INTRO TO YONAH
Yonah was a son of the widow who Eliyahu stayed with during the famine that rocked the land, and when this widow’s son died, it was Eliyahu who brought him back to life. Yonah was a student of Elisha, and was a contemporary of Micha and Ovadiah. The Talmud Yerushalmi (Sukkah) says that Yonah got his prophecy due to his merits from being oleh leregel and his extreme happiness at the simchas beis hasho’eva, which imbued Yonah with ruach hakodesh, which, in turn, facilitated his acceptance of prophecy. Yonah lived over 120 years. He was sent to make the people of Nineveh (the capital city of Ashur) repent (they were not Jewish by the way). Chazal tell us that the king of Ninveh was none other than Pharaoh; formerly the king of Egypt during our Exodus. Pharaoh repented at the last minute whilst drowning at the Yam Suf (he said ‘mi kamocha be’keilim HaShem…’ which we say in malaria each night), and was saved by HaShem as a result. He later became the king of Ninveh. In fact, Chazal tell us that, in order to make Yonah’s job easer, HaShem made Yonah’s face appear like that of Moshe Rabbeinu’s, so that Pharaoh would be moved to repent after having remembered the torment suffered at the hands of Moshe (and this worked).
