Yonah HaNavi
820 BCE–760 BCE · Biblical · Gat-Hefer
Yonah son of Amitai (Jonah) appears first in the book of Kings as a prophet from Gat-Hefer in Galilee who foretold that Jeroboam II would restore Israel's borders (2 Kings 14:25). The book that bears his name tells a very different kind of story. Sent to warn Nineveh, the Assyrian capital, he fled the other way, going down to Jaffa to sail to Tarshish (Jonah 1:1-3). A storm, a great fish that held him three days and nights (Jonah 2:1), and a second command brought him to Nineveh, whose people fasted and repented (Jonah 3:3-5). The book ends with God's question about caring for a city of more than 120,000 people and many animals (Jonah 4:11). The Talmud prescribes the book as the prophetic reading for the afternoon of Yom Kippur (Megillah 31a). Rabbinic tradition identifies him as the son of the widow of Tzarfat whom Eliyahu revived (Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer 33; cf. Yerushalmi Sukkah 5:1), and as the young prophet whom Elisha sent to anoint Yehu (Seder Olam Rabbah 18).
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Gat-HeferLower Galilee (territory of Zevulun)
What they did here
2 Kings 14:25 calls him 'the prophet Jonah son of Amittai from Gath-hepher', a town on the border of Zevulun's territory (Joshua 19:13). Midrashic opinions differ on whether he was of the tribe of Zevulun or Asher (Bereishit Rabbah 98:11; Yerushalmi Sukkah 5:1).
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Yonah HaNavi’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Graeco-Roman world
Works
No works attributed in the corpus yet.