The book of Jonah in the Old Testament is a strange book. (If you need a refresher on the book of Jonah, give it a quick read, it’s short.)

This strangeness is central to correctly reading Jonah, and has led Christian scholars to propose two different understandings of the text. The first understanding reads Jonah as a historical narrative (albeit with some oddities of presentation), and the second sees Jonah as a satirical parable.

Both of these camps have sincere Christians who properly revere the Bible, and hold that Jonah should be included in the Canon of Scripture. The issue isn’t one of “should we read Jonah?”, but rather “how should we read Jonah?”

So, how should we read Jonah? In this article, I’m going to present both my current understanding and the reasoning for it.

(Much of the scholarship and information in this article is from Tim Mackie of the Bible Project. For a more in-depth look at this subject, you can look at his 5-part sermon series on the text.)

To begin, let’s examine several of the oddities of the text. It’s strange in a few ways:

Narrative

The narrative of Jonah is full of surprises and peculiarities. It includes a faithless, hard-hearted prophet, Jonah. Jonah is a historic figure, found earlier in the Old Testament in 2 Kings 14:25.

This historic prophet is sent by God to Nineveh, capital city of the big bad empire of the day, the Assyrians. (In the Old Testament biblical narrative, the Assyrians are presented in the same light modern people see the Nazis. They are seen as evil and destruction personified.) Surprisingly, by the end of the story, everyone in the story has faithfully responded to God except for Jonah, including the Assyrians.

There are more oddities. A part of the city-wide repentance in Nineveh includes the … cows.

There’s also the famous part before Jonah goes to Nineveh where Jonah gets swallowed by a big fish, and then spends a few days inside that fish before being spat out, unharmed. Even more strange, Jonah is able to compose and recite a beautiful poem of prayer during those three days in the fish. (You’d think he’d be unconscious, or having a very understandable panic attack, etc, not composing poetry.)

The story ends abruptly, with God explaining to Jonah that He’s right to care about the people of Nineveh, and also their cows.

Taken together, this short, four-chapter narrative of the Bible has a lot of surprising, or strange, elements.

Language

Let’s look at some of the significant linguistic quirks found in Jonah.

• Wordplay & puns (From AI overview of Google search: “Word play Hebrew Jonah”)

“While there is no single, universally agreed-upon number, the Book of Jonah in Hebrew is exceptionally dense with puns, irony, and wordplay. Scholars often highlight dozens of instances, ranging from subtle phonetic puns to significant thematic wordplays…

Phonetic Wordplay (Similar sounds): Many puns exist simply in the sound of words, such as the similarity between the Hebrew words for gnat and camel, which some scholars suggest is part of the broader, ironic humor found in the text.
 
These puns are largely lost in translation and are designed to enhance the comedic, satirical nature of the book in its original Hebrew.” 

• Exaggerated language
  The Hebrew word for “great/huge” is “gāḏôl“. This word is used 15 times in the book of Jonah, and 6 times in the first chapter. This story is told in a way that emphasizes that everything happening is “big”.
  
• Movement/directional language
  Jonah goes down to Joppa, down to the boat, down to belowdecks, down to the depths.  Another example is found in the language of Jonah 2:5-6:

Jonah 2:5-6: The engulfing waters threatened me,
    the deep surrounded me;
    seaweed was wrapped around my head.
6 To the roots of the mountains I sank down;
    the earth beneath barred me in forever.
But you, Lord my God,
    brought my life up from the pit.

Within these two verses, you can again see a clearly intentional movement being depicted. Down, down, down, Up!

Exaggerated Historic Information

According to archaeological evidence discovered at Mosul, Assyria likely had about 7 miles of walls at the time of the Jonah narrative. That is enormous for the period; quite likely, it was the largest city in the world at the time.

But look at what Jonah 3:3 says: “Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go through it.“

As large as Nineveh was, it certainly wasn’t that large. (You could walk through New York City, end to end, several times in three days.)

All that to say, the measurement presented here should be read as symbolic or hyperbolic illustration of Nineveh’s comparative size and importance, not historic fact.

Putting it Together: Is Jonah History or Parable?

It needs to be said that none of the oddities found within Jonah prove it to be a non-historic work. Christianity, as a starting point, places emphasis on Jesus of Nazareth being killed and rising from the dead. While somewhat cliche to the modern reader, the resurrection of Christ is far more surprising and miraculous than anything found within the narrative of Jonah.

As for some of the linguistic peculiarities, nothing says that presentation of historical fact needs to be dry and humorless. Jonah could be written as a historic account, and written in a way that was meant to be more gripping, in a way that a play based on a historical event is meant to communicate history in a way that is more approachable. (This happens in modern writing, as well: The genres of “narrative nonfiction” and “literary journalism” are examples of this.)

So, the fact that Jonah as a book is strange in comparison to the rest of the Bible doesn’t prove anything.

But just because this strangeness isn’t proof, doesn’t mean that strangeness can’t be an indication.

I think the more likely understanding of the book of Jonah is to see Jonah as a satirical parable.

SATIRE (Merriam-Webster): “wit, irony, or sarcasm used to expose and discredit vice or folly (as of a person, government, or society) // broadly : humor that criticizes weakness or wrongdoing”

PARABLE(Merriam-Webster): ”  a usually short fictitious story that illustrates a moral attitude or a religious principle (ie, the Biblical parable of the Good Samaritan) // also : something (such as a news story or a series of real events) likened to a parable in providing an instructive example or lesson.

With those defined, I think reading Jonah as a satirical parable makes more sense of what is recorded.

As noted above, there are a number of linguistic oddities and exaggerations throughout Jonah. Seeing Jonah as a satirical parable makes sense of these peculiarities.

Beyond this, looking at the narrative of Jonah as a satirical parable also makes more sense to me. As an explanation of this, during his sermon series on Jonah that I have heavily borrowed from for this article, Tim Mackie gives a few quotes that I think are helpful:

“In other words, among the prophets and the poets of the Old Testament in the Hebrew Bible, the very common way to describe Israel’s sin, their suffering, the consequences, exile in Babylon, the restoration, was the use of like drowning in a flood or being swallowed by a great sea beast. And the author of Jonah comes along and he turns these parables into a narrative about one Israelite who through their life story and through their experience actually lives this whole story in this narrative form before us.” – Tim Mackie (Sermon 3, Jonah Sermon Series)

and

“The story of the prophets, all the books of prophecy, are about a rebellious covenant people who are faithless and abandon their God, suffer the consequences, but God’s grace redeems them and brings them out to the other side… That’s the story of Jonah.” – Tim Mackie (Sermon 3, Jonah Sermon Series)

With these thoughts in mind, I think seeing the book of Jonah as a satirical parable, rather than history, is the more probable explanation of the evidence.

Sign of Jonah

One common reason that proponents of the historic view often point to is Jesus mentioning the “sign of Jonah” in Matthew 12:38-41. Let’s look at the text:

Matthew 12:38-41: “Then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to Him, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.”

³⁹ He answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. ⁴⁰ For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. ⁴¹ The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now something greater than Jonah is here.”

However, upon examining that text, I don’t think that Jesus is commenting on the historicity of Jonah. Rather, Jesus is saying that Jonah’s fish points towards His Tomb, and the Ninevites’ repentance points to the fact that even evil people can respond to the grace of God. Jesus is just saying that the events of Jonah point towards Himself. (As Mackie notes in the first sermon of his sermon series on Jonah: In the Gospels, when Jesus brings up the Old Testament to other people, He’s using it to point to Himself.)

I don’t see a need to interpret Jesus’s words here as commentary on the historicity of Jonah. To give a silly, modern parallel, let’s imagine I am giving a teaching on the Parable of the Talents, emphasizing the importance of using our God-given talents and abilities faithfully. Let’s imagine in my teaching I say: “I mean, even purely secular sources point this out! Think about the words that changed Peter Parker’s life: “with great power comes great responsibility.“” That allusion to one of the key moments in the Spiderman mythos does not imply that I see Spiderman and Uncle Ben as real, historic people. It just means I’m referencing a story that both I and my audience are aware of, and using it to illustrate a truth I’m trying to convey.

All of this is to say, Jesus referring to Jonah inside the fish, and the Ninevites’ repentance, doesn’t necessarily indicate the book of Jonah is meant to be read as historic fact.

Conclusion: Why This Matters

To be honest, I think a modern Christian can read the book of Jonah as history, and still take away all, or almost all, of the important implications. Whether you see Jonah as a narrative of historical fact that highlights some spiritual truth, or if you see Jonah as a satirical parable that highlights some spiritual truth, either way, you’ll see:

-That God is gracious and forgiving,
-that people sometimes resent God being merciful,
-that trying to run from God’s will isn’t a good decision, etc.

But just because the historicity of Jonah doesn’t greatly change the broad spiritual “takeaways” of Jonah, doesn’t mean that there aren’t any important implications.

For me, I would be troubled to present the entirety of Jonah as historic fact, because the description of the size of Nineveh is knowably, historically false. I am pastorally and ministerially concerned with presenting incorrect factual data as “God’s truth”, because I don’t want that to be a stumbling block to someone’s faith. I don’t want to misrepresent God’s trustworthiness.

But also, if the book of Jonah is meant to be read as a parable, and I read it as history, I’m going to miss out on the fact that I’m supposed to see Jonah as representing me.

I’m a professional minister. Are there times that I’m hard-hearted towards God, or slow to delight in His goodness? Yeah. Yes, that’s true of me.

And that’s true of every other Christian, sometimes, that I’ve met.

We’re all Jonah. We all need to soften our hearts towards God.

Further Study

Tim Mackie’s Jonah Sermon Series.
Another helpful article on wordplay in Jonah.