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This article was originally published in The Christian Leader (February 2004:6-9).

 

The Relentless God!

A Reflection on Jonah.

by Pierre Gilbert

            The story of Jonah is probably one of the best-known stories in the Bible. Kids love it and adults are fascinated by it. Unfortunately, the main point of the story is too often lost on its readers.

To really appreciate this odd story, we first need to put ourselves in the context of Hebrew narrative. One of the problems we face when we read Hebrew narrative is that we often read it too seriously, without any sensitivity for the humor, the sarcasm and the irony that are often integral parts of Old Testament narratives. A light heart and an easy laugh are vital requirements to reading Hebrew narrative successfully. We need the same attitude of eager expectation as when we are about to hear a good joke. But beware! If we are going to laugh, we have to be willing to pay the price.

There is an old Jewish folktale that illustrates quite well how we should approach the story of Jonah. This is my own “Reader’s Digest” version of it.

Once upon a time there was a poor farmer who lived in a tiny little house with his wife and their nine children. Unable to bear the situation any longer, the poor farmer went to his rabbi to seek a solution. “What can I do for you, my dear friend,” the rabbi asked him.

“Well, rabbi,” the farmer answered, “I have a problem. You see, my house is too small for my family and me. I have no space I can call my own. Tell me what I should do.”

After pondering the problem for a few minutes, the rabbi responded: “My dear friend, here is what you will do over the next five days. Tomorrow morning you will take your 15 chickens and bring them in the house to live with you. On the second day take in your two goats. On the third day, your eight rabbits. On the fourth day bring in your cow. And on the fifth day, you will take in your horse. Come back and see me in three weeks.”

The farmer did as he was told. Three weeks later, he was back in the rabbi’s house, more dejected than ever. “Well,” said the rabbi, “How are things?”

“Ah, my good rabbi, what did you do to me? I have never been so miserable in my life. I have chickens in my bed, a goat in my bathtub and pigs in the kitchen. I don’t have anywhere to sit, and I will spare you the stink. My good wife is so upset with me that she won’t let me come near her, not with the horse looking on anyway.”

The rabbi answered: “Tomorrow take all your animals out of the house, then come back and see me on the following day.” The poor farmer did as he was told. Early the next morning as the rabbi was taking a walk, he saw the poor farmer running down the hill towards him. “What seems to be the problem?” the rabbi asked to the disheveled farmer. “There is no problem, Rabbi,” said the man. “I rushed here simply to thank you. You’ve done a miracle. Two weeks ago, I was a miserable man who lived in a tiny house. Now I am a contented man who lives in a mansion!” 

I am not suggesting that the story of Jonah is simply a folktale, but we will gain more insight if we keep in mind some of the tongue-in-cheek characteristics of Hebrew narrative.

Let’s review the biblical story. One day, God erupts in the prophet Jonah’s life and commands him to preach the word of the Lord, a word of repentance. Normally that should not represent a problem; this is what being a prophet is all about. But there is more to it. The Lord adds, “Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me” (1:2).

Jonah’s reaction is swift. We can almost hear the prophet scream, “Time out! God! Nineveh? Never! These people are liable to believe the message and be saved!” The text does not say it in so many words, but it’s there. Jonah’s reaction is understandable. Nineveh was an important Assyrian city. The Assyrians were the bullies of the Ancient Near East world. They were a cruel and oppressive people who ruled with an iron fist for over a century. They were hated by all. To put it bluntly, to ask Jonah to preach a message that might lead to the salvation of the Ninevites would have been akin to asking a rabbi to speak a message that might have led to the salvation of the Nazis during World War II. God’s command went against every fiber of Jonah’s being.

At this point, the problem with Jonah is his narrow understanding of God’s character. Jonah’s God is neatly wrapped up in a little package. As a “professional” prophet, it was Jonah’s business to know God, and the one thing he did know was that God had no right to ask him to do this. In one way, Jonah was right. The primary task of the Israelite prophet was to speak to his own people, not to contribute to the salvation of the enemies. Caught in the jaws of a painfully contradictory paradox, Jonah adopts the only reasonable course of action open to him. He attempts to put some distance between him and God; he takes off for the great city of Tarshish.

The move to Tarshish is brilliant. First, it’s exactly in the opposite direction from Nineveh. By this strategy, Jonah is perhaps hoping to weaken Yahweh’s ability to force him to go to Nineveh. Or more realistically, perhaps Jonah is hoping that in the time it takes Yahweh to get him back on track, the city of Nineveh will fall. A great plan indeed!

            BUT! What does the Lord care about borders and oceans? The God of Israel demonstrates his absolute control over the seas by cooking up a great storm. The prophet, however, is not at all intimidated. He simply goes below deck and falls asleep. Jonah is not worried. He cares little for his life…only that the Ninevites should die.

            BUT! The sailors need answers and they cast lots. Lo and behold, God controls those too! They discover Jonah is the cause of their calamity. They rouse him, and he is forced to testify. His version of the Four Spiritual Laws is remarkable by its simplicity: “I am a Hebrew and I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land” (1:9). From this confession of faith, we learn Jonah knew all along that distance would not matter. Yahweh is the God of heaven whose authority extends to all of creation. Is Jonah out of options? Absolutely not! “Throw me overboard,” he says! He cares little for his life… only that the Ninevites should die! The sailors object. The last thing they want to do is harm this man, for who knows what the Lord will bring upon them if they kill his messenger.

            BUT! They have no choice, and so they throw him overboard. The sea grows calm and they are saved. Plus as a bonus they worship the Lord. The reason behind Jonah’s reluctance to preach to Nineveh is now plain. He has a super power. A gift. Like the great evangelist Billy Graham, every time he speaks, people turn to God.

Now Jonah is in the sea. Clearly, there is no longer any hope of survival. One can almost hear Jonah’s cry of victory: “I win God! I win!”  He cares little for his life… only that the Ninevites should die. 

BUT! God summons a great monster from the depths of the sea. Before Jonah realizes what is happening, he is swallowed whole! Three days and three nights he sits in the belly of the great fish. What does one do for three whole days in the belly of a sea monster? For starters, you think. There is nothing else to do! You think and you pray. You think about yourself. Your life. Your priorities. Your future. You think about God.      Poor Jonah. He thought he had God all nicely boxed in. But now he has three whole days to figure out that there is no box big enough to contain the Lord of heaven and earth-- three whole days to figure out his real job description. There is nothing like the overpowering rotten smell of a fish belly to focus the mind. In time, Jonah has a change of heart. “What I have vowed, I will make good,” he says. “Salvation comes from the Lord” (2:9b). Left with no other option, Jonah finally agrees to fulfill his mission.

“And the Lord commanded the fish and it vomited Jonah unto dry land (2:10).” Ending up in the belly of a great fish is bad enough, but there is worse. It is to be vomited by a fish. I give you the gooey prophet. Think of the humiliation; even a fish won’t have him.

Well now, we are right back to square one. In spite of all his efforts, Jonah is no further ahead. God speaks to him a second time. “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you” (3:2). The prophet obeys. Jonah has apparently learned his lesson, but the message he is to convey is very puzzling. It is short (only four words in Hebrew), crisp, not very constructive and in fact quite belligerent… essentially a curse. “Forty more days and Nineveh will be destroyed” (3:4). From Jonah’s perspective, this shows promise. The message represents a categorical announcement of destruction. This is a tight case. If anything, this curse will arouse the indignation and the anger of the people. They might beat him up and perhaps even kill me. No problem. Jonah cares little for his life… only that the Ninevites should die.

BUT! Something totally unexpected happens. Upon hearing the message of the “gooey” prophet, the people and the king of Nineveh believe and repent. “When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened” (3:10).

As far as Jonah was concerned, this is the worst thing that could happen. Who could have guessed such an outcome with a message like that? Jonah is very upset. Now we know why Jonah fled. Somehow he knew that God would give these pagans an opportunity to repent and be saved (4:2). Jonah is so disgusted by this turn of events that he asks openly what he only hinted at earlier. “Take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live,” he says (4:3).

BUT! The Lord is willing to let it sit. The least we can say about God is that he is strong willed. God proceeds to nudge Jonah a little: “Have you any right to be angry?” (4:4). Jonah stubbornly refuses to answer. Instead he looks for a place to keep a watch on the city, hoping against all hope, I guess, that it would be destroyed anyway.

One could safely assume that by now God would have been done with Jonah. But not the living God. The living God is more like an annoying little brother that just won’t let you be. The living God is more like a mosquito that keeps buzzing around your ears when you are trying to sleep. This God is relentless. And God cranks it up a little more.        One can’t help but admire the subtlety of God. Rather than scolding the prophet, God proceeds to give Jonah the opportunity to feel the loss of something for which he cares deeply. God provides a vine to shade the prophet. For the first time in the story, Jonah is very happy about divine intervention.

But the next day, the vine dies and God causes a scorching wind and a blazing sun. Jonah once again repeats his complaint. “It would be better for me to die than to live” (4:8). Then God nudges him a little more. “Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?”

“Of course,” he replies. Jonah has every right to be angry. The plant that provided such wonderful relief from the sun is dead. It’s all shriveled up and now Jonah is shriveling up! In fact, he is so angry, he could die (4:9).

Then God goes “for the kill” and asks the final haunting question with which we are all so familiar. “You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?” (4:10).

Where does this odd story leave us? For starters, if we think Jonah was a bit of an idiot or if we are tempted to laugh at his expense, then we have joined the idiots’ club! The instant we start laughing at Jonah, we are caught like a fly in a spider’s web. We are in fact laughing at ourselves, for you and I are Jonah!

The book was written at a time when the people of Israel had lost sight of who God really was. The Israelites had created a God who would be theirs, who would serve them and who would exclusively look after their own interests. They had reduced the God of the universe to a tribal deity. Welcome to God in the box!

The story of Jonah is designed to pry open that box. Let me offer a few of the important lessons the book conveys.

1. God is free.

God is beyond our simplistic ideas of him and our expectations. God’s actions are not determined by our own narrow agendas but by his own nature and purposes.

2. God is unfair.

Jonah discovered the hard truth that God is fundamentally unfair. To a city that has no future because of the sins of its inhabitants, God offered a future. To a prophet that deserved to be discarded, God offered grace. In the book of Jonah, we discover a God who does not give us what we deserve, but offers what we need above all else--his compassion. The God of Jonah obstinately seeks the redemption of all men and women, whether we think they deserve it or not.

3. God is relentless.

When everything is said and done, there is nothing unusual about Jonah. His reaction and behavior represent the default position in most of us. We too flee from the living God and prefer to find solace and comfort in the feeble constructions of our imagination. Were it not for that little word BUT!, we would hopelessly and inexorably slide into the black hole of our self-made delusions. This simple conjunction signals the constant intervention of this “annoying” God who, through his Spirit, passionately intervenes to rescue humanity.

4. The Important things in life

In his most recent book, My Stroke of Luck, Kirk Douglas describes the devastating impact of a stroke and his subsequent struggle with depression. In this book the great actor passionately shares with his readers the great lesson he learned from this difficult experience. This man who was adulated by all throughout his life, put on a pedestal and made to believe he was the center of world discovered near the end of his long life that the most important thing is to care for others. How tragic that it came to him so late in life. He would have been better off being a factory worker. Clearly, he would have been better off in the belly of the great fish!

 

Pierre Gilbert is associate professor of Old Testament studies at MB Biblical Seminary and Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg, Man.

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