Who was Jonah?
When they lived The prophet is placed around the eighth century BC
In short
Jonah was a prophet ordered to preach in Nineveh, the Assyrian capital, who fled in the opposite direction. Thrown into the sea during a storm, he was swallowed by a great fish and returned to dry land. He preached, the city repented, and the book ends with him furious that no destruction came.
- Written by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 7 min read
Jonah has four chapters, takes ten minutes to read, and is probably the most badly summarised book in the Bible. The children’s version ends on the beach, with the prophet spat out by the fish and ready to obey. The book has two more chapters after that, and they are the two that make it interesting.
The subject is not disobedience and punishment. It is the discomfort of a prophet who discovers that divine mercy includes people he would rather have seen destroyed — and the book stops before saying whether he accepted that.
The order and the flight
The mission is to go to Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian empire — the military power that, in Israel’s memory, was tied to deportations and systematic cruelty. Jonah gets up and buys passage to Tarshish, at the opposite end of the known world.
The storm that follows puts a whole crew of foreign sailors at risk, and the book takes care to show that they behave better than the prophet: they each pray to their own god, resist throwing him overboard, try to row back to land, and give in only when there is no alternative. Afterwards they offer sacrifices.
Jonah, meanwhile, is asleep in the hold, and in this edition it is the helmsman who wakes him. It is the first of the book’s several inversions: the pagans act better than the man of God, and the text makes no effort at all to disguise it.
The great fish
The animal appears in a single verse, and the information is spare: a great fish, prepared to swallow Jonah, and a stretch of three days and three nights inside it. The text does not describe the species, does not describe the interior and does not describe the sensation.
Take note of the verse number, because it moves. In this edition the fish appears in chapter 2, verse 1. In Bibles following a different division, the same verse is the last of chapter 1, and everything else in chapter 2 shifts by one. If a reference to Jonah 2 does not line up, this is why.
The prayer that follows is a psalm assembled from familiar formulas — the descent, the waters, the abyss, the bars of the earth — and it ends with a promise of sacrifice. Worth noting what it does not contain: any request for forgiveness for the flight.
1And the Lord prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights.
The verse of the fish, in full. It is a great fish, not a whale — and the text says nothing further about the animal, here or anywhere else in the book.
2And Jonah prayed to the Lord, his God, from the belly of the fish.
3And he said: “I cried out to the Lord from my tribulation, and he heeded me. From the belly of hell, I cried out, and you heeded my voice.
The opening of the prayer. It is thanksgiving for a rescue already accomplished rather than supplication — which is curious, given that the person praying is still inside the fish.
11And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.
The end of the episode in one sentence and with no ceremony: the fish receives an order and puts Jonah out on dry land. The book spends fewer words on this than any modern retelling.
Nineveh repents
Jonah’s preaching is the shortest in the Bible: one sentence, with a deadline and a sentence of doom, no call to repentance and no alternative on offer. He walks into Nineveh, one day’s worth of ground, announcing its destruction.
And it works. The whole city believes, proclaims a fast and puts on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least. The king comes down from his throne, sits in ashes and extends the fast to the animals — a detail that reads as deliberate excess and that sets up the last verse of the book.
God sees the change and turns away from the harm announced. This is where the most spectacular success story in all of biblical prophecy becomes, for the prophet, a personal problem.
4And Jonah began to enter into the city one day’s journey. And he cried out and said, “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed.”
5And the men of Nineveh believed in God. And they proclaimed a fast, and they put on sackcloth, from the greatest all the way to the least.
Note the size of the message against the size of the response. One sentence of threat produces a general conversion — a disproportion the book builds on purpose, because it is what will infuriate Jonah.
10And God saw their works, that they had been converted from their evil way. And God took pity on them, concerning the harm that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.
The verse that ties the knot of the book: the city’s change of conduct and God’s change of decision, in the same sentence.
The fourth chapter, which almost nobody tells
Jonah is furious, and he explains why. He says he knew it from the start: he knew God is lenient, merciful, patient and willing to relent — and that is exactly why he ran. He was not afraid of failing; he was afraid of succeeding.
He then asks to die, leaves the city and builds himself a shelter to watch what will happen. A plant grows and gives him shade, and he is delighted with it. The next day a worm attacks it, it dries up, sun and wind arrive together, and he asks to die again.
The book closes with God arguing from the plant: if Jonah felt for a shrub he did not plant, why should there be no feeling for a city holding more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left — and a great many animals.
The last word of the book is about livestock. And the prophet does not answer: the text stops at the question, and the reader never learns what Jonah said.
1And Jonah was afflicted with a great affliction, and he was angry.
2And he prayed to the Lord, and he said, “I beg you, Lord, was this not my word, when I was still in my own land? Because of this, I knew beforehand to flee into Tarshish. For I know that you are a lenient and merciful God, patient and great in compassion, and forgiving despite ill will.
3And now, Lord, I ask you to take my life from me. For it is better for me to die than to live.”
The confession of the real reason for the flight, made by Jonah himself. It is one of the few places in the Bible where somebody accuses God of being too merciful.
6And the Lord God prepared an ivy, and it ascended over the head of Jonah so as to be a shadow over his head, and to protect him (for he had labored hard). And Jonah rejoiced because of the ivy, with great rejoicing.
7And God prepared a worm, when dawn approached on the next day, and it struck the ivy, and it dried up.
8And when the sun had risen, the Lord ordered a hot and burning wind. And the sun beat down on the head of Jonah, and he burned. And he petitioned for his soul that he might die, and he said, “It is better for me to die than to live.”
In this edition the plant is an ivy; other editions have a gourd, a castor plant, or simply a plant. The species does not matter to the argument — what matters is that it grew on its own and withered on its own, and that he grew attached in between.
11And shall I not spare Nineveh, the great city, in which there are more than one hundred and twenty thousand men, who do not know the difference between their right and their left, and many beasts?”
The last verse of the book is a question with no answer, and it ends on the animals. Ending that way is a literary decision, not a lost conclusion.
What the text does not say
Biblical figures gather layers of tradition that Scripture does not support. Telling the two apart does not diminish the story — it gives back what is actually written.
What is commonly said
Jonah was swallowed by a whale.
What Scripture says
The book of Jonah says great fish, and never uses the word whale across its four chapters. The word enters through the way Matthew 12:40 refers back to the episode — and there it does appear, in all three editions consulted. The Greek term Matthew uses means a large sea creature, with no species specified.
What is commonly said
The book ends with Jonah repentant and reconciled.
What Scripture says
The book ends on a question put to Jonah, and the text stops without his answer. The last words are about the city and its animals. Whoever wrote it chose not to supply the ending, and that choice is part of what the book is saying.
What is commonly said
Jonah ran away out of fear — of the Ninevites, or of how hard the mission would be.
What Scripture says
He gives the reason in plain words in chapter 4, and it is a different one: he knew God would forgive, and he did not want to watch that happen to that city. The explanation comes after everything has gone well, and it is delivered as an accusation.
What is commonly said
The plant that shaded Jonah was a gourd.
What Scripture says
That depends on the edition: the one displayed here says ivy, and others have a gourd, a castor plant, or simply a plant. The original term is rare and translations never settled on it. What the scene requires is something that grows fast and dies fast.
Where this person appears
1And the Lord prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights.
The verse of the great fish. In some Bibles it is the last verse of chapter 1 — worth checking in yours.
2And Jonah prayed to the Lord, his God, from the belly of the fish.
3And he said: “I cried out to the Lord from my tribulation, and he heeded me. From the belly of hell, I cried out, and you heeded my voice.
The opening of the prayer made from inside the fish, in a tone of thanks rather than pleading.
4And Jonah began to enter into the city one day’s journey. And he cried out and said, “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed.”
5And the men of Nineveh believed in God. And they proclaimed a fast, and they put on sackcloth, from the greatest all the way to the least.
The shortest sermon in the Bible and the immediate conversion of an entire city.
1And Jonah was afflicted with a great affliction, and he was angry.
2And he prayed to the Lord, and he said, “I beg you, Lord, was this not my word, when I was still in my own land? Because of this, I knew beforehand to flee into Tarshish. For I know that you are a lenient and merciful God, patient and great in compassion, and forgiving despite ill will.
3And now, Lord, I ask you to take my life from me. For it is better for me to die than to live.”
The explanation of the flight, given by the prophet himself, and the first request to die.
11And shall I not spare Nineveh, the great city, in which there are more than one hundred and twenty thousand men, who do not know the difference between their right and their left, and many beasts?”
The closing question, which ends the book without an answer.