A Gracious and Compassionate God: Mission, Salvation and Spirituality in the Book of Jonah Volume 26 - Paperback

by Daniel Timmer (Author), D. A. Carson (Editor)

The book of Jonah is arguably just as jarring for us as it was for the ancients.

Ninevah's repentance, Jonah's estrangement from God and the book's bracing moral conclusion all pose unsettling questions for today's readers.

For biblical theologians, Jonah also raises tough questions regarding mission and religious conversion. Here, Daniel Timmer embarks on a new reading of Jonah in order to secure its ongoing relevance for biblical theology. After an examination of the book's historical backgrounds (in both Israel and Assyria), Timmer discusses the biblical text in detail, paying special attention to redemptive history and its Christocentric orientation.

Timmer then explores the relationship between Israel and the nations--including the question of mission--and the nature of religious conversion and spirituality in the Old Testament.

This New Studies in Biblical Theology volume concludes with an injunction for scholars and lay readers to approach Jonah as a book written to facilitate spiritual change in the reader.

Addressing key issues in biblical theology, the works comprising New Studies in Biblical Theology are creative attempts to help Christians better understand their Bibles.

The NSBTseries is edited by D. A. Carson, aiming to simultaneously instruct and to edify, to interact with current scholarship and to point the way ahead.

Author Biography

Daniel C. Timmer is professor of biblical studies for the PhD program at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Professeur d'Ancien Testament, Faculté de théologie évangélique, Montréal, Québec. His books include The Non-Israelite Nations in the Book of the Twelve, A Gracious and Compassionate God (NSBT) and Nahum (ZECOT).

D. A. Carson is research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois.