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NLT

English Standard Version (ESV)

New Living Translation (NLT)

Jonah’s Prayer

2 Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from inside the fish. 2 He said, and LORD, you heard me! 3 You threw me into the ocean depths, I was buried beneath your wild and stormy waves. 4 Then I said, ‘O LORD, you have driven me from your presence. Yet I will look once more toward your holy Temple.’ 5 “I sank beneath the waves, Seaweed wrapped itself around my head. 6 I sank down to the very roots of the mountains. snatched me from the jaws of death! 7 As my life was slipping away, in your holy Temple. 8 Those who worship false gods turn their backs on all God’s mercies. 9 But I will offer sacrifices to you with songs of praise, For my salvation comes from the LORD alone.” 10 Then the LORD ordered the fish to spit Jonah out onto the beach.

Introduction to Jonah

Background of Jonah

What Is the Book of Jonah About?

Time: 3 Minutes

Envision a stubborn prophet, unwilling to deliver his message. Imagine the open Mediterranean Sea raging under severe storm weather. Imagine an ancient bustling Assyrian city called Nineveh—think modern day Iraq. The scene is set. Welcome to the book of Jonah.

The book of Jonah belongs in the collection of Minor Prophets. This collection of books (which includes prophets like Amos, Obadiah, and Micah) is not referred to as “Minor” because the books included are less important than the Major Prophets. We call them Minor only because of their size, for they are very short in length when compared to the three Major Prophets—Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel.

Jonah is just four chapters long—only 47 verses. It tells the story of a prophet who runs from God’s commands, gets thrown into the sea by strangers amid a raging storm, is then swallowed by a massive fish, finally decides to obey God, is spit out from that fish, goes on to help save a city from God’s judgement, sees the city spared, gets mad about it, and then complains under a tree. It’s a pretty wild story. People of every age can enjoy it!

The book of Jonah highlights the pursuing grace, mercy, and compassion of God.

The book of Jonah also addresses deep heart issues like racism, self-righteousness, and mercilessness. God sends his Jewish prophet to an especially wicked nation. The prophet doesn’t want his enemies to receive God’s grace and knows that if he preaches judgment to them and they repent, God will likely have mercy on them. So he tells God “No thanks” and runs away from the job.

But through this book we see God pursue two people—he’s chasing after Nineveh’s heart, but he’s also chasing after Jonah’s heart. God wants to show his undeserved kindness both to the egregiously self-righteous, and the hopelessly wicked.

Jonah ends with a cliff-hanger, leaving the astute reader having to ponder the wonderful and counterintuitive mercy of God. Although kids tend to love the book of Jonah, the message of Jonah will captivate any thoughtful adult as well. Because it’s so dramatic, you may think this wild story is far removed from your experience—but it really isn’t.

Have you ever wanted to run away from home?
Have you ever let other people deal with a mess you started?
Have you ever been angry because people were given what you feel they didn’t deserve?

In this book, we see our tendency to negatively react when God shows kindness to people who we think are undeserving of it. But, like Jonah, we aren’t mad when God shows us grace. We tend to think we always deserve a second chance.

Though this little book is named after Jonah, it’s not ultimately about him, or us. It’s about God. It’s about the “Lord, the God of heaven, who made the dry land” (Jonah 1:9 ESV) and the God who shows mercy, even to the worst of people—prophet or pagan, religious or rebellious. The book of Jonah highlights the pursuing grace, mercy, and compassion of God.

Do you want to learn more about those aspects of God’s character? We can guarantee you’ll be entertained by this book, but you’ll also be enriched as you learn about the unfathomable compassion of God.

Go ahead, crack open the book of Jonah.

What Is the Background of Jonah?

Time: 15 Minutes

Background of Jonah

1

Author and Date

Jonah prophesied during the peaceful and prosperous time of Jeroboam II (2 Kings 14:23–28), who ruled in Israel (the northern kingdom) from 782 to 753 BC. This was a time when Assyria was not a threat to Israel.

2

Overview

The Lord called Jonah to go to the great Assyrian city of Nineveh to pronounce judgment on it. Jonah attempted to escape the Lord’s calling by sailing from the seaport of Joppa to Tarshish, which was probably on the shores of the western Mediterranean. Eventually he obeyed the Lord and traveled overland to Nineveh.

3

Theme

The primary theme in Jonah is that God’s compassion is boundless, not limited just to “us” (Jonah and the Israelites) but also available for “them” (the pagan sailors and the Ninevites).

4

Key Themes

1. God is in sovereign control over all events on the earth.

2. God is determined to get his message to the nations.

3. People need to repent from sin in general, and from self-centeredness and hypocrisy in particular.

4. God promises that he will forgive when people repent.

5

Outline

The story of Jonah includes seven episodes, with the first three paralleled by the second three. The final episode stands alone as the climax of the story:

A. Jonah’s commissioning and flight (1:1–3)
B. Jonah and the pagan sailors (1:4–16)
C. Jonah’s grateful prayer (1:17–2:10)
A’. Jonah’s recommissioning and compliance (3:1–3a)
B’. Jonah and the pagan Ninevites (3:3b–10)
C’. Jonah’s angry prayer (4:1–4)
D. Jonah’s lesson about compassion (4:5–11)

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The Setting of Jonah

Background of Jonah

The Global Message of Jonah

The theme of Jonah is God’s saving mercy toward the nations of the world. The Lord’s compassion is not only for insiders like Jonah and Israel but also for outsiders like the Ninevites. Jonah vividly displays the heart of mercy God has for all people groups of the world, even those known for their godlessness. If only they will repent, God’s compassion is available to any persons from any nation or ethnicity.

1

Jonah in Redemptive History

God’s Global Intent

God called Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28). This commission was hindered with the fall into sin, but was given in grace once more to Noah and then to Abraham and the patriarchs (Genesis 8:17; 9:1; 17:20; 28:3; 35:11). Abraham, however, was called not only to be fruitful and become “a great nation” but also to “be a blessing” so that “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:2–3). Abraham and his children were to be a channel of divine blessing to the whole world.

Built into the Old Testament story from very early on, then, is God’s desire to reach the ends of the earth with his goodness and saving mercy. Israel was not called out and chosen by God solely for her own sake—she was called out so that she might bring blessing to the nations (Isaiah 42:6–7; 49:6). Part of the tragedy of Israel’s persistent faithlessness and idolatry over many generations was their ethnocentrism: they turned their focus inward rather than spreading divine blessing to the nations around them. Paul speaks of Israel’s failure in this regard many times, as in his letter to the Romans (Romans 2:1–29). Jesus too addresses the Jewish failure to bring God’s blessing to the nations, as in the parable of the tenants (Matthew 21:33–46; compare Luke 24:47; John 10:16; Acts 1:8).

Jonah’s Role in God’s Global Intent

This inward focus of Israel is also seen in Jonah. The prophet at first refuses to go to Nineveh, the godless Assyrian city, because, he says, “I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster” (Jonah 4:2). Jonah failed to see that God’s compassion was for all people; the very “steadfast love” he had received in the belly of the great fish (Jonah 2:8) was the “steadfast love” he did not want to share with the nations (Jonah 4:2), yet which they desperately needed, and which God stood ready to give to them.

With the coming of Christ, the blessing of God finally begins to flood out to the nations. Indeed, Jesus’ commission at the end of Matthew’s Gospel picks up and extends the commission given to Adam and Eve to be fruitful and subdue the earth, multiplying not only physically but also spiritually (“make disciples of all nations”; Matthew 28:19). And one day the blessing experienced by the Ninevites will be fulfilled in cosmic proportions as Jesus Christ is worshiped by a “ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9).

2

Universal Themes in Jonah

The Compassion of God

This is the key theme of Jonah. It is the note on which the book ends, as the Lord asks a despondent Jonah, “Should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?” (Jonah 4:11). God’s merciful compassion is not restricted to insiders. His mercy is for all who repent. Divine compassion is shown not to those who think they deserve such compassion but to those who receive it with repentance and humility—as the Ninevites did.

God’s Sovereign Purposes

God does whatever it takes—from a storm at sea to a great fish to the miraculous response of repentance by the Ninevites—to bring his boundless compassion to the nations. As Jonathan said to his armor bearer, “nothing can hinder the Lord from saving by many or by few” (1 Samuel 14:6). God delights to invite his people’s glad participation in what he is doing in the world, yet he is not bound by their obedience or disobedience. No matter how God’s people respond, God will accomplish his saving purposes for the world.

The Universal Need for Grace

The Ninevites needed grace for their wickedness. But Jonah, the insider, the prophet, also needed grace. He was shown grace in the belly of the fish, and yet his heart remained stubborn even at the end of the story. He is resentful, refusing to feel the same pity for Nineveh that he felt for a small plant (Jonah 4:5–10). In short, he is a sinner—a hard-hearted man who is in need of mercy, the same mercy that God extended to the Ninevites. The steadfast love shown to Israel is needed by Israelites just as much as by the godless nations to whom Israel was called to bring it. The story stops where it does precisely in order to make this point.

3

The Global Message of Jonah for Today

The message of Jonah is an urgent call for the global church to extend to others the compassion they themselves have received.

One way we do this is through tangible acts of love such as financial generosity, hospitality, sharing of resources and personal possessions, and advocacy on behalf of those in need politically or socially. One thinks, for instance, of the alarming rate at which human trafficking and slavery are spreading. Such horrors demand active advocacy.

A second and even more crucial way we can extend compassion to others is through the spoken Word, just as Jonah did (Jonah 3:3–4). Mindful of the “steadfast love” God has shown to us in Christ, we speak to others of the same steadfast love that is available to all the peoples of the world, regardless of class, ethnicity, or any other socially defining marker. The gospel of Christ crucified is that which is “of first importance” (1 Corinthians 15:3), and we gladly and courageously pass it on to those who have not heard it.

We speak the gospel to lost people with confidence, knowing that the results are in God’s hands. Humanly speaking, no one in Nineveh was less likely to respond to Jonah’s preaching than the king. But God sovereignly caused Jonah’s preaching to pierce the hearts of the Ninevites, “from the greatest of them to the least of them,” including the king (Jonah 3:5–9)!

2:1-2:9 Realizing that the Lord had graciously delivered him by sending the fish, Jonah composed this psalm-like prayer. Its careful structure, conforming to the pattern of an individual song of thanksgiving, suggests that it may have been composed after the event, as Jonah recalled his emotions and concerns.

2:2 Jonah’s psalm-prayer opens by recalling a previous prayer that was not so polished yet was all the more fervent—his cry for help while on the verge of drowning. • from the land of the dead (literally from the belly of Sheol): Sheol was thought to be the abode of the dead (see Isa 14:15; Ezek 31:15-17). The belly metaphor for Sheol is found nowhere else in the Old Testament; it pictures Jonah’s experience of being delivered from Sheol through the belly of a fish.

2:4 On the brink of drowning, Jonah called out for help, for life, and for God’s renewed presence. It is ironic that Jonah spoke of God as driving Jonah from his presence, for that was Jonah’s own aim in fleeing to Tarshish (1:3). • I will look once more: Either Jonah was confident that he would be rescued and thus worship again in the Temple in Jerusalem, or he was calling to the Lord in his Temple from the sea (cp. 2:7).

2:6 Jonah’s metaphors (roots of the mountains; imprisoned in the earth) reflect ancient concepts of the underworld, with the dead being deep within the earth (see also 2:2). At one point Jonah felt hopelessly doomed to death’s prison. • But: The transition is powerful. Jonah, though certain of his own death, was not beyond God’s gracious reach. • the jaws of death (literally the pit): The Hebrew term normally denotes the habitat of the dead. Jonah’s language again makes it clear that at this point he considered himself as good as dead.

2:7 I remembered the Lord: In this context, Jonah’s statement means “I turned my thoughts to the Lord in prayer.” • earnest prayer . . . holy Temple: The Temple was God’s special dwelling place in Israel’s worship, even though God is present everywhere at all times (Ps 139:7-10; Jer 23:23-24).

2:8-2:9 The conclusion to Jonah’s psalm-prayer bears similarity to 1:16: The sailors also responded to the Lord’s power to save and acts of mercy with sacrifices and vows.

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