The four chapters that tell the familiar story of Jonah are extremely interesting and tell us a lot about how God deals with people, not just Jonah the prophet, but also the people of Nineveh.
When the Lord gives Jonah the message for Nineveh that his judgement is against it, Jonah goes “in the opposite direction to get away from the Lord.” Nineveh was a large city (it took three days to “see it all”) on the Tigris River in what is now northern Iraq. Jonah gets on a boat in Joppa that was leaving across the Mediterranean for Tarshish.
Guess what? You can’t hide from God. You can’t get away from Him and Jonah should have known that. Actually, he probably did know this, but his actions caused a lot of trouble. The ship he sailed on was in a terrible storm and the captain and sailors finally figured out it was because of Jonah. Jonah tells them to throw him into the sea and even though they didn’t want to do it, they eventually saw they had to.
Then, Jonah was swallowed by a great fish just as the Lord had arranged. Was it this great fish a whale as is so often depicted? There are whales in the Mediterranean so it may well have been a whale.
What would you have done if you had been swallowed by a great fish? You bet – you would have prayed, which is exactly what Jonah did. According to Jonah’s prayer, he spent a terrifying time in the sea before the fish rescued him. After he told God that he would fulfill his vows and that he realized his salvation cames from the Lord alone, the Lord ordered the fish to spit him out onto the beach.
Jonah goes to Nineveh to shout out the Lord’s message: “Forty days from now Nineveh will be destroyed.” The people of Nineveh took the message seriously; they really believed it. The king, his officials and the people fasted and wore garments of mourning for their evil ways and violence, thinking that God might change his mind and not destroy them. And God did – in His abundant mercy, He decided not to destroy the city.
And did this ever tick off Jonah, so angry that he complained to the Lord about it. Didn’t you just love his complaining about being merciful and compassionate, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love, eager to turn back from destroying people?
God set him straight just as Jesus set the teachers and Pharisees straight by predicting that he would be in the grave for three days just as Jonah had been in the belly of the fish for that long. He told them that “the people of Nineveh will stand up against this generation on judgment day and condemn it, for they repented of their sins at the preaching of Jonah. Now someone greater than Jonah is here—but you refuse to repent.”
Tomorrow, we’ll be reading II Kings 15 and II Chronicles 26.
What Doesn’t Kill You
Today I downloaded a new Iris Johansson book called What Doesn’t Kill You from audible.com. I’ve listened to about half of it and it’s every bit as good as the other books of hers I have read. She has another book coming out in Augus that I am also looking forward to reading.
Until next time…
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