by
Damien F. Mackey
Maybe Jesus called Peter “Simon son of Jonah” (Matthew 16:17)
because Peter actually was a descendant of the prophet Jonah?
First of all, there are several extraordinary likenesses between the stories of Peter and Jonah. James Jackson has picked up some of these at:
https://jamesjackson.blog/2024/10/21/day-293-again-why-does-jesus-call-peter-simon-bar-jonah-in-matthew-16/
…. Why Does Jesus Call Peter Simon Bar-Jonah in Matthew 16?
“An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.” So he left them and departed.”
Matthew 16:4 ESV
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“And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.”
Matthew 16:17 ESV
Through the Bible: Matthew 16
In Matthew 16, Jesus tells the Pharisees and Sadducees who ask Him to show them a sign that “no sign will be given to [them] except the sign of Jonah” (verse 4). This is a repeat of an earlier scene in Matthew (Matthew 12:38-42); only this time, Jesus doesn’t give the extended explanation of what He means by the sign of Jonah:
For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. (Matthew 12:40)
My question was, why repeat it at all? As I’ve said before, every word matters in the gospels. What is said, when it’s said, what is left out. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the human writers wrote exactly what God intended. So there has to be a reason.
A possible answer may be that in Matthew 16:17, Jesus calls Peter “Simon Bar-Jonah” for the first and only time in Scripture.
So is it a coincidence that Matthew repeats the “sign of Jonah” phrase, and calls Peter “Simon son of Jonah” just thirteen verses later? Again, in God’s inspired Word, there are no coincidences. Let’s look at the two stories:
Peter has just made his great confession of Christ. It’s a great moment for him. He gets a new name. No longer is he Simon, son of Jonah, the prophet who was swallowed by a fish. Now he’s Peter, a name which means “rock.” And Jesus is going to build his church on this rock (see Day 293: What Did Jesus Mean by “Upon This Rock?”).
Only, Peter doesn’t always seem very rock-like. Just a few verses later, Jesus is going to rebuke him and compare him to Satan (see Matthew 16:23).
Later, Peter will sink even lower. Given a chance to speak up for Jesus, he denies him three times (see Matthew 26:69-75). Overcome with grief and shame, Peter flees the courtyard and weeps bitterly.
So let’s think about Jonah. He was given a message. He didn’t want to proclaim it. So he ran, and was swallowed by a fish, where he stayed for three days. Then, the fish spits him back onto the beach, and God reinstates him as a prophet, giving him the same message he did at the beginning. (See Jonah 2:10-3:1)
On the night Jesus was arrested, Peter was truly the son of Jonah. He was warming himself at a charcoal fire (John 18:18), when a servant girl asked him if he was one of Jesus’ disciples. At that moment, the Rock, who had once stood at the Gates of Hell and proclaimed Jesus as the Christ, had a golden opportunity to deliver God’s message. Instead, he denied that he even knew Jesus. Then he ran away and “wept bitterly.”
I would imagine he spent the next three days feeling like he had sunk about as low as a person could sink.
Kind of like being in the belly of a fish.
After Jesus was resurrected, John’s gospel records an amazing scene between Jesus and Peter; a scene that “just so happened” to take place on a beach.
And involved fish.
And a charcoal fire.
“When they got out on land, they saw a charcoal fire in place, with fish laid out on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.” So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, 153 of them. And although there were so many, the net was not torn.”
John 21:9-11 ESV
And there on the beach, Jesus reinstated Peter. He gave Peter three chances to confess his love for Jesus—one for every time Peter had denied him.
Then, just as God gave Jonah the same message as He had given him at the beginning (“Go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach against it”); Jesus repeated the same words to Peter in John 21:19 as He did in Matthew 4:19: “Follow me.”
Beloved, we are all going to have our share of “Sons of Jonah” moments. Times when God tells us to do something, and we let fear, or selfishness, or rebellion swallow us up. But sin has a way of chewing us up and spitting us out, leaving us empty and washed up.
That’s when Jesus says, “Come have breakfast.” He lovingly restores. He extends His invitation to follow Him. And we go from being a son of Jonah to a child of the king.
[End of quote]
This nice little piece by James Jackson does not, however, touch upon the amazingly like situations of Jonah wallowing in the sea, drowning, and being rescued by a great fish, and Peter wallowing in the sea, drowning, and being rescued by Jesus Christ, symbolised by a fish:
The great fish in the Book of Jonah, apart from symbolising the “king of Nineveh” (Jonah 3:6), Nebuchednezzar, who swallows Israel whole, only to spit her out (Jeremiah 51:34), more benignly symbolises Jesus Christ as Saviour.
+++++
The historical reconstruction of this era has proven to be extremely complex.
It is all set out in step-by-step detail in my article:
De-coding Jonah
(1) De-coding Jonah
In short, the prophet Jonah (var. Nahum) is, among his many guises, the great Isaiah; while Jonah’s “king of Nineveh” is, as implied by Jeremiah, King Nebuchednezzar - especially in his alter ego guise as the potent king, Esarhaddon, (like Nebuchednezzar suffering a terrible, enduring sickness; re-building Babylon; and attacking Egypt).
For the pervasive Simeonite element amongst some famous prophets of Israel, including Jonah (Nahum)/Isaiah, see my article:
God can raise up prophets at will - even from a shepherd of Simeon
https://www.academia.edu/69393027/God_can_raise_up_prophets_at_will_even_from_a_shepherd_of_Simeon
Although the prophets of Israel were traditionally Levites (Moses, Samuel, Jeremiah, and so on), a Simeonite family had once been selected to play a major prophetic rôle of long duration, commencing with the patriarchal Amos, an avowed non prophet (Amos 7:14-15): “Amos answered Amaziah, ‘I was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I was a shepherd, and I also took care of sycamore-fig trees. But the Lord took me from tending the flock and said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel’.’”
Amos was the same as Micah, who has come to be known as “Amos redivivus”:
Prophet Micah as Amos
(2) Prophet Micah as Amos
and we find this same Micah, a Simeonite, named in the Book of Judith as the father of Uzziah (Isaiah) who was now stationed in “Bethulia”, the sacred northern fort of Bethel (Shechem) to which Amos himself, a southerner, had been sent to minister.
Judith 8:14-15:
“Then the Israelites came down from their town and found [Achior]; they untied him and brought him into Bethulia and placed him before the magistrates of their town, who in those days were Uzziah son of Micah, of the tribe of Simeon, and Chabris son of Gothoniel, and Charmis son of Melchiel”.
That Jonah, under an alternative name of his as Nahum (cf. Tobit 14:8 KJV; 14:8 GNT), was a Simeonite, is the traditionally accepted view:
https://www.monasticrepublic.com/en/orthodox-synaxarion/december/prophet-nahum?srsltid=AfmBOoo5FJ1_mxfGHzITh3__sDGBVtazsizT7n9ufI4mD8xS_RHF7O0j “Nahum is interpreted as "rest" or "comfort" to all. He was from the tribe of Simeon …”.
Amos (Micah) I have also identified as the prophet Zephaniah (Sophonias), who is likewise considered to have been a Simeonite:
https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2021/12/03/103465-prophet-zephaniah
“The Prophet Zephaniah (Sophonias) was a contemporary of the Prophet Jeremiah and the Prophetess Oldama. He was from the tribe of Simeon …”.
“Oldama” here is Huldah, a prophetess, who, too, was Simeonite: the heroine, Judith:
Judith and Huldah
(4) Judith and Huldah
This long-lived prophetic trio, Amos, Isaiah (Jonah) and Judith (under all of their various names), collectively played an enormous part in the history of Israel and Judah, during some its most tumultuous times.
Whereas the Patriarch, Jacob, had been furious with his sons Simeon and Levi for their bloody ruse against the Shechemites, after their sister, Dinah, had been raped (Genesis 34), Judith, for her part, who completely ignores Levi in favour of her eponymous ancestor Simeon, is full of praise for what he had done (Judith 9:2-4):
‘O Lord God of my ancestor Simeon, to whom you gave a sword to take revenge on those strangers who had torn off a virgin’s clothing to defile her, and exposed her thighs to put her to shame, and polluted her womb to disgrace her; for you said, ‘It shall not be done’—yet they did it; so you gave up their rulers to be killed, and their bed, which was ashamed of the deceit they had practiced, was stained with blood, and you struck down slaves along with princes, and princes on their thrones.
You gave up their wives for booty and their daughters to captivity, and all their booty to be divided among your beloved children who burned with zeal for you and abhorred the pollution of their blood and called on you for help. O God, my God, hear me also, a widow’.
And she, too, will, like Simeon, take to the sword to slay the foe, the Assyrian “Holofernes”, who was intent upon seducing her (12:12) - Judith thereby being a symbol of the inviolate Jerusalem towards which the Assyrian army was heading with brutal intent.
Peter - not only a son of Jonah, hence, possibly, a descendant of the prophet Jonah, a Simeonite - likewise bore the name of the eponymous Simeon.
He was Simeon bar Jonah!
And he, like Simeon and Judith before him, would brandish a sword (John 18:10): “Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s servant, cutting off his right ear. (The servant’s name was Malchus)”.
Even the alternative name of Peter’s father, John (cf. John 1:42 and 21:15-17), recalls, in its Greek form of Ιωάννης, the Jonah like fish-man, Oannes (Uanna), of ancient legend (see my article, “De-coding Jonah”).
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