Jonah, the son of Amittai, was a prophet raised up during the Northern Kingdom reign of Jeroboam II of Israel (BC 782-753). And Jonah being a native of Gath Hepher (2 Kings 14:25), a town three miles north of Nazareth in lower Galilee, proves a bit of historical negligence on the part of the Pharisees in Jesus' day when they stated, "Search and look, for no prophet has arisen out of Galilee" (John 7:52).
The book of Jonah is unusual in that it is the only Old Testament book to focus exclusively on a Gentile nation; however, the book's message reveals the merciful and loving heart of Almighty God more than seven centuries before Christ! Unfortunately, as we shall see, Jewish nationalism and spiritual pride routinely blinded God's covenant people, including His prophets, to His worldwide plan for salvation.
"Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying,
'Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it;
for their wickedness has come up before Me.'"
(Jonah 1:1)
Located in modern Iraq, the Nineveh of Jonah's generation boasted a populous of hundreds of thousands (Jonah 4:11) and was the long-time capital of the Assyrian Empire, which was not exactly friendly to Israel in light of the occasional invasion, pillaging, and overlordship. This loathsome reality is undoubtedly what flourished in Jonah's mind upon receiving his divine directive to go to Nineveh, whereupon the reluctant prophet, rather than traveling the five hundred miles northeast to Assyria, chose "to flee to Tarshish [Spain] from the presence of the LORD," two thousand miles to the west!
After Jonah took ship westward, God sent a violent storm that threatened the vessel gravely enough that all were terrified and appealed to their gods while tossing cargo into the sea to salvage any chance of staying afloat. Amidst the tumult the captain discovered Jonah sleeping belowdecks and hastened him to rise and plead with his God for mercy! It was then revealed to the others (by Divine sovereignty employed within the human practice of casting lots; Jonah 1:7) that Jonah was the cause of the tempest and the ship's ill fortune, to which they bid him disclose his identity and design.
The prophet expounded his case and asserted that because he had indeed fled from the LORD, therefore being the reason for the gale and high seas, calm waters would return only if they threw him into the deep--effectively sparing Jonah from forbidden suicide. Reluctantly, and pleading with Jonah's God for clemency, the ship's crew cast the defiant Hebrew into the depths...
"...and the sea ceased its raging.
Then the men feared the LORD exceedingly,
and offered a sacrifice to the LORD and took vows."
(1:15-16)
Almighty God will not be denied. He will even exhibit His glory and mercy in the wake of a defector prophet! But why did Jonah attempt to run from his God? The answer rests upon a foundation of pride, for Jonah (as with each of us) battled the all-too-familiar foe of individualism while resisting practical and spiritual discipline, temperance, true compassion, relational amity, and the list goes ever on.
The tragedy of the circumstance, however, is that Jonah sought to use the LORD God as a means to promote his human agenda rather than be utilized by God toward a divine purpose. Thus, knowing the merciful nature of God, he refused to preach repentance to an archenemy: Jonah would see Nineveh destroyed, God would have mercy. Jonah would rather have God on his side than be on the side of God. Consequently, Jonah fled his prophetic office due to a conflict of wills, not due to fear.
But escape was not so easy, particularly when considering that Jonah may have believed being thrown into the sea and drowned was plausibly the ultimate evasion of the Divine call.
"Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah.
And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights."
(1:17)
This act of God surely secured Jonah's attention, for he "prayed to the LORD his God from the fish's belly" (Jonah 2:1). His petition to God consisted of numerous psalms and heartfelt imagery depicting personal lament juxtaposed with God's saving grace, concluding with a curious statement from Ecclesiastes 5:4-5: "I will pay what I have vowed."
Although only implicit, the context of Jonah's pleading and psalms of thanksgiving make clear the fact that the paying of vows, and personal sacrifice, would include declaring God's power and mercy to the world should he survive: "But I will sacrifice to You with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay what I have vowed. Salvation is of the LORD" (Jonah 2:9). Of course, this is what Jonah was to have done in the first place. And I imagine all of us can empathize with Jonah's obstinacy in that one time or another we, too, have been in the same boat.
"So the LORD spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.
Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time, saying,
'Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach to it the message that I tell you.'
So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh...
and cried out and said, 'Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!'"
(2:10 - 3:4)
Verse 3:3 is quite an understatement. It would seem that the drama of running from God and surviving the twin calamities of a terrible storm and being eaten by a giant fish had finally transformed Jonah's recalcitrant heart into that of an obedient and humble servant, for straightaway after being vomited back onto the Israeli shore he treks five hundred miles east to Nineveh (indeed a long time to reflect, or fret) and upon entering the city he declares God's impending judgment. Add to this the fact that Jonah was a walking object lesson(1) from God with his skin undoubtedly bleached from the fish's gut and then burnt and withered from the arid journey across northern Mesopotamia!
Primed from recent years' plagues in BC 765 and 759 and a solar eclipse in BC 763, and upon hearing Jonah's avowal (ca. BC 757), the people of Nineveh, including their king(2), "believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth," to which the LORD God responded by "relenting from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it" (3:4-10). But...
"...it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he became angry."
(4:1)
Jonah has labored hard to achieve moral failure, even offering a prayer of vexation: "Ah, LORD, was this not what I said when I was still in my country?" The embittered prophet acknowledges God's gracious, merciful, patient, loving nature and then implores Almighty God to take his life (4:2-3), whereupon God calls into question Jonah's "right" to be angry. Jonah reacts by leaving the city proper and seeking a private shelter so that he might brood and observe the city's fate once the forty-day "grace-term" was up (Jonah 3:4).
God supernaturally caused a plant to grow(3) to give Jonah respite from the sun, a Divinely merciful gesture Jonah is actually grateful for. But the dawning of the next day brought another test for the dissenting seer as the LORD ruins the plant and sends a harsh wind that amplifies the desert heat. Exposed to the elements and both physically and emotionally raw, Jonah curses himself to death yet again, proving that the sun had indeed gone down on his indignation.
God then questioned Jonah's right to be angry about the plant! He replied that he absolutely had a right to be angry about the plant, "even unto death!" (4:9) It is here that the LORD calls out Jonah's lunacy:
"You have had pity on the plant for which you have not labored,
nor made it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night.
Should I not pity Nineveh, that great city,
in which are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons
who cannot discern between their right hand and their left [i.e. children]...?"(4)
(4:10-11)
The Creator of all people establishes His love for His creation and proves His love by offering wayward souls the choice between truth and folly. It is notable that the Ninevites who did not know the God of the Hebrews responded wisely to His call for repentance while God's own prophet seemingly stiff-armed Him. Indeed, proper fear of the LORD reveals His judgment as righteous and is the beginning of wisdom (Psalm 19:9; 111:10).
Yet an infuriated Jonah was inclined to die rather than allow God to change Jonah's unforgiving spirit. Thereby, when the child of God no longer fears their Maker and disregards the necessary accountability to Him, such a one's heart has begun wearing the path worn long ago by fallen Lucifer who declared, "I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High..." (Isaiah 14:14)
This is severe enmity against God, an insurrection of the flesh against the Spirit that Jesus Christ has died and risen from the dead to set us free from (Rom. 8:6-14).
Notes:
1. Jonah is the only prophet whom Jesus personally likened to Himself (Matt. 12:39-41).
2. Probably Ashurdan III (BC 773-755)
3. The immediate supernatural growth of the shade plant for Jonah finds a parallel in the Creation account of Genesis 1:11-13, providing stalwart evidence of a literal six-day Creation as opposed to the progressive creation and theistic evolution falsities that insist upon the long-term "natural" growth of the first plant and animal life. Such a naturalistic view steals the glory of God's supernatural and omnipotent creativity.
4. With 120,000 children, Nineveh's total population easily approached 600,000.
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