Jonah and the Savior

To those who sought a sign from Him during His mortal ministry, the Savior said, “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: 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” (Matt. 12:39-40).  The Savior here was comparing Himself to Jonah who spent three days and nights in the belly of a whale, in a similar manner to how Christ would spend part of three days in a tomb after His death.  I think I had assumed this was the only significant similarity between Jonah and the sinless Savior because this prophet was portrayed in his book as a runaway servant and an unforgiving man.  But as we discussed in Gospel Doctrine today the parallels that exist between the life of Jonah and the Savior, I was amazed at how many similarities there are. 

               We see parallels between the life of Jonah and the Savior particularly in the story of Jonah on the ship to Tarshish.  As Jonah was traveling with the mariners, “there was a mighty tempest in the sea” and the people on the boat feared for their lives.  Despite the storm, Jonah “lay, and was fast asleep.”  The others couldn’t fathom how he could be asleep and exclaimed to him, “What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not” (Jonah 1:4-6)  A very similar scene took place with the Savior He was on a boat in the Sea of Galilee.  We read in Mark’s account that “there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full.”  Despite the tempest, Christ “was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow.”  The disciples were shocked at this and said to Him, “Master, carest thou not that we perish?” (Mark 4:37-38)  Both Jonah and Christ also provided the solution to the storm; Christ calmed the waters Himself, and Jonah allowed himself to be thrown overboard after which “the sea ceased from her raging” (Jonah 1:15).  Jonah offered his life to save the ship, willingly letting himself be thrown overboard, to what he must have considered certain death, in order to preserve the life of the mariners.  In a similar manner, Christ willingly let Himself be killed by the people in order to bring salvation to all humankind.  Like Jonah, Christ could have resisted, for He told the people, “No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself” (John 10:18).  Both Jonah and the Savior gave themselves up as willing sacrifices to save others.   

               There are a couple other interesting connections between the story of Jonah and the Savior.  When Jonah boarded his ship into the Mediterranean it was in the city of Joppa.  It was in this same city about 700 years later when Peter received his vision of the great sheet with the unclean beasts.  We read in Acts, “And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter; kill, and eat.”  Peter responded, “Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean,” to which the voice responded, “What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common” (Acts 10:13-15).  So it was there in Joppa that the Lord first started to reveal to Peter that the gospel would be taken to the Gentiles, and it was there in Joppa that Jonah spent time shortly after his call to take the gospel to a major Gentile nation (the Assyrians).  There is also an interesting parallel in the way that the mariners treated Jonah with the way that the rulers of the Jews treated Jesus shortly before His death.  When Jonah told the mariners to throw him overboard, they still tried to continue rowing and avoid doing that.  But eventually they realized they needed to and “cried unto the Lord, and said, We beseech thee, O Lord, we beseech thee, let us not perish for this man’s life, and lay not upon us innocent blood: for thou, O Lord, hast done as it pleased thee” (Jonah 1:14).  They did not want to kill him and earnestly wanted to do right and not have his blood upon them.  On the other hand, when Pilate presented Jesus as a “just person” to the people, they answered, “His blood be on us, and on our children” (Matt. 27:24-25).  Instead of praying that they would not be guilty for His blood like the mariners did, those who sought His death knowlingly let the innocent blood be shed.  These parallels all point us to Christ as we read Jonah and learn of his missionary story.