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Written around 700BC
WHO IS JONAH? CYRIL The Divinely inspired Jonah was the son of Amittai, and came from Gath-hepher, a little city or town of the land of the Jews, so the story goes. JEROME The Hebrew tradition is that Hosea, Amos, Isaiah and Jonah prophesied at the same time. This is historical tradition. CYRIL You could find Jonah uttering a great number of oracles to the Jewish people, transmitting the words from God on high and clearly foretelling the future. Though no other prophetic text from him is extant than this one, though, the divinely inspired Scripture confirms that he continued predicting to the Jewish masses what would happen in the future times. HAIMO The Hebrews say that Jonah was the son of a widow in Zarephath; Elijah raised him from the dead, and when he had been returned to his mother, she gave thanks, and said, "Now by this I know that you are a man of the Lord, and the word of the Lord in your mouth is true." (1Kings 17:24) JEROME The book of Tobit, though not in the canon of the Hebrews, is surely used by the men of the Church, and he mentions Jonah when Tobit says to his son, "my son, I am old and ready to leave this life. Take your sons and go to Media, my son. For I know what the prophet Jonah has said about Nineveh: she will be destroyed"(Tob. 14, 3.). HAIMO They say that Jonah's grave is in Geth, which is in Ophir. Others speak of his birth and burial in Lydda, that is, Diospolis. MESSAGE OF THE BOOK OF JONAH JOSEPHUS Jonah had been commanded by God to go to the kingdom of Nineveh; and when he was there, to publish it in that city, how it should lose the dominion it had over the nations. But out of fear he ran away from God to the city of Joppa, and finding a ship there, he sailed to Tarsus, in Cilicia and upon the rise of a most terrible storm, which was so great that the ship was in danger of sinking, the mariners, the master, and the pilot himself, made prayers and vows, in case they escaped the sea: but Jonah lay still and covered in the ship, but as the waves grew greater, and the sea became more violent by the winds, they suspected, as is usual in such cases, that some one of the persons that sailed with them was the occasion of this storm, and agreed to discover by lot which of them it was. When they had cast lots, the lot fell upon the prophet; and when they asked him whence he came, and what he had done? he replied, that he was a Hebrew by nation, and a prophet of Almighty God; and he persuaded them to cast him into the sea, if they would escape the danger they were in, for that he was the occasion of the storm which was upon them. Now at the first they did not do so, as esteeming it a wicked thing to cast a man who was a stranger, and who had committed his life to them, into such manifest perdition; but at last, when their misfortune overbore them, and the ship was just going to be drowned, and when they were animated to do it by the prophet himself, and by the fear concerning their own safety, they cast him into the sea; upon which the sea became calm. It is also reported that Jonah was swallowed down by a whale, and that when he had been there three days, and as many nights, he was vomited out upon the Euxine Sea, and this alive, and without any hurt upon his body; and there, on his prayer to God, he obtained pardon for his sins, and went to the city Nineveh, where he stood so as to be heard, and preached, that in a very little time they should lose the dominion of Asia. And when he had published this, he returned. IS THE STORY OF JONAH HISTORICAL? Some have doubted that the book of Jonah is historical, and they teach that it is just a humorous didactic story, because the idea that someone was swallowed by a great fish and was in the belly for three days and nights and lived to tell about it seems to be too far fetched and too great a miracle to be actual history. But, CYRIL if God were said to be responsible however; who would still demur? the Divinity is powerful, and easily changes the nature of living things to whatever he chooses, nothing standing in the way of his ineffable wishes. AUG Either all the miracles wrought by divine power may be treated as incredible, or there is no reason why the story of the miracle should be believed. The resurrection of Christ Himself upon the third day would not be believed by us, if the Christian faith was afraid to encounter ridicule. I would be surprised that it would be reckoned what was done with Jonah to be incredible; unless, perchance, one would think it be easier for a dead man to be raised in life from his tomb, than for a living man to be kept alive in the belly of a whale. The Lord appears to have referred to Jonah being in the belly of the whale as historical when He said, "For, as Jonah was in the whale’s belly three days and three nights; so shall the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights." (Mt 12:40) The Lord also referred to Jonah as historical by comparing Himself to Jonah, saying, "For just as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so also will the Son of man be to this generation." (Lk 11:30) Highly unlikely Jesus would have compared His ministry to Jonah's if Jonah's ministry was fiction. Ancient Jewish history, and ancient Christian history (as we see in this catena) has always understood the book of Jonah to be historical. |