In the Septuagint it is said “the cry of its wickedness come up to me.”
It was a unique calling. For the first time a prophet was called to a pagan nation, not to condemn it but to call it to repentance so that the anger of God would not descend upon it. Any prophet could not accept such a mission, not out of hatred of the Gentiles, but out of love for his own people. As aforementioned the salvation of the Gentiles is realized through the falling of the Jews, and the faith of the world through the ungratefulness of the Jews [Rom 11:11]. However, although Jonah, with his human level of thinking, could not accept the calling and he fled, yet God, who knows the purity of Jonah’s heart, used his fleeing to bring about his Divine goals for the Gentiles.
The Septuagint version “the cry of their wickedness has come up before me,” so if a sacred life is shown in its completeness in the Lord Jesus who, “...will not cry out, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets” [Matt 12:19] on the contrary an evil life which cries out in God’s ears and which produces noise which is not acceptable in heaven, shows the loss of inner peace. Evil Cain murdered his brother, Abel, and he kept quiet about it, but the fingerprints of his evil cried out through his brother’s flowing blood. The Lord said to Cain,”...the voice of your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground” [Gen 4:10]. It was also said of the evils of Sodom and Gomorrah: “Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great...” [Gen 18:20].
Jonah (lit. = dove) was called to be a missionary in the great city Nineveh whose cry of evil rose up to heaven, as though God wanted to destroy the cries of evil with the meekness of a dove, treat the inflamed wounds with soft oil and put out the fire with water.
If the world had become a noise and bitter cries of oppression then it is in need of the Church or the true believer who has “dove’s eyes” [Song 1:15]; [Song 4:1], the eyes of Christ the Lord who said, “Learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart” [Matt 11:29]. To have the eyes of the Holy Spirit, the true dove, so that with meekness we inherit the earth [Matt 5:5] for Christ, the Lord, so that his kingdom would become filled with joy and peace.
If the evildoers are earthly not heavenly because of their love for earthly things, and because of their obsession with fleeting pleasures, we then carry within us the genuine Jonah, to win them over with the meekness of His Holy Spirit and change them from earthly to heavenly beings. St. John Climacos says, [The Lord finds contentment in meek hearts while the disturbed spirit is the throne of the devil. The meek shall inherit the earth, or as a matter of fact, shall manipulate it, while the evildoers shall be thrown out from their land (1).]
If the great city Nineveh represents the body whose evil cries of lust rise up before the Lord, then no one else would be able to relieve the body of these cries but our True Jonah who fills the spirit and sanctifies the body also.
It was a unique calling. For the first time a prophet was called to a pagan nation, not to condemn it but to call it to repentance so that the anger of God would not descend upon it. Any prophet could not accept such a mission, not out of hatred of the Gentiles, but out of love for his own people. As aforementioned the salvation of the Gentiles is realized through the falling of the Jews, and the faith of the world through the ungratefulness of the Jews [Rom 11:11]. However, although Jonah, with his human level of thinking, could not accept the calling and he fled, yet God, who knows the purity of Jonah’s heart, used his fleeing to bring about his Divine goals for the Gentiles.
The Septuagint version “the cry of their wickedness has come up before me,” so if a sacred life is shown in its completeness in the Lord Jesus who, “...will not cry out, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets” [Matt 12:19] on the contrary an evil life which cries out in God’s ears and which produces noise which is not acceptable in heaven, shows the loss of inner peace. Evil Cain murdered his brother, Abel, and he kept quiet about it, but the fingerprints of his evil cried out through his brother’s flowing blood. The Lord said to Cain,”...the voice of your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground” [Gen 4:10]. It was also said of the evils of Sodom and Gomorrah: “Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great...” [Gen 18:20].
Jonah (lit. = dove) was called to be a missionary in the great city Nineveh whose cry of evil rose up to heaven, as though God wanted to destroy the cries of evil with the meekness of a dove, treat the inflamed wounds with soft oil and put out the fire with water.
If the world had become a noise and bitter cries of oppression then it is in need of the Church or the true believer who has “dove’s eyes” [Song 1:15]; [Song 4:1], the eyes of Christ the Lord who said, “Learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart” [Matt 11:29]. To have the eyes of the Holy Spirit, the true dove, so that with meekness we inherit the earth [Matt 5:5] for Christ, the Lord, so that his kingdom would become filled with joy and peace.
If the evildoers are earthly not heavenly because of their love for earthly things, and because of their obsession with fleeting pleasures, we then carry within us the genuine Jonah, to win them over with the meekness of His Holy Spirit and change them from earthly to heavenly beings. St. John Climacos says, [The Lord finds contentment in meek hearts while the disturbed spirit is the throne of the devil. The meek shall inherit the earth, or as a matter of fact, shall manipulate it, while the evildoers shall be thrown out from their land (1).]
If the great city Nineveh represents the body whose evil cries of lust rise up before the Lord, then no one else would be able to relieve the body of these cries but our True Jonah who fills the spirit and sanctifies the body also.
Footnote
(1) Step 24:7-8.
Verses that belong to this explanation: 1-2
1 Now the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, 2 Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me.
 | Author: Tadros Yacoub Malaty Rank: Monk Posted on: 2022-10-21 |
In trying to run away from the Lord, you show up the fickleness of all who plan flight. A certain headstrong prophet also had run away from the Lord, crossing the sea from Joppa to Tarsus, as if he could escape from God. But God found him not on land or on sea but in the belly of a beast, where for three days he could not die or even in that way escape from the eyes of God. Is that man not better off who, though he fears the enemy of God, does not flee from but despises him? Who trusts in the protection of God or, if you will, has an even greater fear of God, having stood the longer in his eyes? He says, “He is the Lord, he is mighty, all things are his, and wherever I shall be I am in his hands. Let him do what he will, I shall not run away. If he wishes me to die, let him destroy me, as long as I faithfully serve him. Much would I rather bring odium on him, by dying according to his will, than to live by my own cowardice.”
 | Author: Tertullian of Carthage Rank: Author AD: 220 |
The history of Jonah contains a great mystery. For it seems that the whale signifies Time, which never stands still, but is always going on, and consumes the things which are made by long and shorter intervals. But Jonah, who fled from the presence of God, is himself the first man who, having transgressed the law, fled from being seen naked of immortality, having lost through sin his confidence in the Deity. And the ship in which he embarked, and which was tempest-tossed, is this brief and hard life in the present time; just as though we had turned and removed from that blessed and secure life, to that which was most tempestuous and unstable, as from solid land to a ship. For what a ship is to the land, that our present life is to that which is immortal. And the storm and the tempests which beat against us are the temptations of this life, which in the world, as in a tempestuous sea, do not permit us to have a fair voyage free from pain, in a calm sea, and one which is free from evils. And the casting of Jonah from the ship into the sea, signifies the fall of the first man from life to death, who received that sentence because, through having sinned, he fell from righteousness: "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return," [Gen. iii. 19]. And his being swallowed by the whale signifies our inevitable removal by time. For the belly in which Jonah, when he was swallowed, was concealed, is the all-receiving earth, which receives all things which are consumed by time.
 | Author: Methodius of Olympus Rank: Bishop AD: 311 |
The prophet knows, the Holy Spirit teaching him, that the repentance of the Gentiles is the ruin of the Jews. A lover, then, of his country, he does not so much envy the deliverance of Nineveh as will that his own country should not perish. Seeing too that his fellow prophets are sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel to excite the people to repentance, and that Balaam the soothsayer too prophesied the salvation of Israel, he grieves that he alone is chosen to be sent to the Assyrians, the enemies of Israel, and to that greatest city of the enemies where there was idolatry and ignorance of God. Even more, he feared that Israel might be wholly forsaken due to the conversion of the Ninevites through repentance by his preaching. For he knew by the same Spirit whereby the preaching to the Gentiles was trusted to him that the house of Israel would then perish, and he feared that what was at one time to be would take place in his own time. :.
 | Author: Jerome Rank: Priest AD: 420 |
The Hebrew tradition is that Hosea, Amos, Isaiah and Jonah prophesied at the same time. This is historical tradition.
he book of Tobit, though not in the canon of the Hebrews, is surely used by the men of the Church, and he mentions Jonah when Tobit says to his son, "my son, I am old and ready to leave this life. Take your sons and go to Media, my son. For I know what the prophet Jonah has said about Nineveh: she will be destroyed"(Tob. 14, 3.).
| Author: Jerome Rank: Priest AD: 420 |
About three years have now passed since I first started writing the commentaries on the five Prophets, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, and Haggai. Detained by another work, I was not able to finish what I had undertaken. For I was writing a book on famous men and two volumes against Jovinian, an apology and an essay on 'the best way to translate', which was addressed to Pammachius, two books to or about Nepotian, and other works which it would be lengthy to recount. Therefore I retake up my commentaries with Jonah after such a long absence. Jonah, a type of Saviour, who prefiguring the resurrection of the Lord by spending "three days and three nights in the belly of a whale", was able to attain the first ardour so that we might deserve the arrival of the Holy Spirit to us. If indeed Jonah is to be translated as 'dove', and if the dove can be seen as the Holy Spirit, then we can also interpret the Dove as signifying the dove's entrance into us. I know that some classical authors, both Latin and Greek, have spoken much about this book, and through all of their Questions have less enlightened than obscured the ideas, so that in effect their interpretation needs to be interpreted and with the result that the reader comes away feeling less sure of the meaning than beforehand. I am not saying this to criticise these great minds, to abase others in order to extol myself, but rather because it is the place of the commentator to clarify in short and clearly what is obscure; they should be less concerned with displaying their eloquence than with explaining the meaning of the author. We ask therefore where else the prophet Jonah appears in the Holy Scriptures apart from this book and the allusion made to him by the Lord in the Gospels. And if I am not mistaken he is mentioned in the book of Kings in this way: "in the fifth year of Amasiah, the son of Joash, King of Judah, began to rule the son of Jeroboam son of Joash King of Israel in Samaria, for forty-one years. He did much wickedness before the Lord and did not distance himself from all the sins of Jeroboam, son of Nebat, who caused Israel to sin. He re-established the frontier of Israel in Samaria from the entrance of Emathia to the Sea of Solitude, according to the word of the Lord God of Israel, which was spoken by the mouth of his servant Jonah, son of Amittai the prophet, from Gath which is in Ofer." The Hebrews recount that he was the son of the widow of Sarepta, incited by the prophet Elijah; his mother later said to him, "I know now that you are indeed a man of God, and that the word of God is truly in your mouth"; on account of this the child was called Truth. For Amittai in Hebrew can be rendered 'truth' in our language, and because Elijah spoke true, he who was encouraged was called the son of Truth. And Gath is located two miles from Sepphoris, which is now called Diocaesarea, when you are travelling to Tiberia: there is a small castle where his tomb can be seen. Others, however, prefer to place his birth and tomb near Diospolis, which is in Lydia. They do not see that when he writes 'Ofer', this is to distinguish Gath from other towns of this name that can be seen now near to Eleutheropolis or Diospolis. The book of Tobit, though not in the canon, is all the same used by the men of the Church, and he [it?] mentions Jonah when Tobit says to his son, "my son, I am old and ready to leave this life. Take your sons and go to Media, my son. For I know what the prophet Jonah has said about Nineveh: she will be destroyed". And, indeed, according to the Hebrew and Greek historians, Herodotus in particular, we read that Nineveh was destroyed in the time of King Josiah according to the Hebrews, and King Astyage of the Medians [???]. From this we understand that in the past Jonah predicted that the Ninivites would repent and seek pardon; but afterwards, as they persisted in their sins,they brought the judgement of God upon themselves. The Hebrew tradition is that Hosea, Amos, Isaiah and Jonah prophesied at the same time. This is historical tradition. Not forgetting the others of course: the venerable Pope Chromatius, who took great pains to recount to the Saviour the story of the prophet: he flees, he sleeps, he is thrown into the sea, he is swallowed by a whale, thrown back onto the shore and prays for repentance. And saddened by the safety of this town of many people, he finds comfort in the shade of a fig tree. There he is reproached by God for having taken more care of a green vine which had dried up, than of such a great number of men, and the other details I will try to explain in this volume. But to grasp the complete meaning of the prophet in this short preface there is no better interpretation than that which inspired the prophets and which marked out the lines of the truth of the future for its servants. He therefore speaks to the Jews who do not believe his words and are ignorant of Christ, the son of God: "the men of Nineveh will rise up at the time of judgement with that generation and they will condemn it, for they repented as Jonah required, and here there is more than Jonah!". The generation of the Jews is condemned, while the world has faith and Nineveh repents, Israel the disbeliever dies. The Jews have the books themselves, we have the Lord of books; they hold the prophets, we have an understanding of the prophets; "the letter kills them", "the spirit makes us live"; with them Barabbas the robber is released, for us Christ the Son of God is freed.
| Author: Jerome Rank: Priest AD: 420 |
Jonah knew better than anyone the purpose of his message to the Ninevites and that, in planning his flight, although he changed his location, he did not escape from God. Nor is this possible for anyone else, either by concealing himself in the bosom of the earth, or in the depths of the sea, or by soaring on wings, if there be any means of doing so, and rising into the air, or by abiding in the lowest depths of hell, or by any other of the many devices for ensuring escape. For God alone of all things cannot be escaped from or contended with. If he wills to seize and bring them under his hand, he outstrips the swift. He outwits the wise. He overthrows the strong. He cuts down the lofty. He subdues rashness. He resists power.
 | Author: Gregory the Theologian AD: 390 |
What then is the story, and wherein lies its application? For, perhaps, it would not be amiss to relate it, for its general validation. Jonah also was fleeing from the face of God, or rather, thought that he was fleeing. But he was overtaken by the sea, and the storm, and the lot, and the whale’s belly, and the three days’ entombment. All this is a type of a greater mystery. He fled from having to announce the dread of the awful message to the Ninevites and from being subsequently, if the city was saved by repentance, convicted of falsehood. It was not that he was displeased at the salvation of the wicked, but he was ashamed of being made an instrument of falsehood and exceedingly zealous for the credit of prophecy, which was in danger of being destroyed in his own person. Indeed most would be unable to penetrate the depth of the divine dispensation in such cases.
| Author: Gregory the Theologian AD: 390 |
But there Jonah calls upon God, and marvelous as it is, on the third day, he, like Christ, is delivered…. In my own case, what could be said? What defense could be made if I remained unsettled and rejected the yoke of ministry, which, though I know not whether to call it light or heavy, had at any rate been laid upon me…. On this account I had much toilsome consideration to discover my duty, being set in the middle between two fears, of which the one held me back and the other urged me on. For a long while I was at a loss between them. After wavering from side to side, and, like a current driven by inconstant winds, inclining first in this direction then in that, I at last yielded to the stronger. The fear of disobedience overcame me. In Defense of His Flight to Pontus, Oration
| Author: Gregory the Theologian AD: 390 |
The Divinely inspired Jonah was the son of Amittai, and came from Gath-hepher, a little city or town of the land of the Jews, so the story goes.
You could find Jonah uttering a great number of oracles to the Jewish people, transmitting the words from God on high and clearly foretelling the future. Though no other prophetic text from him is extant than this one, though, the divinely inspired Scripture confirms that he continued predicting to the Jewish masses what would happen in the future times.
 | Author: Cyril of Alexandria Rank: Pope AD: 444 |
The listed verse explanations of the individual persons have nothing to do with the explanations of the other persons. This also applies to the Bible translations.
