The Book of Jonah
This book starts off with the Lord commanding Jonah to go to the great city, Nineveh because “its wickedness has come up before me,” says the Lord. Jonah responds to this by running away from the Lord. He goes down to Joppa, where he finds a ship that is on its way toTarshish, which is far away and in the opposite direction of Nineveh, pays his fare, and boards the ship. In response to this, the Lord sent a great wind on the sea and a violent storm arose which threatened the ship to break. The sailors had become terrified and started throwing cargo into the water to lighten the ship. Meanwhile, Jonah is completely unaware of this because he is below the deck fast asleep. The captain of the ship then comes down and asks him, “How can you sleep? Get up and call to your God! Maybe he will take notice of us and we will not perish”. Then the sailors decide to cast lots to see who is responsible for this great misfortune. The lot falls on Jonah. At this, the sailors became terrified because Jonah reveals who he is and who the God is that he worships. Jonah says, “I am Hebrew. I worship the Lord, the God of Heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.
They knew that Jonah was running away from the Lord. As the sea gets rougher, Jonah told the sailors to throw him into the sea because it was his fault and will make the sea calm. However, instead of this, the men had tried their best to row back to land, but the sea grew wilder than before, so they decided to throw Jonah into the sea. They cried to the Lord and asked the Lord not to kill them for taking Jonah’s life because they have done what the Lord had asked them to do. After throwing Jonah off the ship, the sea had calm down. Jonah did not die after being thrown off the ship because the Lord had arranged for a great fish to swallow Jonah. He stayed there in the belly for three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord from the belly of the fish saying that he was sorry to have disobeyed the Lord and begged for his forgiveness and mercy. He was spewed out onto dry land when he prayed to the Lord and his prayers were answered. Now the Lord told Jonah a second time to go to Nineveh to warn them of their doom and this time, he listened. This journey to Nineveh took three days. When he reached the city, he entered it and walked around in it for a day, warning, “In forty days, Nineveh shall be distroyed.” Meanwhile, the king of Nineveh who heard about this, believed in God and declared a fast that no man should eat or drink and be covered with sackcloth. He said, “Let every man give up their evil ways and their violence.
The Lord saw how they changed their ways and regretted the punishment he had promised, so he had not brought upon destruction upon the city. Jonah was very displeased with what the Lord had done, for he had come there to see Nineveh become overthrown. At this, Jonah said that he would rather die than live, so Jonah left the city and went to sit at a place east of the town and made himself a shelter to see what will become of the city. Jonah was sitting in the sun, so the Lord provided a bush so that Jonah would have shade, so that his anger would be soothed. Jonah became happy, but the next day, a worm chewed up the bush and made it wither so the sun would make Jonah faint. Jonah, again, was angry at that and would rather die than live. In the end, the Lord made Jonah realize that he was not concerned about the bush. “He does not tend the bush or make it grow. It sprang overnight and died overnight” His only concern was his happiness. The happiness that he was getting without doing any bit of work. It ended with the Lord saying, “Should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also the animals?”
The message that this text provides is applicable in many ways. This text can be taken in many ways, but I believe that Jonah represents a part of our human nature. He represents the types of men who has their own opinion on certain things, does what they wants to do, but is often times wrong, however, they are too stubborn to admit it. In some cases, if he believes that someone else is wrong, he will criticize it until he realizes that the other person is right. For example, if Jonah were given a large amount of money for no particular reason without working for it, he would take it without question. As soon as it is taken away from him, he wonders why it is gone, not realizing that he had not done a thing to get it. The text uses the bush as an example to help Jonah realize that the Lord is a kind-hearted being, who will forgive you if you are sorry for what you have done. He cares about everyone, not only human beings, but animals as well. He wants people to realize what they have done through examples, rather than hearing what is the right thing to do and accepting it. In a sense, it is like understanding a particular concept, rather than memorizing it, so that once the concept is learned, it can be applied to other concepts as well. In the text, the Lord starts off by giving Jonah a command, however, unwilling to listen to the Lord, Jonah flees to another place, hoping that everything will just go away. In turn, Jonah puts himself in danger as well as the other sailors on the ship. The Lord, being the forgiving person that he is, spares his life when Jonah prays to the Lord while being in the stomach of the fish. He then gives Jonah another chance to do the right thing, but when the Lord realizes that the people of the great city are no longer evil, he chooses not to overthrow the city, but Jonah is angry at this and waits to see what happens. The Lord gives Jonah yet another chance by showing him how gracious and merciful he is, with the bush he provides Jonah to shade him from the sun. The next thing that Jonah had to learn was that he did not put work into something, but merely accepts things when they are given to him, not realizing the Lord’s reason for relenting to punish the people of Nineveh.
In the Books of the Bible, it is stated that few contemporary scholars argue that the book of Jonah relates historical facts, for events and details in the story strain credulity. However, no single attempt to classify Jonah has commanded universal assent; and the work has been variously identified as folklore, prophetic legend, midrash, allegory, satire, and parable. This lengthy parable can have more than one point or teaching. The Books of the Bible states that central to the Book of Jonah are the concepts of divine freedom and mercy in the face of human repentance. The story is illustrative of the perspective found in a text like Jeremiah 18:7-8. Where the Lord says: “If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will repent of the evil that I intended to do to it.” Jonah knows that “deliverance belongs to Yahweh” He also knows of the divine propensity for showing unmerited mercy. Yet he balks at the notion that Nineveh, capital of Assyria and Israel’s bitter foe, should be the recipient of such mercy, despite the very genuine repentance of its inhabitants. Jonah’s story refutes any notion that Israel alone deserves divine mercy, whereas the other nations of the world merit only divine justice. Yahweh acted mercifully toward Israel, despite its persistent sinfulness. This story demonstrates the divine freedom to exercise grace, despite human culpability. The Book of Jonah is also filled with affirmations that divine sovereignty and care extends to all of creation. “Yahweh, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land”, controls the world and everything in it – storms and sea creatures, worms and wind – regardless of Jonah’s attempt to escape Yahweh’s commission by fleeing to Tarshish. Furthermore, the sovereign creator does not restrict concern for humans to Israelites alone. On the contrary, God wills to save all people, even those whom Israel regards with fear and loathing (Anderson 383).
The Book of Jonah shows us that when you are told to do something, like Jonah was told to go to Nineveh, and you do not want to, you can choose to try to escape it, by fleeing to Tarshish. If, however, you were destined for something, it will come back to you. In this case, the Lord told Jonah another time to go to Nineveh after learning his lesson. Also, it stresses the importance of forgiveness in the sense that the Lord forgave the people of Nineveh for their evil deeds, but if you do not see it, than the Lord will show you the right thing to do. Jonah finally realizes why the Lord is right when the Bush that his is “given”.
