the sea grew calmvv. 11 to 16

    Read vv. 11 to 16 →

  4. D.A great fish prepared, and three days in its bellyv. 17

    Read v. 17 →

Threads

Each of these runs on past this chapter. The passage you have just read is marked.

The sign of the prophet Jonah

Type

Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish, and Jesus took that as the one sign he would give his generation: so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The prophet swallowed and given back becomes the figure of death and resurrection.

The type is the Lord's own, not a preacher's invention. He also judged his hearers by Nineveh, which repented at one day's preaching, and a greater than Jonas stood before them.

  1. Jonah 1:17 you are here

    Three days and three nights in the fish

  2. Matthew 12:40

    As Jonas was, so shall the Son of man be

    Jesus makes the prophet's burial in the deep the figure of his own three days in the heart of the earth.

  3. Matthew 16:4

    No sign but the sign of the prophet Jonas

  4. Luke 11:30

    As Jonas was a sign unto the Ninevites

The world behind this chapter

Jonah 1
When
Israel's last prosperous generation, with Assyria rising · Early to mid eighth century BC — 2 Kings 14:25 places Jonah son of Amittai in the reign of Jeroboam II of Israel (c. 793–753 BC)
Where
The harbor at Joppa, and a merchant ship heading the opposite way
Who first heard it
Israelites who knew Assyria only as the terror gathering on the horizon

The history

Jonah is the only prophet in the Old Testament sent to preach to a foreign capital, and the first thing he does is buy a ticket in the other direction.

Joppa was Israel's practical outlet to the sea — a poor natural harbor with a reef line, but the closest port to the hill country. Ships there were Phoenician-run traders working the Mediterranean coast, and a Hebrew from inland farm country would have found the crew, the language, and the gods on board all foreign.

Tarshish is thought by many to be Tartessos in southern Spain, at the far western end of the known world. Whether or not that identification is right, the direction is the point: Nineveh lay far to the northeast, up the Tigris; Tarshish was as far west as a ship could go.

The sailors' response to the storm is completely ordinary for the time. Each man cried to his own god — a mixed crew carried mixed religion — and then they threw the cargo overboard, which was the standard emergency measure, and then they cast lots. Casting lots to find who had offended a god was a normal ancient procedure, not superstition at the margins.

What is not ordinary is the sailors. When Jonah tells them to throw him over, they row harder instead, trying to save him, and only give up when they cannot. Pagan sailors come off better in this chapter than the prophet does.

What it meant to them

An Israelite hearing this would feel the sting immediately. The man with the true God on board is asleep below deck while foreigners pray, and the foreigners end up fearing the LORD and offering sacrifice.

Jonah's own words are the chapter's confession: he says he fears the God who made the sea and the dry land, while running across that sea to escape Him. The first hearers were being shown that knowing the right thing about God is not the same as obeying Him.

Sources cited

Every work MannaFest builds on →

The text of this chapter

This page carries no textual note on Jonah 1. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →

This page draws on E. B. Pusey, The Minor Prophets: A Commentary; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.

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