Hi all! I apologize for the answers getting posted late. I would love to blame the technology that I use, but, no, I’ve got all of those bugs worked out. It just seems that I ran out of days this week.
I absolutely LOVE the questions this week. None of them are really simple questions – they are thinking questions. They are questions that need a lot of background to be given before they can be asked. They are questions that lead into my message really well! Great stuff. Without further ado, I give you – Jonah!
Jonah
If he had full expectation that God would wipe out Nineveh as a result of his preaching, and that would make him happiest, then why did he run in the first place and have to then go through a near-death experience just to carry that out? It would seem like a worthwhile excursion to participate in ushering in the doom of a #1 enemy–from his point of view.
True, it would seem that if Jonah wanted to see Nineveh destroyed, he would have happily gone there in the first place, preached one of the most non-passionate messages of all times, and seen Nineveh wiped out by God. But we don’t hear what Jonah said to God when God called Him to go to Nineveh. It’s revealed to us in 4:2 when Jonah says to God,
And he prayed to the LORD and said, “O LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.”
Jonah ran because Jonah knew that God would be merciful, even to a people as evil as the Ninevites.
Did Jonah then preach out of the motive and assumption that God would annihilate Nineveh in the most Hollywood way?
It’s hard to tell what motive and assumptions were there, but my guess (guess is the key word here!) is that Jonah preached with a motive of being obedient, since he had just been disciplined for his disobedience. He didn’t seem to be convinced of what would happen to Nineveh, since he sat on the hill to watch. It does appear that he was still holding out hope that God would come down with an iron fist.
Thankfully, for all of us, God did not. God doesn’t judge harshly or completely right away, but often, in His mercy, is patient, and withholds that judgment. Our problem is that many times we see God’s patience as His approval or His disinterest… but that’s a totally different subject!
In Jonah 4:10, God says to Jonah, “You pity the plant . . . ” but he cared about the plant only because of what it did for him. He did not pity the plant; he pitied himself.
True. I think “pity” might carry such a distinct meaning in today’s culture that we can miss what is being said. Pity can mean, “to be grieved on account of any thing; that unearned feeling of compassion that precedes an act of interceding, sparing or delivering one in need.” Jonah was grieved over the death of the plant.
And I have to bring up the plant. I think I almost get the teaching tool by God: Jonah was more preoccupied with the plant’s prosperity and then sudden death (for his own selfish comfort) than he was concerned over “more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left” …but I think I need to hear a little more on it to wrap my head around this bizarre ending.
I’ll be careful not to preach my whole message here, but your observations are accurate, and it paints a VERY stark picture of who Jonah was and how he felt about the Ninevites. The fact that he would be so frustrated over the doom of a piece of agriculture that he was in no way responsible for creating, nurturing or caring for, and yet be so flippant over the death of people who were living apart from God, is disturbing. (Especially if you take into consideration a number of interpreters who believe the 120,000 doesn’t refer to the totality of Nineveh’s population, but just the young children.) Either way, Jonah displays what can only be defined as a hatred for these people, deciding in his own court that they are undeserving of mercy… a mercy that only a short time earlier he himself had to thank for being delivered out of his fishy grave.
As for the bizarre ending, it’s very dramatic. As 21st Century movie goers, we love the ending of our stories to be wrapped up all pretty, for all of the conflict to be resolved, for the good guys to win, and for the bad guys to either lose or be converted to good guys. So when the book of Jonah ends so abruptly, we are forced to answer the pseudo-hypothetical question that God asks Jonah. The answer is, well, yes, of course, You should show compassion to them. Why would I want anything besides that? However, because the question isn’t answered, the reader (us!) has to answer the question for Jonah. We have to evaluate what the correct answer is, and then compare it to what Jonah’s answer might have been. It causes us to wrestle with this book even more after the fact. It is an amazing piece of literature, but more importantly, an amazingly sharp arrow that God still uses today to point out the prejudices in our own lives, and the matchless mercy of our great God!
The danger of talking about Jonah is judging and criticizing him and what he did when I am no better. Why do you think this book is here – to show us that God can use anyone, that even God’s prophets were flawed, to show us our own sinful attitudes? The focus is on Jonah, but reading about Jonah in Luke makes me think it is more about the Ninevites than Jonah. They were so “evil” and yet they repented and responded appropriately as soon as Jonah brought God’s message. Jesus talks about their response, not about Jonah’s.
These are excellent questions and observations, and ones that we should all continue to wrestle with as we read Scripture. We should always ask the question – “why is this here?” To be truthful, it is my opinion that the main point of the book of Jonah is about the person Jonah. We gain insight into his feelings about the Ninevites before he goes, insight into his feelings about the Ninevites after they repent, and then a powerful rebuttal of his feelings by God Himself. So, the immediate point (at least for us on Sunday!) is Jonah.
However, within the story, there are so many other sub-plots that carry great weight. Jonah’s disobedience, Jonah’s prayer and psalm, Jonah’s message, Nineveh’s repentance, the mercy of God… the list could go on and on. When we see Jesus talk about Jonah, He focuses on the response of the people of Nineveh. But even their response is tied into the person of Jonah. Jesus could be referring to the fact that the Ninevites responded even though the message itself was presented as monotonous as they get. Or Jesus could be referring to the fact that as Jonah was delivered by God in what can only be a miracle, bringing Jonah “back from the watery grave” and offering deliverance to the people of Nineveh.
What on earth does it take to develop such a massive to-the-core hatred and anger in a person, called by God, to the point of which he expresses TWICE that he wants to die after fulfilling what God called him to do? Does this have more to do with resentment due to the caliber of the enemy (Nineveh), or is Jonah just a Mr. Potter from “It’s a Wonderful Life” by personality?
I wish this was a simple answer. There is no doubt, the Ninevites were a wicked, evil, mean, arrogant people, and were responsible for much of the pain and destruction experienced by God’s people. We don’t know how their behavior directly impacted Jonah, but to be sure, it did somehow, even if it was the fact that he just heard from the old-timers all their war stories, and Nineveh became what Russia was to many American school children growing up in the heat of the cold war. (i.e. The Boogeyman)
That being said, what Jonah did was take his personal feelings, based on experience or not, and chose to view the Ninevites through that lens, instead of viewing them through the eyes of God. I believe this is the main topic of Jonah…how are we viewing those types of people in our lives? (For us today, the Muslim community after 9/11.) How many people do we carry a prejudice against, where we would, quite frankly, rather see them go to Hell than to experience the mercy and grace of God? This should lead us to ask the question, “Am I Jonah?” (And that was as close as I can possibly get to preaching my message without doing so… )
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