Introduction . . . 

1. His commission was from the Lord.

1:1-2.

2. The name “Jonah” means “dove”.

It is a most suitable name for a servant of God. “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves,” Matthew 10:16. The sound of the dove has been likened onto mourning. “We roar all like bears, and mourn sore like doves: we look for judgment, but there is none; for salvation, but it is far off from us,” Isaiah 59:11. In like manner, the servant of God will never be far from mourning over his own sins or those of God’s people.

3. He was the son of Amittai.

The name means, “My truth”. He came of good stock when his father was so named.

4. The authenticity of this book has been attested by the Lord Jesus.

Matt 12:39-41. That places its contents beyond dispute for the child of God. Phrase, ‘greater than Jonah’ suggests that Jonah was great but the Saviour was greater!

(1) The theme of the book is the difficulties men face when the exceeding mercy and longsuffering of the Lord goes against their hopes! More about that later.

(2) The reluctance of Jonah was mirrored by the reluctance of the early disciples to obey the Saviour’s command to preach the gospel to the nations of the world.

(3) In the book, we have a setting forth of the atoning death and resurrection of the Saviour

(4) and the preaching of the gospel to the Gentile.

5. Like the Saviour also, he was a Galilean. 

This highlights the ignorance of Jews, John 7:52. 

We find only one other reference to Jonah in the Old Testament. It is in 2 Kings 14:25. “In the fifteenth year of Amaziah the son of Joash king of Judah Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel began to reign in Samaria, and reigned forty and one years.  And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD: he departed not from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin. He restored the coast of Israel from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the plain, according to the word of the LORD God of Israel, which he spake by the hand of his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, which was of Gathhepher.”  Gathhepher was a city in Galilee. 

In this passage, the great mercy of God toward an undeserving people is manifested. Jeroboam II was an evil king and under him Israel continued in her rebellion against God. Yet God in his days gave to Israel this merciful restoration. It was a similar display of mercy to Nineveh that caused Jonah such difficulty. 

Jonah prophesied about 860 BC. He would have lived and ministered about the end of Elisha’s ministry.