The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and now something greater than Jonah is here. Luke 11:32)

More than once in the Bible Jesus calls upon the story of Jonah to explain his own relationship to God’s people. In come ways Jesus is very different from Jonah, but in the most vital sense, Jesus finds in Jonah a picture of himself in his most important work of preaching, dying, and being raised.

First, Jonah tried to avoid God’s call to him by running away on a ship to Tarshish, (Jonah 1:3), but Jonah was enough of a true prophet to understand both the storm at sea, and the necessary solution of his being thrown into the raging water. Jonah had resisted God’s call because he was convinced that the Ninevites would harm him and certainly not listen to him. When they finally heard Jonah and in fact did repent , Jonah was angry with God for putting him through the ordeal and not destroying the city, as he had warned would happen. Jonah failed to understand what God knew about the Ninevites:

that the collective consciences of the city were still alive, that the people, though not among the chosen people of Israel, were still capable of recognizing their own sin, and even of repenting at the word of a ragged prophet from Israel. This is the key to Jesus’ identifying with Jonah. Jesus saw that the people who should be able to recognize him, didn’t, but that his ministry was greater even than Jonah’s, and would bring to repentance countless more souls over the millennia ahead.

The echo of Jonah shows up in Mark 4:37: A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat so that it was nearly swamped. Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?” He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” The wind died down and it became calm. They asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and waves obey him!” The wind and waves obeyed Jonah, too, but now there was someone far greater than Jonah in the boat. He, like Jonah, would offer his own life, and the repentance that would be possible after his resurrection would reach around the world to countless generations. Jonah’s life was a prefigure of Christ, and Jesus is our living Savior.

Love in Him,

Prue