Who was Jonah in the Bible?

Son of Amittai and the prophet of Gath-hepher (in Galilee: cf. John 7:52). His prophecy is in the main the history of himself. It shows that the prophet embodied in himself the testimony of God through Israel to the Gentiles (comp. Matt. 24:14), and also the important fact that God regards the contrition and turning from evil of a city or nation. Jonah was directed to go and cry against that great city Nineveh; but instead of obeying, he fled from the presence of the Lord. He himself tells us why he fled — he knew Jehovah was gracious: if he foretold the destruction of the city, and God spared it, he would lose his reputation. Jonah 4:2. It was the same with Israel: they could not bear grace being shown to the Gentiles: cf. Acts 13:45; 1 Thess. 2:16. Jonah was God's servant, but unfaithful: his unfaithfulness brought him into the depths of judgement, but he then embodied in his own person the truth of the testimony he proclaimed, and yet while proclaiming the judgement, he was unprepared for the extension of mercy to the Gentiles. God stopped him in his course, and though he slept, the sailors called him to account. After praying to their gods, they drew lots and the lot fell on Jonah. He had to confess he was fleeing from Jehovah, the God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land. Thus Jehovah was made known to those Gentile seamen. They cried unto Him not to lay the blood of Jonah upon them, and they cast him into the sea. They feared Jehovah exceedingly, offered a sacrifice to Him and made vows. In like manner the obduracy of the Jews only opened the door wider for grace to go to the Gentiles.

Jonah received the commission of Jehovah to announce God’s judgment to the heathen, godless and hostile city. But Jonah inwardly refused God’s wanting to speak to the despised nations other than to Israel. This is why he fled to Tarshish. But God caught up with him. He sent a tempest in the sea so that the ship was like to be broken. He also had the lot to fall upon Jonah upon which the mariners cast him forth into the sea. Finally Jehovah prepared a great fish in whose belly Jonah had to spend three days and three nights until the fish vomited out Jonah upon the dry according to Jehovah’s command.

After all this Jonah was finally ready to carry out God’s commission and to preach the message to Nineveh: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” But when the people of Nineveh repented upon Jonah’s preaching and God annulled the threatening judgment we see Jonah’s pride as a Jew again and his annoyance over the grace of God towards the heathen. He yet had to learn that he himself thankfully received God’s proof of His goodness for his bodily need but that he showed no understanding when God wanted to show mercy for the souls of these unbelieving people.

Second Kings 14:15 informs us already that Jonah was a prophet. In contrast to all other prophets of the OT his ministry was directed to the heathen inhabitants of Nineveh and not to the people of Israel. The only prophetic message that Jonah announced was the one about the coming judgment over Nineveh (Jonah 1:2; 3:2,4). Jonah therefore is the only prophet of the OT revealing the grace of God towards the heathen.

Told to go to Nineveh, the metropolis of a great Asiatic power, the prophet attempted to evade the discharge of such a service, but in vain. God's purposes of goodness to that city and its inhabitants were to be carried out; and Jonah, the son of Amittai, of Gath-hepher, of the tribe of Zebulon, was the instrument selected for this purpose. And his wilful disobedience, and his miraculous preservation in the depths of the sea by being in the fish's belly, only the better fitted him to assure the Ninevites that God did judge evil, and yet could act in grace towards those who had wilfully disobeyed Him. Cast out then by the fish on dry land, he went to Nineveh a stranger, unknown, probably, to any one within its walls, and so without a friend in it, or a companion by his side. And he went with a message not calculated, humanly speaking, to assure him of a favourable reception, nor one which probably had ever been heard there before "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown" (Jonah 3:4).

But note how our Lord regards the spiritual exercises of Jonah. His testimony (and when He has spoken the last word is said on any subject for His people) proves three vital facts about Jonah and what happened to him. In the scripture cited above (Matt 12:38-41) He speaks of Jonah's personal existence as an historical character; of Jonah's prophetical office; and of Jonah's miraculous fate; saying he (and what happened) was a sign, that is, an embodied significant lesson.

"The word of Jehovah came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before Me." Jonah had already been entrusted with messages from Jehovah to Israel (2 Kings 14:25); now he has the unique distinction of being sent "far hence 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 am I, send me?"

Turning then to our prophecy, we read, "Now the word of Jehovah came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me. But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of Jehovah, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of Jehovah." But in Jonah is seen the stiff-neckedness of man. Jehovah told him to go east, and he at once hurries west; that is, he flies exactly in the teeth of the divine command. To some this seems unaccountable in a prophet; to the rationalist it is incredible, and casts a doubt on the historical character of the entire book. But we have to learn that flesh is no better in a prophet than in ourselves. For the real difference between men is not that the flesh of some is better than that of others, but that some have learned to distrust themselves altogether, and to live another life which is by faith, not by flesh. Therefore it is that the believer only in fact lives to God so long as he goes on in dependence on Him. The moment he ceases to do so, wonder not at anything he says or does. Here we have a flagrant witness of it in Jonah. He was told to go to Nineveh; but "he rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of Jehovah, and went down to Joppa," — that is, to the neighbouring port of Palestine on the great sea, the Mediterranean, in order to go west.

Verse 3. Jonah rose up at once, but instead of going to the east towards Nineveh he fled in the other direction. Tarshish in Spain was his goal. It is also stated that he fled from the presence of the Lord. This cannot possibly mean that he fled from the presence of Him whom he knew as the omnipresent One. The Psalm of David which speaks of this expressly was then in the possession of Israel, and Jonah must have known it: "Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there: if I make my bed in sheol, behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me" (Psalm 139:7-10). He did not flee from the presence of the Lord in the sense of escaping His knowledge and authority. It means that he left the land of Israel where Jehovah dwelt; he fled from the service-commission he had received.

"Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness has come up before me. But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord."

Here, then, we have him, as a fallen child of Adam, setting up his will against God. Selfwill marks him at the very start; in the pride of his heart too, like Adam, he will take his own way to accomplish his own ends; and instead of going to Nineveh, where God had sent him in the exercise of a ministry in which all the power of God would sustain him, he rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, like Adam again, who hid himself from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden after he had set up his will.

There was not much that was loveable about Jonah, unless it was his fierce patriotism. This may have accounted for much in him that to us appears repellent. He did not want to carry any message from God to Nineveh, “bloody city, full of lies and robbery,” for he knew enough about the God he served, to know that if they hearkened to His word and repented of their sins, they would be forgiven and spared, even as it turned out. And he had no wish except that Nineveh should perish utterly without a warning. Why should the oppressor of his people be spared? So he fled, not from Nineveh, for he was no coward; it was not men that scared him from the will of God, it was from the presence of the Lord that he fled. What he feared was an out-pouring of the mercy of God upon an alien and guilty foe. In his concern for his nation and his own reputation, he was selfish, miserable, without compassion, and despicable—as unlike his God as he could possibly be.

Now Jonah was a very wilful man, and instead of at once going to do what God told him, he does the very opposite. Do you know why Jonah did not go at once to Nineveh? That comes out in chapter 4. When the mercy of God to this guilty and doomed city was manifested, Jonah was very displeased. He said: "I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before to Tarshish; for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil" (Jonah 4:2).