We may remark that the case of Jonah is used in the New Testament in two ways, which must not be confounded together. He is mentioned as a testimony in the world, by the Word of God—a service with which the Lord compares His own; afterwards, as in the belly of the fish—a circumstance used by the Lord as a figure of the time during which He lay in the grave. Jonah, by his preaching, was a sign to the Ninevites, even as the Lord was to the Jews, harder of hearing and of heart than those pagans who were afar from God.
Jonah was also (in that which happened to him in consequence of his refusal to bear testimony) a type of that which befell Jesus when He bore the penalty of the people’s sin. When he was raised from the dead, He became the testimony of grace, and at the same time the occasion of judgment to those who had rejected Him. We see in his history that Jonah is also a remarkable moral figure of Israel—at least of Israel’s conduct.
J. N. Darby (adapted)