Although it is placed among other prophetic writings in the book of the Twelve, the book of Jonah is different from all other prophetic books. Instead of being a collection of prophetic oracles, it is a story about a man named Jonah, who is never called a prophet in the book. To be sure, it opens with the familiar prophetic phrase, “The word of the LORD came to Jonah” (1:1), but there is only one brief prophetic oracle in the whole work (3:4). Unlike the other prophets, Jonah
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