Book of Jonah
The Book of Jonah is one of the twelve minor prophets of the Nevi'im in the Hebrew Bible, and an individual book in the Old Testament where it has four chapters. The book tells of a Hebrew prophet named Jonah, son of Amittai, who is sent by God to prophesy the destruction of Nineveh, but attempts to escape his divine mission.
The story has a long interpretive history and has become well known through popular children's stories. In Judaism, it is the Haftarah portion read during the afternoon of Yom Kippur to instill reflection on God's willingness to forgive those who repent, and it remains a popular story among Christians. The story is also retold in the Quran.
Mainstream Bible scholars generally regard the story of the Book of Jonah as fictional, and often at least partially satirical. Most scholars consider the Book of Jonah to have been composed long after the events it describes due to its use of words and motifs exclusive to postexilic Aramaic sources.
Date
The prophet Jonah is mentioned in 2 Kings 14:25, which places Jonah's life during the reign of Jeroboam II, King of Israel,, but the book of Jonah itself does not name a king or give any other details that would give the story a firm date. Most scholars consider the Book of Jonah to have been composed long after the events it describes due to its use of words and motifs exclusive to postexilic Aramaic sources. A later date is sometimes proposed, with Katherine Dell arguing for the Hellenistic period.Evangelical Assyriologist Donald Wiseman takes issue with the idea that the story is late. Among other arguments he mentions that the "Legends of Agade" date to the time of the Old Babylonian Empire, though later versions "usually taken as a late composition, propagandistic fairy tale or historical romance can now, on the basis of new discoveries of earlier sources, be shown to be based on a serious and reliable historical record".
Narrative
Unlike the other Minor Prophets, the book of Jonah is almost entirely narrative with the exception of the psalm in the second chapter. The actual prophetic word against Nineveh is given only in passing through the narrative. The story of Jonah has a setting, characters, a plot, and themes; it also relies heavily on such literary devices as irony.Chapter and verse divisions
The original text was written in Hebrew language. Chapters 1 and 2 are divided differently in the Hebrew and English versions: verse 2:1 in the Hebrew version is equivalent to Jonah 1:17 in the English version.Outline
An outline of the book of Jonah:- Jonah flees his mission
- # Jonah's disobedience, and its consequences
- # Jonah's deliverance and thanksgiving
- Jonah fulfills his mission
- # Jonah's obedience and Nineveh's repentance
- # Jonah's displeasure at the Lord's salvation.
Summary
While inside the great fish, Jonah prays to God in thanksgiving and commits to paying what he has vowed. Jonah's prayer has been compared with some of the Psalms, and with the Song of Hannah in 1 Samuel 2:1-10.
God then commands the fish to vomit Jonah out.
In chapter 3, God once again commands Jonah to travel to Nineveh and to prophesy to its inhabitants. This time he obeys God's command, and goes into the city, crying, "In forty days Nineveh shall be overthrown." After Jonah has walked across Nineveh, the people of Nineveh begin to believe his word and proclaim a fast. The king of Nineveh then puts on sackcloth and sits in ashes, making a proclamation which decrees fasting, the wearing of sackcloth, prayer, and repentance. God sees their repentant hearts and spares the city at that time. The entire city is humbled and broken, with the people in sackcloth and ashes.
In chapter 4, displeased by the Ninevites' repentance, Jonah refers to his earlier flight to Tarshish while asserting that, since God is merciful, it was inevitable that God would turn from the threatened calamities. He then leaves the city on its eastern side, and makes himself a shelter, waiting to see whether or not the city will be destroyed. God causes a plant, in Hebrew a, also called a gourd in the King James Version, to grow over Jonah's shelter to give him some shade from the sun. Later, God causes a worm to bite the plant's root and it withers. Jonah, now being exposed to the full force of the sun, becomes faint and pleads for God to kill him. In response, God offers Jonah one final rebuke:
The book ends abruptly at this point.
Interpretive history
Early Jewish interpretation
Fragments of the book were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, most of which follow the Masoretic Text closely and with Mur XII reproducing a large portion of the text. As for the non-canonical writings, the majority of references to biblical texts were made as appeals to authority. The Book of Jonah appears to have served less purpose in the Qumran community than other texts, as the writings make no references to it.Late Jewish interpretation
The 18th century Lithuanian master scholar and kabbalist, Elijah of Vilna, known as the Vilna Gaon, authored a commentary on the biblical Book of Jonah as an allegory of reincarnation.Early Christian interpretation
New Testament
The earliest Christian interpretations of Jonah are found in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke. Both Matthew and Luke record a tradition of Jesus' interpretation of the Book of Jonah.As with most Old Testament interpretations found in the New Testament, the interpretation ascribed to Jesus is primarily typological. Jonah becomes a "type" for Jesus. Jonah spent three days in the belly of the fish; Jesus will spend three days in the tomb. Here, Jesus plays on the imagery of Sheol found in Jonah's prayer. While Jonah metaphorically declared, "Out of the belly of Sheol I cried," Jesus will literally be in the belly of Sheol. Finally, Jesus compares his generation to the people of Nineveh. Jesus fulfills his role as a type of Jonah, however his generation fails to fulfill its role as a type of Nineveh. Nineveh repented, but Jesus' generation, which has seen and heard one even greater than Jonah, fails to repent. Through his typological interpretation of the Book of Jonah, Jesus has weighed his generation and found it wanting.
Augustine of Hippo
The debate over the credibility of the miracle of Jonah is not simply a modern one. The credibility of a human being surviving in the belly of a great fish has long been questioned. In, Augustine of Hippo wrote to Deogratias concerning the challenge of some to the miracle recorded in the Book of Jonah. He writes:Augustine responds that if one is to question one miracle, then one should question all miracles as well. Nevertheless, despite his apologetic, Augustine views the story of Jonah as a figure for Christ. For example, he writes: "As, therefore, Jonah passed from the ship to the belly of the whale, so Christ passed from the cross to the sepulchre, or into the abyss of death. And as Jonah suffered this for the sake of those who were endangered by the storm, so Christ suffered for the sake of those who are tossed on the waves of this world." Augustine credits his allegorical interpretation to the interpretation of Christ himself, and he allows for other interpretations as long as they are in line with Christ's.
Medieval commentary tradition
The Ordinary Gloss, or Glossa Ordinaria, was the most important Christian commentary on the Bible in the later Middle Ages. Ryan McDermott comments that "The Gloss on Jonah relies almost exclusively on Jerome's commentary on Jonah, so its Latin often has a tone of urbane classicism. But the Gloss also chops up, compresses, and rearranges Jerome with a carnivalesque glee and scholastic directness that renders the Latin authentically medieval." "The Ordinary Gloss on Jonah" has been translated into English and printed in a format that emulates the first printing of the Gloss.The relationship between Jonah and his fellow Jews is ambivalent, and complicated by the Gloss's tendency to read Jonah as an allegorical prefiguration of Jesus Christ. While some glosses in isolation seem crudely supersessionist, the prevailing allegorical tendency is to attribute Jonah's recalcitrance to his abiding love for his own people and his insistence that God's promises to Israel not be overridden by a lenient policy toward the Ninevites. For the glossator, Jonah's pro-Israel motivations correspond to Christ's demurral in the Garden of Gethsemane and the Gospel of Matthew's and Paul's insistence that "salvation is from the Jews". While in the Gloss the plot of Jonah prefigures how God will extend salvation to the nations, it also makes abundantly clear—as some medieval commentaries on the Gospel of John do not—that Jonah and Jesus are Jews, and that they make decisions of salvation-historical consequence as Jews.
Modern
In Jungian analysis, the belly of the whale can be seen as a symbolic death and rebirth, which is also an important stage in comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell's "hero's journey".NCSY Director of Education David Bashevkin sees Jonah as a thoughtful prophet who comes to religion out of a search for theological truth and is constantly disappointed by those who come to religion to provide mere comfort in the face of adversity inherent to the human condition. "If religion is only a blanket to provide warmth from the cold, harsh realities of life," Bashevkin imagines Jonah asking, "did concerns of theological truth and creed even matter?" The lesson taught by the episode of the tree at the end of the book is that comfort is a deep human need that religion provides, but that this need not obscure the role of God.
In 2025, a Filipino author self-published "Si Jonas at Ang Malaking Isda: Pinakaunang Salin sa Filipino ng Isang Bagong Tuklas na Manuskrito Tungkol sa Kinagisnang Kuwento" , which retells or reimagines the Biblical story. The short story retelling introduces Jonah as an adventurous young man, searching for answers to his questions.