Jonah is my favorite Old Testament book. Does that surprise you? Well, I have my reasons, and I am ready in
season and out of season to give a defense of my overlooked and under-appreciated
Jonah.
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| From Jason Davis's website |
Even though it’s classified with the
"prophets," Jonah is more of a straightforward narrative. And what a rip-roaringly good tale it is! I
love that Jonah starts out right away with his disobedience. That
comforts me. Here is Jonah – a prophet of God. He lives in daily communication
with the Most High. Yet, when God tells him to do something he doesn't want to
do, Jonah runs away like a little monkey boy. Here I am – God’s daughter
through Christ. I live in daily communication with the Most High through His
Holy Spirit. Yet, when God tells me to do something I do not want to do, seven
times out of ten, I cower and whimper and try to avoid Him. But, even I am not
so foolish as to think that a sea cruise to Tarshish will get me away from the
presence of the Lord. But, Jonah does – which is funny. This is a very funny
book.
So, here we have Jonah, riding on a boat to Tarshish, where
he has convinced himself that the Lord will never find him. We all know what
happens next: God sends out a giant storm; the pagan sailors freak out, start
throwing cargo overboard, and pray desperately; their gods do what they can do –
which is nothing; Jonah's snoozing down in the cargo hold. The sailors rouse
him with cries of "Hey, you! Get up and call on your God that He
may consider us, so that we may not perish!" See, God is not only
interested in getting through to Jonah, but to these sailors as well.
Who doesn't like the next part? 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. Three things stand out. First of all, God is so startling and
creative. Who else would have thought of a fish? Also, He is kind. That
rascally Jonah, all grumpy and hard of heart, was running away from God and essentially
giving Him the raspberry. Does God strike him down and find another prophet to
do His bidding? No. God is infinitely patient with Jonah. Patient, but not
without delivering a bit of comeuppance to His wayward servant. Jonah was stuck
in a fish, after all. Lastly, it is significant that it was for three days.
Three days, Jonah sat in that fish’s belly, breathing in the noxious fumes of
decaying sea life, bathed in stomach acids, pouting and gnashing his teeth in
rebellion. It took Jonah three whole days to decide that God was God and
he had some repenting to do. I know I’m stubborn, but I ain’t got nothing on
Jonah!
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| From Ford Jordan.com |
At last, the old reprobate decides
to call upon the Lord for deliverance. He repents and promises to fulfill his
vows and be a good boy from now on. So, the Lord spoke to the fish, and it
vomited Jonah onto dry land. Nice! Of course, there was no hot shower and
fresh set of clothes waiting for Jonah on the beach. Picture him with me, will
you? Hair and beard plastered with regurgitated stomach acid and half-digested remnants
of seafood; his headpiece all askew; his clothing reeking of things too nasty
to contemplate. Without skipping a beat, the Lord says, "Arise, go to
Nineveh, that great city, and preach to it the message that I tell you."
So, stinky old Jonah trudges his way to the city and walks about it crying,
"Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!"
God, whose wisdom is deeper than
anything man can fathom, had a very good reason for not letting Jonah get
freshened up after his gastrointestinal sojourn: the pagan people of Nineveh
worshipped both the fish goddess, Nanshe, and the fish god, Dagon. They were
riveted by the stench and convicted by the revelation of a God who could
control so easily the mighty beasts of the sea. Jonah's humiliation was used by
God as a vehicle for the Ninevites' salvation. They believed God, proclaimed a
fast, and put on sackcloth. The king himself sat in ashes and sent out a decree
commanding that everyone turn from wickedness in the hope that God would relent
and turn away His fierce anger. Then God saw their works, that they turned
from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He
would bring upon them, and He did not do it.
To which the Lord mildly replies: Is
it right for you to be angry?
Though I don’t think I’ve ever been
this extreme, there is residual hardness in my heart –though I know well
my own hopeless cause outside the blood of Christ – that makes me understand
Jonah’s words too well. It is a hidden, visceral understanding that I’m ashamed
to acknowledge. I know it's there, and God knows it's there. And I praise God
mightily when He responds to Jonah (and thus to me) with an incredulous, but
gentle, "Is it right for you to be angry?"
What does our prophet do next? He
goes up onto a hillside overlooking Nineveh, hoping yet to see the wrath of the
Lord consume the evil city. I know God is Spirit, but I still see Him shaking
His head at this; don't you? Again, though, instead of smacking Jonah down, God
provides mercy. He causes a plant to grow up, shading Jonah's head from the
harsh sun. Jonah takes this gift as his due, but it does not cause him to reconsider
his hatred of Nineveh. I am convinced that that is the reason that God next prepares
a worm to chew up the shading plant and cause it to wither. So, the wind and
the sun beat down upon Jonah, nearly causing him to faint.
Jonah begins to whine again: It
is better for me to die than to live! God replies, Is it right for you
to be angry about the plant? The prophet, clueless as ever, avers, It is
right for me to be angry, even to death! I love Jonah’s honesty in recounting to us a story that never
casts him in a good light. And, even though he is wrong, wrong, wrong
throughout this whole narrative, he never loses faith that he can be completely
himself with God and yet still be loved by Him. Jonah keeps up the
conversation, and he trusts that God will continue to abide with him. And so, in the face of Jonah's whining and
anger, God delivers His heart's cry:
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.
And 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 -- and much livestock?
The end of Jonah always makes
me cry with self-awareness of how small I am in stature and spirit. I like to
think that Jonah cried, too, at the piercing revelation of his own failings to
mirror the great and good heart of the God he served. The narration stops
abruptly after God's rebuke. And that is the last reason that I love this book.
Because, that is life, isn't it? It does not consist of episodes that
end tidily with an over-arching thematic denouement. All each story in a life
can end with is the goodness of God proclaimed yet again, because it is the
only stable element of the human condition. We are bad people learning to serve
a holy, good, and wholly good God. And so, though I believe that Jonah did
repent again, because he did, after all, write out this adventure for
posterity, I do not know for sure how he replied to God. And, by leaving the story
as he did, Jonah was telling us that what he said or did after that was not
important. God's love, God's mercy, God's grace -- those were final words of
this amazing tale.
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