Jonah
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Jonah (יוֹנָה "Dove", Standard Hebrew Yona, Latin Ionas, Tiberian Hebrew Yônāh) was a person in the Biblical Old Testament and Jewish Tanakh, the son of Amittai, from the Galilean village of Gath-hepher, near Nazareth.
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Summary Book of Jonah
God orderded Jonah to prophesy at Nineveh. Jonah did not want to, and tried to avoid God's command by sailing to Tarshish. During a storm he was thrown overboard, yet was miraculously saved by being swallowed by a large fish. The fish afterwards spit him out on the shore, in the land of Nineveh where the Lord has wished him speak in the first place.
The word of the Lord a second time directed him to visit Nineveh. He therefore went there and walked through it for a whole day, crying "In forty days Nineveh shall be destroyed." The Ninevites believed his word, and appointed a public fast, from the meanest of the people to the greatest; the king himself putting on sackcloth and sitting in ashes. God, being moved with their repentance, did not execute at that time the sentence pronounced against them.
Jonah, from a notion probably that his divine mission would be disputed, was afflicted at this result and complained to God that he had always questioned whether, as being a God of mercy, He would not yield to their prayers. After this he retired out of the city and made a shelter for himself, waiting the event.
The Lord caused a plant to grow over his shelter, giving Jonah some shade from the sun. Later, a worm bit the plant's root and it withered. Jonah, being now exposed to the burning heat of the sun, became faint and desired that God would take him out of the world.
The Lord said unto him, "Do you have reason to be concerned at the death a plant, which cost you nothing, which rises one night and dies the next; yet would you not have me pardon such a city as Nineveh, in which are 120,000 persons not able to distinguish their right hand from their left?". That is, children not arrived at the use of reason, nor having offended God by actual sin.
As children make generally about one fifth part of the inhabitants of cities, it is presumed that Nineveh contained above 600,000 persons
Dating of Jonah
He was a prophet of the ten-tribe kingdom of Israel, and predicted the restoration of the ancient boundaries (2 Kings 14:25-27) of the kingdom. This prophecy was already fulfilled during the reign of Jeroboam II, under whom Jonah exercised his ministry. Timewise, this may mean he was contemporary with the prophets Hosea and Amos; or possibly he preceded them. If so, and if the Book of Jonah was, in fact, written by the prophet himself, Jonah is the very oldest of all the prophets whose writings we possess. He is often placed in the 8th century BC.
The person of Jonah
His personal history is mainly to be gathered from the Book of Jonah, traditionally ascribed to the prophet himself, although this is not stated in Scripture. In the book, Jonah is a reluctant and uncompassionate prophet. This story contains a two-fold characterization of Jonah: (1) a reluctant prophet of doom to heathen Nineveh, and (2) a "Son of man" type. The character of Jonah, who wants Nineveh destroyed, is contrasted with that of God, who is compassionate toward Jew and Gentile, human and animal.
The fish
Though often called a whale today, the fish at the time probably referred to a large shark, common in the Mediterranean. According to some Bible scholars, the size and habits of the white shark correspond entirely to the representations given of Jonah's being swallowed.[1]
Jonah and Jason
In 1995 the classicist Gildas Hamel revived a long-forgotten theory connecting the story of Jonah with that of the Greek hero Jason ("Taking the Argo to Nineveh: Jonah and Jason in a Mediterranean context," Judaism Summer, 1995; online). Drawing on the Book of Jonah and Greco-Roman sources—including Greek vases and the accounts of Apollonius of Rhodes, Valerius Flaccus and Orphic Argonautica—Hamel identifies a number of shared motifs, including the names of the heroes, the presence of a dove, the idea of "fleeing" like the wind and causing a storm, the attitude of the sailors, the presence of a sea-monster or dragon threatening the hero or swallowing him, and the form and the word used for the "gourd" (kikayon, a hapax legomenon within the Hebrew Bible). Hamel argues the Hebrew author was reacting to and adapting this mythological material to communicate his own, quite different message.
Jonah and Cassandra
Structurally, Cassandra and Jonah are exact opposites: A woman whose predictions are true but are not believed, and a man whose prophecies are believed and therefore do not come to pass.
External links
- Jewish Encyclopedia (1901–06) offers a more modern critical and historical appraisal of the manuscript traditions, the age and origin of Jonah, its inclusion into the canon, etc. Note: This is about the book. For information on the prophet see here
- Catholic Encyclopedia: Jonah
- Jonah on the Web, annotated guide to 200 sites and 150 pictures of Jonah
- Read Jonah at Bible Gateway
- Fast of Jonah at the Coptic Orthodox Church
- Study Notes on Jonah
- Jonah An Overview of Jonah
- Yonah: Flight, Return and Redemption Jonah from an Orthodox Jewish perspective
References to Yunus (Jonah) in the Qur'an
- Appraisals for Yunus: 6:86, 21:88, 37:139, 37:143, 37:146, 68:49, 68:50
- Yunus's preaching: 4:163, 37:147, 37:148
- Yunus and one big fish: 21:87, 37:140, 37:141, 37:142, 37:144, 37:145, 68:48, 68:49
- Yunus belief: 10:98, 37:148
Template:Prophets in the Qur'an Template:HeBible-stub This entry incorporates text from the public domain Easton's Bible Dictionary, originally published in 1897.cs:Jonáš de:Jona (Prophet) fr:Jonas pl:Jonasz (postać biblijna) ru:Иона (пророк)