Jonah 3
James Bartley was discovered when the whale was caught and cut open a couple of days later. He was pulled from the stomach unconscious but he came round and eventually resumed his life as a whaler. The significant aspect of the account is that for the rest of his life he was strangely bleached. Considering he had lain in the gastric acids of the whale’s stomach at temperatures of around 105°F it is hardly surprising.
Clearly the message that Nineveh would be overthrown was a devastating one. It was a solemn message of impending judgement and suggested that something cataclysmic would shortly befall them.
Nineveh’s reaction to Jonah was all the more remarkable because the message itself seemed so absurd. One strange-looking foreigner standing in front of a towering wall repeating endlessly that the city would be overturned in forty days invited mockery. Who could possibly overturn Nineveh? In any normal circumstances Jonah would, at best, have been laughed out of town or ignored as a mad fool. At the same time, he could have expected persecution or even execution. Certainly other prophets had met their death for lesser predictions in less hostile surroundings.
And if the repentance of Nineveh was remarkable because the message appeared far-fetched, it was even more surprising when you consider the messenger—Jonah himself.