JONAH was one of the twelve minor Hebrew prophote. He le mootioned in 2 Kings xlv. 25, where we are told that Jeroboam 11. "restored the coast of Israel from the entering of Ilatuath unto the Sea of the plain, *wording to the word of the Lord God of !met which ho epake by the hand of his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, which was of Oath-neither," or GittalelIepher (Joshua xix. 13), a pity near the eastern boundary of the tribe of Zebubin, which formed a part of the kingdom of Ismel, and afterwards of Galilee. From this passage most critics have supposed that Jonah lived under Jeroboam II., who reigned from n.o. 823 to n.o. 782.
Bishop Lloyd places him near the close of Jchd? reign, or the begin ning of that of Jehoalutz. The book of Jonah, with the exception of the highly poetical prayer iu chap. EL Is entirely mu-native. It may be divided into two parts. The first (chaps. i. and IL) relates tho attempt of Jonah to evade God's command to preach to the people of Nineveh by fleeing to Joppa, and there embarking in a ship sailing for Tarshish ; his being thrown into the sea and swallowed by a fish, in the belly of which he remained three days and three nights; and his deliverance from the fish, which at the command of the Lord vomited him out upon the dry land. The second part gives an
account of his second commission to Nineveh, where the king and people repentoi at his preaching (chap. iii.); his auger because God, upon the peopled repentance, did not execute the judgments which the prophet had predicted, and the striking reproof which Jonah received (chap. iv.). The history of Jonah is referred to in several passages of the New Testament (Matt. zit 30.41 xvi. 4 ; Luke xi. 29, 30, 32). The canonical authority of the book is generally admitted.
Bochart supposes that the fish which swallowed Jonah was a species of shark (' Decherd Opera,' torn. iiL, p. 742), and Townsend endeavours to identify it with the idol-fish worshipped at Ascalon under the name Derceto.
(The Introductions of Home and Jahn ; Calmct, Dictionary ; Townsend, Old Testament arranged in Chronological Order ; Rosen mttller, Scholia; and list of commentators in Watt's Bibliotheca Britannica.)