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Jonah took ship from Joppa to travel to the city of Tarshish (Jonah 1:3). That city's exact location is contested; but I think most folk would agree that it lay somewhere in the direction of Spain. Anyway we can at least be pretty sure that Jonah's rendezvous with the big fish took place in the Mediterranean Sea.
Jonah's preaching was very successful in Nineveh; and Jesus specifically credited the prophet's success to his experience with the fish. (Matt 12:39-41)
Well the thing is; Nineveh's ruins are eleven miles north of Mosul Iraq, which itself is roughly 406 miles inland from the Mediterranean Sea as the crow flies. So my question is: How were the Ninevites aware that Jonah was a man back from dead if the city didn't actually observed him come ashore from the fish's mouth?
Somehow, in some way, the people of Nineveh were aware that Jonah survived drowning and digestion in a fish's tummy; a survival that could only be explained by an honest-to-gosh miracle. So when Jonah went round about the city threatening it with destruction; nobody mocked, nobody jested, and nobody poked fun-- instead, everybody got really scared; including their king, and as everybody familiar with the book of Nahum knows, the citizens of Nineveh were a really brutal people not easily intimidated.
This all tells me that Jonah's experience with the fish wasn't a contingency. It was in the plan all along, though the prophet likely didn't know it, because God needed something very persuasive to get those people's attention.
Well; Jonah's recovery worked for Nineveh, but some people are as dense as the wall of China.
● Luke 16:27-31 . .The rich man said: I beg you, Father, that you send Lazarus to my father's house-- for I have five brothers --that he may warn them, lest they also come to this place of torment.
. . . But Abraham said: They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them. But he said: No, Father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent! But Abraham said to him: If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead.
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