Why did Jonah run from God?
Right at the start of the book, God says, ‘Go to Nineveh’. Jonah says ‘No way!’. God’s prophet would rather flee to the other side of the world than carry out his commission. Why?
You need to know a bit about the background. For instance, if you didn’t know who the Nazis were you may not understand the horror if a Jew was asked to preach against Hitler in Berlin in the early 1940s.
Assyria was the dominant power of the region and Nineveh was their mighty capital. Assyria had been extracting tribute from Israel for a long time by now. Jonah would have watched the gradual expansion of their empire with horror and known that it was just a matter of time before Israel was next. And Jonah would have been correct. In a couple of decades or so, Assyria would capture Israel’s capital and exile all the people to a foreign land.
The Assyrian empire was not only Israel’s enemy, but they were a cruel, merciless people who delighted in torturing those they conquered:
Limbs were cut off so they could watch people bleed to death.
People were burnt alive and relatives were forced to parade their loved ones’ heads on poles through the city streets.
When Jonah eventually does preach to them the king responds by telling the citizens of Nineveh to “turn… from the violence”. Over the course of the centuries there have been public announcements given to city dwellers. Telling the whole population of a city to ‘stop being violent’ probably doesn’t rank too highly.
Fleeing from God
Jonah ran because he was determined to stop any chance those evil Assyrians might repent. If he wasn’t anywhere near him, then they couldn’t hear God’s message and have a chance to repent and change. It was an illogical choice because God could have simply raised somebody else up to speak to them. But Jonah wasn’t thinking logically. In the emotion of it all, he legged it out of Israel leaving behind his family, friends and his culture.
In his rebellion, he would travel 100kms on foot to get to the coastal town of Joppa – the same place where the apostle Peter would have his roof-top vision in Acts 10.
Jonah would then pay a significant amount of money to board a ship to take him to as far west as Israelites knew to go. It’s not known exactly where Tarshish is (some think Spain) but think: ‘as far across the Mediterranean Sea as possible’.
Ironically, he was fleeing one Gentile city to go to another Gentile city. But he’d have no way of getting back from Tarshish – even if he reached there safely. Ship journeys back then were hit and miss. The longer you sailed for, the higher the chance of not making it.
Jonah wasn’t just abandoning his family and friends; he was abandoning his God. The ESV says he fled ‘from the presence of the Lord’ (Jonah 1:2)
It’s not a good start to the book. In the first three sentences, you have the Ninevites in active rebellion of God and Jonah, God’s prophet in active rebellion. You’d think it could only go up from here. But it doesn’t. Jonah runs from God a fair bit more before he eventually re-engages him again and acknowledges that God is God and he is not.
So, why did Jonah run from God?
Some deep-seated emotion was driving him to go to this extreme. Was it fear? To enter the Assyrian capital alone surely would have put his life at risk. But Jonah doesn’t seem too afraid when he eventually goes to preach.
The final chapter of the story hints at the cause of this deep guttural reaction. We read that Jonah hates that God doesn’t bring doing judgment on them. He wants fire from heaven – like Sodom and Gomorrah. But God shows them mercy. Jonah is deeply angered by this and tells God that his life is no longer worth living. You can feel the pain in his cry when God doesn’t do what he wanted.
The best guess we can derive from this is that Jonah is driven by hate. He hates the Assyrians and wants them destroyed. And to hold onto this hatred he willing to give up everything that ever meant anything to him. His home, his family, his friends, even his God.
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If you want to dive deeper with the book of Jonah, I’ve written a 30-Day devotional. In one month, at ten mins a day, you’ll read through the entire book. As well as an explanation of each verse, there is a suggested application and a guided prayer. Get it now from Amazon and develop a deep love for this moving book.
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Right at the start of the book, God says, ‘Go to Nineveh’. Jonah says ‘No way!’. God’s prophet would rather flee to the other side of the world than carry out his commission. Why? You need to know a bit about the background. For instance, if you didn’t know who the...
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