By Will Hall, Baptist Message executive editor
ALEXANDRIA, La. (LBM)—For critics of the Bible, the account of Jonah’s evangelistic mission to Nineveh is just a “whale of a story.”
But they and many Christians miss the point of Jonah’s message. The issue is not “how” God delivered Jonah to Nineveh. Instead, the takeaway for readers should be “the impact” of God’s message on this great city of the powerful Assyrian empire.
Indeed, the “moral of the story” is at least fourfold:
— God can accomplish His good purposes even through reluctant obedience (1 Samuel 15:22; Hosea 6:6; Mark 12:33).
— God’s offer of salvation extends to the whole earth, Jews and Gentiles alike (Isaiah 49:6).
— God truly does not wish anyone to die, but for everyone to repent (Ezekiel 18:23, 32; 2 Peter 3:9; James 2:13).
— God desires us to love our enemies enough to share the Gospel with them (Matthew 5:43-48).
But Jonah’s time “in the belly of the fish” (Jonah 1:17) was important.
In addition to bringing Jonah to repent of his arrogant disobedience of God, Jesus used the example of those “three days and three nights” to rebuke the scribes and Pharisees with the prophesy about His coming crucifixion, burial and resurrection (Matthew 12:40-41).
PROOF OF JONAH
The evidence confirming Jonah’s account does not include proof about his days and nights in the belly of a fish. He and God are the sole witnesses to that miracle.
However, there is archaeological affirmation of Jonah’s reluctant visit to Nineveh, specifically in the accuracy of the details he recorded about the “exceedingly great” size of the city (Jonah 3:3), such that it could accommodate a population of 120,000 (Jonah 4:11).
It is important to note that until 1830 or so, Assyria was a nation “only on paper,” and the Bible was the primary source for information about it. Nothing physical had been discovered about this once great ancient empire, and Bible naysayers pointed to the absence of imperial cities, monuments and other artifacts to claim this empire was merely fable and lore.
Likewise, it did not help that Greek and Roman historians mixed fable, myth and loose geography in their limited writings about Assyria.
Consequently, Jonah’s account of a vast city requiring three days to traverse gave critics ammunition to dismiss his description as exaggerated myth.
Then, between 1846 and 1851, British archaeologist Sir Austen Henry Layard excavated the earthen mounds covering Nineveh and discovered a massive city enclosed by 7.5 miles of imposing walls and spread across more than 1,800 acres—an area Jonah could easily have taken three days to cover while preaching in every neighborhood, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” (Jonah 3:4).
But once Layard’s excavation confirmed Nineveh’s vast size, critics shifted their argument: instead of saying Jonah exaggerated the city’s size, they claimed it was too small to hold the large population he reported.
However, 120,000 people living within Nineveh’s roughly 2.8-square-mile walled city equals about 67 people per acre—dense, to be sure, but hardly impossible. By comparison, at its peak around A.D. 275, ancient Rome held an estimated 200 to 300 people per acre inside its famed Aurelian Walls. Both cities accommodated high-density populations through multi-story dwellings, much as large cities do today.
FURTHER PROOF
Additional discoveries at Nineveh confirmed other biblical accounts, further strengthening the Book of Jonah’s credibility as a historical record.
In 1830, British Colonel Robert Taylor discovered a six-sided cylinder—ironically, in the “Prophet Jonah’s Mound.” Its cuneiform text remained undeciphered for two decades. But when it was translated in 1851, it detailed Assyrian King Sennacherib’s siege of Jerusalem and his attempt to extract tribute from King Hezekiah of Judah, confirming many details of the biblical account about this encounter (2 Kings 18:14-16).
Meanwhile, Layard’s excavations uncovered 12 carved stone panels in Sennacherib’s palace depicting the Assyrian siege of Lachish, a Judean city, aligning with the biblical accounts in 2 Kings 18-19, Isaiah 36-37, and 2 Chronicles 32.
ENDURING LOVE
In a striking twist of irony, after being forgiven himself, Jonah—angered that Israel’s enemies in Nineveh had repented and cried “mightily to God” (Jonah 3:8)—complained that He is “a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm” because He spared Nineveh (Jonah 4:2).
Yet, mercy defines God’s character and is intrinsic to His very nature.
Indeed, as another example of His patience, even though He ordered the utter destruction of the Amorites as part of Israel’s conquest of the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 20:17), God used the 400-year captivity of Israel in Egypt to allow the Amorites time to repent of their evil (Genesis 15:16).
God is “not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead, He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).
That is the message of Jonah–not the miraculous transportation of him in the belly of a great fish.
