The Sign of the Prophet Jonas

2023-01-20

What did Jesus mean when He spoke of “the sign of the prophet Jonas”?

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 (Matthew 12:39)

Jonah (Jonas) was told to preach but didn’t. Jesus was sent by the Father to preach, and He went willingly.

Both Jonah and Jesus were asleep in the boat. When he awoke, Jonah was thrown into the sea to make the storm calm. When Jesus awoke, He commanded the storm to be calm. In both cases, the people in the boat gave glory to God. “Then the men feared the LORD exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice unto the LORD, and made vows” (Jonah 1:16). “And they feared exceedingly, and said one to another, What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (Mark 4:41).

Jonah was in the belly of the whale. Jesus was in the heart of the earth. Both were in the depths three days and three nights. “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” (Matthew 12:40). When you read Jonah 2, there are some remarkable parallels if you think of Jesus. “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” (Jonah 2:6).

Jonah preached to the Gentiles of Nineveh, and they believed the message and turned to the Lord. The message of our Lord Jesus Christ went to the Gentiles to the ends of the earth, and they believed.

Jonah, a Jewish man, was indignant at God’s mercy of the Gentiles. When Jesus was preached in the apostolic era, the Jews largely rejected Him, and the Gentiles turned more to the Lord by believing in Jesus. “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” (Matthew 12:41).