We all think we know the story of Jonah and the whale.
Well, clearly, we don’t.
It wasn’t called a whale, but a “great fish.” Now, the word fish can refer to anything that looks like what we think of as a fish, so I suppose the creature could have been a whale. Back then, biological taxonomy wasn’t what it is today.
But the book of Jonah is not about the fish. It really isn’t even about Jonah; Jonah is the foil for God, who is the real protagonist.
In the first verse we learn that Jonah is a son of Amittai. That’s also noted in 2 Kings 14.25, where we also learn that he was from Gath Hepher, a village in Galilee, just 3 miles northeast of Nazareth. So he was from the Northern Kingdom of Israel. The Kings passage also places him in the reign of Jeroboam II. Scholars note that Assyria and its capital Nineveh were weak around that time, a fact that might explain the Ninevite king’s apparent humility and call for repentance.
Before we get to the theology, we ought to ask a basic question: Is the story true?
There are elements of the story that, though not technically miraculous, are remarkable evidences of providence—most especially the fish, of course, and the rapidly living and dying vine. Sceptics would reject anything smacking of the miraculous. But scholars have noted that this story doesn’t have the typical characteristics of allegory, or parable, or fable. There’s no known fictional form into which the story robustly fits.
If there is a God, and if he acts, then there is no reason to reject the story as fictional. And since the 2 Kings passage is historical narrative, not historical fiction, a reader would have to reject more than just the fish to call the whole account unhistorical.
Of course Jesus referred to Jonah (Mt 12.39-41). Now there is such a thing as literary allusion, and if I refer to Ebenezer Scrooge as a stingy old miser, that doesn’t mean I think he actually existed. But Jesus referred to Jonah as a prophet, not merely a fictional character, and he cited the conversion of Nineveh as an example for Israel—a fact that would make little sense if the Ninevites’ repentance never happened. Further, in the same discourse Jesus cited the Queen of Sheba (Mt 12.42), whom the Scripture presents as clearly a historical figure.
Jonah is a unique book among the prophets, in that it contains almost no prophecy. His entire prophetic message consists of a few words in Jonah 3.4; the rest is narrative. Further, most other prophets don’t engage in dialogue with God (Habakkuk being the most notable exception). And Jonah, of all the prophets, is simply a bad guy. He’s a bigot who refuses God’s command and complains when the prophecy is fulfilled.
Maybe there’s hope for some of the rest of us to be prophets.
I’m kidding, of course.
The book is structured* around two times that God called Jonah (Jon 1.2; 3.1-2). He disobeys the first call, but a group of pagans, the sailors, demonstrate more piety than he does. He obeys the second call, but only reluctantly, and again, a group of pagans—this time the Ninevites—demonstrate more piety than he does. In both halves of the book, Jonah ends up in a private conversation with the Almighty, and there we get to the meat of the book: who God is with respect to his enemies—and by implication, who we should be as well.
* I’m indebted to the Holman Concise Bible Commentary for this structural analysis.
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