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 refuses to preach to Ninevah and suffers symbolic death (1)

A1. Jonah Cannot Escape the Lord’s Justice (Jonah 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

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Parallel passages in other scriptures

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Passages affected by Joseph Smith Translation

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Questions for further thought and study

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Footnotes

reflist

Additional sources and links

• Books

• Wayment, Thomas A., ed. The Complete Joseph Smith Translation of the Old Testament, p. 216-17. 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

A1. Jonah Cannot Escape the Lord’s Justice (Jonah 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)

Jonah runs as far away as possible. He goes to Joppa, a major port, and sails for Tarshish, probably a port in Spain, at the other end of the Mediterranean world.

In ancient writing large bodies of water often represent chaos, evil and death. Upon being cast into the sea, Jonah is symbolically overcome by the evil and/or death of which he alone had been unaware while sleeping. Another lesson is that one sufficiently bad apple can forfeit God’s help for an entire group trying to survive the chaos and evil of this world. But the main point of this episode is that disobeying God leads inevitably to death, be it physical or spiritual. There is no escape from this justice.

B1. Jonah’s Psalm of Salvation (Jonah 2)

a. Jonah prays after three days in the belly of a fish (1:17L-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 (2:10L)

Christ twice identifies this chapter as a sign of his own death and subsequent resurrection on the third day. When asked for a sign, Christ replies that “there shall no sign be given to it [this generation], but the sign of the prophet Jonah; for as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” (Matthew 12:39-40, also see Matthew 16:4).

As for his own symbolic death, Jonah’s return from a (spirit) prison prepared by God under the depths of the sea to life upon dry ground represents both victory over physical death and victory over evil or spiritual death (see, e.g., the use of “hell” in 2 Nephi 9:10-13). After being shown in chapter 1 that God’s justice is inescapable, we are shown in chapter 2 that it is in fact possible to escape justice – through God’s mercy if we will turn and seek it from him in his holy temple, for “salvation is of the Lord.”

Jonah’s unsuccessful trip across the sea can be contrasted with the successful trip of the Jaredites (Ether 6). They are not asleep to their peril, never cease to call upon God, therefore cannot be harmed by the sea’s mountain waves that crash upon them nor by any leviathan in its depths (evil and death), and are continually blown by the wind (spirit or life) toward the promised land (heaven).

Paul’s shipwreck in the last two chapters of Acts is another symbolic death and resurrection on the open sea, in that case teaching that Christ’s death and resurrection in the last two chapters of Luke is reenacted in the death and resurrection of all mankind. And in Romans 6:4 Paul expressly describes baptism by immersion as a symbolic death.

A2. Jonah Preaches and Ninevah Repents (Jonah 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)

The book of Jonah was written about forty years before the Assyrian empire conquered and erased the Northern Kingdom of Israel and nearly did the same to the Southern Kingdom of Judah. In Jonah’s day the Assyrians were already greatly feared for their cruelty and were expanding in the direction of Israel and Judah. Jonah lived in northern Israel, probably near Nazareth. Jonah’s desire that the Assyrian capital Ninevah be destroyed is thus easy to understand (4:2).

But eventually Jonah does obey the commandment to warn the people of Ninevah about their impending destruction. Ninevah is a great city of three days’ journey, and Jonah merely begins to enter partway into the city. He preaches and then leaves to see what will happen to the city (3:3-4). The missionary does not care about the welfare of his audience. But Ninevah does repent and avoid destruction.

Jonah’s repentance while in the whale involved the religious performances of offering sacrifice and paying a vow (2:9). The people of Ninevah likewise engage in fasting and the wearing of sackcloth (3:5-8). But the Assyrian king further decrees right moral conduct: “let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands … And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way” (3:8, 10). The Assyrian repentance in chapter 3 is thus portrayed as deeper than Jonah’s repentance in chapter 2.

It is worth noting that the Lord did not excuse Ninevah from heeding Jonah’s call to repentance just because Jonah had failings of his own. Destruction was avoided only because the people of Ninevah repented. The Book of Jonah teaches that a prophet who speaks for the Lord need not be perfect; he needs only to obey the Lord’s command to proclaim truth. We the hearers must not judge the message by the messenger, but by the Holy Ghost (see Luke 24:32; 1 Corinthians 2:1-5).

B2. Jonah’s Gourd Grows and Dies (Jonah 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)

In chapters 1 and 3 the Lord speaks only to command Jonah to go and preach to Ninevah. In chapter 2 the Lord does not speak at all. But in chapter 4 the Lord engages in an extensive conversation with Jonah.

Jonah is angry that Ninevah is saved from destruction, and the Lord sets out to teach him about the Lord’s view of love (4:1-4). As Jonah sits outside the city to see what will happen to it, the Lord causes a gourd plant to grow up quickly to provide Jonah with shade “to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceedingly glad of the gourd.” But the next day a worm kills the plant, and Jonah is exposed to a vehement east wind and the beating sun. Jonah’s gladness quickly dissipates, he desires to die, and the Lord asks him “Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd?”

The Lord points out that the gourd came and went in the space of only two days and that Jonah had expended no effort in nurturing it. The Lord then compares the gourd to a city of 120,000 people, suggesting that the Lord had spent both time and effort in nurturing the city, and makes the point that such a city is worthy of much more concern than the gourd for which Jonah laments.

This chapter is often recognized as teaching the Lord’s chosen people that they are not the only people he loves, and that his chosen people should share that love and concern for their fellow men.

To again summarize the book of Jonah, the Lord’s justice is inescapable unless one qualifies through repentance for the mercy that he desires to show all his children.

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