Where it fits

Jonah is the 32nd book of the Bible, with four chapters. Unlike most prophetic books, it is a story about a prophet rather than a collection of his messages. A prophet named Jonah son of Amittai, from Gath-hepher in Israel, is mentioned in 2 Kings 14:25 as serving under Jeroboam II, around 780 BC. The author is unknown. Read straight through, it takes about seven minutes.

The big story

God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, a great city whose wickedness has come up before him (1:2). Assyria was Israel's most feared enemy and would soon destroy the northern kingdom. Jonah goes the other way and boards a ship at Joppa heading for Tarshish, as far west as he can go (1:3). God sends a storm. The sailors pray to their gods and throw cargo overboard, while Jonah sleeps below deck. When lots point to Jonah, he tells them to throw him into the sea, and when they do, the storm stops, and the sailors worship God (1:4–16). A great fish, prepared by God, swallows Jonah, and he prays from inside it for three days and nights, thanking God for rescuing him (2:1–9). The fish spits him onto dry land.

God calls Jonah again, and this time he goes. He walks into Nineveh and delivers a very short message: in forty days Nineveh will be overthrown (3:4). The people, from the king to the animals, believe God, fast, and put on sackcloth, and God relents (3:5–10). Jonah, though, is furious. He prays that this is exactly why he fled: he knew God was gracious, merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in love, and would relent from sending disaster (4:2). He sits outside the city, and God makes a plant grow to shade him, then sends a worm to kill it. Jonah is angry about the plant. God asks whether he should not care about Nineveh, a city with more than 120,000 people who can't tell their right hand from their left, and many animals (4:10–11). The book ends there, with God's question unanswered.

Three ideas to hold on to

1. God's mercy is wider than we expect. God cares about Nineveh, and about its people and animals (4:11). No one is beyond his concern.
2. You can't run from God. Jonah goes down to Joppa, down into the ship, and down into the sea (1:3, 5, 15; 2:6). God pursues him with a storm, a fish, a plant, and a question.
3. Repentance moves God. When Nineveh turns from its evil, God relents (3:10), as Jeremiah 18:7–8 says he will.

Passages people ask about

• Jonah 1:1–16. Flight and storm.
• Jonah 1:17–2:10. Jonah's prayer from inside the fish, a psalm of thanksgiving offered before he is out.
• Jonah 3. Nineveh repents.
• Jonah 4. Jonah's anger, and God's question.

How it points to Jesus

Jesus says that Jonah is the sign of his own ministry. Just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, and the people of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment to condemn those who didn't repent, because they repented at Jonah's preaching, and something greater than Jonah is here (Matthew 12:39–41). Jesus is the greater Jonah: he goes to an enemy people willingly, and his message of mercy reaches beyond Israel.

A common misunderstanding

Jonah is remembered as a story about a big fish, but the fish takes up only a few verses. The book is about a prophet who resents God's mercy to his enemies. Careful readers differ on whether it is meant as historical narrative or as a divinely inspired parable, and the main message is the same either way. Jesus treated Jonah as a real sign and as a challenge to a people who didn't repent. The ending is meant to leave the reader with God's question, to decide if they would answer it differently from Jonah.