What the book is
Jonah is unlike any other prophetic book. It is not a collection of the prophet’s sayings but a story about him, and the prophet does not come out of it well. God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh, the great city of the Assyrians, Israel’s enemies, and call out against it. Jonah boards a ship going the other way:
But Jonah got up to run away to Tarshish, out of the presence of the LORD. He went down to Joppa, and there he found a ship bound for Tarshish. He paid the fare and went down into the ship to sail with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD.
A storm, a great fish and a prayer from its belly bring him back. He preaches in Nineveh, and the whole city, from the king to the cattle, repents. God relents, and Jonah is furious, because he knew it would happen:
He prayed to the LORD, “Please, LORD, did I not say this while I was still in my own country? That is why I hurried to run away to Tarshish. For I knew that You are a God of grace and tender compassion, slow to grow angry, rich in faithful love, and one who relents from sending disaster.
The book ends with God’s question, which Jonah never answers: should God not care about Nineveh, with its 120,000 people “who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many animals as well”?
Who wrote it, and when
Jonah son of Amittai was a prophet in the reign of Jeroboam II of Israel, in the eighth century BC (2 Kings 14:25). The book does not say who wrote it, and tells the story of Jonah in the third person. Many scholars date it to the time after the exile, from its Hebrew and from its questions about God’s mercy to the nations; others hold it to be older. Readers also differ over whether it is history, a story told to teach, or both. Jesus spoke of “the sign of Jonah”, comparing his three days in the tomb to Jonah’s in the fish, and the repentance of Nineveh to his own generation’s refusal (Matthew 12:39–41). The draft takes no side on these questions; they do not change how a sentence is translated.
How the book is laid out
- Jonah runs (1): the storm, the sailors’ prayers, and Jonah thrown into the sea.
- Jonah’s prayer from the fish (2).
- Nineveh repents (3).
- Jonah’s anger and God’s question (4): the plant that grows and withers.
How Open Word Bible translates Jonah
Verse numbers. The verses are numbered as in the Hebrew text. The great fish swallows Jonah in 2:1 here, which is 1:17 in most English Bibles, so the verses of chapter 2 are one higher than in those Bibles. A note at 2:1 and 2:2 explains.
A great fish. The Hebrew says “a great fish”, not a whale, and the draft keeps it.
Jonah’s prayer (2). The prayer is a psalm of thanks, set in its lines. It speaks of Sheol, the realm of the dead, from which God brought Jonah up. See Sheol, Hades and Gehenna. In 2:5 the Hebrew can be read as hope, “still, I will look again toward your holy temple”, or as despair, “how will I look again?”; the draft follows the first, marks the decision uncertain and footnotes the second.
A great city (3:3). Nineveh was “an exceedingly great city, a three days’ walk across”. Whether the three days measure the city’s breadth, the time to go through all its streets, or the district around it is uncertain, and the footnote gives the readings.
The plant (4:6). God makes a plant grow up over Jonah to give him shade. Its kind is not known for certain; older Bibles call it a gourd, and some think it was the castor-oil plant.
God’s mercy (4:2). Jonah’s complaint quotes the words God spoke to Moses in Exodus 34:6: “a God of grace and tender compassion, slow to grow angry”. The God who shows that mercy to Israel shows it to Israel’s enemies too, and that is what Jonah cannot bear.