The Purpose of the Book. 

        Our estimate of the book’s purpose will to some extent depend on the date we assign to its composition. Still it should be clear that the closing words are the climax of the book, “And should I not have pity on … persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle.” Jehovah is not merely the creator of all life but its lord, and “He loveth all He made.”

        The idea that the early Israelites looked on Jehovah merely as a localized “tribal deity” has been largely exploded (Cf. Wright: The Old Testament against its Environment, p. 13). Their belief in Him as Creator was fundamental, even if its implications were often overlooked or forgotten. Jonah forgot one of them, when he tried to run away from Jehovah to Tarshish, and so earned for himself the stinging rebuke of the sailors (1:9f). Just as the ordinary Israelite of the time attributed real, though perhaps vague powers to the gods of the other nations, so the sailors had quite understandably assumed that Jehovah was the god of the hills of Israel (cf. IKings 20:23).

        Another implication was that Jehovah was the absolute lord of the nations, doing His will in and through them as He willed. But Jonah shows that this power was linked to a loving kindness which embraced all His creation.

        This lesson of the power and love of God needed urgently to be learned in the middle of the eighth century B.C. In 745 B.C. Pul seized the throne of Assyria and called himself after one of the famous kings of the past Tiglath-Pileser (III). From then on Assyria was to be the rod of God’s anger (Isa. 10:5), smiting Israel until it ceased to be a people, and Judah until it was brought to the verge of destruction (Isa. 1:9). In this time of unparalleled distress God’s spokesmen had to see clearly that Jehovah was the lord of Assyria, and that behind all His smiting was His love. Where this truth was not grasped, the only logical course was to turn and worship the “victorious” gods of Assyria as did Ahaz and Manasseh (IIKings 16:10-16; 21:3).