fierce and narrow nationalism is the key to his stubborn disobedience. It is also the character trait that God addresses throughout the book. The book of Jonah is concerned entirely with Jonah’s mission to Nineveh, the great city of Assyria—the ‘away mission’. His mission at home, on the other hand, is recounted in a few verses (2 Kings 14:23–27). It fixes Jonah in history, ministering during the long and successful reign of Jeroboam II, king of Israel. The striking feature of his
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