Jonah

The Old Testament > Jonah

Subpages: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4

                                                                 Chapter 1

Brief outline and summary

The book of Jonah can be outlined as follows:

A1. Jonah cannot escape the Lord's justice and suffers symbolic death (1)

• Jonah disobeys the command to preach to Ninevah and instead flees toward Tarshish (1:1-3)

• the Lord sends a mighty storm, the mariners are afraid, and each calls upon his own god, but Jonah is asleep (1:4-6)

• lots are cast, the lot falls upon Jonah, Jonah explains that he fears the Lord God of heaven, and the mariners are exceedingly afraid (1:7-10)

• the mariners cannot reach shore, they cast Jonah overboard, the storm ceases, and the mariners fear the Lord exceedingly (1:11-16)

B1. Jonah’s Psalm: salvation from death comes from the Lord (2)

a. Jonah prays after three days in the belly of a fish (1:17-2:1)

b. the Lord answered my cry from hell (2:2)

c. the Lord had cast me into the deep (2:3)

d. though cast out, I looked again to the Lord’s temple (2:4)

c. I was buried in the deep (2:5)

b. the Lord brought my life up from prison and corruption (2:6)

d. I remembered and prayed to the Lord in his temple (2:7)

e. salvation is of the Lord (2:8-9)

a. the Lord has the fish vomit Jonah out upon dry ground (2:10)

A2. Jonah preaches, Ninevah is also saved following its repentance (3)

• Jonah obeys the repeated command to preach in Ninevah (3:1-4)

• the people repent in sackcloth (3:5-9)

• God sees their repentance and turns away destruction (3:10L)

B2. Jonah's gourd, the Lord teaches that he cares for all people (4)

a. The Lord is merciful and kind (4:2)

b. Jonah is angry that Ninevah’s is saved (4:1-4)

c. a gourd grows in a day to provide Jonah with shade (4:5-6)

c. a worm kills the gourd in a day, the sun beats Jonah (4:7-8)

b. Jonah is angry at the death of the gourd (4:8-9)

a. The Lord desires to spare a large city more than a plant (4:10-11L)

The Book of Jonah is about the Lord’s justice and mercy, with a symbolic foreshadowing of Christ’s death and resurrection. In the first pair of episodes Jonah refuses to warn the people of Ninevah that they must repent. He then learns that disobedience leads to a death from which he can be delivered only by the Lord. In the second pair of episodes he does finally preach to Ninevah, but he is angry when the city qualifies through repentance for the same mercy that he had previously received. He is then taught of the Lord’s concern and mercy for all people, even non-Israelites.

Each of the major divisions of Jonah is discussed separately on the following subpages: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4.

Detailed discussion

On Jonah as a narrative

Among the prophetic books of the Old Testament, the Book of Jonah is certainly unique: it is a narrative, rather than a collectiton of specific prophecies (likely the reason there are baby board-books of Jonah but not of, say, Habakkuk and Nahum). The narrative character of the text certainly suggests that it be read differently from other prophetic books: this book is subject to the logic of narrative (explicitly an art form), rather than the logic of the prophetic word (explicitly bound to the event of the prophet's declaration). This is as much as to say that the Book of Jonah opens more directly onto the reader (as a narrative) than it does onto the hearer (as would a prophetic book). In other words, as a narrative, the Book of Jonah is a prophetic word contextualized, written into a text, and so it lends itself quite immediately (in the literal sense) to readers at any distance of time. As a narrative, the Book of Jonah occurs primarily as a text, rather than derivatively as a text (as the prophetic books apparently do--apparently: Nephi seems to offer an argument against this distinction in 2 Ne 25:1ff).

Moreover, the third-person-ness of a narrative allows the author to explore Jonah's refusal to preach to Ninevah in a way that could only be guessed at by the reader of a first-person prophetic account. The narrator here words things very carefully, weaving together themes that open up the meanings of Jonah's few, rather pithy statements. In other words, the narrative structure of the prophetic book allows the reader to explore the context in which the few, short prophetic words arise. The book allows one to think through the meaning of the prophetic word, but--and here is the catch--in a rather ironic setting. The Book of Jonah, in order to put on display the nature of the prophetic task, presents the prophet's words in the context of his refusal to preach: Jonah demonstrates the nature of the prophetic task by refusing it, by narratively fleeing from it. In the end, only such an incredibly complex narrative could put on display the meaning of the prophetic task.

Parallel passages in other scriptures

This list is complete.

• 3:9-10

Passages affected by Joseph Smith Translation

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Questions for further thought and study

• Click the edit link above and to the right to add questions

Footnotes

reflist

Additional sources and links

• Books

• Wayment, Thomas A., ed. The Complete Joseph Smith Translation of the Old Testament, p. 218. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 2009. (ISBN 1606411314) BX8630.A2 2009

• See the articles at these essays on Jonah in The Journal of Scriptural Reasoning, v. 3(1), June 2003.

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                                                                 Chapter 1