Jonah

And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
Matthew 3:17

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The key to Jonah lies in the absence of any cited reason for him to run away from God in chapter 1. While readers may conjecture, the text refuses to give a reason. Why? To create suspense and to add emphasis when the reason is finally given in Jonah 4:2-3. Jonah didn't like the fact that God was so gracious, and he certainly didn't want God being gracious to Ninevites! Whereas they were eager to repent and receive God's forgiveness, that forgiveness (and the ability of God to change His mind) was what made Jonah angry and want to die. The whole book is about the grace of God, who has access to it and how, and whether or not others can accept it.

Jonah's problem was that though he was glad to receive God's grace for himself (for instance, when God saved him from the belly of the fish), he was angry when others received it if he thought they should not. Perhaps Jonah thought they did not deserve it - but that's the whole point! Of course they did not deserve it, and neither did he - nobody deserves God's grace because by definition it is undeserved. Instead of letting God be God, Jonah wanted to stipulate who could receive it (himself, the Jews?) and who could not (Ninevites, the Gentiles?). This attitude-problem clearly persisted in Jesus' day, and it is still alive and well amongst believers today. It is all too easy to tolerate one's own faults but think that others are beyond the pail.

We know of Jonah from another mission of his recorded in 2 Kings 14:25, and we know that he was active as a prophet during the reign of Jeroboam II of Israel. While the historicity of a person's ability to survive 3 days and nights in a whale's belly has been questioned, there are alleged precedents for this in history. Although Nineveh was spared in the days of Jonah, the prophet Nahum later prophesied its destruction, which ultimately came about as power in the Ancient Near East shifted from Assyria to Babylon.

Here are two important scriptural links to Jonah:

1. The book of Nahum is also a short, 'minor' prophecy about Nineveh, and forms a counterpart to Jonah. In Jonah, Nineveh repents and is spared; in Nahum she ultimately reverts to type and her destruction is predicted. The pair of outcomes illustrate God's mercy and His judgment and the importance of repentance.
2. Jonah's 3 days and nights in the belly of the fish is picked up by Jesus and used as a sign of his own death and resurrection. He, too, spent 3 days and nights in the darkness of a grave, but rose to save lives through belief and repentance.

The book has a simple narrative flow. Jonah 1 describes Jonah's commission, flight, and descent into the sea, and chapter 2 his prayer from the belly of the fish. Chapter 3 describes his ministry in Nineveh and the remarkable repentance of the people of Nineveh. Chapter 4 depicts Jonah's anger at the outcome and the acted-parable of the worm and the gourd.

The prayer of Jonah in chapter 2 is a kind of patchwork, woven from the language of the Psalms. Jonah was obviously deeply familiar with the Psalms, as a quick look at a Bible with marginal references will reveal. But while it is a very Biblical prayer in that sense, it's a very real question as to whether there is any word of repentance in it for Jonah's having run away (while Jonah 2:2,7 come close, arguably they don't quite get there).

The book of Jonah powerfully illustrates the importance of repentance. As the people of Nineveh discovered, it is quite literally life-changing. Their example - even though they knew so little about the God of Israel - is outstanding. The king, for all his human importance on the world-stage, rises immediately from his throne to abase himself (contrast Jonah who rose to go down to Joppa, and ultimately down into the sea). The repentance he leads and asks of his people is complete. There are no 'if's and 'but's. It is a fine example.