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But I, with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will fulfill. Salvation comes only from the LORD!” 10
In each case, God orchestrated a circumstance in history to teach Jonah something he desperately needed to know.
going down to Joppa, down into a ship, down into the depths of the ship—and now, finally, he goes even further down into the very depths of the ocean. “But not until he was all the way down, finally stripped of his own buoyant self-sufficiency, was deliverance possible.”2 There was a fatal flaw in Jonah’s character, and it had lain hidden from him as long as his life was going well. It was only through complete failure that he could begin to see it and change it.
Abraham, Joseph, David, Elijah, and Peter all became powerful leaders through failure and suffering.
But it is not simply being at the bottom that begins to change Jonah but prayer at the bottom. As Jack Sasson says, at this point in the story, “the action is about to come to a full halt to leave Jonah alone with his God.”4 Jonah begins to pray, and at the climax of the prayer, he speaks of chesdh (Jonah 2:9). It is a key biblical word often translated as “steadfast love” or “grace.” It refers to the covenant love of God. It takes the whole prayer for Jonah to get there—to a declaration about God’s grace—but when he does, he is released back into the land of the living.
We must admit not only our sins but also that we cannot repair or cleanse ourselves from them. Our culture, again, does not help us here, for it is dominated not only by therapy but also by technology.
is how costly the salvation is that God provides.
We are sinners, unable to save ourselves and able to be saved only through extreme and costly measures. Not until centuries later would it be revealed that atonement could not be effected by the blood of bulls and goats but only by the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus Christ (Hebrews 10:4–10).
God’s grace becomes wondrous, endlessly consoling, beautiful, and humbling only when we fully believe, grasp, and remind ourselves of all three of these background truths—that we deserve nothing but condemnation, that we are utterly incapable of saving ourselves, and that God has saved us, despite our sin, at infinite cost to himself.
No human heart will learn its sinfulness and impotence by being told it is sinful. It will have to be shown—often in brutal experience. No human heart will dare to believe in such free, costly grace unless it is the only hope.
He has recognized that the “bars are closed upon me forever.” However, he immediately adds: “And yet you lift me up from the pit alive, O Lord” (verse 6). He is lost, condemned, and unable to unlock the doors of his prison. And yet God saves him. Jonah begins to praise God and dedicate himself before he has any assurance that he will escape from the fish by some supernatural deliverance.
“It is not when history is redirected by some supernatural event . . . that the great miracles occur. It is when a person comes to acknowledge his or her sin and confesses it before God and when, as a consequence, God restores the broken Creator-creature relationship.”10 That’s the real deliverance—not the release from the fish.
and in a climactic statement he says, “Salvation comes only from the LORD” (verse 9). Some have called this text the central verse of the Scriptures, or at least, it expresses with great economy of language the main point of the entire Bible.
In other words, despite his breakthrough here, Jonah has not grasped grace as deeply as we might at first think he has. There is still a sense of superiority and self-righteousness that will cause him to explode in anger when God has mercy on those Jonah sees as his inferiors. He sees the literal idols that the pagans worship and doesn’t see the more subtle idols in his own life that keep him from fully grasping that he too, just like the heathen, lives only, equally by God’s grace.
Who knows? God may relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.” 10
The Hebrew word for “repent” (shub—to turn) occurs four times in verses 8–10, and that is the striking, central message of this passage.
Historians have pointed out that about the time of Jonah’s mission, Assyria had experienced a series of famines, plagues, revolts, and eclipses, all of which were seen as omens of far worse things to come. Some have argued that this was God’s way of preparing the ground for Jonah. “This state of affairs would have made both rulers and subjects unusually attuned to the message of a visiting prophet.”1 So there was some sociological explanation for this response.
Those attending the conference came under deep conviction of sin, especially when a preacher called them to repent of their traditional hatred of the Japanese.
While it says they “believed God” (verse 5), there is no indication that the Ninevites came into a covenant relationship with the God of Israel.
The word the Ninevites use is “God,” the generic word Elohim, rather than the personal, covenant name, “Yahweh,” that the Lord uses with his people Israel. There is no mention of the residents of Nineveh forsaking their gods and idols. They did not offer sacrifices to the Lord, nor was there any rite of circumcision. This is why almost all commentators agree that Jonah did not successfully convert the Ninevites.5 What, then, was really happening? The king of Nineveh understood God to be saying that each citizen of the city must “forsake his evil way and the violence that he plans toward
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It wasn’t merely that the Assyrians as a nation were oppressing other nations, but individuals were violent toward one another, poisoning social relationships.
He was warning them about their evil, violent behavior and the inevitable consequences if they did not relent and change.
It is hard for us to even imagine today the ministry that happened in Nineveh. Usually those who are most concerned about working for social justice do not also stand up and speak clearly about the God of the Bible’s judgment on those who do not do his will. On the other hand, those who publicly preach repentance most forcefully are not usually known for demanding justice for the oppressed.
[Jonah] . . . did not become free to select for himself what he would say to men. He did not go to them to tell them about his experiences. . . . He did not decide the content of his preaching. . . . Thus . . . our witness is fast bound to the word of God. The greatest saint or mystic can say nothing of value unless it is based solely on God’s word.11
Isaiah did not see social injustice as merely meriting God’s wrath. Rather, the misery and social breakdown, the economic and political “devouring” of one another (yet the inner emptiness and discontent it brings) is all actually the outworking of God’s wrath.
Without understanding the wrath of God, it is impossible to fully understand why so many societies, empires, institutions, and lives break down.
A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.14
In his great “I Have a Dream” speech, Dr. King did not appeal to modern, secular individualism. He did not say, “All should be free to define their own meaning in life and moral truth.” Rather he quoted Scripture and called his society to “Let [God’s] justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream” (Amos 5:24).15
“In forty days, Nineveh shall be overthrown!” That was what Jonah enthusiastically wanted and predicted. He enjoyed preaching wrath. He did it with glee, not tears, because he couldn’t wait for God’s hammer to fall on them.
“I just knew you might do something like this! These people are evil, and they only changed because they were scared. They didn’t convert and start worshipping you. They merely promised to start changing—and you bestow mercy on them for that! It’s good that you are a God of mercy, but this time you’ve gone too far.”
Perhaps we could say that all theological problems play themselves out not merely in our intellects but in our commitments, desires, and identities. When Jonah says, in effect, “Without that—I have no desire to go on,” he means he has lost something that had replaced God as the main joy, reason, and love of his life. He had a relationship with God, but there was something else he valued more. His explosive anger shows that he is willing to discard his relationship with God if he does not get this thing.
If he had to choose between the security of Israel and loyalty to God, well, he was ready to push God away.
Jonah should have prepared to help them continue in their journey by teaching them the character of this new God, the Lord, and what it means to be in a covenant relationship with him. Instead he was furious that they had even begun to move toward God. Rather than going back into the city to teach and preach, he stayed outside it, in hopes that maybe God would still judge it (Jonah 4:5).
Jonah’s rightful love for his country and people had become inordinate, too great, rivaling God. Rightful racial pride can become racism. Rightful national pride and patriotism can become imperialism.
“Jonah sets God against God . . . all to justify himself.”2 He reads the Bible selectively, ignoring the latter part of Exodus 34:7 that speaks of God not leaving “the guilty unpunished.” He creates a simplistic picture of a God who simply loves everyone without judgment on evil.
In other words, if we feel more righteous as we read the Bible, we are misreading it; we are missing its central message. We are reading and using the Bible rightly only when it humbles us, critiques us, and encourages us with God’s love and grace despite our flaws.
Ellul concludes that if we use the Bible to puff up our own egos with our correctness and righteousness, and to denounce all others, then studying the Scripture “becomes a source of death and Satan’s work.”
However, at the very end of his prayer he said that those who cling to idols forfeit God’s love (Jonah 2:8). Jonah had seen some of his need for grace, but there was still some pride left. Pagans have idols—but not him! Yes, of course he needed mercy, but surely he wasn’t on the same level as these people. Surely he still had some spiritual merit—he still had some claims on God.
He cried, “Salvation comes only from the LORD!” yet also, in effect, “But I’m not like those awful pagans!” (Jonah 2:8–9).
We learn from Jonah that understanding God’s grace—and being changed by it—always requires a long journey with successive stages. It cannot happen in a single cathartic or catastrophic experience (like being swallowed by a fish!).
Jonah’s heart was like that. Every time it seemed he had taken God and his grace to the very bottom, it turned out that he needed to go deeper.
What does it mean to get to “bedrock” in one’s heart? If you say, “I’ll obey you, Lord, if you give me that,” then “that” is the nonnegotiable and God is just a means to an end. “That”—whatever it is—is the real bedrock. It is more foundational to your happiness than God is.
But “such” anger—inordinate anger of self-righteousness and fear—is a sign that the thing Jonah loves is a counterfeit god. He is inordinately committed to his race and nation. God will have to deal with this idolatry if Jonah is ever to get the infinite peace of resting in God’s grace alone.
To deliver him from his dejection, the LORD God appointed a plant that grew rapidly up over Jonah, to be a shade over his head.
On the contrary, “Paul speaks of two men battling in him [the ‘old man’ and the ‘new man’] Jonah shows it too. . . . We continue to be sinners” (cf. Galatians 5:17; Ephesians 4:22–24). Of course, we cannot use this to justify bad behavior, but we can take the deepest comfort in seeing that “God knows the totality of [the human heart] . . . that this does not exhaust God’s love and patience, that he continues to take this rebellious child by the hand.”1
Even though God declared a stay of execution, Jonah still wants to see “what would happen to the city,” meaning he still had hopes that God would not spare Nineveh for a long period of time.2
In deep discouragement and grief, sometimes rather small comforts can be particularly sustaining. Self-pity may have played a role in his joy over the plant. “Well, finally,” Jonah may have said to himself, “something is going right for me.”
“the love of benevolence.” This meant doing good and helpful things for people even if you didn’t like them. It was an exercise of the will.
In contrast there was the “love of attachment” in which you loved someone because your heart was bound up with them in attraction and loving desire.
When you put your love on someone, you can be happy only if they are happy, and their distress becomes your distress. The love of attachment makes you vulnerable to suffering, and yet that is what God says about himself—here and in other places (cf. Isaiah 63:9). In Genesis 6:6 it says that when God looked down on the evil of the earth, “his heart was filled with pain.”6 While this language cannot mean that the eternal, unchangeable God loses any of his omnipotence or sovereignty, it is a strong declaration at which we must marvel.7
