Jonah is the Book of Warning and Corrective Discipline. On a personal level for Jonah, and on a societal level for Nineveh, the LORD issued warnings and corrective discipline. Believers often sink to the depths before they are humbled enough to repent. Nations come to the brink of national destruction, and yet the God of Grace will have regard for the truly repentant. If God can get Jonah out of the great fish’s gut, He can deliver any believer from any circumstance.
The Hebrew, Greek, and English titles for the book are all taken from the proper name of the prophet who delivered the message of this book.
Jonah the son of Amittai is mentioned in 2nd Kgs. 14:25 as a prophet in the reign of Jeroboam II of Israel. He was born in Gath-hepher, a Galilean town (conveniently ignored by the Pharisees during the life of Jesus Christ, Jn. 7:52).