Page 53 - The Minor Prophets - Student textbook

we see that, given the caveat that Jonah was spewed upon the shore by a great fish, Nineveh’s
repentance follows from a very logical progression.

Nineveh was Assyrian. What this essentially means is that Berosus wrote of a fish-man named Jonah
who emerged from the sea to give divine wisdom to man – a remarkable corroboration of the Hebrew
account.

Jonah appears elsewhere in the chronicles
of Israel as the prophet who predicted
Jeroboam II’s military successes against
Syria in the 8th century before Christ (2
Kings 14:25). He is said to be the son of
Amittai (cf. Jonah 1:1) from the town of
Gath-hepher in lower Galilee. Flavius
Josephus reiterates these details in
his Antiquities of the Jews (chapter 10,
paragraph 2). Jonah was not an imaginary
figure invented to play the part of a disobedient prophet, swallowed by a fish. He was part of Israel’s
prophetic history.

As for the city of Nineveh, it was rediscovered in the 19th century after more than 2,500 years of
obscurity. It is now believed to have been the largest city in the world at the time of its demise.
It is interesting to note where the lost city of Nineveh was rediscovered. It was found buried beneath a
pair of tells in the vicinity of Mosul in modern-day Iraq. These mounds are known by their local names,
Kuyunjik and Nabi Yunus. Nabi Yunus happens to be Arabic for “the Prophet Jonah.” The lost city of
Nineveh was found buried beneath an ancient tell named after the Prophet Jonah.

So we now have three of the four major players: Jonah, Nineveh and the man-eating fish. All that
remains is the fourth major player: God. Skeptics scoff at the miracles described in the book of Jonah as
if there were no mechanism by which such events could ever occur. That is their bias. We are inclined,
however, to believe that there is One who is capable of manipulating natural phenomena in such
supernatural ways. We believe that He is the Creator of the natural realm and is not, therefore,
circumscribed by it. We call Him “God,” and we believe that He sent Jonah to Nineveh to bring about
their repentance.

God has made Himself known throughout history in many diverse ways, not the least of which was His
incarnation in the Person of Jesus Christ. Not only does Jesus give us reason to believe that there exists
One who is able to perform miracles, He gives us every confidence that such events have, in fact,
occurred.

Jesus spoke of Jonah’s ordeal as a real historical event. He used it as a typological metaphor for His own
crucifixion and resurrection, itself a miraculous event. Matthew quoted Jesus as saying, “For just as
Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea creature, so will the Son of Man be three
days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up with this generation at
the judgment, and will condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold,
Someone greater than Jonah is here” (Matthew 12:40-41; cf. Luke 11:29-30, 32).

The evidence is such that any Christian should have confidence to believe and any skeptic should think

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