In Matthew 12, the Pharasees are trying to trap Jesus. They want him to give them a sign, after getting worked up by Jesus’s teaching and miracle making.

But Jesus still has work to do before becoming a sacrifice on the cross.

Cryptically, then, he tells them they will not receive a sign “except the sign of the prophet Jonah”.

He adds:

For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now something greater than Jonah is here. [Matthew 12:40-31 NIV]

In speaking like this, Jesus is giving the Pharasees nothing to clobber him with.

Instead, he makes a link between himself and Jonah.

Later events in the gospel would make the meaning of the comparison clear. Jesus is comparing his death with the experience of Jonah, who was stuck “deep in the realm of the dead” for three days.

Just as Jonah surviving three days in a big fish or whale was made possible by God, so Jesus returning from the dead – indeed, defeating the curse of death – was to be made possible. Jonah helped the people of Nineveh to repent, but Jesus brought something vastly bigger in scale.

A light for the Gentiles

There is another similarity insofar as the mission of Jonah and Jesus both involved expanding the message of God’s love outside of Israel.

As John Wesley put it in in the mid-18th century:

In contrast to all other prophets of the OT [Old Testament] his ministry was directed to the heathen inhabitants of Nineveh and not to the people of Israel. The only prophetic message that Jonah announced was the one about the coming judgment over Nineveh (Jonah 1:2; Jonah 3:2; Jonah 3:4). Jonah therefore is the only prophet of the OT revealing the grace of God towards the heathen.

God’s desire for his Israel to be a blessing for the whole work links with with various Old Testament passages, including Isaiah 42:6, which says:

I will keep you and will make you
to be a covenant for the people
and a light for the Gentiles…

God uses sinners

The importance of the work God gives Jonah, and Jesus’s choice to draw a parallel between himself and Jonah, might seem quite odd. After all, Jonah ran away from God’s mission, and once he finally completed it, was rather grumpy.

But many of the people in the Bible who achieved great things with God had very visible flaws.

Sometimes, as Christians, we can fret that we inadequate, or too imperfect, or that no one will listen to us. But, as Philippians 4:13 (NKJV) says: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”