"The Book of Jonah is read in the synagogue on the afternoon of Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, the sacred Day of Atonement. Why, of all books in the Bible, this book this most holy day?The answer is clear.
The major themes of the book are singularly appropriate to the occasion—
*sin and divine judgment,
*repentance and divine forgiveness.
What is remarkable is that the work is not at all about Israel. The sinners and penitents and the sympathetic characters are all pagans, while the anti-hero, the one who misunderstands the true nature of the one God, is none other than the Hebrew prophet. He is the one whom God must teach a lesson in compassion.
*Its universalistic outlook;
*its definition of sin as predominantly moral sin;
*its teaching of human responsibility and accountability;
*its apprehension that true repentance is determined by deeds and
*established by transformation of character (Jonah 3:10), not by the recitation of formulas, however fervent;
*its emphasis on the infinite preciousness of all living things in the sight of God (Jonah 4:10–11); and, finally,
*its understanding of God as “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving-kindness” (Jonah 4:2)—all these noble ideas of the Book of Jonah constitute the fundamentals of Yom Kippur."
