Jonah: The Prophet Who Ran From Mercy

The Pattern

Jonah is four chapters, and each one puts the prophet in a different place. Hold the four places and the whole book is held.

• The sea (chapter 1): Jonah runs, and Gentile sailors end up fearing Yahuah.
• The pit (chapter 2): Jonah prays from inside the fish.
• The city (chapter 3): Jonah preaches, and a Gentile city turns.
• The hillside (chapter 4): Jonah argues, and Yahuah ends the book with a question.

The halves mirror each other. Chapters 1 and 3 open with the word of Yahuah came unto Jonah and close with Gentiles turning. Chapters 2 and 4 are Jonah praying — first glad to be alive, then asking to die. Every created thing in the book obeys Yahuah: wind, sea, fish, gourd, worm. The only one who resists is the prophet.

Who and Why

Jonah son of Amittai was a real prophet from Gath-hepher in Galilee, a few miles from Nazareth (2 Kings 14:25). Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, the empire that would later destroy Israel. Jonah did not run because he feared Nineveh. He ran because he knew Yahuah would forgive it (4:2).

1. The Sea

Sent east to Nineveh, Jonah sails west for Tarshish. The chapter tracks him with one verb, went down: down to Joppa, down into the ship, down into its hold to sleep. A storm comes, and the pagan sailors pray while the prophet sleeps. Thrown overboard, he is swallowed by a fish Yahuah prepared.

Then the men feared Yahuah exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice unto Yahuah, and made vows. (Jonah 1:16)

Watch for: the man who would not take Yahuah’s name to the Gentiles brings it to a shipload of them anyway.

2. The Pit

From inside the fish Jonah calls his place sheol (2:2), the grave. He has gone down to the bottoms of the mountains, and Yahuah brought up my life from corruption (2:6) — the same word Peter applied to the resurrection (Acts 2:27). The prayer ends on its thesis:

Salvation is of Yahuah. (Jonah 2:9)

Watch for: deliverance belongs to Yahuah. The word is yeshu’ah, from the same root as the name Yahushua — Yahuah saves. The Son’s name declares the Father as Savior.

3. The City

The command comes the second time, unchanged. Jonah preaches five Hebrew words: Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown (3:4). The city believes, fasts, and the king orders every man to turn from the violence that is in their hands.

And Elohim saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and Elohim repented of the evil. (Jonah 3:10)

Watch for: belief first, then a changed walk, and Yahuah saw their works. His relenting is not a change of mind; He set the rule in advance (Jeremiah 18:8).

4. The Hillside

Jonah is furious and finally says why he ran:

For I knew that thou art a gracious El, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness. (Jonah 4:2)

He is quoting the name Yahuah proclaimed at Sinai (Exodus 34:6) as a complaint. Yahuah prepares a gourd to shade him, a worm to kill it, and a hot east wind. Jonah grieves over the plant. Yahuah asks whether He should not spare a city of more than 120,000 people, and also much cattle (4:11).

Watch for: the book ends on that question, and Jonah’s answer is never given. It is left for the reader.

Three Pulpit Errors Jonah Answers

• Friday to Sunday. Yahushua gave one sign: three days and three nights (Matthew 12:40). A Friday-afternoon burial and Sunday-dawn resurrection gives two nights. The gospels date His death by Yahuah’s calendar, the 14th of Aviv, not by the Roman week.
• Peter’s vision cancelled the food laws. Simon Bar-jona — son of Jonah — was at Joppa, Jonah’s port, when called to the Gentiles. Peter said what the vision meant: I should not call any man common or unclean (Acts 10:28). It was about men, not menus.
• Out of Galilee ariseth no prophet (John 7:52). The Pharisees were wrong by their own scrolls. Jonah was a Galilean, and his was the sign Yahushua gave them.

Where Jonah Points Next

Jonah went down into the sea and into sheol, and Yahuah brought him up from both. Revelation finishes the picture for all the dead: the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them (Revelation 20:13). The men of Nineveh will stand at that judgment, as Yahushua said they would (Matthew 12:41).