I. Name

Jonah, "Dove," was the son of Amittai of GathHepher, in the tribe of Zebulun. In 2 Kings 14:25 we find the same name, and there can be no doubt that both refer to the same person. The statement in Kings locates him in the reign of Jeroboam II., 783-743 B. C, probably in the early part of that reign, while the book now before us belongs to the latter part of it when Jonah was an old man.

II. Contents

The book contains an account of the mission of Jonah to Nineveh.

1. The first call. Chs. 1 and 2. Jehovah commands Jonah to go to Nineveh and cry against it on account of its wickedness, 1:2. Instead of obeying, Jonah takes a ship for Tarshish, a place in the opposite direction, 1 13. A violent storm arising, Jonah is thrown into the sea, 1:15; and is swallowed by a great fish, 1:17; where he remains for three days, composing a prayer expressed in poetical form, 2:1-9; after which he is restored to the dry land, 2:10.

2. The second command to go. Chs. 3 and 4. Jehovah gives a second command to Jonah to go to Nineveh, 3:1, to which the prophet immediately responds, and at his preaching there is a great repentance, 3:5-9, so that the threatened destruction is averted, 3:10. This displeased Jonah, 4:1-3, whereupon Jehovah teaches him a lesson of compassion by means of a gourd, 4:6-11.

III. Authorship

The important question is, Did Jonah himself write the book or is it a book about Jonah written by some one else?

The common opinion is that Jonah himself wrote it and that it is an episode in the prophet's own life.

In favor of this we note:

1. Its place among the Minor Prophets who are generally understood to have recorded their own utterances. It has the same authentication as many other prophetical books, Joel 1:1; Hag. 1:1; Micah 1:1.

2. The reference to it in Tobit 14:4 assumes that it is historical.

3. All the details of the narrative lead us to regard it as a personal record. The fact that some of it is written in the third person has many parallels in the Biblical narratives, as Daniel, Ezra.

4. The tone of the book, teaching so plainly the willingness of God to regard the cry of the heathen, is more in harmony with Jonah's time than with the later post-exilic period to which some would assign it.

5. The use made of it by Christ, Matt. 12:39-41; 16:4; Luke 11:29-32, demands a historical basis.

Against this position many modern critics have taken a decided stand. Driver places it in the fifth century, and others still later. The following are the reasons given:

1. The book is a narrative rather than a prophecy. But other prophets have written narratives, why not Jonah?

2. The language indicates a late origin. But Driver says, "Some of the linguistic features might (possibly) be compatible with a pre-exilic origin in northern Israel." (Int. to O. T., p. 322.) The idiom and vocabulary are regarded as those of the latest period of Old Testament Hebrew. We reply that the language agrees well with that used in the northern kingdom, to which Jonah belonged, at the time when he lived.

3. The reference to Nineveh, 3:3, is thought to imply that when the book was written the city had long since passed away But in a historical narrative such an inference is not necessary. It was a great city when Jonah went there.

4. The miraculous element has been urged strongly against it. But if we admit the possibility of miracles under any conditions, they are no more difficult here than elsewhere.

5. The peculiar nature of his mission to a foreign nation is urged as out of keeping with Old Testament prophecy, and the fact that history does not confirm the statement in regard to the repentance of Nineveh has been used as proof that it never happened. But other prophets had to deal with foreign nations, Amos 1, Isa. 14, and it was eminently fitting that the lesson of God's mercy to the penitent should be plainly stated as a rebuke to the narrowness of the Jews. God's people, then as now, needed to be taught their responsibility to bring the message of God to all the world.

That history does not corroborate the narrative is not strange when we remember how little historical confirmation we have to the prophetical teachings of the Old Testament. It reads like the historical narratives of Elijah and Elisha in the Book of Kings, and the peculiar opening words, "And it came to pass," lead to the suggestion that if it had been inserted immediately after 2 Kings 14:25, its fitness and naturalness would have been at once apparent.

While then the question of authorship is an exceedingly complicated one, we do not find any reason for assuming the late origin of the book sufficient to cause us to abandon the old position maintained by the church that it was written by the prophet as a record of his own personal experience.

IV. Its Interpretation

1. Some have thought the book a Hebrew attempt to teach ideas similar to the Greek stories of Hercules or Andromeda, but this needs no reply.

2. The symbolic character of the book has been maintained. The prophets, it is said, taught much in this way, Jer. 25:15. Israel had a world commission to preach the forgiving love of God, but being recreant to duty, was rejected, and when repentant becomes the evangelizer of the world, but always fails to grasp the fullness of the divine purpose. But the story seems too complicated for such a purpose.

3. The form is historical, and all the incidents can best be explained in that way. It is history, but history told for a purpose. It sets forth more than a mere statement of the fortunes of Jonah. In the history of Jonah the history of one greater than Jonah is typified. This the New Testament use of it plainly shows, Matt. 12:39. It is also designed, doubtless, to make plain the fact that God's government embraces all nations and that His mercy to the penitent is not limited to any one people; a truth as much needing expression then as now.

LITERATURE

Commentaries: Orelli; G. A. Smith, The Book of the Twelve Prophets; Keil and Delitzsch; Pusey. Hengstenberg's Christology; Robertson Smith, The Prophets of Israel; Farrar, The Minor Prophets; article "Hosea" in Bible Dictionaries of Smith and Hastings; Introductions of Driver, Keil, Bleek; Stanley, History of the Jewish Church. Mitchell, Exposition of the Book of Jonah; Banks, Jonah in Fact and Fancy; Kennedy, On the Book of Jonah; Trumbull, Jonah in Nineveh.