Bible Quiz: Book of Jonah
Four chapters, forty-eight verses, and the strangest prophet in the book — a man who ran the wrong way and paid his own fare to do it, slept through a storm the whole crew was praying through, spent three days inside a great fish, preached eight words to a city of a hundred and twenty thousand, and then sat down on a hill east of town and sulked because it worked. You get fifteen questions drawn from a bank of 46 covering all four chapters plus the places Jonah turns up elsewhere in the Bible, and every answer shows the verse behind it, so a miss sends you straight back to the text.
That round moved through the whole book of Jonah — a fare paid to Tarshish, lots cast on a heaving deck, three days in the belly of a great fish, eight words shouted into Nineveh, a king sitting in ashes, a gourd, a worm, and a question nobody ever answers.
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Common Questions About the Book of Jonah
What is the book of Jonah about?
Jonah is four chapters and forty-eight verses long, and it is the one prophetic book that is almost all story and almost no oracle. God tells a prophet named Jonah to go to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, and warn it. Jonah goes down to Joppa instead, pays his own fare, and boards a ship heading the opposite way. A storm hits, the sailors cast lots, and Jonah tells them to throw him into the sea. A great fish swallows him for three days and three nights. He prays, is put out on dry land, walks into Nineveh and delivers eight words: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” The whole city, king included, puts on sackcloth, and God relents. Then the book does something nobody expects: Jonah sulks. The last chapter is a sunburnt prophet sitting on a hill east of town, arguing about a dead plant, and the book ends on a question nobody answers.
Was Jonah really swallowed by a whale?
The book itself never says whale. Jonah 1:17 reads, “Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah,” and the Hebrew simply means a large fish. The word “whale” came into English through the King James translation of Matthew 12:40, where Jesus speaks of Jonah being three days and three nights in the whale’s belly. Readers have taken the account two ways for a long time. Some read it as straight history, noting that the text reports it the way it reports everything else, and that Jesus refers to it the same way. Others read it as a prophetic parable, a deliberately outsized story told to make a point about mercy reaching a people Israel despised. The book does not argue the case either way. What it plainly cares about is not the fish, which gets three verses in total, but the four chapters on either side of it.
Why was Jonah angry that Nineveh was spared?
This is the question the whole book is built around, and Jonah answers it himself in chapter four: “I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil.” He did not run because he doubted anything would happen. He ran because he was certain the warning would work and the city would be forgiven. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, an empire with a well-documented reputation for cruelty toward the nations it conquered, Israel among them. Jonah wanted it levelled, so the one job he refused was the job that might save it. The book closes with God pointing at a plant Jonah pitied and did nothing to grow, then asking whether a hundred and twenty thousand people might be worth at least as much. Jonah never replies, which leaves the question sitting squarely with the reader.
Why do Bible quiz teams study the book of Jonah?
Jonah is a favourite assigned book for youth Bible quizzing and for Sunday school review nights because it is short enough to learn properly and dense with exact, quizzable detail. In forty-eight verses you get names and numbers that are easy to mix up under pressure: Amittai and Gath-hepher, Joppa and Tarshish, three days and three nights, forty days, sixscore thousand, a booth, a gourd, a worm and an east wind. Quizzers also have to keep straight who actually does what, since it is the sailors who pray, cast lots and offer a sacrifice, the king of Nineveh who issues the decree, and the livestock who end up in sackcloth. This quiz draws fifteen questions at random from a bank of 46 covering all four chapters, plus the places Jonah turns up elsewhere, in 2 Kings 14:25 and in what Jesus says about him in Matthew and Luke. Every answer shows its exact verse.
How should I use this Jonah quiz?
Play a round of fifteen and read the short note under each answer, because that is where most of the learning actually happens. Every round pulls a fresh random set from the bank of 46, so three or four rounds back to back will cover most of the book and show you which chapter keeps catching you out, which for most people is chapter four. If you are leading a group, read the question aloud and let everyone call out an answer before you tap one. It is free, needs no sign-up, saves nothing and installs nothing, and nobody sees your score unless you choose to share it. There is no printable answer sheet here, just the live quiz, which is rather the point: the fifteen questions are never the same twice. When you are ready, scroll back up and start a round of the Book of Jonah quiz above.