Analysis Of The Image Of Jehovah In Jonah

Through text analysis on the scriptures of Jonah, the paper studies the image of the Lord portrayed and established by the author. Based on the text analysis, the paper investigates what makes the image of the Lord in Jonah special, and compares the images of the Lord in the Twelve Minor Prophets and the New Testament, to find the influences of the image of the Lord in Jonah on the New Testament. In the scriptures of Jonah, the Lord not only shows compassion and love for the elect(the Israeli), but also extends the compassion and love to the Gentiles and the heathen(people in the ship and the people of Nineveh). There is a considerable disparity between this image of the Lord and those in other Minor Prophets and the Old Testament. This transformation of the image of the Lord in Jonah is usually regarded to have surpassed the Jewish people's view of God and religious belief at that time. Such universal compassion and love for the Israeli as well as all the people in the world created by the Lord is a sublimated religious thought, which surmounted the nationalism, exclusionist ethnic policy and religious intolerance of the Jewish nation then. This transformation of the image of the Lord in Jonah also made it possible for the ethnic religion Judaism to turn into Christianity spread around the world later.