² tn Grk “at the preaching of Jonah.”

² sn A quotation from Jonah 1:17.

² tn Grk “at the preaching of Jonah.”

¹ tn Grk “to the Ninevites.” What the Ninevites experienced was Jonah’s message (Jonah 3:4, 10; 4:1).

⁵ sn Jonah repeats his assessment, found also in 4:3.

⁴ sn As the following comparisons to Solomon and Jonah show, in the present context the sign of Jonah is not an allusion to Jonah being three days in the belly of the fish, but to Jesus’ teaching about wisdom and repentance.

¹ tn Heb “spoke to.” The fish functions as a literary foil to highlight Jonah’s hesitancy to obey God up to this point. In contrast to Jonah, who immediately fled when God commanded him, the fish immediately obeyed.

⁷ tn Heb “but Jonah.” The disjunctive construction of vav + a non-verb then a perfect verb introduces a parenthetical description of Jonah’s earlier actions before the onset of the storm.

² sn The phrase repented when Jonah preached to them confirms that in this context the sign of Jonah (v. 30) is his message.

³ tn The verbs translated “I will sacrifice” and “I will pay” are Hebrew cohortatives, expressing Jonah’s resolve and firm intention.

¹ tn Or “You had thrown me.” Verse 3 begins the detailed description of Jonah’s plight, which resulted from being thrown into the sea.

⁴ sn Three times in chap. 1 (in vv. 3 and 10) Jonah’s voyage is described as an attempt to escape away from the Lord—from the Lord’s presence (and therefore his active awareness; compare v. 2). On one level, Jonah was attempting to avoid a disagreeable task, but the narrator’s description personalizes Jonah’s rejection of the task. Jonah’s issue is with the Lord himself, not just his commission. The narrator’s description is also highly ironic, as the rest of the book shows. Jonah tries to sail to Tarshish, in the opposite direction from Nineveh, as if by doing that he could escape from the Lord, when the Lord is the one who knows all about Nineveh’s wickedness and is involved in all that happens to Jonah throughout the book. Compare Jonah’s explanation when talking with the Lord (see 4:2).

² tn Tg. Jonah 2:2 renders this interpretively: “and he heard my prayer.”

⁴ sn The first two times that Jonah is said to be running away from the Lord (1:3), Hebrew word order puts this phrase last. Now in the third occurrence (1:10), it comes emphatically before the verb that describes Jonah’s action. The sailors were even more afraid once they had heard who it was that Jonah had offended.

³ tn Heb “Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish away from the Lord.”

¹ tn Heb “the ones who observe vain things of falsehood.” See Jonah 2:9.

¹ tn The verb מָנָה (manah) in the Piel stem is used elsewhere in Jonah meaning “to send, to appoint” (Jonah 2:1; 4:6-8; HALOT 599 s.v. מנה 2; BDB 584 s.v. מָנָה).

¹ sn The use of the term יָטַב (yatab, “rightly, good”) creates a wordplay with its antonym רָעָה (raʿah, “evil, wrong”), which is used in 4:1 of Jonah’s bad attitude.

⁶ tn Or “know.” What Jonah knew then he still knows about the Lord’s character, which is being demonstrated in his dealings with both Nineveh and Jonah. The Hebrew suffixed tense accommodates both times here.

¹ sn The eight verses of Jonah’s prayer in Hebrew contain twenty-seven first person pronominal references to himself. There are fifteen second- or third person references to the Lord.