Obadiah Jonah Commentary

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Recommended: Analysis of the book Jonah

An interesting concept that appeared to me while reading the Book of Jonah, was that the concept of the story was universally understood, so simple that they made a children's book from it. While reading “Obadiah, Jonah, Micah : A Theological Commentary” by Philip Peter Jenson, he brought up the question of the message of the story. My initial perception of the story was that Jonah was an unwilling prophet, that did not believe that God would actually do harm to the people of NININ and he chose to ignore the word of the Lord. After the Lord punishes him to a wicked storm and a bit of solitary confinement for three days and three nights, Jonah repents to God and decides to listen to his God. Jenson brought up the point that “The message of Jonah is notoriously difficult to identify. The main objections to the standard proposals is that they do not do justice to all parts of the book, and that the key to the meaning is imported from outside the story without sufficient evidence” (Jenson 36). With examples such as prophecy, universalism, theodicy it started to make me question my initial interpretation of the message being …show more content…

This connection is very fitting once you read more of the bible and pick up other mentions of doves. When Israel was disobedient of God they said ““Ephraim has become like a dove, silly and without sense; they call upon Egypt, they go to Assyria”” (Hos 7:11) (Jenson 43). This is symbolic because when God told Jonah, an Israeli man, to go to Nineveh he went to the opposite way towards Tarshish. He also disobeyed God's commands, and because of that brought on a lot of hardship he had to deal with while God tried to redirect his decision. I believe this was not a mistake and that the pairing of Jonah and the dove was a writing strategy. Jonah is now portrayed as a dove in christian art, which shows how significant the symbolism

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