a total of thirty-nine references to the deity in the forty-four verses of the book

This is a story about Jonah, but more precisely about the Lord and Jonah.

It would be as if a Jew who had lost family in the Holocaust were asked to undertake a mission to Germany just after the Nazi period

A repetition indicates what is most important in this beginning of the story: Jonah was running away “from the presence of the LORD”

The verb “flee” has the sense of running away from a relationship or a community

The idea is to make a break with past relationships and to begin a new life outside those relationships.

Jonah discovered that it is impossible to escape God’s presence. Psalm 139 puts the matter clearly:

Whither shall I go from thy Spirit?

Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?

If I ascend to heaven, thou art there!

If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there!

He wrote that no power, no place, no time can separate God’s people from the love shown them in Christ

he does make some things crystal clear: (1) Jonah was convinced that God had called him; (2) he knew to whom God was sending him; and (3) he knew why the message was to be given.

Verse 3 suggests two weaknesses in Jonah’s theology. (1) He believed Jehovah to be a local deity

(2) A second evidence of the fuzziness of Jonah’s theological thinking was his apparent idea that one can disobey God with impunity.

Jonah the son of Amittai. The recipient of the Lord’s revelation is Jonah (“dove”), the son of Amittai (“loyal” or “faithful”). This designation identifies the prophet as the historical character of 2 Kin. 14:25, who proclaimed that Jeroboam II (793–753 B.C.) would recover territory from the Syrians to the north. Contrast Jonah’s message to Jeroboam’s kingdom with the words of Amos and Hosea, who prophesied during the period of Israel’s spiritual decline in the latter part of the eighth century

the LORD hurled a great wind upon the sea. Jonah’s God is creator and lord of the sea

Jonah’s instant success with the people of Nineveh suggests that he was a powerful evangelist. However, a study of Jonah’s actions and personal motivations reveal Jonah to be a prophet of rebellious spirit and mistaken priorities

the NT treats Jonah as a type of Christ. Matthew and Luke record Christ’s references to “the sign of Jonah” prefiguring his own death, burial and resurrection

The OT narrative, however, treats Jonah primarily as an antiprophet who undertakes an anti-quest

different from any other prophetic book in the Bible in that it is not primarily a collection of utterances by a prophet, but a tale about a prophet.

The book of Jonah has taken on a different meaning within the Christian tradition than it had in the Hebrew Bible. The three days and nights that Jonah spends within the large fish were seen to prefigure the resurrection of Christ (Matt. 12:39–41). For this reason, Jonah became a symbol of resurrection in early Christian art.