Category:Book of Jonah

THE PROPHECY OF JONAH 'JONAH prophesied in the reign of JEREBOAM II: as we learn from 2 Kings 14:25. To whom also he foretold his success in restoring all the borders of Israel. He was of GETH OPHER in the tribe of ZEBULUN, and consequently of GALILEE. He prophesied and prefigured in his own person the death and resurrection of CHRIST: and was the only one among the prophets that was sent to preach to the Gentiles.' Jonah had previously been spelled Jonas. Jeroboam had previously been spelled Jereboam.

Jonah Chapter 1
Jonah being sent to preach in Nineveh, flees away by sea: a tempest rises: of which he being found, by lot, to be the cause, is cast into the sea, which thereupon is calmed.

Jonah Chapter 2
Jonah is swallowed up by a great fish: he prays with confidence in God; and the fish casts him out on the dry land.

2:1. Now the Lord prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah: and Jonah was in the belly of a fish for three days and three nights.

2:2. Jonah prayed to the Lord, his God, out of the belly of the fish.

2:3. He said: I cried out of my affliction to the Lord, and He heard me: I cried out of the belly of hell, and You have heard my voice.



2:4. You have cast me forth into the deep, in the heart of the sea, and a flood has compassed me: all Your billows, and Your waves have passed over me.

2:5. I said: I am cast away out of the sight of Your eyes: but yet I shall see the holy temple again.

2:6. The waters compassed me about even to the soul: the deep has closed me round about, the sea had covered my head.

2:7. I went down to the lowest parts of the mountains: the bars of the earth have shut me up forever: and You will bring up my life from corruption, O Lord, my God.

2:8. When my soul was in distress within me, I remembered the Lord: that my prayer may come to You, unto the holy temple.

2:9. They that in vain observe vanities, forsake their own mercy.

2:10. But I with the voice of praise will sacrifice to You: I will pay whatsoever I have vowed for my salvation to the Lord.

2:11. The Lord spoke to the fish: and it spewed out Jonah upon the dry land.

Spoke to the fish. . .God's speaking to the fish, was nothing else but His will, which all things obey.

Jonah Chapter 3
'Jonah is sent again to preach in Nineveh. Upon their fasting and repentance, God recalls the sentence by which they were to be destroyed.'

3:1. The word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time saying:

3:2. Arise, and go to Nineveh, the great city: and preach in it the preaching that I bid thee.

3:3. Jonah arose, and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord: now Nineveh was a great city of three days' journey.

Of three days' journey. . .By the computation of some ancient historians, Nineveh was about fifty miles round: so that to go through all the chief streets and public places was three days' journey.

3:4. Jonah began to enter into the city one day's journey: and he cried and said: Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be destroyed.

3:5. The men of Nineveh believed in God: and they proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least.



3:6. The word came to the king of Nineveh: and he rose up out of his throne, and cast away his robe from him, and was clothed in sackcloth, and sat in ashes.

3:7. He caused it to be proclaimed and published in Nineveh, from the mouth of the king and of his princes, saying: Let neither men nor beasts, oxen, nor sheep taste anything: let them not feed, nor drink water.

3:8. Let men and beasts be covered with sackcloth, and cry to the Lord with all their strength, and let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the iniquity that is in their hands.

3:9. Who can tell if God will turn, and forgive: and will turn away from his fierce anger, and we shall not perish?

3:10. God saw their works, that they were turned from their evil way: and God had mercy with regard to the evil which he had said that he would do to them, and he did it not.

Jonah Chapter 4
'''4:1. Jonah was exceedingly troubled, and was angry:

Was exceedingly troubled, etc. . .His concern was lest he should pass for a false prophet; or rather, lest God's word, by this occasion, might come to be slighted and disbelieved.

'''4:2. He prayed to the Lord, and said: I beseech thee, O Lord, is not this what I said, when I was yet in my own country? therefore I went before to flee into Tarshish: for I know that you are a gracious and merciful God, patient, and of much compassion, and easy to forgive evil.'''



4:3. Now, O Lord, I beseech thee take my life from me: for it is better for me to die than to live.

4:4. The Lord said: Do you think you have reason to be angry?

4:5. Then Jonah went out of the city, and sat toward the east side of the city: and he made himself a booth there, and he sat under it in the shadow, until he might see what would befall the city.

4:6. The Lord God prepared an ivy, and it came up over the head of Jonah, to be a shadow over his head, and to cover him (for he was fatigued): and Jonah was exceeding glad of the ivy.

The Lord God prepared an ivy. . .Hederam. In the Hebrew it is Kikajon, which some render a gourd: others a palmerist, or palma Christi.

4:7. But God prepared a worm, when the morning arose on the following day: and it struck the ivy and it withered.

4:8. When the sun was risen, the Lord commanded a hot and burning wind: and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, and he broiled with the heat: and he desired for his soul that he might die, and said: It is better for me to die than to live.

'''4:9. The Lord said to Jonah: Do you think you have reason to be angry, for the ivy? He said: I am angry with reason even unto death.'''

4:10. The Lord said: You art grieved for the ivy, for which you have not labored, nor made it to grow, which in one night came up, and in one night perished.

4:11. Shall I not spare Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons, that do not know how to distinguish between their right hand and their left, and many beasts?

Distinguish between... God is referring to the children and infants.

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---excerpt from the Illustrated Bible Dictionary

Book of Jonah - - This book professes to give an account of what actually took place in the experience of the prophet. Some critics have sought to interpret the book as a parable or allegory, and not as a history. They have done so for various reasons. Thus (1.) some reject it on the ground that the miraculous element enters so largely into it, and that it is not prophetical but narrative in its form; (2.) others, denying the possibility of miracles altogether, hold that therefore it cannot be true history. Jonah and his story is referred to by our Lord (Matthew 12:39, Matthew 12:40; Luke 11:29), a fact to which the greatest weight must be attached. It is impossible to interpret this reference on any other theory. This one argument is of sufficient importance to settle the whole question. No theories devised for the purpose of getting rid of difficulties can stand against such a proof that the book is a veritable history. There is every reason to believe that this book was written by Jonah himself. It gives an account of (1.) his divine commission to go to Nineveh, his disobedience, and the punishment following (Jonah 1:1-17); (2.) his prayer and miraculous deliverance (Jonah 1:17-2:10); (3.) the second commission given to him, and his prompt obedience in delivering the message from God, and its results in the repentance of the Ninevites, and God's long-sparing mercy toward them (John 3:1); (4.) Jonah's displeasure at God's merciful decision, and the rebuke tendered to the impatient prophet (John 4:1). Nineveh was spared after Jonah's mission for more than a century. The history of Jonah may well be regarded "as a part of that great onward movement which was before the Law and under the Law; which gained strength and volume as the fullness of the times drew near." Perowne's Jonah.