The book of Jonah, like the other prophetical books of the Old Testament, begins with an introduction or subtitle indicating the circumstances in which God’s message came to the prophet: One day the LORD spoke to Jonah son of Amittai.
The title “prophet” and the verb “prophesy” do not, however, occur in this verse, nor in the whole of the book. The introductory verse is, in spite of this, intended to indicate that Jonah was a prophet, since it states that the LORD spoke to Jonah, or as in Revised Standard Version (Revised Standard Version), “the word of the LORD came to Jonah.” There is no one standard form to introduce all the fifteen prophetical books, but they all have in common a reference either to “the word of the LORD” (Jeremiah, Ezekiel, etc.) or to “the vision … that he saw” (Isaiah, Amos, Obadiah, Nahum, Habakkuk). As a rule a date is given that either relates the activity of the prophet to some period in Israel’s history (Jeremiah, Hosea, Amos, Micah, Zephaniah) or states more precisely the exact date at which God’s message was entrusted to the prophet (Ezekiel, Haggai, Zechariah). In Jonah alone does the introduction take the form of a plain statement that, at some unspecified time (One day), the word of the Lord was addressed to the prophet. In this way the reader is indirectly informed that this is no ordinary collection of prophecies, such as those of Amos or Micah, but is a narrative about a prophet.
In some languages one set expression or another is used to indicate the beginning of a story. “Once upon a time” (Judges 9.8 New English Bible [New English Bible]) suggests that what follows is a work of fiction. This is, in fact, how the Winding Quest translation introduces Jonah, “Once upon a time God spoke to Jonah,” but this is unsuitable in a translation. “Long ago” (Ruth 1.1 New English Bible) indicates that the story which follows was written down long after the events it describes.
A literal rendering of One day can be misleading because it might suggest a specific day when the Lord spoke. A more typical equivalent may be “On an occasion” or “On some day.” In this way the indefiniteness of the time is emphasized.
In a number of languages it is awkward to use a double expression of speaking; for example, “The Lord spoke … he said.” A much more natural form of expression may be “One day the Lord said to Jonah son of Amittai, ‘Go to Nineveh….’ ” Other languages, however, may employ a double expression of speaking in the form “The Lord spoke to Jonah son of Amittai. What he said was, ‘Go to Nineveh….’ ”
The first word of the book in Hebrew, wayyehi, often acts as nothing more than an introductory expression that need not be represented in translation. Several books begin with it, and in Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Esther, and Ezekiel its omission in translation would make no difference to the meaning. Here, however, it is the main verb in the sentence, as in New English Bible “The word of the LORD came….” The same verb occurs in a relative clause at the opening of Jeremiah, Hosea, Joel, Micah, and Zephaniah, but in the book of Jonah the prefix to the verb (King James Version [King James Version] “Now the word of the LORD…”) raises the question whether this is to be taken as a conjunction, and if so, with what it links the opening sentence. There is no force in any argument that would try to link Jonah with Obadiah (compare Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel as a linked succession of narratives).
It has been suggested that this book is pictured as the continuation of the section relating to Jonah in 2 Kings 14.25-27. In other words, Jonah, having been assured of God’s gracious attitude to Israel, is entrusted with a mission to condemn Nineveh (Rudolph, page 335).
Like the prophetical books mentioned in the preceding paragraph, this one introduces “the word of the LORD” in the very first verse and tells us that it “came” to Jonah (New English Bible). The word used for “came” is not the usual verb of motion but is used many times to describe the action of the word of God, or even of a human message (1 Sam 3.21 [Good News Translation]; 4.1 [Revised Standard Version]). The individual messages of the prophets often begin with the formula “The word of the LORD came to…” (nearly 40 times in Jeremiah and over 50 times in Ezekiel). This kind of formula became the standard form of introduction to the prophetical books when the individual messages were collected.
“The word of the LORD came” can be translated as the LORD spoke as in Today’s English Version (Good News Translation), or even “Jonah heard the Lord saying to him.” Knox renders “The Lord’s voice came to Jonah,” and the Modern Language Bible leads into the next verse by saying “with this message:….” In the Hebrew expression used here, God’s “word” is described as something with an almost independent existence, in the same way as his spirit “comes upon” Othniel (Judges 3.10), Jephthah (Judges 11.29), Saul (1 Sam 19.23), Azariah (2 Chr 15.1), and Jahaziel (2 Chr 20.14). Similarly, in Ezekiel the hand of the Lord “comes upon” the prophet (1.3, where the word of the Lord is also said to come to him: 3.22; 33.22; 37.1; 40.1).
Some translators have felt that an expression such as “the Lord spoke to Jonah” is not really adequate to render the implications of the expression “the word of the Lord came to Jonah.” In order to suggest something of the role of the prophet receiving a special message from the Lord, these translators have preferred an expression such as “the Lord uttered a special message to Jonah” or “the Lord revealed to Jonah what he should do.” In this way something of the emphasis of “the word of the Lord coming” can be communicated, thus suggesting the prophetic role that Jonah was to have.
The expression “the word of the Lord came” also occurs in the New Testament in Luke 3.2, where the use of these words suggests to the reader that John the Baptist is indeed a prophet.
In the Good News Translation text the Hebrew proper name, generally transliterated as “Yahweh” but traditionally pronounced as “Jehovah,” is here indicated by capital letters LORD, following the widespread usage in English. By the use of capital letters the Hebrew name may be distinguished orthographically from the Hebrew title ʾadonay, rendered as LORD in Good News Translation. The rendering of “Yahweh” as LORD goes back to ancient tradition among Jews, who regularly marked the four-consonant Hebrew name with the vowels of ʾadonay, and in reading substituted ʾadonay for “Yahweh.” The proper name for God was regarded as so holy that it was only very rarely pronounced. Since an orthographic distinction between the rendering of “Yahweh” and ʾadonay is not necessarily recommended in other languages, no attempt is made to maintain this distinction in the discussions in this volume.
The only other place in the Old Testament where Jonah is mentioned is in 2 Kgs 14.25, where he is described both as a prophet and as the Lord’s “servant.” Nothing else is known about that prophet, but the author of the book of Jonah wishes his readers to understand that Jonah and the prophet were one and the same person, since the name of his father is identical. The Jonah of 2 Kings lived in the eighth century B.C., so it is implied that that is the period of the events in this book. There is nothing to indicate who wrote the book, and no suggestion that the author was Jonah himself.
Quoted with permission from Clark, David J. et al. A Handbook on the Book of Jonah. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1978, 1982, 1993. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .