Rochelle a Laura, Cub Olson Shasa Nyatanga, Illustrator
Jonah is the only book of the Minor Prophets that is written as a narrative. When God commands Jonah to preach to Nineveh, a major city of Israel’s enemy, the Assyrian Empire, Jonah sails off in the opposite direction: God sends a storm, and Jonah asks to be thrown overboard. God sends a massive fish to swallow Jonah, and he lives in its belly until he agrees to do God’s will—sort of. When Nineveh repents—despite the fact that Jonah only speaks five words (in Hebrew) with an ambiguous message—the prophet becomes angry. By the end of the book, God has made his position known: he cares for all who call upon him, and he will give them mercy, no matter who they are. Finally, the dove or Jonah is proposed here to pre-figure John the Baptist. The story also mirrors the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD as the Ninevites were given forty days (a day is a year here) and forty years after John’s death the Romans destroyed the Jewish ritual sacrificial system that the Ninevites were in the grand scheme of things. Nineveh is symbolic of the repentance during Acts and Stephen when 3000 came to faith in Messiah, but alas the body of Jews rejected him, and so were destroyed.
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