Deeper Commentary

Jonah 1:1 Now the word of Yahweh came to Jonah the son of Amittai saying- "Jonah" means 'dove', and we recall the dove going out from the ark, not finding rest, returning, and then going out again to find rest away from her original sanctuary in the ark, after judgment had been poured out upon the eretz or land promised to Abraham (Gen. 8:8,9). This speaks of Jonah's two journeys to Nineveh; the first unfruitful, and the second fruitful. And again, water is a strong feature of the narrative, as it was in that of the flood. The dove like Jonah was saved from the water by grace.

"Amittai" means 'truth' or possibly even suggests 'the truth of Yahweh'. The final truth of the prophetic word is grace and not judgment, which is what Jonah was brought to learn. The narrative addresses the elitism which had crept into Israel, especially at the time of the restoration from Babylon. Although the book describes an event before then, at a time before Nineveh was overthrown, it was perhaps published, as it were, at that time. Jonah represents Israel, saved by grace in the fish, cast back up upon the land / eretz in order to witness to the Gentiles of God's grace.

"Now..." definitely suggests a continuation of a narrative; "now it happened..." would be a fair translation. Nearly every usage of the term elsewhere implies a continuation of a previous narrative. Was Jonah ever mentioned before in the Bible? Yes, in 2 Kings 14:25,26: "[Jeroboam II] restored the border of Israel from the entrance of Hamath to the sea of the Arabah, according to the word of Yahweh, the God of Israel, which He spoke by His servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet who was of Gath Hepher. For Yahweh saw the affliction of Israel, that it was very bitter; for there was none shut up nor left at large, neither was there any helper for Israel". We learn here that Jonah lived at a time when Israel was oppressed by Gentiles, and yet Yahweh had promised restoration. We understand why he found the idea of preaching grace to Gentiles so difficult.

Jonah 1:2 Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city- Quoting Gen. 10:12 about Nineveh. The archeological excavations have found an area of about 25 square kilometers all surrounded by a mighty wall. It took three days to go into the city (Jon. 3:3).

And preach against it- The idea is, to its face. Face to face contact is always the most effective way of witnessing, although we live in a world of social media and communication which tempts us to avoid doing this.

For their wickedness has come up before Me- There is no specific call to repentance. But Jonah ought to have deduced that he was not called to merely inform them that they were wicked and that God had noticed. Rather the idea was that because God had noticed and was therefore going to respond in judgment, they ought to do something- repent. The language is that used about how the wickedness of Sodom and the world before the flood came up before God (Gen. 6:5; 18:21). Jonah passed through water, which he describes as a flood (Jon. 2:3). He is presented therefore as having carried and experienced their judgment. He experienced 'death' by a flood, just as Noah's world did; and this was the experience which in essence was going to come upon Nineveh, seeing their wickedness had come before God as that of Noah's world had done. This depends the sense in which Jonah was a type of the Lord Jesus; He represented us, tasting death for every man, dying the death of the cross, the death of the criminal, the sinner. And yet after three days and nights, was resurrected from it. Again we see that we appeal to people through commonality of experience.

Jonah 1:3 But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish- The idea is, a place far from the eretz promised to Abraham, beyond its borders. But if a boat of those times could sail on a single voyage from Joppa to Tarshish, we can be sure that "Tarshish" has no reference to Britain. And there is no evidence that Palestine traded with Britain at that time or even knew it existed. Wherever it was, it was accessible by one voyage from Joppa. If it refers to the ancient city of Tartessus in Spain, then this was in precisely the opposite direction of Nineveh. In Jon. 4:2 Jonah states that he fled because he suspected that Yahweh would relent of His purpose to destroy Nineveh. He therefore represents the unspoken xenophobia which developed within Hebrew thinking after the restoration, a hypocritical dislike of Gentiles and assumption that ethnic Israel were the only people of God. We too can preach without any actual desire for the repentance of our audience, the exercise can often be a stroking of our own egos, in the name of 'witness', rather than a desire that some will actually respond. Churches and individuals must really enquire whether they actually want success in their preaching, because the implications of so many attitudes are that they don't.

Resistance to the Divine call is very common- we think of Moses, Gideon, Jeremiah etc. We need to ask what is our calling, and how resistant are we to it.

From the presence of Yahweh- Jonah knew the theory from the well known Psalm 139:7: "Whither shall I go from thy Spirit, and whither shall I flee from thy presence?". But we can know Bible texts well, and yet act in a completely opposite way; see on :9. Perhaps he still laboured under the idea that God's presence was only in the eretz promised to Abraham, and he thought that by leaving that he could thereby flee from relationship with God. The place where Yahweh was revealed was understood as the face or presence of God (Gen. 4:4; 32:30). Or possibly the allusion is to how God's prophetic servants stood before His face / presence, and he thought that by leaving the eretz he could resign from relationship with God and the call to prophetic service. But we cannot resign from God and our standing before Him. Judah had indeed been cast out from the presence of Yahweh (2 Kings 24:20; Jer. 23:39; 52:3), but Jonah was to learn that even when 'dead' in the seas of the Gentiles, he was not out of that presence ultimately. And this was the lesson for all Israel and Judah in their dispersion.

The text appears to poke fun at Jonah- a Hebrew man fleeing from the presence of Yahweh, when he knows that presence cannot be fled from. And yet it is Jonah who wrote the book- continually pointing out what a fool he had been, how he just didn't get it, and thereby appealing to us his readers to learn from his mistake. We end up disliking Jonah, but that's because Jonah himself sets us up to do so.

To stand in the presence of someone is often used in the sense of acting as one’s official minister (Gen. 41:46; Deut. 1:38; 10:8; 1 Sam. 16:21f.; 1 Kings 17:1; 18:15; 2 Kings 3:14, etc.) To flee from His presence was therefore "to refuse to serve Him in this office” (Theodore Laetsch, The Minor Prophets (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1956), p. 222). But there is no way we can resign from our calling to be witnesses. We are now with the Lord, and we cannot just resign from His purpose and calling. Jonah intended to flee to Tarshish, the very end of the known world; going the very opposite direction to Nineveh. And we too need to be impressed by the reality of the fact that we can never resign from the Father and Son; we are in their grip. We cannot just ‘pass’ on the piercing issues of commitment day by day.  

He went down to Joppa, and found a ship going down to Tarshish; so he paid its fare, and went down into it, in order to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of Yahweh- We notice the triple emphasis upon his 'going down', away from God. The term is used again in :5. See on Jon. 2:6. The fare was usually paid in full when the passenger had arrived at the destination; but Jonah comes over as eager to board the ship, and confident that his plan will mean that he arrives at his destination.

Jonah 1:4 But Yahweh sent out a great wind on the sea and there was a mighty storm on the sea, so that the ship was likely to break up-  God created a great wind, perhaps through an Angel being sent out (Ps. 104:4) with which He brought Jonah and his fellows to their knees. God later creates another great wind with which to teach Jonah something else (Jonah 4:8). Jonah ought to have perceived the same hand of the same God at work with him. Divine work and control of creation is quite a theme in Jonah- the wind, the great fish, the vine / gourd, the tiny maggot which ate it, and prepares the way for the conclusion at the end of the book, that God cares for animals too (Jon. 4:11). The extent and scope of Divine involvement in our world was something Jonah as well as Israel in captivity needed to learn. He was not only involved with the Israelite people on the territory of their land, but with all men worldwide, and even with vegetation and animals great and small. Jonah surely knew all this from the Psalms, but as noted on :3 he acted contrary to the basic Bible verses he knew and sung. This is our problem too; the implications of just one verse of the Bible or a Bible-based hymn can turn our worldview right around, if we let them. Jonah was so focussed on truth for its own sake, being the son of Amittai, 'Truth of Yah'. He was concerned with the future restoration of Israel and the judgment of sinners, but didn't perceive God's hand and huge activity right now.

Jonah 1:5 Then the sailors were afraid, and every man cried to his god- The implication was that Jonah was amongst Gentiles (see on :9), the very people he despised as unworthy of his witness. But through the whole incident of the storm, he was made to realize that he was to witness to Gentiles, indeed he had to. And this failure, like ours, prepared him for his greater witness to Gentile Nineveh.

 

They threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten the ship- Circumstances repeat within the experience of God's servants; repeating examples of Biblical characters, and also those of God's children known and contemporary to us. It is the same Divine hand at work. Paul during his shipwreck experienced something similar, Acts 27:18,19 being very similar to the LXX here in Jonah; and again, it was a suffering en route to make a witness to the Gentiles. Paul would have been encouraged to go forward, insofar as he perceived the similarities with Jonah. We need to keep asking ourselves what Bible character has trodden our path before us, that through the comfort of the scriptures we might have hope, even if we cannot attach exact meaning to event in this life.

 

But Jonah had gone down into the lowest parts of the ship-  We noticed the triple emphasis upon his 'going down' in :3, away from God. And now he goes even deeper down, and he will go even deeper, taken to the depths of the ocean by the fish. He ought to have come to repentance there, but it appears he didn't; and so Jonah had to go into the great fish and be up hard against its rib cage, a grander form of the sides of the ship. At least later, he would have perceived the similarities. Our tribulations often repeat, that we might learn the lessons we ought to have previously learnt from similar but less extreme situations. Remember this is Jonah writing his memoirs, his autobiography. He perceives how he went lower and lower... and then, even in his defiance, was used to make one of the greatest witnesses of all times.

And he was laying down, deeply asleep- Surely he wasn't asleep, but was giving that impression. Here we have one of many examples of where the Bible records things from the viewpoint of how they appeared to men, even if that appearance was incorrect. The language of demons is another example. We think of the Lord Jesus likewise asleep during a storm; and see how Jonah was being set up as a type of Messiah.

Jonah 1:6 So the captain came to him and said to him, What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call on your God! Maybe your God will look to us so that we won’t perish- Jonah was the only one who didn't apparently pray to his God, even though he is presented as the only one on board who had a relationship with the true God. He would have reflected that despite this, he had not used that relationship as he might have done, in order to save both himself and Gentiles. The Gentiles were more zealous for their gods than Jonah was. The captain himself made the effort to come down to Jonah to ask him to pray. Perhaps Jonah thought that Yahweh was only approachable from within the eretz promised to Abraham, and stubbornly refused to entertain the possibility that God could be prayed to from anywhere. This was a lesson which the captives in Babylon and Assyria had to learn, and so the book of Jonah addresses that question. Or maybe Jonah had given up with a God of so much grace. We note that "Your God" is ha Elohim, as if to imply that the captain was driven to the suspicion that there was only one true God, the God; and it was the God of Israel, the God of this rebellious Hebrew passenger. As with Jonah, God worked with those pagans to elicit from them a true recognition of Himself.

"Arise and call..." is exactly what Jonah had been told by Yahweh in :2- to arise and preach / call out to Nineveh. He is hearing the same words of Yahweh again, but through the larynx of a Gentile. He is being severely nudged, but he chooses suicide at sea [as he imagined it] rather than obedience. And still, by grace, God saves him even from that. We note that Jonah was also disobedient to the captain's call to "arise and call..." just as he was to that of Yahweh. There is no statement of penitence here when we would expect it, especially as Jonah thinks he os to be thrown to his death. He was lost in his own depression and preferred suicide to obedience and repentance. He is the same in chapter 4. He presents himself as the one who didn't repent but was still saved by grace; whereas the Ninevites repented and were saved. He leaves us to conclude that God was even more gracious to him and Israel than He was to the Assyrians. 

Jonah time and again presents as a man who wanted to walk away from what he didn't like, to avoid responsibility to God and man [just as modern man]- but God doesn't abandon him in that, but works powerfully to almost make him obedient. Without making man a puppet, God by grace does 'push' at just the right force to encourage obedience without forcing it.

We note how the Gentile captain rather parallels the king of Nineveh. They both 'arise', and both ponder whether Yahweh might be gracious to them. Both the captain and the King acted "so that we not perish" (1:6; 3:9) and both came 'to fear Yahweh'. Jonah was intended to learn from the conversion of the sailors, and this should have led him to hope for the conversion of the Ninevites. But his memoirs are stating that he failed, time and again, on every level. Yet still God used him to affect the most succesful preaching of any man apart from the Lord Jesus- just a sentence from him, unenthusiastically muttered, led to the conversion of a whole city with 120,000 children in it, i.e. likely 1 million total population.

Jonah 1:7 They all said to each other, Come, let’s cast lots, that we may know who is responsible for this evil that is on us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah- Jonah had the opportunity to repent in front of them all; but he doesn't. So the lot fell upon Jonah to elicit repentance from him. We too could avoid so many problems, for ourselves and others, if we repented earlier, rather than circumstance arising which forces us to public repentance.

Jonah 1:8 Then they asked him, Tell us, please, for whose cause this evil is on us. What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? Of what people are you?- This was to elicit from Jonah a statement of his own biography, which was used by God to elicit true repentance. It is no bad thing for us all to mentally prepare such a biography, that we might realize who we are before God.

Jonah 1:9 He said to them, I am a Hebrew, and I fear Yahweh the God of heaven- "Hebrew" was a term always used either by or to foreigners. Again we are given the impression that he was on a Gentile ship; see on :5. The implication could be that he feared Yahweh's judgment. For in :10 we read that Jonah told them that he was fleeing from Yahweh's call. So he could hardly claim that he was truly fearing Yahweh when he had been so disobedient to Him. We note that he answers their questions apart from the question about his occupation. He was a prophet, but he didn't want to be a prophet, and even at his most desperate moment, he denies it. He had been called by God to know His Truth and share it, but like so many, he resisted it, desperately. But still God worked with him to help him come out with his faith. And Jonah's memoirs in this book are his testament to that grace. God wants us, and He will not give up with us just because we think we can avoid or resign from our responsibilities. Jonah presents as the very opposite of how good prophets behave- they grieve for the impenitent, rejoice when their message is received, lament that nobody hears them. Whereas Jonah utters a brief sentence about judgment- and 120,000 people believe it and repent immediately. The book of Jonah is Jonah's marvel at God's grace and patience with him. He was perhaps the most succesful preacher after the Lord Jesus- he uttered a message of just one sentence, warning of judgment to come- and 120,000 people repented and were saved. He realized the wonder of this, and is making the point that he was the last person who ought to have had this honour, he was the world's worst prophet, the most mixed up of people. His book is marvelling at how God uses such people in His gracious hands.

Who has made the sea and the dry land- The Gentiles thought there were separate gods of the sea and of the dry land. Jonah in his extremity is brought to realize and teach that Yahweh is the only true God, God of both sea and dry land. But he had fled from the presence of Yahweh, thinking that Yahweh was only really active and present in the land of Israel. Now he was being driven to realize that God was also the God of the sea, symbolic as it clearly is in scripture of the Gentile nations. Jonah came to this realization quite naturally; we marvel at the way God taught him so much so quickly, or rather, brought Jonah to realize the truth in reality of that which he theoretically knew. See on :3.

Jonah 1:10 Then were the men extremely afraid and said to him, What is this that you have done?- This can be read not as a question, but an exclamation: "What ever have you done!". They realized the extreme sinfulness of what Jonah had done, more than he did. The wind and waves all around them were clearly sent from God, and were witness enough to the seriousness of the sin of denying others salvation. We must ask whether implicitly or explicitly we have done the same. For it is a serious matter. Who can be baptized or fellowshipped is a question we must ask ourselves; and it's no good assuming that we are innocent of our part in barring others from these things just because we are mere members of a church or group who does this.

"What have you done?" is the question to Eve (Gen. 3:13). And like Adam and Eve, Jonah doesn't respond as intended with a frank expression of penitence; and yet is still ultimately saved by grace.

For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of Yahweh, because he had told them- He may have done so whilst explaining to them why he feared God's judgment upon him (:9). Or perhaps he had earlier jokingly but in truth told them that he was a prophet of Yahweh who was running away from Him, seeing Jonah considered that He only operated in the land of Israel. And now they were all being taught how wrong that was. We note that Jonah is never once repentant. Yet God saves him and keeps hold of him by sovereign grace. And the book concludes with God saying that He saved Nineveh because He felt sorry for all the kids and the cattle- not actually because He repented in line with their repentance. Sovereign grace is the theme all through.

Jonah 1:11 Then they said to him, What shall we do to you, that the sea may be calm to us? For the sea grew more and more stormy- They realized that their salvation depended upon Jonah; note the contrast between "you" and "us". This was to set Jonah up to appreciate that he and his mission really could be used by God to save Gentiles. It was clear that destruction was imminent and not a moment could be wasted, or else that destruction was going to take away the lives of the sailors unless Jonah was proactive. This was to prepare Jonah for his work with Nineveh; in a sense, their salvation depended upon him being proactive. But again, Jonah presents himself as a man who failed to learn his lessons- and who was therefore saved, and used by God, by absolute sovereign grace.

Jonah 1:12 He said to them, Take me up- The Hebrew means ‘to lift up’ in the sense of exaltation; the very idea used by the Lord to describe His exaltation and ‘lifting up’ on the cross. The language of Jonah suffering in the fish and drowning in “great waters” is full of allusions to Messianic Psalms which point forward to the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus- and His saving out of it in resurrection.

The  sailors knew Jonah was a religious man and that he knew the requirements of his God. They knew the storm was upon them for his sake as a punishment from his God, and so they ask what they can do to him to appease his God. Jonah felt that he had to die; he could have thrown himself into the sea. But he says they must do so, presumably because he wants them to have guilt over it. His desire to bring judgment and not grace upon Gentiles is clear.

And throw me into the sea. Then the sea will be calm for you; for I know that because of me this great storm is on you- Jonah reasoned that Yahweh sought to kill him in judgment, and he didn't see the point in the Gentiles perishing along with him. This was a natural conclusion on his part; he was being brought to the position where he did in fact care whether Gentiles perished or not. God's patient efforts to educate Jonah were amazing; and He tries likewise with us, working through our failures to teach the lessons. Jonah recognizes that his judgment is just; being drowned in the sea of nations but miraculously preserved by grace makes Jonah a representative of sinful Israel, who would finally accept the justice of their punishments (Lev. 26:41,43). And yet at the same time, Jonah is clearly typical of the Lord Jesus, who died so that a great company of Gentiles might be saved (Jn. 11:50). The Lord's death was if He was drowning in the stormy sea (Ps. 69:1,2). His three days in the grave was clearly represented by Jonah's time inside the fish. The Lord represented sinful Israel, and yet at the same time, His death brought both them and the Gentiles to salvation. Jonah opens up to us the real import of the Lord's representative sacrifice, dying as the representative of God's sinful people, and yet thereby their saviour.

Jonah 1:13 Nevertheless the men rowed hard to get them back to the land- Literally, they 'broke through', i.e. the waves. Jonah would have later reflected on their humanity, not wishing for one Hebrew to perish. This is in stark contrast to his indifference as to the perishing of multiple thousands of Gentiles, and the book of Jonah concludes by recording Jonah being rebuked for this. And who wrote the book of Jonah? Presumably, Jonah himself, under Divine inspiration. The way he concludes it is therefore his own recognition of how his inhumanity and indifference was worse than that of the Gentiles whom he had so despised. The book is really his own confession of utter guilt, having come to repentance and marvel at God's grace by the time he wrote it.

Jonah presents the Gentile sailors as more righteous and nicer than he was- a self centered man trying to sleep at the bottom of the ship rather than helping the sailors. The verbs used to describe the sailors are scream, feared, threw. The three verbs used for Jonah are went down, lay down, fell asleep. He really didn't care for the humanity around him, only about himself. He paints a picture of his studied and extreme indifference to people. We note that those sailors had thrown the cargo into the sea, but they had more morality than to be willing to throw Jonah into the sea. And the conversion of the sailors sets us up for the conversion of Nineveh, with Jonah sitting beneath the gourd self centered and angry whilst the Ninevites frantically repent. But it is Jonah who is presenting himself like this. At the end of the book, he doesn't make specific his appeal to 'not be like him'. This is the whole effect of his style; that we are left to conclude that. And by portraying himself as he did, Jonah makes an even more powerful appeal to us than he would've done had he stated that in so many words.

But they could not, for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them- The men deeply believed Jonah's story, and were driven by his suggestion to pray to Yahweh (:14). "Tempestuous" implies a whirlwind, of the type associated with the cherubim in Ezekiel's visions. Jonah and the sailors were really witnessing a theophany, so powerful that they could only be saved from it by accepting Yahweh as God and [in Jonah's case] repenting.

Jonah 1:14 Therefore they cried to Yahweh and said, We beg you Yahweh, we beg you, don’t let us die for the sake of this man’s life, and don’t lay on us innocent blood; for you, Yahweh, have done as it pleased You- As Jonah heard these Gentiles praying to Yahweh rather than their own gods, he must have realized that his failure had led them to Yahweh; and that Gentiles were quite capable of turning away from their gods to whom they had fruitlessly been praying just a short time before. "They cried out to Yahweh" is a phrase elsewhere used about Israel in their desperation crying out to Yahweh, especially during the time of the Judges. These Gentiles are presented as Israel ought to be. Their request "don't lay on us innocent blood" is the language of Israel asking God not to be held guilty for untraced murder (Dt. 21:8,9). I don't think they knew God's law, but their words are recorded and framed as if they were Israelites.

When Jonah heard the men of Nineveh praying that they ‘might not perish’, he should’ve thought back to how the men in the boat to Tarshish prayed the very same words. The men in the ship prayed earnestly that they ‘might not perish’, both in the storm and for the sake of Jonah’s life (1:6,14). The men of Nineveh prayed to God that they too ‘might not perish’ (Jon. 3:9)- the record uses the same Hebrew word in both cases. Jonah should’ve learnt his lesson; the men in the ship didn’t perish because of his self-sacrifice- and the implication could be that they turned to Israel’s God as a result of the whole dreadful experience. And Jonah’s self-sacrifical preaching, just as painful for him as voluntarily suggesting he be thrown to his death, was eliciting in Jonah the same response from those he was preaching to. But he couldn’t maintain the intensity of the self-sacrificial life of witness; he gave up and got angry that they were responding, and, it seems, stopped preaching once he had entered into the city and the response had started. Take another lesson from this; we would likely have been inspired to continue preaching by such a good response. But for Jonah, the response was what discouraged him. What is encouraging for one in the work of witness is a great discouragement for another. 

Jonah 1:15 So they took up Jonah, and threw him into the sea; and the sea ceased its raging- This continues the similarity with the Lord asleep in the storm and then the storm suddenly ending (Lk. 8:24), confirming Jonah as a type of the Lord Jesus, even in his rebellion. The sea "stood still" (Heb.), recalling the miracle at the Red Sea. The Gentile sailors were bidden realize that they too could participate in such a great deliverance, through identity with the people of God.

Jonah 1:16 Then the men feared Yahweh exceedingly; and they offered a sacrifice to Yahweh and made vows- They sacrificed an animal whilst onboard, and made vows which would have been fulfilled when they got to land. Those vows were surely to accept Yahweh as their God. Perhaps as Jonah hit the waters and the storm ceased, the last thing he heard in the sudden silence was their vowing to make Yahweh their God. And this was why from within the fish he also made vows and promised that he would keep them and also offer sacrifice when back on dry land (Jon. 2:9). The heroes of the story so far are the sailors, who vow to Yahweh and sacrifice to Him as best they could on the ship; and Jonah is not at all the hero. Jonah in the boat is a clear type of the Lord Jesus asleep in the boat in Mk. 4:36-41. We have a man with others in a boat, a great storm arises and waves threaten to sink the boat, Jonah / Jesus sleeps through the storm, but is awakened by fearful sailors; the storm stops immediately, leading to ‘fearing a great fear’. I suggest that the Lord Jesus intentionally appeared asleep in the boat during the storm, in order to prompt the disciples to see themselves as the sailors in Jonah's ship- and like them, come to faith and commitment. But it seems that prompt was not perceived by the disciples, and they 'feared' but not 'fearing Yahweh' as the sailors with Jonath did. We too are given such prompts, situations which recall Biblical narratives, and we may or may not perceive them. It is also the case that the Lord was setting Himself up as an antitype of Jonah, but in the sense that He was the opposite to Jonah. His sea voyage was to take the Gospel to the Gentiles in the area of the Gerasenes; and Legion's repentance matches that of the Ninevites.

Jonah 1:17 Yahweh prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah- As noted on :4, this continues the theme of God being actively at work not just with Israelites outside the land of Israel, not just with Gentiles, but also with animals, the natural creation and vegetation like the vine / gourd.

 

And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights- The Lord quoted this as being typical of His time in the grave (see on Mt. 12:40). So it seems Jonah died. We marvel at the extent of God's hand. Jonah thought he could avoid God's hand on him by committing suicide. He does it, dies, gets swallowed by a specially created fish, and then resurrects inside the fish. God's grace to him was sovereign. And he still wants to commit suicide again, in chapter 4; the fact he stays alive to write his memoirs shows God again saved him from it. He becomes a parade example of grace. Likewise we have noted that Jonah's being asleep in the boat and then the storm ceasing was also typical of the Lord. But Jonah made no active effort in these matters; the events happened to him. Just as he brought Gentiles to believe in Yahweh and worked to save them (:12) without making any conscious effort. All this was to show him God's grace; he was saved and used by grace, and this was intended to prepare him for the next stage of his life, which was the journey to Nineveh in order to offer them God's grace based upon his own experience of that grace. We can also see phases in our own lives, for which we are educated by experience through our previous failures.

As Jonah was three days in the fish and then came up out of it to preach to the Gentiles, so the Lord would be three days in the grave and then would rise- as a sign to the Jews. But how was His resurrection a sign to them, seeing they never saw His risen body? Yet the Lord’s reasoning demands that His resurrection be a sign to them, just as tangible as the re-appearance of the drowned Jonah. But, the Jews never saw Him after the resurrection...? The resolution must be that in the preaching of the risen Jesus by those in Him, it was as if the Jews saw Him, risen and standing as a sign before them, every bit as real as the Jonah who emerged from the fish after three days.

Matthew’s Gospel, which refers to this as a type of the Lord's time in the grave, doesn’t seem to teach a literal 72 hours for Jesus in the grave. But a ‘day’ can mean ‘part of a day’- as in 1 Kings 20:29; Esther 4:16-5:1. The term is surely used to highlight the connection with Jonah’s experience.