The Lord gave this message to Jonah son of Amittai: “Get up and go to the great city of Nineveh. Announce my judgment against it because I have seen how wicked its people are.” But Jonah got up and went in the opposite direction to get away from the Lord. He went down to the port of Joppa, where he found a ship leaving for Tarshish. He bought a ticket and went on board, hoping to escape from the Lord by sailing to Tarshish.
Jonah 1:1-3 NLT
The story of Jonah is one that is well known when it comes to Jonah’s unwillingness to go and preach God’s message to the wicked people of Nineveh, then being swallowed by a whale, then going to Nineveh and preaching God’s message, and the people of Nineveh putting a stop to their evil ways with God relenting from destroying them. A Bible story that is often taught to young children during Sunday school class, a theme for a Vacation Bible School or even church camp. I myself remember hearing the stories and being awestruck about the story of a man who is thrown off a boat during a raging storm only to be swallowed by a whale that God sent and eventually Jonah ending back up on land where the whale spit him out three days later. That pretty much summed up my theology of the prophet Jonah for many years until recently diving back into the book of Jonah and coming away with a whole different perspective of the story of Jonah.
A year ago while taking an Old Testament survey class from Johnson University, we were required to read most all of the Old Testament and quizzes that would cover multiple books and one of these quizzes spent time on the prophet Jonah. As I read all four chapters of Jonah, I realized that this was not quite the story I remembered being taught as a child with some of the questions raised by the quiz. In being ushered along to cover the rest of the Old Testament, I decided I would come back to the book of Jonah after the class finished. Thankfully that happened just a few months later through a gift given to me by Mark Pike who serves as the Campus Minister at Ball State Christian Student Foundation. The title of the book was, “The Prodigal Prophet: Jonah and the Mystery of God’s Mercy” by non-other than one of my favorite authors being Timothy Keller. After a more in-depth study of Jonah and reading Keller’s book I discovered that Jonah loved something even more than God, an idol that Jonah’s identity was tightly woven in.
In giving context for Jonah during his day for the nation of Israel, there are two shocking things about God’s commission to Jonah that Keller highlights. First, “because it was a call for a Hebrew prophet to leave Israel and go out to a Gentile city,” which up to this point such a thing had never happened (pg. 10). The prophets went and preached God’s message to the nation of Israel and Israel alone, so it was quite the revelation for God to call an Israelite prophet to go and preach to a Gentile city, let alone one of Israel’s enemies being the Assyrians.
Secondly, “It was even more shocking that the God of Israel would want to warn Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian empire, of impending doom” (pg. 10). The people of Nineveh were quite wicked in being known to inflict great terrors and suffering on those they attacked including torture, dismembering, decapitations, putting the decapitated heads of people elevated on poles, mocking those they attacked, treating prisoners inhumanly, and brutal slavery. Not only that, but the citizens of Nineveh treated each other poorly between stealing, beating, killing, and cheating one another. In reflecting on it, why would God want to warn such a wicked people of impending doom? I am sure that is what went through Jonah’s mind and he realized that there might be a chance that God wanted to extend mercy and grace to the Ninevites. As an Israelite, Jonah was not willing to see that chance come to fruition and as such he disobeyed God’s commission and ran in the opposite direction of Nineveh in hoping to escape from God and his calling.
The Lord isn’t really being slow about his promise, as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent.
2 Peter 3:9 NLT
Fast forward past the storm on the sea, the whale, and Jonah’s prayer for deliverance, we read in the beginning of chapter 3 that God again speaks to Jonah for a second time in telling him to go to the great city of Nineveh and deliver the message he first gave him. Jonah obeys and now has a slightly better understanding of grace at this point in how God saved him from the depths of the sea, but his understanding is still lacking.
On the day Jonah entered the city, he shouted to the crowds: “Forty days from now Nineveh will be destroyed!” The people of Nineveh believed God’s message, and from the greatest to the least, they declared a fast and put on burlap to show their sorrow.
Jonah 3:4-5 NLT
Later in verse 10 we see that God witnesses what the people of Nineveh had done in putting a stop to their evil deeds, God changes his mind and does not carry out the destruction he had first threatened. The people of Nineveh are spared, but it is important to note that God is not going back on his word in changing his mind, God’s original intention and disposition always included the possibility of mercy. Otherwise why would he have sent Jonah to warn them of their impending doom? In looking at the book of Jonah as a whole, I thought, “Why doesn’t the parable of Jonah just end here with chapter three? It would be quite the happy ending, but perhaps God wants to teach the readers of the story of Jonah something?”
In chapter 4 we are confronted with Jonah’s anger at the Lord’s mercy towards the people of Nineveh. Timothy Keller writes the following, “Jonah’s great anger, however shows that he was not merely perplexed by a theological conundrum. When he says he wants to die (verse 3) and God, with remarkable gentleness, chastises him for his inordinate anger (verse 4), we see that Jonah’s real problem was at the deepest level of his heart… He had a relationship with God, but there was something else he valued more. His explosive anger shows that he is willing to discard his relationship with God if he does not get this thing… If he had to choose between the security of Israel and loyalty to God, well he was ready to push God away… If love for your country’s interests leads you to exploit people or, in this case, to root for an entire class of people to be spiritually lost, then you love your nation more than God. That is idolatry, by any definition” (pg. 101-103). Jonah’s idol was his race and nationality at the depth of his heart, that was his heart issue. He lacked in faith in not trusting God to be the source of Israel’s welfare and protection. Jonah’s will for political desires of Israel were diverging from God’s own will.
What Jonah lacked in understanding God’s mercy was that salvation is of the Lord’s to give, to whomever he pleases, even if that meant to Israel’s enemies. The book of Jonah ends with an object lesson in God’s mercy for Jonah through a plant and worm as he is still angry enough to die, only to be met with God chastising him again.
Then the Lord said, “You feel sorry about the plant, though you did nothing to put it there. It came quickly and died quickly. But Nineveh has more than 120,000 people living in spiritual darkness, not to mention all the animals. Shouldn’t I feel sorry for such a great city?”
Jonah 4:10-11 NLT
Verse 11 is where the book of Jonah ends leaving the reader with a cliff-hanger and thus we as the readers do not know what Jonah’s response was to God’s question. God is not only focused in extending mercy and grace on the more than 120,000 people of Nineveh, but also he is focused on the 1, being Jonah. God pursues Jonah so that he might know of the mercy and grace that form part of His own identity. However, this question is not only aimed at Jonah, but also us as the readers. How will we answer? As Timothy Keller puts it, “What is our relationship to God’s Word, world, and grace?” (pg. 135). Even though this story happens in the northern kingdom of Israel during the politically prosperous but spiritually dark reign of king Jeroboam II in 793-753 BC, God invites us to apply this text to our own lives today and place. The nature of God encompasses immeasurable mercy and grace that we continue to learn of in the Scriptures and be in awe of God’s goodness. I would encourage you to revisit the book the book of Jonah in reading the story as a whole, but I will leave you with this one last quote by Keller.
“To reach heart bedrock with God’s grace is to recognize all the ways that we make good things into idols and ways of saving ourselves. It is to instead finally recognize that we live wholly by God’s grace. Then we begin serving the Lord not in order to get things from him but just for him, for his own sake, just for who he is, for the joy of knowing him, delighting him, and becoming like him. When we’ve reached bedrock with God’s grace, it begins to drain us, slowly but surely, of both self-righteousness and fear.” - Keller
Best Regards,
Derrick Shipley