Jonah

Oversimplified

• The reluctant prophet who fled God's call, was swallowed by a great fish for three days, and was spat back to preach to Nineveh.
• Christ names Jonah's three days in the fish as the one "sign" of His own three days in the tomb — which is why the Church reads Jonah at Pascha.

His Story

Jonah (Hebrew Yonah, "dove"), son of Amittai, is a prophet of the northern kingdom sent to preach against Nineveh, the great city of Israel's Assyrian enemies. Unwilling, he flees by ship toward Tarshish. A God-sent storm and the sailors' casting of lots expose him; at his own word they throw him overboard, and he is swallowed by "a great fish," from whose belly he prays and is delivered onto dry land on the third day (Jonah 1). Sent again, he preaches, and the whole city — from king to cattle — repents and is spared. The book ends not with Jonah's death but with God rebuking his resentment at such mercy, teaching him to pity Nineveh as God does (Jonah 4).

The Sign of Jonah

"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). Jonah's descent and return is the Old Testament's clearest type of the death and resurrection of Christ; the whole short book is appointed for reading on Holy Saturday.[^1] See Bodily Resurrection, Typology in Scripture.

[^1]: The book of Jonah is appointed for reading on Holy Saturday, his three days in the fish a type of Christ's three days in the tomb.