One of the best-known prophets in the Bible is also mentioned several times in the Qur’an. This is Jonah, the prophet who was swallowed by a big fish. The Muslims also call him by the names Yunus and Dhan-Nun. A surah of the Qur’an bears his name, and a book in the Old Testament bears it as well. So who was this man of God? How did he come to be in the belly of a fish and what are the lessons to take from his life?

According to 2 Kings 14:25, Jonah was from a city called Gath-Hepher, which was found in the territory of the tribe of Zebulon, in the kingdom of Northern Israel, about 50 kilometers north of Samaria, the capital. He lived and preached the word of God toward the end of the eighth century before Jesus, so this was some time after the prophets Elijah and Elisha whom we have already considered. The Bible speaks of a prophecy he made concerning the reign of the Israelite king Jeroboam II, but the book of Jonah tells of a mission that God gave him concerning the pagan city of Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian empire. This empire was, at the time, the most powerful in the world. Nineveh was located in the north of what is now Iraq, but it dominated a very large territory. The Assyrians were known for their excessive cruelty, and they represented a very serious threat for Israel and its neighbors.

Here is the story of the prophet Jonah:

“The word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amittai: ‘Get up! Go to the great city of Nineveh, and preach against it because their wickedness has come up before Me.’ However, Jonah got up to flee to Tarshish from the Lord’s presence. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. He paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish, from the Lord’s presence.” (Jonah 1:1-3)

(We should point out that this Tarshish was in Spain, in the opposite direction from Nineveh. One might assume that Jonah was afraid to preach a message of condemnation to such an evil people, but the rest of the story shows us that he had a very different motivation for his disobedience to God’s command.) The text continues:

“Then the Lord hurled a violent wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose on the sea that the ship threatened to break apart. The sailors were afraid and each cried out to his god. They threw the ship’s cargo into the sea to lighten the load. Meanwhile, Jonah had gone down to the lowest part of the vessel and had stretched out and fallen into a deep sleep. The captain approached him and said, ‘What are you doing sound asleep? Get up! Call to your god. Maybe this god will consider us, and we won’t perish!’

‘Come on!’ the sailors said to each other. ‘Let’s cast lots. Then we’ll know who is to blame for this trouble we’re in.’ So they cast lots and the lot singled out Jonah. Then they said to him, ‘Tell us who is to blame for this trouble we’re in. What is your business and where are you from? What is your country and what people are you from?’

He answered them, ‘I’m a Hebrew. I worship Yahweh, the God of the heavens, who made the sea and the dry land.’

Then they were even more afraid and said to him, ‘What is this you’ve done?’ The men knew he was fleeing from the Lord’s presence, because he had told them. So they said to him, ‘What should we do to you to calm this sea that’s against us?’ For the sea was getting worse and worse.

He answered them, ‘Pick me up and throw me into the sea so it may quiet down for you, for I know that I’m to blame for this violent storm that is against you.’ Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to get back to dry land, but they couldn’t because the sea was raging against them more and more.

So they called out to the Lord, ‘Please, Yahweh, don’t let us perish because of this man’s life, and don’t charge us with innocent blood! For You, Yahweh, have done just as You pleased.’ Then they picked up Jonah and threw him into the sea, and the sea stopped its raging. The men feared the Lord even more, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.

Now the Lord had appointed a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the fish three days and three nights.

Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from inside the fish: ‘I called to the Lord in my distress and He answered me. I cried out for help in the belly of Sheol; You heard my voice […] You threw me into the depths; into the heart of the seas, and the current overcame me. All Your breakers and Your billows swept over me […] But You raised me from the pit, Lord my God. As my life was fading away, I remembered Yahweh. My prayer came to You, to Your holy temple.’

Then the Lord commanded the fish and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.” (Jonah 1:4–2:3,6,7,10)

In the New Testament, Jesus refers to what happened to Jonah and compares it to the fact that he himself had to die, be buried and rise again. In Matthew 12:40, he said, “For as Jonah was in the belly of the huge fish three days and three nights so the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights.”

In the story of Jonah we already see several truths:

We cannot hide from God. He is omnipresent—that is, He is everywhere all at once, not being limited by a physical body. This is a thought that should make us fear when we want to do wrong, but which should comfort us when we are in affliction of some kind or when we feel all alone. David wrote in the Psalms:

“Where can I go to escape Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence? If I go up to heaven, You are there. If I make my bed in Sheol, You are there. If I live at the eastern horizon, or settle at the western limits, even there Your hand will lead me; Your right hand will hold on to me. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me, and the light around me will be night’—even the darkness is not dark to You. The night shines like the day; darkness and light are alike to you.” (Psalm 139:7-12)

We also see the absolute power of God in nature. Whether it be the sea and the wind or the great fish, everything obeys God’s commands. (By the way, some people find this story unbelievable because they doubt that a fish could swallow a man. They believe that even if it happened, a man could not survive there for three days. In reality, several cases have been reported in modern times. Mr. de Parville, the scientific editor of Journal of Debates, and other scientists investigated the accident involving James Bartley, a sailor on the whaling ship, Star of the East, in February 1891, near the Falkland Islands. A blow from the tail of a sperm whale caused him to fall into the sea, and he disappeared. The other sailors ended up killing the whale and devoted the rest of the day and part of the night to removing the whale’s blubber. The next day, they noticed movement in the stomach of this sperm whale. They opened it and found the missing sailor, unconscious but very much alive. After three weeks, he was able to recover enough to return to work, but the skin of his face, neck, and hands were completely blanched and resembled white paper.)

But let us return to the prophet Jonah, whom God chose to save from drowning by means of the fish. God again commanded him to go to Nineveh and preach the message that the Lord had given him. This time Jonah obeyed. He went to Nineveh and proclaimed to the people the decision of God to destroy the city at the end of forty days. The Bible informs us that “the men of Nineveh believed in God. They proclaimed a fast and dressed in sackcloth—from the greatest of them to the least. When word reached the king of Nineveh, he got up from his throne, took off his royal robe, put on sackcloth and sat in ashes. Then he issued a decree in Nineveh: ‘[…] Both man and beast must be covered with sackcloth, and everyone must call out earnestly to God. Each must turn from his evil ways and from the violence he is doing. Who knows? God may turn and relent; He may turn from His burning anger so that we will not perish’” (Jonah 3:5,6,8,9).

(Again we see that Jesus referred to this part of the story of Jonah. He said in Matthew 12:41, “The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at Jonah’s proclamation; and look—something greater than Jonah is here.”)

The Bible says that “God saw their actions—that they had turned from their evil ways—so God relented from the disaster He had threatened to do to them. And He did not do it” (Jonah 3:10). Here we see the compassion of God for the sinner who humbles himself and who turns from his sin. As the Lord would say much later by the mouth of the prophet Ezekiel: “As I live! declares the Lord God, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked person should turn from his way and live. Repent, repent of your evil ways! Why will you die, house of Israel” (Ezekiel 33:11).

We now come the reason why Jonah was not willing to obey God’s command to preach to the people of Nineveh: when the prophet saw the repentance of the Ninevites and understood that God had decided to spare them,

“Jonah was greatly displeased and became furious. He prayed to the Lord: ‘Please Lord, isn’t this what I said when I was still in my own country? That’s why I fled toward Tarshish in the first place. I knew that you are a merciful and compassionate God, slow to become angry and rich in faithful love, and One who relents from sending disaster. And now, Lord, please take away my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.’” (Jonah 4:1-3)

Although he was a prophet, Jonah did not share God’s love for the people of Nineveh. Was he racist and did not want God’s grace to be given to those who were not Israelites? Did he see the Assyrians as enemies of his nation who would come one day to attack and oppress them? Did he simply not have room in his heart for forgiveness of those who had sinned? We don’t know the exact reason, but Jonah did not want God to have pity on the people of Nineveh. Apparently he still hoped that God would punish the city.

The story continues:

“Jonah left the city and sat down east of it. He made himself a shelter there and sat in its shade to see what would happen to the city. Then the Lord God appointed a plant and it grew up to provide shade over Jonah’s head to ease his discomfort. Jonah was greatly pleased with the plant. When dawn came the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, and it withered. As the sun was rising, God appointed a scorching east wind. The sun beat down so much on Jonah’s head that he almost fainted, and he wanted to die. He said, ‘It’s better for me to die than to live.’” (Jonah 4:5-8)

Then God tried to reason with Jonah and to show him that if he was so affected by the loss of this plant that he had not planted or caused to grow, it was certainly normal that God would be pained at the loss of human beings that He had created. God is interested in us, no matter what our nationality or our position in life. He has pity on us, and He wants us to repent so that He may give us life. This is what Jonah did not want to understand.

Once again we see that being a prophet of God did not mean being free of all fault. The prophets were human beings, fallible and sinners like us, but God allowed them to serve Him. And most of them give us examples of an extraordinary faith, even in very difficult conditions. Let us always try to imitate the good that we see in them, while avoiding the evil. Let us also have a heart of compassion for all people, a heart like that of God Himself.