Jonah

Jonah (also rendered Jonas, the Greek form of the Hebrew name Yonah, meaning "dove") is a prophet of the northern kingdom of Israel, son of Amittai, and the central figure of the book that bears his name.

Scripture places him in established history at one point: 2 Kings 14:25 names him as the prophet through whom Yahweh promised that Jeroboam II would restore Israel's border from the entrance of Hamath to the sea of the Arabah, and identifies his hometown as Gath Hepher in Zebulunite territory. That places him in the first half of the eighth century BC, and the same verse presents his oracle as favorable to the king, in contrast with the reluctant figure of the book. The narrative of Jonah 1–4 tells the rest: God commands him to cry out against Nineveh; he instead rises to flee to Tarshish, goes down to Joppa, boards a ship, and is thrown overboard in a storm after confessing Yahweh as God of heaven and sea (Jonah 1:3, 1:9). A great fish prepared by God swallows him, and he is in its belly three days and three nights (Jonah 1:17); after his prayer from the fish he is vomited onto dry land, preaches to Nineveh, and the city turns from its evil (Jonah 3:5–10). The book closes with a rebuke rather than a resolution: God prepares a plant, a worm, and a sultry east wind, and answers Jonah's wish to die by asking whether he does well to be angry over the plant while the city's people and animals are spared (Jonah 4:8–11).

The New Testament takes up Jonah as a type. In Matthew 12:39–41 and Luke 11:29–32, Jesus refuses a sign to a generation that seeks one except "the sign of Jonah the prophet," interpreting the three days and nights in the fish as prefiguring the Son of Man's three days and nights in the heart of the earth (Matthew 12:40), and citing the Ninevites' repentance at Jonah's preaching as testimony against his hearers, since "someone greater than Jonah is here" (Matthew 12:41; Luke 11:32). Matthew 16:4 repeats the sign saying without the explanation.

Established historical and linguistic fact bears on how the book is read: Nineveh was the Assyrian capital, and Assyria was the power that would eventually overwhelm the northern kingdom, which makes the prophet's reluctance intelligible in the narrative's own terms; the Hebrew name Yonah and the Greek Iōnas underlie the English forms Jonah and Jonas, the latter familiar from the King James Version and the Greek text. Beyond this, Christian traditions genuinely differ. Many read the book as straightforward historical narrative, holding the events as described to have occurred; others, noting its distinctive style, its irony, and the parabolic character of episodes such as the plant and the worm, read it as a prophetic parable or satire whose truth lies in its message rather than its reportage, and some hold that the historical Jonah of 2 Kings 14:25 need not be the author of the book. Interpreters also differ over the "sign of Jonah"—whether it points chiefly to the fish and burial, as Matthew 12:40 explains it, or to Jonah's preaching as a sign to the Ninevites, as Luke 11:30 frames it—and over whether the Ninevites' repentance is presented as a model of Gentile response to God or as a rebuke to Israel's own hardness.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.