Jonah.
Jonah.
§ 160. Jonah (
) means “dove,” and the reason for this name is not clear. He belonged to the nation of Judah and was born at Gath Hepher, a city in the tribe of Zebulun (Josh. 19:13).
** Epiphanius says he was born in Gath or in Havathamaum in the tribe of Dan, not far from Azotus, a city of Palestine, near the sea. [Epiphanius] also says he was the widow of Zarephath’s son, whom the prophet Elijah raised from the dead in Zarephath of Sidon and whose mother later said to him: “Now I know that you are a man of God and that [the Lord’s word] in your mouth is the truth” [1 Kings 17:24]. For this reason, he says, the boy was called “the son of Amittai,” that is, “the son of truth,” because the truth was again brought out into this light when the prophet Elijah was speaking. **
Jonah’s father was Amittai [Jon. 1:1]. Jonah prophesied at the time when Jeroboam, son of Joash, was king of Israel and Phul Belochus ruled in Assyria and Babylon, as we gather from 2 Kings 14:25, where Jonah’s prophecy is mentioned. God sent him to Nineveh, the chief city of the Assyrian monarchy (Gen. 10:11). Because at first he refused this call, he was enveloped in peril. After being divinely freed from this, he faithfully fulfilled the duties of the calling entrusted to him, and with his preaching of repentance, he brought the people of Nineveh unharmed out of the imminent destruction he had prophesied for them.
The book consists of four chapters and has two parts: (I) The account of Jonah turning his back and refusing his divine call, for which God punished him (Jonah 1) but later freed him miraculously (Jonah 2). (II) The account of Jonah accepting the repeated call and, by his prediction of imminent destruction, bringing the Ninevites to repentance (Jonah 3). This bothered him, but the divine oracle restrained him (Jonah 4).
Jerome is greatly surprised that the Septuagint translators translated “forty days” (Jon. 3:4, etc.) as “three days” because in the Hebrew they have no commonality of syllables, accents, or words. Augustine struggles mightily to explain these difficulties and is unable to extricate himself sufficiently (De civ. Dei, bk. 18, c. 44). We give the simple response, however, that the Greek text here is corrupt because some copies do have “forty.”