Jonah 1: 1-2
Now the Word of the LORD came to 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.”
NOTE: This is very interesting because nowhere else in O.T. Scripture does the LORD send a prophet to a foreign nation to offer them a message to repent or perish. The sins of Sodom and Gomorrah came up before God also, and if only ten righteous persons could have been found within them, destruction could have been averted but there was no Missionary outreach available to them (Cp. Genesis 18: 20-21, 23, 32).
1: 3
But Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish [“Tyre”] from the presence of the LORD. He went down to Joppa, and found a ship going for Tarshish; so he paid the fare, and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD.
NOTE: The geography is right on the money in this one because Jonah was from Gath Hepher in the territory of Issachar (Cp. II Kings 14: 25b; Joshua 19: 13), and Joppa was to the South in the territory of Dan (Cp. Joshua 19: 46). Tarshish is along the Mediterranean Coast toward the far North in Tyre (Cp. Isaiah 23: 1). Jonah sought to flee from the LORD’S presence, just like Adam and Eve (Cp. Genesis 3: 7-10) but he should have read Psalms 139: 7, which states: Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence (Cp. verses 8-12)?
1: 4-5
But the LORD sent a great wind on the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship was about to be broken up. Then the mariners [seamen] were afraid; and every man cried out to his god, and threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea, to lighten the load. But Jonah had gone down into the lowest parts of the ship, had lain down, and was fast asleep.
NOTE: This is very similar to the tempest and waves that tossed the boat where Jesus (Yeshua) was asleep in (Cp. Matthew 8: 23-27).
1: 8-9
Then they said to him, “Please tell us! For whose cause is this trouble upon us? (1) What is your occupation? (2) Where do you come from? (3) What is your country? (4) And of what people are you?” So he said to them, “(4) I am a Hebrew; and I fear the LORD (YHVH), the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.
NOTE: The sailors asked Jonah four questions but he only answered the last one.
1: 11a, 12a
Then they said to him, “What shall we do to you that the sea may be calm for us?” And he said to him, “Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will be calm for you.”
1: 14-16
Therefore they cried out to the LORD and said, “We pray, O LORD, please do not let us perish for this man’s life, and do not charge us with innocent blood; for You, O LORD, have done as it pleased You.” So they picked up Jonah and threw him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the LORD exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice to the LORD and took vows.
NOTE: These pagan mariners from Tarshish [Tyre] had some sense of a moral or spiritual compass because they were hesitant to throw Jonah overboard and tried to row past the storm. They finally acquiesced to Jonah’s request and like the cargo that went “deep six,” lifted him up and tossed him over the side of the boat. Before that, however, they prayed to the LORD not to charge them with shedding innocent blood in Jonah’s apparently certain death.
1: 17
Now the LORD prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
2: 1, 2b
Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the fish’s belly. “Out of the belly of Sheol [the Land of the Dead], and LORD You heard me.”
NOTE: Perhaps the belly of the great fish is just an allegory for “Sheol” and Jesus [Yeshua] said in Matthew 12: 40: “For as Jonah was in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The ‘great fish’ that swallowed Jonah could be DEATH just as the Son of Man tasted this for every man (Cp. Hebrews 2: 9).
2: 3, 5-6
You threw me into the ocean depths, and I sank down to the heart of the sea. The mighty waters engulfed me. I was buried beneath Your wild and billowy waves. I sank beneath the waves, and the waters closed over me. Seaweed wrapped itself around my head. I sank down to the very roots of the mountains. I was imprisoned in the earth, whose gates lock shut forever. But You, O LORD my God, snatched me from the jaws of death!
NOTE: These would hardly be the words of a man who was enclosed within the body of a great fish; if taken literally, that is. It is however plausible that the LORD sent the great fish to preserve Jonah’s ebbing life as he was about to die from drowning, and given another opportunity to carry out God’s mission to the Ninevites while recuperating in the insides of a divinely prepared ‘great’ fish; as verse 7 indicates below:
2: 7, 10
As my life was slipping away, I remembered the LORD. And my earnest prayer went out to You into Your holy Temple. So the LORD spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.
NOTE: The fish carried Jonah all the way to land and expelled him from its insides [along with other undigested matter] in perhaps a not so pleasant environment.
3: 1-2
Now the Word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach to it the message that I tell you.”
3: 3-4
So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the Word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, so large a city that it takes three days to see it all. And Jonah began to enter the city on the first day’s walk. Then he cried out and said, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”
NOTE: Noah was called a preacher of righteousness (Cp. II Peter 2: 5), and if that was the case he probably warned the ‘Antediluvian’ people about the upcoming Flood. Since Noah “walked with God” probably at age 500 after the birth of his sons, he doubtless preached 100 years until the rain came and the floodgates of the deep burst open (Cp. Genesis 5: 32; 6: 5-13; 7: 6, 11). Conversely, the people of Nineveh had only forty days to repent and thus avert God’s wrath.
3: 5-10 “The people and king of Nineveh repent at the preaching of Jonah”
NOTE: Why was this message so disturbing to the Ninevites from a foreigner that they would repent before the God of the Hebrews when they worshipped, like Sennacherib king of Assyria [capitol of Nineveh] Nisroch his god (Cp. II Kings 19: 36-37a). Perhaps the Ninevites have had some contact with God as a result of prophesies found in Nahum 3: 1-19 and Zephaniah 2: 13-15. There is a universal principle found in Jeremiah 18: 7-8, which says, “The instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, to pull down, and to destroy it, “if that nation against whom I have spoken turns from evil, I will relent of the disaster that I thought to bring against it.”
4: 1-2
But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he became angry. So he prayed to the LORD, and said, “Ah LORD, was not this what I said when I was still in my country? Therefore I fled previously to Tarshish; for I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in loving-kindness, One who relents from doing harm (Cp. Exodus 34: 6; Numbers 14: 18a; Psalms 86: 5, 15; Joel 2: 13b).
4: 3-4
“Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live!” Then the LORD said [asked], “Is it right for you to be angry?”
Jonah is a very interesting psychological and spiritual study as he voices anger to God because He doesn’t destroy the Ninevites as well as God causing a plant to grow providing shade for Jonah from the heat of the day. He then prepares a worm which damages and causes the plant to wither the next day. It seems Jonah cared more for the gourd than for human lives of people from another land. Jonah mentioned about it being better for him to die which he repeats three times (Cp. verses 3b, 8b, 9b), but he must have so soon forgotten about his previous “Near Death Experience” of being in the “belly of the great fish.”
Robert Randle
776 Commerce St. #B-11
Tacoma, WA 98402
October 10, 2009
pbks@hotmail.com
