The great question that concerned the Jewish people at the time of Jesus was that regarding the person and authority of Jesus Christ. He had performed many signs and wonders, healed sick people and raised others from the dead, and satisfied thousands of people with bread and fish. He walked on the water, calmed the storm and cast out demons. These were clearly signs of His Messiahship. The question rightly arose, then, could Jesus Christ be the promised Redeemer? Was He the one the prophets had proclaimed long ago? This question among the people is found in John 7:40-53, “Many of the people therefore, when they heard this saying, said, Of a truth this is the Prophet. Others said, This is the Christ. But some said, Shall Christ come out of Galilee? Hath not the scripture said, That Christ cometh of the seed of David, and out of the town of Bethlehem, where David was? So there was a division among the people because of him. And some of them would have taken him; but no man laid hands on him. Then came the officers to the chief priests and Pharisees; and they said unto them, Why have ye not brought him? The officers answered, Never man spake like this man. Then answered them the Pharisees, Are ye also deceived? Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on him? But this people who knoweth not the law are cursed. Nicodemus saith unto them, (he that came to Jesus by night, being one of them,) Doth our law judge any man, before it hear him, and know what he doeth? They answered and said unto him, Art thou also of Galilee? Search, and look: for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet. And every man went unto his own house.”

In spite of the clear proof, the clerics of that time ended the question of the Messiah with one single sentence, “Search, and look: for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet.” Thus, the honest quest of many people was thwarted and nipped in the bud. This was because Jesus did not fit their picture of Him, and they were simultaneously in danger of losing their authority, their job, as representatives of the old covenant. All this may be the reason that people carried on with their lives. They even resorted to the lie, “Out of Galilee ariseth no prophet.” The Scribes, who knew the Bible well, were also familiar with the book of Jonah. They knew what was written in 2 Kings 14:23-25, “In the fifteenth year of Amaziah the son of Joash king of Judah Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel began to reign in Samaria, and reigned forty and one years. And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord: he departed not from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin. He restored the coast of Israel from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the plain, according to the word of the Lord God of Israel, which he spake by the hand of his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, which was of Gathhepher.” So they deliberately denied one of their own prophets: Jonah.

Jonah. “Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me” (Jonah 1:1-2). The prophet Jonah is well known to many through the story of the great fish that swallowed him. Jonah came from Gathhepher, a little place in Galilee, quite close to Nazareth. Jonah lived around 750 B.C.

Bible critics call the book of Jonah religious fantasy. They are of the opinion that the events of the book could never have taken place, or that they are illustrations to teach us certain truths. Others maintain that the described events come from the pen of a literary genius, or that they are legends similar to William Tell or Robin Hood.

It is interesting to note how Jesus spoke of the person and the book of the prophet Jonah. For Him, Jonah was a real, historical personality, and his book belongs to the Word of God. Jesus Christ, who made the laws of nature and who bears the whole universe and holds it together, simply accepted Jonah as a fact. He even quoted Jonah to the people who persecuted and finally rejected Him, “An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: for as Jonas 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. The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here” (Matthew 12:39-41). Jesus assumed that His opponents knew the truth but did not want to accept it. They closed their ears and hearts and behaved as though they had never heard of Jonah. According to them, Jonah never existed, “Out of Galilee ariseth no prophet.” By doing this they took refuge in lies and went back to their daily lives, “And every man went unto his own house.”

Jonah had a message to proclaim which did not suit many of them. Should the Word of God be proclaimed to the Assyrians? Were they not excluded from the grace of God? For many, this was unthinkable. The Assyrians were well known for their godlessness and their bloodthirsty nature. Moreover, they were a continual potential military threat to Israel. And now these people should have a message from God proclaimed to them? For a prophet who proclaimed God’s salvation to such people, there could be only one result: they were erased from the annals and their existence denied. The tragic consequence was: a prophet Jonah, the man from Galilee, never existed!

It was clear to the spiritually “elite”: had not God chosen them? Was not Israel the chosen people? Were not they chosen to be a light to the Gentiles? Did not God dwell in His sanctuary in Jerusalem? These blessings led Israel to complacency, to an elitist way of thinking and spiritual self-righteousness. This ultimately kept them from realizing their divine commission toward the Gentiles. Through the prophet Isaiah, God had already said, “I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6). When Paul drew the attention of the clerics of that time to this fact, we see the following reaction, “But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy, and spake against those things which were spoken by Paul, contradicting and blaspheming. Then Paul and Barnabas waxed bold, and said, It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you: but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles. For so hath the Lord commanded us, saying, I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the earth” (Acts 13:45-47). Israel was chosen by God to be a blessing to the Gentiles, to be a light for the nations, and a witness of the living God for the whole world. Yet neither Jonah nor Jesus Christ or an apostle Paul fitted into their picture. They thought the message of these people robbed them of their exclusive position of priority.

Jonah’s flight. “But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord” (Jonah 1:3). Jonah may have had various reasons for his flight. Fear of the Assyrians? Who would want to go to their own execution? His elitist way of thinking: “We are the people of God. What do these unbelievers want?” Or was it simply his resistance to God’s command? We do not know Jonah’s reasons, but does this not remind us of our own lives? Are we always obedient to God and His Word? Have we not also the tendency to close our inner ears? There are sometimes things in our lives which God has often drawn our attention to. But, no, we will not be told! There are certain patterns of behavior, perhaps, which the Holy Spirit has shown us that we must renounce, and yet… There are certain sins maybe, and God tells us to lay them aside, and yet we cling to them. We tend to point to Jonah, his objections, fears, his running away, his wrong behavior and his anger. But do we behave any better?

Jonah was disobedient to God’s command. Such things always have consequences sooner or later. His disobedience unleashed the forces of nature and brought the ship and cargo in danger, and we read, “But the Lord sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken” (Jonah 1:4). Innocent people were also affected, “Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his god, and cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it of them” (verse 5). Jonah’s disobedience ultimately brought him to the verge of death, “So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea” (verse 15). “Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights” (verse 17). 

This account is continually questioned, yet Jesus Himself confirmed the truth of it by saying, “For as Jonas 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 12:40). Professor E. Wilder-Smith wrote in his (German) book A Scientist in the Pulpit, “The meeting of the prophet Jonah with the fish has been an object of mockery for non-Christians for a long time. It is always supposed that a whale swallowed him and then spat him out again, which, of course, is hardly possibly because normally whales have much too narrow a gullet. The strange thing about this account, however, is the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ quoted the meeting of Jonah with the fish as being fact. This has certain consequences. If the account is a story, and if Jesus looked upon it as historically true, then the Son of God was wrong and He is not infallible. Then He erred and actually He lied, because He maintained He was the truth in person. It seems to me to be impossible that Jesus was one with the Father and at the same time spread human mistakes!”

Either we believe the account of Jonah unconditionally and accept it, or we question it, and thereby Jesus Christ also. The consequence would be that His Word, the Bible, His redemption and His promise of salvation would also be cast overboard. There is only one alternative; either all or nothing! For Jesus Christ, the events in the book of Jonah were real and a true historical happening. It was so real that He even used it as an example of His own death and resurrection. Various reports of people who experienced and survived similar situations as Jonah prove that it is quite possible. One report is worth mentioning: “In 1892 a whaling ship Star of the East was in the vicinity of the Falkland Islands hunting whales. A crew in a small boat were able to harpoon a large whale. But the whale overturned the boat and the crew fell into the water. While the men attempted to reach the whaling ship, the whale attacked again and one man disappeared. When it surfaced a little while later it was able to be caught. When it was cut open the missed man was found in its stomach. He was unconscious but alive. His skin was very yellow, his eyes and ears very much affected and he was out of his mind. Only after weeks did he recover. James Bartley, as the man was called, never regained his normal appearance. His skin remained yellow, wrinkled and looked like parchment.”1

On the grounds of his disobedience, Jonah now experienced a true journey into hell. Whether he was conscious during this time, we do not know. In the time, however, in which he was, he did one thing: he prayed! And so we read, “For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves passed over me. Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight; yet 

I will look again toward thy holy temple. The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head. I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever” (Jonah 2:3-6). Jonah cried in his desperation to the Lord, “When my soul fainted within me I remembered the Lord: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple. They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy. But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that 

I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord” (verses 7-9). 

In his plight, Jonah experienced what it means when it says in Psalm 50:15, “Call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee.” And we read, “And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land” (Jonah 2:10). It would be interesting to know what Jonah looked like and how he smelt! It could be that Jonah smelt of vomit, and that his skin was burned by the gastric acid. Perhaps he lost his hair, and he looked more like an Egyptian mummy than a human being. He was a walking, stinking warning with leathery, wrinkled and yellow skin, who had escaped from hell and bore the signs of it. Once again, God commanded him, “Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days’ journey. And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown” (Jonah 3:2-4).

Jonah must have aroused quite an upheaval in Nineveh. His appearance, his smell and his message must have deeply shocked the people of Nineveh. They saw that here was a man who not only warned of hell, but who had gone through hell himself. And the inconceivable thing happened, “So the people of Nineveh believed God…” (verse 5). The people saw that here a man was speaking at God’s command. This had consequences, “…and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them. For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God; yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not? And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not” (verses 5-10). 

God sees our hearts and He says, “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways: for why will ye die, O house of Israel?” (Ezekiel 33:11). Nineveh, the capital of the kingdom of Assyria, which was known for being brutal and merciless, repented. The whole city turned around, repented of their deeds and heeded God. And God had mercy on them, “And should I not spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?” (Jonah 4:11). One hundred and twenty thousand people who could not tell their right hand from their left: those were children between 1 and 4 years of age, not counting their parents, siblings and grandparents. 

God has mercy on us because He does not desire the death of the sinner, but that he is converted and lives! Are you meant here? However your past may be, your present life may be, God is also saying to you, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). If God wanted to promise forgiveness to a city like Nineveh, which was known for her dark past, this also applies to you. He wants to blot out your sins, just as it says in Isaiah 44:22, “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto me; for I have redeemed thee.” God’s compassion is also for you, as it says in the New Testament, in Ephesians 1:7, “In whom (Jesus Christ) we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace.”

Jonah and the history of the Jewish people. When we compare Jonah with Israel, we discover interesting parallels: Jonah was called, like Israel, to be a witness to the Gentiles, the lost world, and to be God’s messenger. He was to bring them near to the reality, holiness and righteousness of God. But pride and national patriotism kept Jonah, as also Israel, from fulfilling this task. Both refused to carry out their divine calling at first and departed from the face of God. Jonah boarded a ship, while the Jews became worldwide merchants—ever restless, driven and hunted by wild seas of nations. It is interesting, however, that neither Jonah nor the people of Israel denied their true origin, even in the face of death. Even in their greatest trouble, in the midst of the gas chambers of the Holocaust, they confessed the true God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The Jews were abandoned to human hell. Jonah was swallowed up by a whale or fish, and for Israel a centuries-long odyssey over the seas of the nations began, which ended in the gas chambers of the Holocaust. After they had escaped from this hell, both were scarred. Jonah was spat out by the whale, and Israel was carried back by the waves of the sea of nations to the land promised to her by God. While Jonah proclaimed God’s message to Nineveh, in our day Israel is being prepared for the time when she will proclaim God’s message of salvation among the nations during the millennium of peace. While Jonah left the world stage 2,700 years ago, Israel is appearing on it again. And God’s goal is, “For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord GOD: wherefore turn yourselves, and live ye” (Ezekiel 18:32).                                  (MR0711/459)

ENDNOTE

1 From Science and Religion by Dr. Rimmer, and http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buch_Jona