The book of Jonah is, in some ways, the greatest in the Old
Testament: there is no other which so bravely claims the whole world
for the love of God, or presents its noble lessons with so winning
or subtle an art. Jonah, a Hebrew prophet, is divinely commanded to
preach to Nineveh, the capital of the great Assyrian empire of his
day. To escape the unwelcome task of preaching to a heathen people,
he takes ship for the distant west, only to be overtaken by a storm,
and thrown into the sea, when, by the lot, it is discovered that he
is the cause of the storm. He is immediately swallowed by a fish, in
the belly of which he remains three days and nights (i.). Then
follows a prayer: after which the prophet is thrown up by the fish
upon the land (ii.). This time he obeys the divine command, and his
preaching is followed by a general repentance, which causes God to
spare the wicked city (iii.), whereat Jonah is greatly displeased;
but, by a new and miraculous experience, he is taught the shame and
folly of his anger, and the infinite greatness of the divine love
(iv.).
On the face of it, the narrative is not meant to be strictly
historical. Its place among the prophetic books shows that its
importance lies, not in its facts, but in the truths for which it
pleads. Much detail is wanting which we should expect to find were
the narrative pure history, e.g. the name of the Assyrian king, the
results of Jonah's mission, etc. Other circumstances stamp it as
unhistorical: considering the poor success the Hebrew prophets had
in their own land, such a wholesale conversion of a foreign city,
even if such a visit as Jonah's were likely, must be regarded as
extremely improbable, to say nothing of the impossibility of the
animals fasting and wearing sackcloth, iii. 7, 8. The miraculous
fish and the miraculous tree which grew up in a single night forbid
us to look for history in the book. Nineveh's fame is a thing of the
past, iii. 3; the book is written after, probably long after, its
fall in 606 B.C. The lateness of the book and its remoteness from
the events it records, are proved in other ways. Its language has
the Aramaic flavour of the later books, and such a phrase as "the
God of heaven," i. 9, only occurs in post-exilic literature. It
contains several reminiscences of late books[1] (e.g. Joel?), and
its ideas are most intelligible as the product of post-exilic times,
especially if it be regarded as a protest against a loveless and
narrow-hearted type of Judaism. All the conditions point to a date
not much, if at all, earlier than 300 B.C.
[Footnote 1: There are many points of contact between the prayer in
Jonah ii. and the Psalter; but the prayer must be later than the
original book of Jonah. It is in reality not a prayer but a psalm of
gratitude, and is quite inappropriate to Jonah's horrible situation
in the belly of the fish. Even if the metaphors from the sea were
interpreted literally, they would not be applicable to Jonah's case;
e.g., "the weeds were wrapped about my head," _v_. 5. The
Psalm, which is partly, but not altogether, a compilation, must have
been inserted here by a later hand, hardly by the author of the
book, who would have noticed the impropriety of it.]
Jonah is himself a historical character; there is no reason to doubt
that the prophet, in whose time Nineveh is standing, i. 2, is
contemporary with the Jonah mentioned in 2 Kings xiv. 25 as living
in the reign of Jeroboam II, and prophesying the restoration of
Israel to its ancient boundaries. It may have been as the
representative of an intense and exclusive nationalism that he was
chosen as the hero of this book. Here and there the story trenches
on Babylonian and Greek legend, but the spirit, if not also the
form, is altogether the author's own.
The book abounds in religious suggestion; even its incidental
touches are illuminating. It suggests that man cannot escape his
divinely appointed destiny, and that God's will must be done. It
suggests that prophecy is conditional; a threatened destruction can
be averted by repentance. It is peculiarly interesting to find so
generous an attitude towards the religious susceptibilities and
capacities of foreigners: in this we are reminded of Jesus' parable
of the good Samaritan. The foreign sailors cry, in their perplexity,
to their gods, and end by acknowledging the God of Israel; the
people of Nineveh repent at the prophet's preaching. All this forms
a splendid foil to the smallness and obstinacy of Jonah. With his
mean views of God, he would not only exclude the heathen from the
divine mercy, but rejoice in their destruction. In this the prophet
is typical of later Judaism, with its longing for the annihilation
of the nations as the obverse of the redemption of Zion. This
attitude was greatly encouraged by the rigorous legislation of Ezra;
and Jonah, like Ruth, may be a protest against it, or at least
against the bigotry which it engendered. If Israel is, in any sense,
an elect people, she is but elected to carry the message of
repentance to the heathen; and the book of Jonah is indirectly,
though not perhaps in the intention of the author, a plea for
foreign missions.
The greatest lesson of the book is skilfully reserved to the end,
iv, 2, 10, 11. It is that God is patient and merciful, that He loves
all the world which He created, that His love stretches not only
beyond the Jews and away to distant Nineveh, but even down to the
animal creation. He hears the prayer of the foreign sailors, He
delights in the repentance of Nineveh, He cares for the cattle, iv.
11. This book is the Old Testament counterpart to "God so loved the
world."