Thus read, Jonah becomes the protest of liberal Judaism against the narrow, exclusive tendencies of popular piety in Israel.

Its hero Jonah, the son of Amittai, according to II Kings 14:25, lived during the reign of Jeroboam II (780-740 B.C.), and predicted the wide extension of the territory of southern Israel; but the Jonah of the story is evidently a type of the Jew of the Persian and Greek periods.