Jonah: The Minor Prophets
An Easter Message … an EASTER Message? Really!?
The FOURTH in the series on the Minor Prophets, however, dealing with the FIFTH prophet. We skipped Obadiah … why? Jonah has a special significance for Easter, in “the sign of Jonah”.
Jonah is mentioned elsewhere, in 2 Kings 14 [vv23-27]:
23 In the fifteenth year of Amaziah the son of Joash, king of Judah, Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel, became king in Samaria, and reigned forty-one years. 24 And he did evil in the sight of the Lord; he did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who had made Israel sin. 25 He restored the territory of Israel from the entrance of Hamath to the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the Lord God of Israel, which He had spoken through His servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet who was from Gath Hepher. 26 For the Lord saw that the affliction of Israel was very bitter; and whether bond or free, there was no helper for Israel. 27 And the Lord did not say that He would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven; but He saved them by the hand of Jeroboam the son of Joash.
The “SIGN OF JONAH” is mentioned 3 times in the Gospels:
Matthew 12:39-41 39 …“An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40 For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. 41 The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here.”
Matthew 16:4 “A wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.”
Luke 11:29,30 “This is an evil generation. It seeks a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah the prophet. For as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so also the Son of Man will be to this generation.”
Jonah’s journey away from the Lord IS OUR JOURNEY.
“The narrative is keen to tell us that every step of the way was a step downward for Jonah. He went “down to Tarshish”. He went “down into the ship”. He went “down into the water”. He went “down into the fish”. Every step away from God was a step into oblivion.” (https://thetown.org/blog/2020/08/25/all-roads-lead-to-jesus-jonah)
Emanuel Swedenborg, in Heavenly Secrets, paragraph 6726: in this prophetic utterance is described a state of temptations; “the waters which compassed even to the soul” denote falsities …; “the deep round about” is the evil of falsity; “the seaweed bound about the head” denotes false memory-knowledges besetting truth and good, as is the case in a state of desolation.
Recorded on Sunday 17th April 2022