Study Audio Download

The Book of Jonah Chapters 2 – 4

[Aired February 15, 2025]

The first study in Jonah finished with the great fish swallowing him. It seems that Jonah wasn’t the least bit concerned about being drowned since he was asleep ‘in the sides of the ship’ as it rolled and pitched violently in the tempest. His lethargy is akin to us formerly at ease in Zionist Christianity, oxymoronically with both the dull eyes of a whore and highly alert eyes of a harlot, hoping to catch the attention of leering paramours (Amos 6:1. Eze 23:20). We saw some of the Bible’s most notable scriptures profoundly related to Christ’s death and resurrection emanating from Jonah’s attempted escape from the Lord. What a marvellous understanding it is, if we are the Elect, to recognise our guarantee of being resurrected in this life, along with Christ’s promise to empower us in completing the task of saving our brothers and sisters in Nineveh the world in the Lake of Fire. The Saints, like Jonah’s symbolic death three days and nights in the deep, is our unnerving spiritual progression (No. 3) in the deep of our flesh through judgement, no matter how hard we resist, to be faithfully delivered to our expected destination.

Mat 12:39  But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas:
Mat 12:40  For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
Mat 12:41  The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.
Mat 12:42  The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here.

I recently had a very good Babylonian Christian friend semi-consciously and effectively state that he’d take his chance in the Lake of Fire and suffer whatever fear Christ dished out to him rather than give up his materially rich lifestyle and, today, follow Christ’s truth. His understanding was long ago taken away from him, not realising that “unquenchable fire” keeps burning while he retains that impudence. He will, and like Jonah, have his ‘ease in Zion’ spiritually burn him until he does cry out of the fish’s belly, the womb of his re-creation.

Mat 3:11  I indeed baptise you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptise you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire:
Mat 3:12  Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

Many years ago, when I did a basic first aid course, the ambulance instructor said that people saved from the fire, though suffering extensive third-degree burns, and while their nerve endings are all burnt off and they feel amazingly free of pain, they are at peace with the near inevitability of death. I, too, experienced that while body surfing. My brother and I were swept out several hundred meters from the shore. Utterly exhausted, I did the ‘dead man’s crawl’  doing a dog paddle vertically in the water while sinking; at peace, resigned to going down. A prayer and burst of energy got me to my back, and there I stayed and kicked with all my remaining might and eventually crested the back of a mighty wave and made it to shore. God had unfinished work to do in me in an unseen future event, and like Jonah’s watery saga was about to get worse,

Significations:

A Great Fish Swallows Jonah

Jon 1:17  Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. 

Jonah’s Prayer

Jon 2:1  Then Jonah prayed unto the LORD his God out of the fish’s belly [H990 = womb], 
Jon 2:2  And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice. 
Jon 2:3  For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves passed over me. 

In these stories, there are two ways of responding: either with lethargy or fear. Lethargy, while life is good in Babylon, is normal until pain sets in, as did the claustrophobic nature of the fish’s belly for Jonah. So, too, is what happens to us when we fail to repent and, out of sheer terror, look to Christ, our ‘holy temple’.

Jon 2:4  Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight; yet I will look again toward thy holy temple. 
Jon 2:5  The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head. 

Christ created us and knows precisely how to get our attention. Jonah, being in the soft mush of a fish’s belly with seaweed wrapped around his head, is the equivalence of despotic military waterboarding torture and worse than drowning. It is where the person is tied down blindfolded with a towel around his head and face while water is steadily poured over the towel, with rarely an opportunity to chokingly gasp for air, rendering a constant panic of drowning, only to have it all repeated for as long as the psychopath desires. No doubt that is what Jonah felt for three days and nights, and it is indicative of our troubled and narrow spiritual progression while enduring judgment in this life. As Christ is and was, so, too are we in this life.

Psa 18:4  The sorrows of death compassed me, and the floods of ungodly men made me afraid.
Psa 18:5  The sorrows of hell compassed me about: the snares of death prevented me.
Psa 18:6  In my distress I called upon the LORD, and cried unto my God: he heard my voice out of his temple, and my cry came before him, even into his ears.

1Co 3:15  If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire. 
1Co 3:16  Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?
1Co 3:17  If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.

Joh 2:19  Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.

Jon 2:6  I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O LORD my God. 
Jon 2:7  When my soul fainted within me I remembered the LORD: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple. 
Jon 2:8  They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy. 

Even though the oceans are created salty, salt is a derivative of burnt sulphur, indicative of the Dead Sea following Sodom and the cities of the plain’s sulphurous burning. Jonah’s fleeing to the West in a ship headed for Tarshish (Southern Spain) from the light of God behind in the East and his resignation to drowning in the salty sea is, as was Noah’s, a type of baptism in water. His subsequent ‘saving’ by the giant fish in the terrifying pitch blackness of its belly points to the future Saint’s being baptismally salted with like spiritual fiery trials. Ironically, Jonah, a kind of giant worm (Isa 41:14) in the fish’s belly, fearful of fulfilling a more noble task, was spat out back on a beach in the East from whence he came to sullenly accomplish his God-given task in the light of God’s insistent demand.

Mar 9:47  And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire:
Mar 9:48  Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. 
Mar 9:49  For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt. 

To “observe lying vanities” is the same as indolently giving heed to lying doctrines. Any time we witness Christ to a Babylonian Christian, a spirit-led Elect can read their disinterest in their glazed eyes, overlaying Christ’s truth with the traditions of Gentile Christianity; consequently, they, as we in our time, have traded truth for the immediacy of sensualities, like Essau for a pot of bland lentils fulfilling the term ‘forsaking our own mercy’. Conversely, an Elect will glorify God for his fiery trials with thanksgiving for the vow Christ has given us to finish the New Adam in him.

Jon 2:9  But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the LORD. 
Jon 2:10  And the LORD spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land. 

One of the greatest expressions of love towards our Lord is the sacrifice of thanking him for our trials and chastisements, knowing that they bring forth righteousness unto salvation.

Psa 116:16  O LORD, truly I am thy servant; I am thy servant, and the son of thine handmaid: thou hast loosed my bonds.
Psa 116:17  I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call upon the name of the LORD.
Psa 116:18  I will pay my vows unto the LORD now in the presence of all his people,
Psa 116:19  In the courts of the LORD’S house, in the midst of thee, O Jerusalem. Praise ye the LORD.

Just as the Lord vomits our works of the flesh out of his mouth, Jonah is about to pay his vows in the presence of those outside the Camp of Israel in Niveneh, typically as we do at every opportunity among our Gentile Christian friends. Our Lord will give us the words to say as we somewhat fret their judical enquiries.

Mar 13:10  And the gospel must first be published among all nations [typified by Jonah in Nineveh]. 
Mar 13:11  But when they shall lead you, and deliver you up, take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye: for it is not ye that speak, but the holy ghost.

Jonah Goes to Nineveh

Jon 3:1  And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time, saying, 
Jon 3:2  Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. 
Jon 3:3  So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days’ journey. 
Jon 3:4  And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. 
Jon 3:5  So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them. 

The Lord, upon coming to Jonah and us a second time, is a patient double witness against our inevitable tardy obedience. We are that evil great city of Nineveh. Like Christ’s timeframe of submitting to the Father and fulfilling his three years of ministry is reflected in us symbolically taking three days to cross that ‘great city’ to fulfil the progression of merely taking one day, “a short work’ for our Lord to change our hearts. Such is the responsiveness of the ‘very Elect’, enlivened with Christ’s spirit, is given a progressive change of heart yet typified by the people of Nineveh, their excited consternation going ahead of them person to person no doubt before a timeframe of three days was up.

Joh 2:18  Then answered the Jews and said unto him, What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things?
Joh 2:19  Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up [in our God-given spiritual understanding]. 
Joh 2:20  Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days?
Joh 2:21  But he spake of the temple of his body.

Rom 9:28  For he will finish the work, and cut it short in righteousness: because a short work will the Lord make upon the earth.

It took Jonah three days to cross Nineveh since he obviously spent many hours stopping to forewarn its highly attentive people of the expected coming disaster; no doubt otherwise, by walking continuously a nominal 9-hour day’s journey at four mph, the city would absurdly be 36 miles across, and it would have taken much less time, maybe only a day. In fact, records state that the old city was 7.5 miles across. Jonah’s unwilling yet forced submission to God’s authority denotes our formerly unrepentant hearts in Gentile Christianity, condemning others of our very same sins and retiring to the safe distance in our church’ to smugly see their demise in the delusional eternal burning hell fire. Nineveh’s response corresponds to those in the One Thousand Year reign by the rod of iron and their alarm for the coming prophesies, yet they are unable to sustain a genuine change of heart.

2Pe 3:7  But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men [thankfully today in those he is judging first]. 
2Pe 3:8  But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. 
2Pe 3:9  The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

Jonah’s 40 days of prophecy against Nineveh represent the progression of tribulation in our lives in Christ, recreating the New Adam within.

Act 14:22  Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.

Upon the Beast we are, our hopefully eager acknowledgement of our iniquities and submissive de-throning from God’s rightful seat is our spiritual fasting through deep introspection of our corruptible hearts illustrated by Nineveh’s amazing about-face.

Heb 5:7 [Christ, and he in us] Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared;

The People of Nineveh Repent

Jon 3:6  For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 
Jon 3:7  And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor Beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: 
Jon 3:8  But let man and Beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. 
Jon 3:9  Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not? 
Jon 3:10  And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not. 

The king and people of that great city, Nineveh, proved wiser and more apt to respond to God’s signs and wonders more readily than initially the Lord’s prophets, his Elect, “for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light” – Luk 16:8. The children of the world are already unwittingly “taken” by Satan and don’t always suffer the same intensity of attack as the children of light, and more so in the One Thousand Year reign are in an uneasy forced peace in Zion, and in this case, Nineveh,  to make wiser decisions. But not so Jonah, representing the Lord’s Elect, at Satan’s hand constantly before the Lord, hoping to instigate our death.

Rev 12:11  And they overcame him [Satan] by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.

The decree that not just the men of Nineveh are commanded to fast, but the beasts of their herds and flocks, too, denotes us giving our whole heart to the Lord.

Jer 29:11  For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. 
Jer 29:12  Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you.
Jer 29:13  And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.

Jonah’s Anger and the Lord’s Compassion

Jon 4:1  But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry. 

Wow! Jonah, like we in our fiery journey, is a hard man to toss. His petulant response is reminiscent of Cain’s anger at the Lord’s rejection of his offering.

Gen 4:5  But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.
Gen 4:6  And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen?
Gen 4:7  If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.

It is very wise of us to “do well” and eagerly agree with our Lord’s commands rather than repeatedly flee from his presence; otherwise, too late in our testing of him, our Lord may give us up to fiery serpents or, worse, the Lake of Fire.

1Co 10:9  Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed of serpents.

Rev 22:11  He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still.
Rev 22:12  And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.

Jonah is about to argue with God, pointing out that he had already done all that the Lord commanded, and the people rejected him and God and he was not thrilled to be additionally humiliated. Jonah’s approach is akin to us obeying the first milky works in Christ, relying on our own strength and failing the more fiery trials, giving up and going back to Babylon, where life is peaceful, rich and safe from troubles, signified by the greasy grace of Tarshish’s gold and silver.

Isa 60:8  Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as the doves to their windows?
Isa 60:9  Surely the isles shall wait for me, and the ships of Tarshish first, to bring thy sons from far, their silver and their gold with them, unto the name of the LORD thy God, and to the Holy One of Israel, because he hath glorified thee.
Isa 60:10  And the sons of strangers shall build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee: for in my wrath I smote thee, but in my favour have I had mercy on thee.

Jon 4:2  And he prayed unto the LORD, and said, I pray thee, O LORD, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil. 
Jon 4:3  Therefore now, O LORD, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live. 

Again, remembering the Lord’s same response to Cain,

Jon 4:4  Then said the LORD, Doest thou well to be angry? 
Jon 4:5  So Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what would become of the city. 

Jonah’s sullen compliance denotes a small advancement in our spiritual growth by him sitting on the sunny ‘east side of the city’ with his back to the rising sun, in his booth, a temporary dwelling, and a disappearing ‘shadow’ of the transitory fleshy nature of our journey in becoming Christs. Of course, we know what will become of that city, our old man, negatively and positively. We are incredibly grateful that our sins are stripped from our land, little by little and not in one devastating death throw. Nonetheless, the inevitability of metaphoric ‘cutworm’ of chastisement suitable for the occasion is thankfully for evermore a sword upon our temporary house.

Exo 23:29  I will not drive them out from before thee in one year; lest the land become desolate, and the beast of the field multiply against thee.
Exo 23:30  By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased, and inherit the land.

Psa 121:5  The LORD is thy keeper: the LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand.
Psa 121:6  The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.
Psa 121:7  The LORD shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.
Psa 121:8  The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.

Jon 4:6  And the LORD God prepared a gourd, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd. 
Jon 4:7  But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered. 

Jonah’s self-made booth facing west towards Nineveh would have been inadequate as the sun peaked at midday and, on its descent, shone harshly under the entrance eve on his frailty. The vignette portrays the Lord’s great mercy to his Saints in their progression spiritually. Being shaded from the early heat of his chastisements prepares us for the direct afternoon light of God shining directly on our frame. Even then, the Lord’s mercy provided a miraculously very fast-growing gourd to shade Jonah’s booth, only the next day, to likewise as Jonah to wither rapidly in the heat. Our lives are but a mist that disappears as the sun rises. The entire account establishes that we are God’s workmanship, and he will smite and treat us how he wills to create in each of his Elect a uniqueness for his use today for saving the rest of humanity.

Jas 4:14  Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.

Rom 9:20  Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?
Rom 9:21  Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?
Rom 9:22  What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction:
Rom 9:23  And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory.

The Lord’s chastisements ebb and then violently rise and threaten to destroy us, as did the tempest upon Jonah’s ship bound for Tarshish. Just as one trial finishes, another is at our very door. The Lord knows perfectly how far he can push us to the point of our imagined death, thinking that we are not able to suffer anymore, only like Job, have another trial hot on the heels of the previous one.

Jon 4:8  And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live. 

Job 2:9  Then said his wife unto him [Job], Dost thou still retain thine integrity? curse God, and die.
Job 2:10  But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this did not Job sin with his lips.

Jonah, along with us, must reflect just as Job did with his wife. Astonishingly and most embarrassingly, Jonah, much like Cain, clings to his self-righteousness and fearlessly fires back at God – a humiliating lesson for the Saints.

Jon 4:9  And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry, even unto death. 
Jon 4:10  Then said the LORD, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night: 
Jon 4:11  And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle? 

The gourd also represents the many called and not chosen, including those outside the camp of Israel and the world, who are not given to suffer the fiery heat of Christ’s commands. They are expressed by the “sixscore thousand”, safe as Nineveh for the time being but destined as cattle for the slaughter at the end of the One Thousand Year reign under the rod of iron, perishing in the night, having overcome nothing in their lives to be raised to judgement and ultimate saving on the Eight Day.

Eze 18:23  Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord GOD: and not that he should return from his ways, and live?
Eze 18:24  But when the righteous turneth away from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity, and doeth according to all the abominations that the wicked man doeth, shall he live? All his righteousness that he hath done shall not be mentioned: in his trespass that he hath trespassed, and in his sin that he hath sinned, in them shall he die.
Eze 18:25  Yet ye say, The way of the Lord is not equal. Hear now, O house of Israel; Is not my way equal? are not your ways unequal?
Eze 18:26  When a righteous man turneth away from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity, and dieth in them; for his iniquity that he hath done shall he die.
Eze 18:27  Again, when the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive.

The Book of Jonah ends abruptly, and Jonah is left introspective and humiliated for questioning God’s chastising grace. The legend is for our understanding, glorifying God our deepest gratitude for burning the idols of self-righteousness out of our hearts for resisting his wonderful works within.

We conclude with these verses:

Rom 11:30  For as ye in times past have not believed God, yet have now obtained mercy through their unbelief:
Rom 11:31  Even so have these also now not believed, that through your mercy they also may obtain mercy.

Joh 16:22  And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.

Psa 92:4  For thou, LORD, hast made me glad through thy work: I will triumph in the works of thy hands.

Amen