And the word of Jehovah came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying,
The book of Jonah opens without a date, without a vision, and without a sermon — only with God speaking to one man from a small northern town. That one line raises the questions the whole book answers. What does it mean for God's word to come to someone? Who was this son of Amittai? Why does his story stand apart from every other prophet's?
One writer picks up a detail about how the book names Jonah, and asks what "prophet" really means:
In this little book, Jonah is never called a "prophet." The Holy Spirit uses the writer of 2 Kings to give him that title. What does the word "prophet" mean in Scripture? Perhaps we will find God's own definition by comparing Exodus 4:16 and 7:1. In the first Scripture God says of Aaron, "He shall be your spokesman to the people"; and in the second, God says, "Aaron your brother shall be your prophet." Perhaps this gives us the clearest definition of a prophet according to the Word of God: he is God's "spokesman to the people." Very often God speaks of judgment or blessing to come, and then the spokesman speaks of what will happen in the future. But his first duty is to be God's spokesman.
(In Exodus 4:16 the ESV reads, "He shall speak for you to the people"; older translations say "spokesman," the word this writer builds on.)
The verse does not present Jonah as a legend. It places him in a family, a town, and a period of Israel's history:
Jonah was born in Gath-hepher, in the northern part of Palestine. He probably lived at the same time as Elisha, or followed him soon after. We learn this from 2 Kings 14:25-27. It tells us that Israel won back its coastlands from the Syrians, just as Jonah had predicted earlier. That fact, and the character and contents of the book itself, let us date this prophecy very early indeed. It is a prophecy of judgment on proud and haughty Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian kingdom and the ruling city of the earth. It is perhaps the earliest prophetical book we have.
One writer takes the meaning of the two names in this verse and reads the book's message in them:
People say the name "Jonah" means "a dove." A dove is the symbol of peace, and the book is in reality an offer of peace from the Lord Himself… They also say the name "Amittai" (Jonah's father) means "Truth." Could it be that in these two names we have the same precious message as John 1:17, "grace and truth came through Jesus Christ"? Truth is the light that shows our sins. Grace provides the means to cover our sins.
Read on and you find something odd. The book keeps almost none of the prophet's words. What God preserved was his conduct.
What makes this book unusual is that it does not contain a single prophecy. There is the message to Nineveh — if that can be called a prophecy — but beyond this we have no record of what God used Jonah to communicate… When we examine the book, we discover that its teaching lies in Jonah's own history. Or rather, it lies in how he behaved when the Lord sent him to go and cry against Nineveh, because its wickedness had come up before Him. The book therefore has, we might say, a parable-like character.
There is more. God gives a prophet with strong Jewish feelings a message for the world power of his day:
Jonah himself might have been strongly Jewish in his feeling. Still, God used him for a final Old Testament testimony to the Gentiles. Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian kingdom, was the great power of the world at that time… The whole history of Jonah is a sign. It is not simply what he said but what he did, and the ways of God with him.
The same opening words come back after Jonah has tried to escape:
In Jonah 3 we come to another point. The word of the Lord comes to Jonah again. How persistent is His goodness, and how useless for His servant to think of escaping!
- Word. The book begins with God speaking. A prophet is first of all God's spokesman to people, not mainly someone who predicts the future.
- Man. That word came to a real man: Jonah of Gath-hepher in northern Israel, son of Amittai. 2 Kings 14:25 records his earlier work for Israel.
- Names. "Jonah" means dove and "Amittai" means truth. One writer finds in that pair the same message as grace and truth coming through Jesus Christ.
- Life. Almost none of Jonah's preaching survives. God taught through his conduct instead, so the whole history became a sign.
- Reach. The message reached past Israel to the world's leading city. When the runaway prophet ran, the same word came to him a second time. God's goodness is that persistent.
Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me.
God speaks first in this book, and His first words send His prophet away from Israel to a great pagan city. One sentence gives both His reason for acting ("their evil has come up before me") and the errand itself ("call out against it").
Jonah was not a new preacher. He had already served God at home, and this fresh order broke the pattern of his life's work.
Jonah had already carried messages from the LORD to Israel (2 Kings 14:25); now God gives him a unique distinction and sends him "far away to the Gentiles" (Acts 22:21). It is an unspeakable honour to be a messenger for God at any time. Have we all learned this? Are we all in the spirit of Isaiah's words "Here I am, send me?"
Two things set Jonah apart: who he was sent to, and what he was sent to say.
Unlike every other prophet of the Old Testament, he served the pagan people of Nineveh and not the people of Israel. The only message Jonah announced was the one about the coming judgment on Nineveh (Jonah 1:2; 3:2,4). So Jonah is the only prophet of the Old Testament who shows God's grace to the nations outside Israel.
God calls Nineveh great. Where did the city come from?
What of Nineveh — "that great city"? We first read of it in Genesis 10:6-13, where Ham's line produces Nimrod, and Nimrod goes to Assyria and builds Nineveh. So the descendants of a man under a curse founded it, and God Himself must say of it, "their evil has come up before me."
Why does evil "come up" before God? Nineveh is not the first place where Scripture says it did.
It is a solemn truth, reader: sin has a voice. It cries to heaven for God's righteous judgment, and the word of God confirms it. God says to Cain, "What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground." God then pronounces judgment upon Cain. To Abraham the Lord said, "Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see…"
What God saw in a city, He sees in one person.
God took notice of the wickedness of the men of Nineveh, just as He takes notice of your wickedness. Do not think that His eye is not on you. It is. His hand may not be on you yet, but His eye is on you.
Jonah is told to call out against the city, not to plead with it. Set that beside the message preachers carry today.
How striking is the difference between Jonah's message and ours! Jonah's message was entirely one of judgment without a word of mercy. Yet both preacher and hearers read in this message, and read correctly, an offer of mercy. Otherwise, why send the warning of judgment? It is well for us to remember that in every message of judgment, there is hidden an offer of mercy, if the guilty ones will only take warning and repent.
Nahum later prophesied against the same city. Read the two books together.
The book of Jonah teaches that God is patient and merciful. Where there is repentance, God will hold back His judgment. The book of Nahum teaches something else. The God who sees the end from the beginning will carry out the judgment He pronounced, once He counts the time of His patience finished.
The command is two plain verbs. The next verse shows what Jonah did with them.
The LORD told him to go east, and he hurries west at once. He runs straight against God's command. To some this seems hard to explain in a prophet… But we have to learn that flesh is no better in a prophet than in ourselves. The real difference between people is not that one man's flesh is better than another's. It is that some have learned to distrust themselves completely, and to live another life — a life by faith, not by flesh.
Notice also that God did not leave the destination open.
The Lord did not only tell Jonah to "Arise, go." He told him just where to go. He did not say, "Arise, go anywhere you like." The Lord will tell us where to go too. He may send us to someone in our own family, or to our neighbours. He may send us to people of a different nation, speech and language, at the other end of the earth.
- Cause. Sin has a voice. Nineveh's evil came up before God, just as Cain's murder and Sodom's outcry did.
- Notice. What God saw in a whole city He sees in one person — His hand may not be on you yet, but His eye is.
- Gift. The command to call out against the city was all judgment, yet sending a warning was itself an offer of mercy.
- Reach. God sent His prophet out of Israel to a pagan city, and He named the destination Himself. The errand is His to give, near or far.
- Result. Jonah heard "go east" and ran west. A prophet's flesh is no better than ours; only distrust of self and a life of faith keep a servant going.