SOURCE: Blenkinsopp, Joseph. “Prophets and Prophecy in the Second Commonwealth.” In A History of Prophecy in Israel, pp. 25-73. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1983.

In the following excerpt, Blenkinsopp explains Jonah's reluctance to be a prophet and contends that the message of the book is that God's ultimate will is to save mankind.

Jonah is fifth in the Dodekapropheton, between Obadiah and Micah. This position is one of several indications of editorial concern for chronological sequence, since a prophet named Jonah ben-Amittai was active during the reign of Jeroboam II (786-746 b.c.e.). The context (II Kings 14:25) informs us that he predicted the successful outcome of Jeroboam's campaigns to restore the borders of Israel. He was therefore an optimistic and nationalist prophet and, despite the generally negative verdict of the historian on the Northern Kingdom, his intervention is not condemned. Unlike the other prophetic books, however, it bears...