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January 27 - February 17, 2023
The narrative of Jonah seduces the reader into thinking of it as a simple fable, with the account of the great fish as the dramatic, if implausible, high point.
How you respond to this will depend on how you read the rest of the Bible. If you accept the existence of God and the resurrection of Christ (a far greater miracle), then there is nothing particularly difficult about reading Jonah literally.
Certainly many people today believe all miracles are impossible, but that skepticism is just that—a belief that itself cannot be proven.2 Not only that, but the text does not show evidence of the author having made up the miracle account. A fiction writer ordinarily adds supernatural elements in order to create excitement or spectacle and to capture reader attention, but this writer doesn’t capitalize on the event at all in that way. The fish is mentioned only in two brief verses and there are no descriptive details. It is reported more as a simple fact of what happened.3 So let’s not get
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Jonah wants a God of his own making, a God who simply smites the bad people, for instance, the wicked Ninevites and blesses the good people, for instance, Jonah and his countrymen. When the real God—not Jonah’s counterfeit—keeps showing up, Jonah is thrown into fury or despair. Jonah finds the real God to be an enigma because he cannot reconcile the mercy of God with his justice. How, Jonah asks, can God be merciful and forgiving to people who have done such violence and evil? How can God be both merciful and just?
Many students of the book have noticed that in the first half Jonah plays the “prodigal son” of Jesus’s famous parable (Luke 15:11–24), who ran from his father. In the second half of the book, however, Jonah is like the “older brother” (Luke 15:25–32), who obeys his father but berates him for his graciousness to repentant sinners. The parable ends with a question from the father to the Pharisaical son, just as the book of Jonah ends with a question to the Pharisaical prophet. There is a striking parallel between the two stories, which Jesus himself may have had in mind.
It was shocking first because it was a call for a Hebrew prophet to leave Israel and go out to a Gentile city.
Assyrian history is “as gory and bloodcurdling a history as we know.”
Yet it was this nation that was the object of God’s missionary outreach. Though God told Jonah to “proclaim against” the city for its wickedness, there would have been no reason to send a warning unless there was a chance of judgment being averted, as Jonah knew very well (4:1–2).
It was “Jonah the son of Amittai.” No background information is given, meaning he needed no introduction. 2 Kings 14:25 tells us Jonah ministered during the reign of Israel’s King Jeroboam II (786–746 BC). In that text we learn that, unlike the prophets Amos and Hosea, who criticized the royal administration for its injustice and unfaithfulness, Jonah had supported Jeroboam’s aggressive military policy to extend the nation’s power and influence. The original readers of the book of Jonah would have remembered him as intensely patriotic, a highly partisan nationalist.5 And they would have been
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Tarshish, it is believed, lay on the outermost western rim of the world known to Israelites of the time.6 In short, Jonah did the exact opposite of what God told him to do. Called to go east, he went west. Directed to travel overland, he went to sea. Sent to the big city, he bought a one-way ticket to the end of the world.
Jonah concluded that because he could not see any good reasons for God’s command, there couldn’t be any. Jonah doubted the goodness, wisdom, and justice of God.
When this happens we have to decide—does God know what’s best, or do we?
And the default mode of the unaided human heart is to always decide that we do.
We all know that we can run from God by becoming immoral and irreligious. But Paul is saying it is also possible to avoid God by becoming very religious and moral.
Neither son trusted his father’s love. Both were trying to find ways of escaping his control. One did it by obeying all the father’s rules, the other by disobeying them all.
Flannery O’Connor describes one of her fictional characters, Hazel Motes, as knowing that “the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin.”10 We think that if we are religiously observant, virtuous, and good, then we’ve paid our dues, as it were.
Unless Jonah can see his own sin, and see himself as living wholly by the mercy of God, he will never understand how God can be merciful to evil people and still be just and faithful.
The dismaying news is that every act of disobedience to God has a storm attached to it.
The Bible does not say that every difficulty is the result of sin—but it does teach that every sin will bring you into difficulty.
Derek Kidner writes: “Sin . . . sets up strains in the structure of life which can only end in breakdown.”1
Sin is a suicidal action of the will upon itself.
Sin always hardens the conscience, locks you in the prison of your own defensiveness and rationalizations, and eats you up slowly from the inside.
“You will be sinning against the Lord, and you may be sure that your sin will find you out” (Numbers 32:23).
Sin finds you out not always others—but sin ALWAYS has a payment
this storm leads the sailors to genuine faith in the true God even though it was not their fault.
The Bible does not say that every difficulty is the result of our sin—but it does teach that, for Christians, every difficulty can help reduce the power of sin over our hearts.
“in all [our] affliction he too [is] afflicted” (Isaiah 63:9).2
Each part has three sections—God’s word to Jonah, then his encounter with the Gentile pagans, and finally Jonah talking to God.
This is one of the main messages of the book, namely, that God cares how we believers relate to and treat people who are deeply different from us.
God wants us to treat people of different races and faiths in a way that is respectful, loving, generous, and just.
He did not want to talk to pagans about God or to lead them toward faith. So he fled—only to find himself talking about God to the exact sort of people he was fleeing!
Hugh Martin says Jonah was sleeping “the sleep of sorrow.” Many of us know exactly what that is—the desire to escape reality through sleep, even for a little while.1
What is the captain rebuking Jonah for? It is because he has no interest in their common good.
Jonah fled because he did not want to work for the good of the pagans—he wanted to serve exclusively the interests of believers. But God shows him here that he is the God of all people and Jonah needs to see himself as being part of the whole human community, not only a member of a faith community.
This is not a merely pragmatic argument: “Believers had better help nonbelievers or things will not go well with them.” The Bible tells us we are co-humans with all people—made in God’s image and therefore infinitely precious to him (Genesis 9:6; James 3:9).
Jonah is not bringing the resources of his faith to bear on the suffering of his fellow citizens. He is not telling them how to get a relationship with the God of the universe. Nor is he, relying on his own spiritual resources in God, simply loving and serving the practical needs of his neighbors. God commands all believers to do both things, but he is doing neither. His private faith is of no public good.
We deserve the critique of the world if the church does not exhibit visible love in practical deeds. The captain had every right to rebuke a believer who was oblivious to the problems of the people around him and doing nothing for them.
James 1:17 says, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights.” That is, God is ultimately enabling every act of goodness, wisdom, justice, and beauty—no matter who does it. Isaiah 45:1 speaks of Cyrus, a pagan king, whom God anoints and uses for world leadership. Isaiah 28:23–29 tells us that when a farmer is fruitful, it is God who has been teaching him to be so.
Common grace does not regenerate the heart, save the soul, or create a personal, covenant relationship with God. Yet without it the world would be an intolerable place to live. It is wonderful expression of God’s love to all people (Psalm 145:14–16).
James, the author argues that if you say you have a relationship with God based on his grace, and you see someone “without clothes and daily food” (James 2:15) and do nothing about it, you only prove that your faith is “dead”—unreal (verse 17).9 That is why James can say, “Judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful” (verse 13). The lack of mercy in Jonah’s attitude and actions toward others reveals that he was a stranger in his heart to the saving mercy and grace of God.
Everyone gets an identity from something. Everyone must say to himself or herself, “I’m significant because of This” and “I’m acceptable because I’m welcomed by Them.” But then whatever This is and whoever They are, these things become virtual gods to us, and the deepest truths about who we are. They become things we must have under any circumstances.
When financial success commands allegiance that is unconditional and that cannot be questioned, it functions as a religious object, a god, even a “salvation.”2
To ask, “Who are you?” is to ask, “Whose are you?” To know who you are is to know what you have given yourself to, what controls you, what you most fundamentally trust.
Many people in the world tack on their religion, as it were, to their ethnic identity, which is more foundational for them. Someone might say, for example, “Why, of course I’m Lutheran—I’m Norwegian!”
when loyalty to his people and loyalty to the Word of God seemed to be in conflict, he chose to support his nation over taking God’s love and message to a new society.
Unfortunately, many Christians today exhibit the same attitudes. This is not merely the result of poor education or cultural narrowness. Rather, their relationship with God through Christ has not gone deep enough into their heart. Just as in Jonah’s life, God and his love is not their identity’s most fundamental layer.
Shallow Christian identities explain why professing Christians can be racists and greedy materialists, addicted to beauty and pleasure, or filled with anxiety and prone to overwork. All this comes because it is not Christ’s love but the world’s power, approval, comfort, and control that are the real roots of our self-identity.
One of the messages of this book is that anyone, even a successful prophet (or preacher), can be in the dark about grace. Jonah’s fears, prejudices, and emotional breakdown all stem from his blindness to the reality of grace. In chapter 1 he runs away because he finds God’s grace and mercy an inexplicable mystery. In chapter 2, in the belly of the fish, we find him wrestling with that same mystery. It is only when he has a breakthrough in his understanding about grace that he is released. Only then can he become a fearless preacher. The main purpose of God is to get Jonah to understand grace.
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It is an understanding of God’s grace that makes a person a Christian and not merely a moral person or a religious person or a nice person.
Religious people often invite nonbelievers to convert by calling them to adopt new sets of behaviors and new ritual practices, all the while redoubling their efforts to live a virtuous life. That, however, is to load more burdens on people. The Pharisees did this, laying “heavy, cumbersome loads” on people (Matthew 23:4), and so they sank. All other religions put on people the burden of securing their own salvation, while God provides unearned salvation through his son (cf. Isaiah 46:1–4). While the gospel must lead to a changed life, it is not those changes that save you.
C. S. Lewis’s set of essays The Four Loves is famous for what it says on the subjects of friendship and sex. Less well known is his treatment of patriotism.
