2 Kings 14:25
He restored the coast of Israel from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the plain, according to the word of the LORD God of Israel, which he spake by the hand of his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, which was of Gath-hepher.
Jonah is identified as the son of Amittai, a prophet from Gath-hepher, which was his native city and birthplace, a city of Zebulon in northern Israel. This is the only reference to Jonah outside the book of Jonah in the Old Testament, giving what is known about him apart from that book and recognizing him in another sacred historical account as a true prophet through whom the Lord spoke. His work is placed about 862 years before Christ. Gath-hepher is marked as the place where the Lord commissioned him to go to Nineveh nearly nine hundred years before Christ.
Jonah lived and prophesied during the reign of Jeroboam II, king of Israel, described as sinful, in the former part of the reign of Jeroboam son of Joash from B.C. 827 down to about 810 B.C., recording a prophecy concerning him. On this ground his prophecy is dated earlier than Joel's according to Usher's chronology. He prophesied that Israel's territory would be restored from the entering of Hamath to the Sea of the Plain, which was fulfilled when Jeroboam recovered the land and Israel recovered its possessions. Jonah directed, encouraged and strengthened Jeroboam in his appointed work of completing Israel's deliverance from Syrian oppression, and at Jonah's word victory was given. Those holding one account add that Jonah predicted Jeroboam II's victories over the Assyrians.
The restoration happened because the Lord saw Israel's very bitter affliction with no helper, said not that he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven, but was gracious and had compassion and saved them by the hand of Jeroboam because of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It records Israel's expansion and recovery of territory under Jeroboam II, whose historical setting was that Syria had served as a buffer state for Israel and Assyria's defeat of Syria left Israel free to expand and grow strong, which fits the account in Kings. Jonah's prophesying came first, and after those successes exalted Israel, Amos prophesied Israel's captivity and destruction in the days of Uzziah and Jeroboam, two years before the earthquake, between 800 and 786 B.C. Jonah himself wrote the book bearing his name, giving the history of God's wonderful work in saving Nineveh and showing what a man can accomplish when he does God's bidding and preaches the message God gives him, while also revealing his own weakness, the weakness of a great man.