The sign of Jonah the prophet
The books of the Old Testament are filled with prophecies about the Lord Jesus from His birth, until His ascension to heaven, and then His second coming to judge the living and the dead . The words of None of the prophets of the Israelites are devoid of one or more prophecies that shed light on one of the stages of the life of the Lord Jesus, even Balaam, the gentile prophet, who is alien to the people of Israel, prophesied about the coming of the Lord Jesus in the flesh , “I see Him, but not now; I behold Him, but not near; A Star shall come out of Jacob; A Scepter shall rise out of Israel, And batter the brow of Moab, And destroy all the sons of tumult. (Numbers 24:17). Thus, all the prophets share in prophesying about the person of the Lord Jesus .
As for the Prophet Jonah, he distinguished himself over many prophets , not only did he speak prophetically about the coming of the Lord, but he himself became a symbol indicating the death of the Lord and His resurrection. This is what the Lord Jesus explained when the scribes and Pharisees asked Him to show them a sign from heaven ,
“But He answered and said to them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” (Matthew 12:39-40)(Luke 11:30)
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Historical overview
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Jonah the son of Amittai, whose name means dove, was born in the village of jet hafir, which is located on the border of Zebulun and Naphtali ( Isaiah 19: 13), and is about five kilometers northeast of the city of Nazareth .
Its place is now located “Khirbet al-Zura” near the “village of Mashhad” where there is now the” Tomb of the Prophet Yunus ” in which it is believed that the prophet is buried, and St. Jerome ( of the IV century) mentions that he visited this tomb .
There is no mention of this prophet in the book of the Old Testament outside the book of Jonah except in the second book of Kings ( 2 Kings 14: 25), where it is mentioned that he prophesied in the days of King Jeroboam Ben Joash of Israel (793-735 BC).
The prophet Jonah prophesied in one of the most difficult periods that passed for his nation. All the contemporary Kings who ruled Israel were very wicked in the eyes of the Lord, and the Lord’s punishment was about to befall them . God used the Prophet Jonah to warn the people that they might repent, and God would return and have mercy on them and save them from their enemies .
It seems that the intervention of God and his mercy on this people was the result of the preaching of the Prophet Jonah among them,” For the Lord saw that the affliction of Israel was very bitter; and whether bond or free, there was no helper for Israel. And the Lord did not say that He would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven; but He saved them by the hand of Jeroboam the son of Joash.” (2 Kings 14:26,27)
The reason for the deliverance from the enemies that was done by the king is not due to the repentance of the people and the king, as much as to God’s mercy on His people. Although Jonah called them to repent, the King did not turn away from his evil and did not repent to the Lord
“In the fifteenth year of Amaziah the son of Joash, king of Judah, Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel, became king in Samaria, and reigned forty-one years. And he did evil in the sight of the Lord; he did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who had made Israel sin.
He restored the territory of Israel from the entrance of Hamath to the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the Lord God of Israel, which He had spoken through His servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet who was from Gath Hepher.”
(2 Kings 14:23,24,25)
The Kings of the Assyrian state, contemporaries of this king, one of whom repented by Jonah’s calling, were Adad-Nirari III (810-782 BC.), Shalmaneser IV (782-772 BC.), Ashur-Dan III (772-754 BC.), And Ashur-Nirari V (754-746 BC.) . There are some historical evidences that prove that in the days of King Adad Nirari III there was a religious revolution followed by a kind of belief in one God, or at least in a greater God, and some historians link this revolution with the call of Jonah the prophet to the people of Nineveh .
It seems that the people of Nineveh were very evil in the eyes of the Lord, as he prophesied destruction to them more than one prophet . The Prophet Nahum says in his prophecy
“Woe to the bloody city! It is all full of lies and robbery. Its victim never departs….
Your injury has no healing, Your wound is severe. All who hear news of you Will clap their hands over you, For upon whom has not your wickedness passed continually?” (Nahum 3:1,19)
HYPERLINK “https://www.biblestudytools.com/nkjv/nahum/2.html”
As Zephaniah the Prophet prophesies about it, saying
“And He will stretch out His hand against the north, Destroy Assyria, And make Nineveh a desolation, As dry as the wilderness….
This is the rejoicing city That dwelt securely, That said in her heart, “I am it, and there is none besides me.” How has she become a desolation, A place for beasts to lie down! Everyone who passes by her Shall hiss and shake his fist.” ( Zephaniah 2:13,15)
HYPERLINK “https://www.biblestudytools.com/nkjv/zephaniah/1.html”
The message of the Prophet Jonah
In order to know the message of this prophet, we should refer to the book that bears his name, the book of Jonah the prophet, because this book provides us with one of the most important theological mysteries, the mystery that Paul the apostle called for in his epistle to the Ephesians :
“if indeed you have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which was given to me for you,
how that by revelation He made known to me the mystery (as I have briefly written already,
by which, when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ),
which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to His holy apostles and prophets:
that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ through the gospel,” (Ephesians 3:2-6)
It is clear that the mystery of Christ here is that God is not only for the Jews, but also for the Gentiles . The Prophet Jonah wanted to convey these ideas to his people Israel, and he knew perfectly well that it was difficult for them to accept this thought, because he himself completely rejected this concept .Why?
Whenever the people of Israel sinned and strayed through God, God warned them that He would chasten them by the Gentiles . Therefore, the children of Israel looked at the Gentiles with a severe hostility and wished them constant punishment, and it never occurred to them that the possibility of the salvation of these peoples would happen .
They tried to search in the sayings of the prophets about the prophecies that foretell destruction and ruin, and they are many . But if they find any hint in the words of the prophets about the possibility of the salvation of these peoples, they try to interpret it symbolically incorrectly in order to remove from their thoughts any possibility of their salvation .
It is one of the few hints that indicate God’s acceptance of the Gentiles, which the prophets mentioned casually. The prophet Isaiah said in his prophecy about John the Baptist, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord; Make straight in the desert (among the peoples that didn’t know God) A highway for our God. ” (Isaiah 40: 3) .
Isaiah also speaks of the return of all nations to the fold of the Lord,” Now it shall come to pass in the latter days That the mountain of the Lord’s house Shall be established on the top of the mountains, And shall be exalted above the hills; And all nations shall flow to it. (Isaiah 2:2) It is clear that these prophecies were referring to the era of the coming of the Messiah, the Lord Jesus .
These were the hints of the prophets . As for the Prophet Jonah, instead of giving theoretical teachings and sayings about God’s acceptance of the repentance of the nations, he was forced to tell them the story of how God dealt with him personally in the mission in which God sent him to the nations to call them for repentance. He also explained to them that at first he was averse to the idea of the repentance of the Gentiles and their return to God . And how he tried to escape from the face of the Lord so that he would not go and preach to the gentiles, so they repented and returned and God forgave them .
During his escape to Tarshish (which may be one of the ports of the present-day country of Spain), God saused the sea to rise, and the ship almost sank, so the sailors had to throw him into the sea, where God prepared for him a big fish that swallowed him, saved him unharmed, and then threw him on land . Jonah obeyed God’s command and went to preach to the people of Nineveh, Top of Form
Those who, as soon as they heard the warning, turned to God in repentance, offering pure fasting, seeking the mercy of God who forgave their sins.
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God has taught Jonah a lesson he will never forget, and he now wants his Jewish brethern to learn that lesson . And here is the New Testament Church, which has also benefited from this lesson, legalizes a special fast similar to the Nineveh fast so that it always instills in the souls of its children that God not only rejoices in the repentance and return of a sinner to Him, but also that He is not the God of a particular church or a particular people, but he is the God of the whole creation.
“ who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (1 Timothy 2:4)
“But in every nation whoever fears Him and works righteousness is accepted by Him.” (Acts 10:35)
In addition to this mystery that the Prophet proclaims, which is the mystery of God’s acceptance of the Gentiles, he also emphasizes a life of repentance . He tells us about the repentance of the pagan sailors and their faith in God of Heaven, Earth and the sea, and in their repentance they made vows to God and sacrificed a sacrifice (Jonah 1: 16) .
It also tells us about the repentance of the people of Nineveh, from the oldest to the youngest, and their return to God, repenting and sitting in the sackcloth and ashes (Jonah 3: 5-9) . He also tells us-albeit with a subtle hint-about his own repentance. Although the Prophet did not explicitly tell us that he had repented, in writing this book he openly confessed the wrong path he had taken .
Finally, he tells us about God’s remorse for the evil that He wanted to inflict on the people of Nineveh , and that the repentance of this people made God turn back from His threat to destroy this country: ”Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it.” (Jonah 3:10)
In ancient times, God wanted to find in Sodom and Gomorrah ten pious people who would only return His anger to forgive them, but He did not find them ( Genesis 18: 32). Even more than that, He wanted to forgive Jerusalem if He found a single righteous person in it,” ”Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem; See now and know; And seek in her open places If you can find a man, If there is anyone who executes judgment, Who seeks the truth, And I will pardon her.” (Jeremiah 5:1)
As for the pagan city of Nineveh, it repented and returned to God completely, and received salvation, and deserved-as Christ testified to it-to stand before God’s throne to condemn the cities that did not follow and accept the word of God
“The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here.” (Matthew 12:41)
The sign of Jonah the Prophet :
How did Jonah become a sign? The Gospel of St. Matthew answers, saying ”For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.( Matthew 12:40) . The Gospel of St. Luke adds that “For as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so also the Son of Man will be to this generation.” (Luke 11:30)
The Pharisees asked the Lord to show them a sign from heaven, forgetting all the signs and miracles that he had done among them . And the Lord showed them that this evil generation, who surpassed the people of Nineveh in their wickedness, needed another kind of signs
Because the people of Nineveh repented of calling Jonah without asking him for a sign proving the truth of his words, therefore, the Lord Jesus saw that they needed the sign for which he incarnated and came down to our Earth, the sign of His death and burial in the grave for three days and then his resurrection from the dead, raising with Him all those who believe in Him in that generation and in all generations. “and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 2:6)
The sailors turned on Jonah and threw him into the sea, and the belly of the big fish became for him the “ the belly of Sheol” (Jonah 2: 2) . Thus, the Jews turned against the Lord, crucified Him and buried Him in the “underground”. And just as God saved Jonah in the belly of the big fish unscathed and was living on the hope that he would see the temple of God again :” Yet I will look again toward Your holy temple. ” ( Jonah 2: 5) .
This is how the prophecy about the Lord Jesus said that he was buried on hope “Therefore my heart rejoiced, and my tongue was glad; Moreover my flesh also will rest in hope. For You will not leave my soul in Hades, Nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption.”
(Acts 2:26,27)
And just as Jonah came out of the belly of the big fish after three days and three nights, and went and preached to the people of Nineveh, so the Lord rose from the dead on the third day and proclaimed the good news of salvation for all creation . What is meant by” three days, three nights ” is not three whole days because in the language of the Bible, and in ancient Jewish literature in general, a part of a day is called a whole day (e.g. I Kings 20: 29; Esther 4: 16, 5: 1; Luke 2: 21) .
The descent of Jonah into the belly of the big fish and his safe exit was a sign for the people of Nineveh, it gave them life after they had been sentenced to death Thus, the death and resurrection of the Lord became the cause of eternal life for all those who believe in Him, after we were all under the sentence of death because of the judgment that was imposed on Adam and his descendants
“For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead.
For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.” (1 Corinthians 15:21-22)