Jonah and the Whale: A Whale of a Tale or an Actual Event?

We’re doing a series in “Jonah” right now for Sunday mornings at our church. Some people struggle with believing that Jonah was swallowed by a large sea creature and lived 3 days and 3 nights in it. I’ll be addressing this particular issue this coming Sunday morning, but I want to just give you a list of some historical reasons to believe in Jonah to think about. Here are some things that we know that give further support for Jonah. I mentioned these in my first sermon on Jonah, but I’ll mentioned them again Sunday and wanted to post them here. The thinking behind this post is this: If you can show that some of the places and people surrounding the Whale (Great sea creature, whatever it was) can be verified, then you begin to take a few steps closer to consider that the Whale Account is true as well. There are other arguments and lines of approach, this is just one of them. My sermon Sunday will cover more and hopefully help people to believe it more than doubt it.

1. Jonah had a father, and a family name. Verse 1: “The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai.” We can confirm that name independently in 1 Kings 14.

2. Jonah’s identity and existence is confirmed (and believed by) the writer of 1 Kings 14:25: “25 He [King Jeroboam] restored Israel’s border from Lebo-hamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word the Lord, the God of Israel, had spoken through his servant, the prophet Jonah son of Amittai from Gath-hepher.” The writer of 1 Kings put Jonah in the middle of the Jeroboam II’s reign in Israel, a real person who ruled Israel.

3. Jonah’s Hometown of “Gath-hepher” is also mentioned in Joshua 19:13 as a part of Zebulun’s inheritance of land which Joshua distributed by lot after they entered the area.

4. We can find, today, the location of Jonah’s homeland on a map. It’s in the Galilee area around the Northwest. It’s North of Nazareth and West of the Sea of Galilee. We can find all those places on a map. Today Jonah’s homeland is called Mashhad, Israel and you can go online and look at the city today. “Gath-hepher” is not a fairytale land; it’s a real place.

5. We can also verify the location of the cities of Joppa, Ninevah and Tarshish on our current-day maps as well. Not only can we get on a plane and take you to the physical location of Jonah’s birth, we can get on a plane take you to Joppa (the port city where Jonah was running from God…Joppa is Northwest of Jerusalem…it’s a BEAUTIFUL place by the pictures online), we can take you to Ninevah (modern day Mosul which is in Northern Iraq), and we can take you to Tarshish (which is in southern Spain). None of these places are made up or fairy-tale places.

6. Jesus believed that Jonah was a real person. Jesus Himself speaks about Jonah as a real person in Matthew 12:40-41 when He compares Jonah’s account to His own resurrection. Jesus said: “40 For as Jonah was in the belly of the huge fish[l] three days and three nights, so the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights. 41 The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at Jonah’s preaching; and look—something greater than Jonah is here.” It seems unlikely that Jesus would have compared His Actual, Physical resurrection to someone that DOESN’T exist? We’ll cover the connection between Jesus and Jonah in another sermon, but for right now we ought to take COMFORT that Jesus Himself BELIEVED in Jonah as an actual person, Jesus Himself BELIEVED in the Big Fish (sea creature, sea serpent, whatever it was), and Jesus BELIEVED that Jonah was inside that creature for 3 days and 3 nights.