Jonah

Purpose & theme

Jonah is unlike any other prophetic book. It contains only a single line of the prophet’s preaching; the rest is a gripping narrative about the prophet himself — a man called by God to warn the great pagan city of Nineveh, who instead ran the opposite direction. Jonah is the reluctant prophet, and the book is really about the God who pursues him: the God who hurls a storm at his fleeing ship, appoints a great fish to swallow and preserve him, hears his prayer from the depths, sends him a second time, and then patiently reasons with his hard heart. Above all, Jonah is a book about the astonishing breadth of God’s mercy — a mercy that reaches not only to a wayward prophet but to a whole city of Israel’s cruelest enemies when they repent.

The book turns on a scandal: Jonah did not fear that his mission would fail, but that it would succeed. He fled because he knew that God is “a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster” (4:2), and he did not want that mercy shown to the Ninevites. When the city repents and God spares it, Jonah is furious. So the book ends not with the city’s conversion but with God’s tender question to His pouting prophet: “And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons?” (4:11). Jonah holds up a mirror to every believer tempted to hoard God’s grace, and points forward to the God whose compassion embraces the nations — a mercy fulfilled in the coming of Christ, who called Jonah “a sign” of His own death and resurrection.