Robin Hardy Online
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This is a remarkable little book, and not just for the fantastic element of the great fish. Bible narratives are wonderful in their unflinchingly honest portrayals of God's people. This story of Jonah can tell us a great deal about ourselves and God--if we listen. According to 2 Kings 14:25, Jonah was a real, historical person who lived in Israel (the northern kingdom) during the reign of Jeroboam II, approximately 786 - 746 BC. Hosea and Amos were his contemporaries. Dr. Clarke (Adam Clarke, author of the venerable Clarke's Commentary series) thinks this one mission made up Jonah's entire career as a prophet. Seemingly out of the blue, the Lord ordered him to go preach in Nineveh. This was the huge, cosmopolitan capital city of Assyria, located on the Tigris River about 230 miles north of present-day Baghdad, Iraq. The Assyrians were a world power at the time, a hated and feared enemy of Israel and Judah. As a matter of fact, Assyria was to conquer Israel in 722 BC. When the Lord spoke to Jonah, heathen Nineveh was in danger of divine destruction because it harbored so much evil. God wanted to warn them of the impending destruction to give them a chance to change their ways, and Jonah was the messenger chosen for this mission of mercy. So Jonah said, no thank you, and hightailed it to the coast to buy passage on a Phoenician trade ship bound across the Mediterranean for Tarshish--probably Tartessus, in southwestern Spain. It was a destination as far in the opposite direction from Nineveh as he could go. But the Lord wouldn't let him go, sending a "mighty tempest on the sea" (RSV). The experienced mariners did everything they could to save their ship, but the storm was so unrelenting that the ship was in danger not just of sinking, but breaking up. So they took the classic last resort of praying, and ordering everyone else on board to do the same. Is it unbelievable that Jonah was asleep in the hold during the storm? Not if he was exhausted from running. Note the superlative irony of the pagan captain ordering the prophet to pray to his God. There are a few gaps in the narrative here; it would be nice to know how the sailors knew the storm was supernatural in origin. Maybe it was unseasonal or unusually fierce for their location. Since the prophet kept silent, God used their primitive superstitions to reveal the truth. Once exposed, Jonah told them the whole story. And when they heard it, they were all the more afraid. The sailors asked Jonah how to appease his angry God, and he told them to throw him overboard--he would rather die than fulfill his mission to preach to Nineveh. But they, being more upstanding than he, took every means to save his life. Only when it was apparent that there was no other way did they do what he asked, and not without a prayer for forgiveness. When the deed was done and the sea instantly became calm, there was a shipload of new converts to the God of the Hebrews. So even the disobedience of the prophet and the resulting catastrophe were a witness to the greatness of the Lord. God sent the storm, and God sent deliverance from the storm. Contrary to the expectation of Jonah's guilty conscience, God saved him from drowning in the sea. But he was not ready for dry land yet. So God appointed a "great fish" to swallow Jonah. Fortunately for Jonah, the creature was more obedient in its mission than the prophet had been. It was not a whale--Dr. Clarke says it could have been a shark, and I agree; some meat-eating species are 40 feet long and tend to swallow their prey whole. So Jonah got to thoroughly think things through while trapped inside this fish's guts for three days and nights. How did he survive? Who knows? Jesus, in referencing this situation, implied that it was supernatural (Matt. 12:40-41). Jonah obviously recognized the power of God at work because of what he says in Chapter 2: God knew what Jonah needed, and gave it to him. I have a theory that God sends frightful circumstances to those who are motivated by fear. The terror of nearly drowning brought Jonah to his senses. He was thrown to the bottom of the sea, hopelessly entangled in seaweed. At the point of losing consciousness, he prayed, and God sent a rescuer. Once Jonah had recovered from the shock of being swallowed alive and realized he was breathing and undamaged, he began praising God. Then he recognized that putting distance between himself and God was not what he wanted at all. What he really wanted was to be at home with God. Verse 9 is the climax: "But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to thee; what I have vowed I will pay. Deliverance belongs to the Lord!" As a prophet, what Jonah had vowed was obedience. Keep in mind that he was still inside the fish when he prayed all this. With the prophet's attitude properly readjusted, God instructed the fish to vomit up its undigested meal, and it did. Out came Jonah and whatever else was in its stomach--digestive juices, sea garbage, and bonafide shark dinner. Ugh. Besides the humiliation of being upchucked on a public beach, it had to humble the prophet to realize that his life had hung on the fish's obedience to God, just as the Ninevites' lives hung on Jonah's obedience to God. Jonah was probably redeposited somewhere along the Phoenician coast of the Mediterranean Sea, where he had embarked. From there, he apparently went home to Gath-hepher in Israel to await further instructions. We do not know how long he cooled his heels at home; but for all that time, the need remained unaddressed. The people of Nineveh were still living and dying in their sin. Finally God reissued His original instructions to Jonah, with additional details. This time, Jonah went. Nineveh was indeed a great city, with a population of over two million people. It was enclosed by a wall sixty miles in circumference, wide enough to drive three chariots side by side on top. It took three days just to walk from one end of the city to another. One day into the city, Jonah began delivering his message: God will destroy this city in forty days. Again, it would be interesting to know if this was the entire text of Jonah's message. Did he mention the fact that they could escape destruction by repentance? Possibly not. Obviously, he personally didn't give a damn (not to be profane, I mean that literally: he did not care if they were damned), and that might have added to the impact of his message. I have heard it suggested that his appearance after stewing in the fish's digestive juices would have been pretty appalling, too. That may have been true. It is well known (to parents, especially) that acute stress or trauma can turn a person's hair white almost overnight. Poor Jonah was in for another surprise: "from the greatest to the least" (NIV) they believed him. Sackcloth was a very rough, ugly, uncomfortable garment people wore for public mourning. It indicated great sorrow and humility. Sitting in (or covering oneself) with ashes or dust meant the same thing. It was a public show of repentance. That the mighty king of Nineveh did this was astounding--we do not even know that he spoke personally with Jonah. But apparently God had been laying the groundwork in their hearts while Jonah was pouting at home. They were supremely ripe for repentance. And their repentance was not just for show. The king, with the backing of his court, ordered his people to fast, pray, and "give up their evil ways and their violence" (NIV). The first two actions would have been useless without the third. Again, did Jonah tell them what to do? Apparently not. Like the sailors, these heathen were guided by the conscience God placed in all mankind. Furthermore, the king made no assumptions that they would mollify God with their good intentions. With no guarantees, just on the outside chance that God would accept their sacrifices and prayers, they acted in obedience to the voice of God. As a matter of fact, just about everybody in this story was more obedient to the voice of God than Jonah. My definition for faith is believing God enough to do what He says. When God saw the faith of the Ninevites demonstrated by what they did, He declined to destroy them. The word for "repented" in the RSV and "had compassion" in the NIV carries the sense of "sighed with relief." This is hysterical. Jonah got mad that his prophecy went unfulfilled! Never mind mercy, he wanted to see fireworks! He had the nerve to tell God, "I knew this would happen; that's why I refused to go in the first place." So God tried to reason with him. Apparently, Jonah got angry enough to stop preaching when he saw the first signs of the Ninevites' repentance. Dr. Clarke says that the tense of verse 5 ought to be past perfect; that is, Jonah had gone out of the city and had built himself a little booth as a balcony seat. However long he preached, it wasn't for the entire forty days. We know he did not preach up until the deadline because he had time to not only build a shaded balcony seat, but watch a green plant grow up over the top of his booth to make a pleasant shade under which he sat hoping to watch the Ninevites fry. This was probably a castor oil plant, which was fast-growing with abundant leaves. But God appointed a worm to kill the plant, and a hot east wind and scorching sun to make Jonah uncomfortable. So, predictably, Jonah got angry again and demanded to die. Again, God tries to reason with him: "You're sorry for the plant, which grew without any effort on your part. [That it sprang up overnight does not mean it grew over the booth in one night, only that it sprouted unsown.] Then why shouldn't I pity Nineveh, with all its innocent children and helpless beasts?" The narrative abruptly ends there, and that is sad. There is no record of Jonah's saying, "I'm sorry, God; You were right and I was wrong. You saved my life when I repented, so I should not begrudge Your mercy in saving their lives now that they have repented." There is no record of God's asking Jonah to do anything else. And there is no record of Jonah's doing anything else. Of all the prophets, Jonah had it the easiest. He was by far the most successful, in terms of immediate results. Other prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah suffered through decades of rejection, imprisonment, and torture, yet never saw widespread acceptance of their message. Hosea and Ezekiel endured personal heartache and Daniel political intrigues. Jonah had only to go preach. He went, but with an attitude Dr. Clarke calls "abominable." I feel sorry for Jonah, being unable share the joy of seeing God work. He missed out on the thrill of a lifetime because he could not shake off his stingy nature. He completely forgot what he had learned inside the fish: "Deliverance belongs to the Lord!"--not just for himself, but for people he didn't like. (Do you know of any Christians who are more interested in condemning people than saving them?) A prophet who could not learn anything from his own suffering was apparently useless, so God let him go.
copyright 2002 Robin Hardy
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