Person
Jonah
Also called Jonas
In the book of Jonah, a prophet who flees from God's call to preach to Nineveh, is swallowed by a great fish, and then preaches there.
See Jonah 1:3, Jonah 1:17, Jonah 3:4.
A great fish marks Jonah in the reading view: “the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah” (Jonah 1:17).
Mentioned in 24 verses across 4 books, first in 2 Kings 14:25. The verses below are the ones linked to this person (the Theographic dataset, with our sourced corrections).
How artists have pictured him
3 works from different centuries and traditions. Each shows how its time and place imagined Jonah, not how he looked.
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In these stories
In the Bible
The first 10 of 24 verses, in Bible order. Text from the Berean Standard Bible; verse numbers follow the KJV.
2 Kings
- 2 Kings 14:25
This Jeroboam restored the boundary of Israel from Lebo-hamath to the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word that the LORD, the God of Israel, had spoken through His servant Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath-hepher.
Jonah
- Jonah 1:1
Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying,
- Jonah 1:3
Jonah, however, got up to flee to Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD. He went down to Joppa and found a ship bound for Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went aboard to sail for Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD.
- Jonah 1:5
The sailors were afraid, and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the ship’s cargo into the sea to lighten the load. But Jonah had gone down to the lowest part of the vessel, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep.
- Jonah 1:7
“Come!” said the sailors to one another. “Let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity that is upon us.” So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah.
- Jonah 1:15
At this, they picked up Jonah and cast him into the sea, and the raging sea grew calm.
- Jonah 1:17
Now the LORD had appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah spent three days and three nights in the belly of the fish.
- Jonah 2:1
From inside the fish, Jonah prayed to the LORD his God,
- Jonah 2:10
And the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.
- Jonah 3:1
Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time:
Events
Events the dataset lists Jonah as taking part in. Dates follow its Ussher–Jones reckoning (one of several traditional counts), not established history.
- c. 825 BCProphecies of Jonah
Dictionary
From Easton’s Bible Dictionary (1897), as attached to this record by Theographic. The entry is for the name and can describe more than one person who bore it. Easton wrote in 1897, and some of his views are now debated.
Read Easton’s entry
A dove, the son of Amittai of Gath-hepher. He was a prophet of Israel, and predicted the restoration of the ancient boundaries (2 Kings 14:25-27) of the kingdom. He exercised his ministry very early in the reign of Jeroboam II., and thus was contemporary with Hosea and Amos; or possibly he preceded them, and consequently may have been the very oldest of all the prophets whose writings we possess. His personal history is mainly to be gathered from the book which bears his name. It is chiefly interesting from the two-fold character in which he appears, (1) as a missionary to heathen Nineveh, and (2) as a type of the “Son of man.”