Exploring Life, Faith, & All Things Nerdy
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I love the way Jonah 2 ends. Right after the prayer concludes, it says this:
And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.
(Jonah 2:10)
Can you imagine what that would feel like? It’s one thing to be swallowed, but to be vomited up? I can’t even handle it when one of my children throw up. I get nauseous and feel like I’m going to puke, too. Thankfully my wife has a stronger stomach and less of a gag reflex. The thought of actually being thrown up – along with all the bile and remains of undigested fish food….
But it’s really no different than what Jesus says about lukewarm, stale, tepid Christians.
I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.
(Revelation 3:15-16)
When God commanded the fish to regurgitate the rebellious prophet, the fish was probably relieved. Jonah was that tepid, wishy-washy fence-sitter that Jesus warned about later in Revelation. Jonah probably didn’t set will in the fish’s stomach.
LET’S TRY THIS AGAIN
Then we see what I consider to be one of the most amazing sentences in the entire story as we being chapter 3.
Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.
(Jonah 3:1)
If I were God, I think I would have just left Jonah on his own and went to find someone else. There has to be someone better than Jonah – less racist, less spiteful, less flighty, more willing to take God’s word to people who aren’t just like him. But God didn’t give up on Jonah. God is a God of second chances. The sailors were given a second chance. The people of Nineveh would be given a second chance. And Jonah is given a second chance.
As a society we used to love good redemption stories. We like to see people who messed up get a second chance at life. But I don’t think we’re that way anymore. We want justice! We want people to get what they have coming to them! If someone is pegged as a racist, then that could be the end of their career. We’re so willing to dish out judgement and punishment that lives can be ruined for good based on a few Tweets in their past. We aren’t willing to help them work through their issues and give them a fresh start.
That’s the whole point of Philip Yancey’s book Vanishing Grace from a few years ago.
But I’m eternally grateful that while society may be short on Grace, God is overflowing with it. In the story of Jonah, it’s Jonah himself who is in most need of God’s grace. I think that’s the point.
The Bible is full of men and women who were given a second chance at life because of God’s grace. Just to list a few – Jacob, Moses, Samson, David, the Woman at the Well, Mary Magdalene, Peter, Paul. Each of these people had demons in their past (figurative AND literal). Jacob was a con-artist. Moses was a murderer. The Woman at the Well had a really checkered sexual history. Peter denied knowing Jesus. Paul used to persecute Christians.
Did any of these deserve a second chance? If they didn’t, then neither do I.
Jonah got a second chance because I think he hadn’t learned his lesson yet. Sure, he’s learned about God’s justice through the storm and about God’s mercy and salvation through the fish. But Jonah needs to learn more about God’s grace and love.
I know plenty of people demand justice for being wronged but then expect mercy when they are in the wrong. That’s Jonah’s outlook. Jonah was thankful to receive mercy for his own sinful actions, but he was still demanding justice to be done for the people of Nineveh.
GOD’S WORD, NOT YOURS
God says, it doesn’t work that way. God gave him these instructions:
“Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.”
(Jonah 3:2)
If Jonah were able to proclaim his own message, I wonder what he would say. Actually, I don’t have to wonder. All I have to do is get on “Christian” Twitter to see what the modern-day “Jonahs” are saying to their own “Ninevehs.” It’s not pretty. And it’s not good news. And it’s not changing any hearts.
We’ll get to what message Jonah gave to the people in Nineveh next time, but I don’t want to skip over this sentence:
Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh.
(Jonah 3:3a)
Does obedience indicate a change of heart? Nope. But it’s a start.
Imagine being covered in slimy fish bile and then having to make the 500+ mile overland journey to a foreign city. I bet Jonah had some interesting conversations along the way.
But here’s something you would miss if you didn’t do a little research into the ancient city of Nineveh. I’m just going to quote the Wikipedia article about it here. What do you notice about it?
The English placename Nineveh comes from Latin Ninive and Septuagint Greek Nineuḗ (Νινευή) under influence of the Biblical Hebrew Nīnewēh (נִינְוֶה[2] from the Akkadian Ninua (var. Ninâ) or Old Babylonian Ninuwā. The original meaning of the name is unclear but may have referred to a patron goddess. The cuneiform for Ninâ (𒀏) is a fish within a house (cf. Aramaic nuna, “fish”). This may have simply intended “Place of Fish” or may have indicated a goddess associated with fish or the Tigris, possibly originally of Hurrian origin. The city was later said to be devoted to “the goddess Ishtar of Nineveh” and Nina was one of the Sumerian and Assyrian names of that goddess.
That’s right. The name of the city literally meant “Place of Fish.” The symbol for Nineveh was a fish in a house. And they worshiped a god/goddess represented by a man-fish hybrid!
Tell me God doesn’t have a sense of humor. Jonah spends three days inside a fish. He is then vomited out of the fish and makes a three-week journey on foot just to be greeted by…images of a man-fish in the “Place of Fish.”
A prophet of God sleeping in a boat at sea during a particularly violent storm which has everyone else on board panicked. The prophet is rudely awakened and miraculously causes the storm to cease.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
The more I study the story of Jonah, the clearer it becomes that Jesus based a lot of his ministry and teachings on the life of Jonah. The connections become obvious to anyone paying attention. In fact, Jesus makes it obvious for us by coming right out and telling us that “something greater than Jonah is here” (Matthew 12).
So how is Jesus the new Jonah?
We’ll look at this throughout the story, but let’s just stay in chapter 1 for now.
THE WORD OF THE LORD
The opening phrase of Jonah’s story should perk the ears of Christians. “The Word of the Lord…” doesn’t that have some significance?
Look at how John’s gospel begins: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Jesus IS the Word of God. Jesus’ story is inextricably connected to Jonah’s from the opening phrase.
GO TO NINEVEH
God calls Jonah to leave his home (Israel) and go to a foreign, hostile land (Nineveh) to proclaim God’s message. Jonah, somewhat understandably, is hesitant to do this. Instead, he runs away from the call to foreign missions.
Where is Jesus in this? How is Jesus the new Jonah in this regard? The answer is best summarized in Philippians 2:
Who, being in very nature God,
Did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
Rather, he made himself nothing
By taking on the very nature of a servant,
Being made in human likeness,
And being found in appearance as a man,
He humbled himself
By becoming obedient to death –
Even death on a cross!
Looking back at John 1, The Message version puts it this way:
The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.
Jesus was sent on a mission from God to leave his home in heaven, to come to a foreign land (the world), to preach to a hostile population, and ultimately to be killed for it.
Jonah didn’t want to leave Israel and go to Nineveh for fear of what might happen. Christ left heaven and came to Earth fully knowing what would happen. Christ is the greater Jonah.
THE STORM AT SEA
Then there’s the storm. I want to draw your attention to all the parallels between Jonah 1:3-16 and Mark 4:35-41.
Sailing in the opposite direction/other side
Violent windstorm on the sea and imminent danger of ship’s sinking
Deep sleep during the storm
Rude awakening by frightened shipmates
Calming of sea by protagonist’s actions
Shipmates’ awestruck fear at divine power
Before you start crying “Coincidence!” I must remind you that it was Jesus himself who drew the parallels between his ministry and Jonah’s. Jesus’ earliest followers purposefully pointed to these connections in the way they told their stories.
God was trying to teach Jonah (and subsequently Israel) the lesson that God cares about the Gentile nations, too. As Peter and Paul would put it, God wants all people everywhere to be saved (Acts 17:30; 2 Peter 3:9). God loved the world to the extent that he sent his one and only Son (John 3:16).
Not long after Jonah, the Assyrian Empire would rise in power once again and overthrow the evil kingdom of Israel, taking their people into exile and erasing them from the annals of history. Even in the face of this unspeakable tragedy, God still had a bigger plan in mind:
“It is too small a thing for you to be my servant
To restore the tribes of Jacob
And bring back those of Israel I have kept.
I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
That my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” (Isaiah 49:6)
Jesus, with this very passage in mind, would tell his earliest followers, “You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5).
Jesus is Jonah. So am I. So are you. Each one of us is called to leave the comfort and security of our own tribe in order to take God’s word to the nations.
I may be one of the few people in the world who considers Jonah among my favorite books of the Bible. Don’t @ me. The book of Jonah has a lot of things going for it:
Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai… (Jonah 1:1)
In the fifteenth year of Amaziah the son of Joash, king of Judah, Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel, began to reign in Samaria, and he reigned forty-one years. And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. He did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which he made Israel to sin. He restored the border of Israel from Lebo-hamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which he spoke by his servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was from Gath-hepher. For the Lord saw that the affliction of Israel was very bitter, for there was none left, bond or free, and there was none to help Israel. But the Lord had not said that he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven, so he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam the son of Joash. (2 Kings 14:23-27)
Jonah was a prophet in the Norther Kingdom of Israel during the reign of Jeroboam II (ca. 750 BC).
During Jeroboam’s reign (who was an evil king, BTW) the borders of Israel were restored to the greatest extent they had ever been. Israel gain in power like it hadn’t seen in a long, long time. Israel improved its military, its economy, and everything was going well. Israel had been made great again, all thanks to the prophetic word of Jonah, son of Amittai.
So we know that Jonah worked closely with the king. We know that Jonah oversaw one of the greatest surges in nationalistic power they had ever seen. We know that Israel’s enemies were losing strength during this time. Jonah was surely swelled up with nationalistic pride and probably equated patriotism with religious fervor.
That’s why the next words in the story are so shocking:
“Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” (Jonah 1:2)
This was the first time God had called one of his prophets to go specifically to a gentile nation for the purpose of prophesying to/against them. Why is this important? Why Nineveh?
NINEVEH
The earliest mention of Nineveh is way back in Genesis 10. It was one of the major cities established in the Fertile Crescent along the Tigris River. Genesis claims that it was established by Nimrod as part of his kingdom. This automatically puts Nineveh in a bad light, because Nimrod was viewed as an enemy of God.
Nineveh is a very ancient city. It was an ancient city by the time the Assyrian Empire rose to power. The Assyrians were brutal. When they overthrew a city or nation, they would completely decimate its people and culture. Assyria had its eyes set on Israel for a while because Israel was a very strategic location. But during Jonah’s time the Assyrian Empire had a string of incompetent rulers and was in a period of decline and upheaval.
Nineveh was not the capital city of Assyria at that time. But it was easily representative of the Assyrian Empire in much the same way New York City, Chicago, or Los Angeles would be representative of the USA. If God wanted to send a message to the Assyrian Empire, Nineveh was as good of a place as any.
But why even bother?
God tells Jonah that their “evil has come up before me.” The phrase is similar to saying, “I’ve had it up to HERE with their evil!” YHWH had not turned a blind eye to the evils of the empire and the surrounding nations. YHWH would seize this moment of opportunity, while the empire was up against the ropes in decline, to try and reach them with his message of mercy.
And God chose Jonah to be the mouthpiece, the arbiter of grace to Israel’s enemy.
What could possibly go wrong?
God told Jonah to get up and go to Nineveh…
But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord. (Jonah 1:3)
Jonah, what are you doing? Running away from God? Are you crazy?
Notice a few things about this verse. Tarshish is mentioned three times. This was a purposeful, deliberate plan on Jonah’s part. He didn’t just show up and board the first boat he came across. He wanted to pick the farthest point on the map – a three year round trip by some estimates.
“From the presence of the Lord” is said twice. Jonah knew he was directly disobeying God. He was doing everything he could to get out of this trip. By why would he think God wouldn’t be in Tarshish? Because Isaiah had said as much:
I will set a sign among them. And from them I will send survivors to the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, who draw the bow, to Tubal and Javan, to the coastlands far away, that have not heard my fame or seen my glory. (Isaiah 66:19)
God’s word and presence hadn’t been proclaimed in Tarshish. Perfect. Let’s go there!
Jonah went down to Joppa and down into the boat. This begins a downward spiral, descending into further rebellion and distance from God and closer to chaos and the grave.
And that phrase “paid the fare” is better understood as commissioning the whole ship and crew for the voyage. He wasn’t just buying a ticket for a bunk on the boat. He was financing the entire mission.
Verse three emphasizes the lengths to which Jonah was willing to go in order NOT to do what God told him to do. Nineveh was about a 550 mile, relatively easy trip across land via trade routes. Tarshish was on the Southern coast of Spain at the farthest edge of the Mediterranean Sea, risking storms, shipwrecks, pirates, disease, and more.
Jonah truly was the world’s worst prophet. I don’t like Jonah.
But then I realize that I see so much of Jonah inside me. To what lengths have I gone to avoid doing what God has called me to do? Who am I staying away from? What am I running from? What responsibilities am I shrugging off?
There’s a little bit of Jonah in all of us.
Daniel N. Lee 