Jonah and the Mercy of God - Episode 191

Carey Griffel: Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot, where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel, and lately we have been getting into the theme of refuge in Scripture.

 

[00:00:23] We've done a lot of work in Genesis as well as Exodus, and today I'm going to jump over into the prophets. But we're gonna start with tackling one of the strangest prophets. Well, really, they're all kind of strange in their own ways, aren't they? But Jonah is really strange in some very strange ways. A lot of times we tend to focus on the details in his story about the supposed whale and things like that. But when it comes to just being a prophet, Jonah is a very strange one.

 

[00:01:02] We're gonna be talking about a lot in the Book of Jonah, including Genesis themes and flood themes and animal themes and refuge themes. I want you to look for ideas like concealment, hiding, flight, presence of God, providential refuge, provisional refuge, as well as the idea of covenant, which is a little bit harder to see in the Book of Jonah compared to other prophetic literature. That doesn't mean it's not there.

 

[00:01:37] Like with a lot of our themes, we see a lot of ideas that are put on their heads for narrative effect, for irony, and to highlight what a true refuge is and what true covenant is, and also to demonstrate who God is himself. Because I think that is the main purpose and the main message of Scripture, is to reveal who God is, what he's up to, how consistent he is in his actions, and what he wants to accomplish. And this is often in contrast to the people in the story.

 

[00:02:16] Today I wanna look at the Book of Jonah, and our controlling question for the episode is going to be, why does God save a prophet who is trying to escape both God and his mission? Now God certainly preserves Jonah, not just because Jonah needs refuge, because Jonah doesn't seem to be the one in actual danger. He's the one running away. But in spite of what Jonah is trying to accomplish in his own actions, God does not give up in his pursuit of Jonah, and God intends to bring a saving situation through him.

 

[00:02:59] And Jonah is gonna see a lot of our themes that we've seen before, where he passes through judgment himself. There is water, there is dry land, there is commissioning. But there remains in the book this resistance against God's mercy. When we're talking about the conclusion of what that means for us and for our theology and the way that we read Scripture, the stories of Scripture are supposed to be illustrative of how we should act, how we should think, how we should behave. And we're supposed to see the characters, sometimes the anti-characters in the story, as being examples of what not to do.

 

[00:03:44] All right. Now, the first thing that we think of when we hear the story of Jonah, at least I think this is the case for a lot of us, is the picture of the whale, right? So we will talk about that. We'll talk about the animal and what that is, what it isn't, what we can know about it. Because that is part of the theme of the book as a whole, and it shows a lot of what we're gonna be talking about.

 

[00:04:13] The story of Jonah and the whale is one of those stories that often shows up in Vacation Bible School. And just like you see pictures of Noah and the ark, you'll also see plenty of pictures of Jonah and the whale in nurseries and lots of children literature. And you know, fair enough, we love stories that include animals as a main character, but these are also very heavy stories about judgment and death and repentance and other things.

 

[00:04:48] And many of us know Jonah as a disobedient man who happens to receive a divine assignment. What's interesting is that Jonah is not only confined to the book of his name. He is identified elsewhere in Scripture as a prophet. And so his story is very essential to look at. He belongs very solidly to Israel's prophetic vocation. But the book itself gives very little of his preaching, but a great deal about the preacher. His message actually ends up succeeding even though he remains resistant to its purpose. So it's really fascinating because Jonah may be one of the most successful prophets in the Bible by one measure at least, because an entire city responds to a warning that is only five words. Yet he experiences that success as a catastrophe.

 

[00:05:51] So we focus on Jonah's survival through the fish, but I think the more interesting question might be why God wanted him to survive and why God didn't just leave him to it and then go with a different prophet. There's a lot of really heavy and important messaging behind this.

 

[00:06:12] So the first place that we see Jonah show up in historical fashion is in the book of Second Kings. I won't read this whole section, but in Second Kings chapter 14, verses 23 through 27, it mentions Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet. The context here is Jeroboam II reigns over the northern kingdom of Israel and is condemned for continuing the sins of Jeroboam I. Yet Israel is suffering so severely that Yahweh acts compassionately despite the king's unfaithfulness. Through Jonah, son of Amittai, Yahweh announces that Israel's borders will be restored, and Jeroboam fulfills that word.

 

[00:07:04] This passage emphasizes that this restoration happens not because Israel deserves it, but because Yahweh sees its affliction and has not yet determined to erase Israel's name. So the key point here that I want to bring out is that Jonah has, in the context of another book in the history of Israel, he served as a prophet of undeserved national restoration for sinful Israel. And I think that does map very directly onto what his character is and what's going on in the Book of Jonah.

 

[00:07:41] Now, an interesting question here, I find it interesting, is the relative dating of the Book of 2 Kings and the Book of Jonah. Of course, we do not have a really solid dating on either one, but most critical scholarship places the final form of the Book of Kings during the Babylonian exile, often shortly after the last event that it records, Jehoiachin's release in Babylon around 560 BC. Many models also posit earlier editions or perhaps source collections in the seventh century, followed by revision during the time of the exile.

 

[00:08:25] But it's important to note that traditions about Jonah may be much earlier, and 2 Kings 14 may preserve older royal or prophetic material. But the book's final editorial form is usually dated to the sixth century BC. Now, the date of the Book of Jonah is often dated to the Persian period, commonly somewhere in the fourth or fifth century BC. A minority of scholarship continues to defend an eighth-century or earlier date of the Book of Jonah. But the linguistic arguments are not quite as decisive as they were sometimes presented in older scholarship. So a post-exilic date remains the majority critical position.

 

[00:09:13] Now, does that mean that Jonah was entirely written after 2 Kings, and that it's just a made-up story that is using a prophet that is mentioned in an earlier book? I mean, that's certainly a possibility, but it's not the only possibility. Because several things are possible. Jonah and Second Kings could independently draw from older tradition about Jonah, or it was written at the same time as the Book of 2 Kings. A third possibility is that the Book of Jonah does deliberately expand and critically reflects upon the portrait that is associated with the figure in 2 Kings 14.

 

[00:09:55] We just don't know which one of these is actually right. And it might not matter, although it might matter, because if Jonah was composed in the Persian period, that does mean that its use of an eighth-century northern prophet along with an Assyrian city is a work of retrospection. The book would be addressing readers who already knew that Assyria had destroyed the northern kingdom, that Judah had experienced a Babylonian exile, that imperial nations could be both instruments as well as objects of divine judgment, and questions of Israel's identity and relation to foreigners had in this time become especially acute.

 

[00:10:43] None of that reduces the importance or the historicity of the Book of Jonah. But it does mean that the story's question about mercy toward Nineveh would have been heard within the full weight of Israel's subsequent history and Israel's failure.

 

[00:11:03] From a historical Old Testament perspective, we can see a parallel between what's going on with Jeroboam as a wicked king and Yahweh seeing Israel's severe affliction and restoring its territory, as well as what's going on with Jonah and Nineveh. Now, if we presume that both of the stories are historical, then Jonah is a prophet who appears very comfortable with divine compassion when Israel receives it, even though Israel doesn't deserve it, but deeply troubled when that compassion reaches a foreign enemy. And I think that can matter for how we understand his character and how we understand how he should impact the way that we model things and the way that we behave.

 

[00:11:55] How do we understand the in-group and the out-group and people who are not the elect? Because I think that today we have a really high tendency to be very judgmental of outsiders. That's outsiders of any type. I'm not just talking about politics. I'm talking about the fact that we tend to set up ourselves, our tradition, or Christianity in general, as if everybody in our group is so much better and so much more deserving than those people over there. This affects the way we understand judgment, the way we understand justice, the way we understand mercy, the way we understand our interactions with other people.

 

[00:12:42] The Book of Jonah is arranged among the 12 prophets, but it is unlike most other prophetic books. Instead of presenting a large collection of oracles, it tells a narrative about the prophet himself. Jonah's actual proclamation to Nineveh is extremely short. Why is a book containing almost no prophetic speech included among the prophets?

 

[00:13:11] Well, it is pretty clear that Jonah is a prophet, first of all, right? So that fact alone could set him within that body of literature. But it's also clearly a different kind of a genre than most prophetic literature, because the book devotes nearly all of its space to what happens to and through the prophet. So the book's focus is therefore not only Jonah's message, but the relationship between the prophet, the word that he's supposed to be carrying, God's purpose for that word, as well as the prophet's own resistance.

 

[00:13:52] As a genre, scholars will describe it as prophetic narrative, as satire, as parody, as a didactic story or some form of story that is meant to teach us in character. Or perhaps it is a genre that combines some of these things. The labels that scholars apply will vary, but the unusual concentration on the prophet's conduct is widely recognized.

 

[00:14:21] On the other hand, the call that he receives is completely conventional. The word of Yahweh came to Jonah, and he is to arise and go and proclaim. Nothing about the commission marks Jonah as a false prophet, but the disruption in what's going on comes from Jonah's response himself. He does arise, and he does go, but he goes in the opposite direction. So he is a called prophet whose behavior reverses the calling, and yet he isn't not still called to be a prophet. God still sticks with him as a prophet.

 

[00:14:51] His oracle to the city is extraordinarily brief. This is recorded in Jonah chapter three, verse four, and it only contains five Hebrew words. In English, it's translated as, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh will be overturned.” Whether this represents the entirety of his preaching or simply a narrative summary cannot be established by us today.

 

[00:15:33] But from a literary standpoint, the brevity of his proclamation shifts attention away from his eloquence and toward the effectiveness of God's Word itself. We really don't have a sermon, but there is a massive response by the people. And so one of the things that we could learn here is that prophetic effectiveness rests with God and the word, not really the messenger's enthusiasm or his rhetorical performance.

 

[00:16:05] By ordinary measures, Jonah is remarkably successful. The sailors come to fear Yahweh. Nineveh believes the warning. The king himself responds, and destruction is averted. And yet at the end, Jonah is remaining resistant. Within the flow of the book, Jonah himself is the one who tends to be principally judged in the book. He is addressed and questioned by God himself in chapter four. So while the city responds to the warning, Jonah really doesn't clearly respond to God's final question to him, and that suggests that prophets don't stand safely outside the word that they proclaim. The prophetic word can expose and judge its messenger just as well as its stated audience.

 

[00:17:02] So again, it doesn't have to be an either/or. And if we're thinking about how that might apply to us today as Christians, we can have a whole lot of problem with the way a preacher or a tradition puts things or understands things. But in the end, it is not the human witnesses and their character and their rhetoric that necessarily matter. It is God's word that holds the ultimate power.

 

[00:17:28] Another thing to notice here is that the words of a prophet can actually change the outcome. If people listen to the prophet and his warning, then the warning actually doesn't end up falling. This is very crucial to understanding God's justice, to understanding God's character.

 

[00:17:48] And a few episodes ago, I ended a series that was talking about penal substitutionary atonement. And I was making a lot of points about forgiveness and God's justice and things like that. And one of the things I said was that it's really unfortunate that evangelicals or Protestants don't tend to read the prophets often enough. Because in every single one of the prophetic books, what you will see is a prophet who is proclaiming what God gives him. And that word that God gives him addresses evil, the crisis that the people are in, the judgment, and a possible response, a response that can be turned away by the people's repentance and obedience to God.

 

[00:18:41] I've seen people argue against the bringing in of the prophetic literature as a witness to how we should understand justice. I see people say, “Well, that is the law. That is the Old Testament. We are now under grace. We're under the New Testament.” As if things that God literally said with His prophets in the Old Testament somehow no longer apply. That is a crazy direction to me, and I don't really quite grasp it.

 

[00:19:13] Because however you understand the law and grace and the Old Testament and the New Testament, even if you believe there's a really sharp distinction between those two things, you still don't get something like penal substitution without appeal to the law itself. All right. Anyway, so let's talk about Nineveh for a minute. Nineveh is, of course, an evil city. In Jonah chapter 1, verse 2, it says that Nineveh's evil has come up before Yahweh.

 

[00:19:47] I'm going to suggest that the Book of Jonah has a whole lot of echoes of Genesis. We're not even gonna be able to touch on all of them in this episode today. But one of the things we have that is echoing from Genesis into the Book of Jonah is the idea of widespread human evil, corruption, and all of that violence before the flood, as well as the outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah that comes before Yahweh in Genesis 18. Just like in those circumstances, we have Nineveh's evil that rises before the Lord in Jonah chapter 1.

 

[00:20:28] This places Nineveh within a very Genesis and even primeval framework where violence matters to God. A lot of times we tend to focus on covenant, and Nineveh isn't said to be in covenant with God, and yet God is still sending a prophet to the people of Nineveh. This also highlights and really complicates the narrative of the nations and their relationship to God. We're very used to understanding the nations as being something that God disinherited, and God chose His people, and God is in relation to His people, and the other nations are under their gods.

 

[00:21:12] And yet here, we've got that whole thing put on its head because Jonah, who is an Israelite prophet, is to go into Nineveh and preach against its evil. This is another example where wickedness becomes so grievous that it demands the creator's attention and response. In Jonah chapter 3, verse 8, the Ninevites are specifically told to turn from their evil way and the violence in their hands.

 

[00:21:42] That is not the words of Jonah himself, by the way. That is the words of the king of Nineveh. After he arose from his throne and he repented in sackcloth and ashes, he issued a proclamation. And so it's really quite fascinating that even though Jonah is the prophet, it is the king who gives a little bit more detail behind what's going on.

 

[00:22:07] Now, a question that I think a lot of people have is why warn Nineveh at all? These are not the covenant people of God. Why doesn't God just enact His judgment and be done with it? God could simply just overthrow the city. But instead, He sends a prophet to announce that its evil has reached Him. And so here's an important point, I think. God's purpose is not just to enact retributive destruction. He actually wants the people to repent. He wants to provide mercy to them.

 

[00:22:45] Nineveh is both the enemy city as well as a human city. It's full of people. The Book of Jonah repeatedly calls Nineveh a great city. By the end of the book, God describes it in terms of its vast population, its human moral confusion, and also notes that it has a lot of animals. And yet it seems like Jonah is seeing Nineveh chiefly as a deserving enemy. But God sees a violent city that must be confronted and a living city that's full of creatures under his care that he wants to actually provide and give mercy to.

 

[00:23:28] So we know the common story in the first chapter of Jonah. Jonah flees because he doesn't want to obey God and his prophetic calling. He ends up on a ship, and he's trying to get really far away from the presence of the Lord. Now, does that mean that he thinks that God is only localized, and that if he goes far enough, then he will actually literally get away from God?

 

[00:23:55] I don't really think that's the case. I think the context is probably the land and the presence of God in the temple and things like that. Like if Jonah leaves that space, then he will be away from the presence of the Lord. Not that God can't see him, but that he is no longer in that covenant-protected context. But of course, God gives a big storm. The ship that he's on is threatened, and the sailors are afraid. And verse five says that they each cried out to his god. They throw over cargo to try and make the ship more navigable. But Jonah was in the belly of the ship and was fast asleep.

 

[00:24:44] The captain comes to him and says, “Hey, arise and call to your God. Perhaps the God will give a thought to us that we may not perish.” So God in verse two tells Jonah to arise and go to Nineveh. The captain of the ship here in verse six, he's telling Jonah to arise and pray to God.

 

[00:25:06] And then all of the sailors cast lots because they want to know how this evil of the storm has come upon them. And as they cast lots, the lot falls to Jonah. And so they know it's him because they're presuming that their little divination here is going to work, and it's showing them the purpose and the reason why they are in this storm. So they question Jonah. And by the way, it never says that Jonah called out to God here after the captain asked him to.

 

[00:25:37] But once the sailors all converge on Jonah, Jonah admits who he is. He says that he fears the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. So this is not a formula where Jonah is calling to God as covenant people of Israel, but as God the creator. This is why I don't think he believes that he's going to escape God's eye, because he knows that God is the creator.

 

[00:26:06] And then the sailors are afraid because they know that Jonah has done something bad and that this is why they are in the predicament that they're in. So they ask Jonah himself what they should do. And Jonah says, “You know what? Just go ahead, throw me into the sea. I know that that's why there's this big storm. Just throw me overboard, and you guys will be okay.” The sailors actually did not do that at first. They tried to just get through the storm, but it didn't work. So even though Jonah is not said anywhere in this chapter to pray to God, the sailors do it for him.

 

[00:26:49] And after their prayer, they actually do throw him into the sea, and the storm stops. And the sailors are then said to fear the Lord. They offer sacrifice and make vows. So they seem to be a good bit more faithful than Jonah himself. The end of the chapter, of course, is where we have the great fish that swallows up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights.

 

[00:27:19] All right, so looking back at some of the details in this chapter, Jonah is said to go down a number of times. He goes down to Joppa, down into the ship, down into the sea, down toward the roots of the mountains. So the movement is both geographic as well as theologic. God tells Jonah to arise and go up. Jonah does, but then doesn't.

 

[00:27:47] Everything that he is doing is putting him further downward. And he obviously chooses the ship as a refuge. Does not work. He's trying to get away from his commission. He's trying to hide from responsibility. He was asleep through the storm because he didn't wanna have to deal with that at all and actually talk to the sailors or admit what's going on.

 

[00:28:13] But clearly, the ship is not a refuge that is appointed by God. It is Jonah's chosen refuge from God. And I say that directly because the fish itself is described as being appointed by God. So Jonah chooses the ship, and then God chooses the fish. Now, this is very contrasted with Noah and his boat narrative, because Noah enters a boat in obedience. Jonah enters the boat that he has in disobedience. Noah's vessel preserves all of its occupants. But the presence of Jonah on his vessel threatens everybody on board.

 

[00:28:59] So the contrast here is that Noah's Ark survives because the righteous passenger is inside of it, and Jonah's ship survives only when its rebellious passenger is tossed over the side. So this is a very vivid flood inversion. And there's a whole lot of inversion in this story, right? Jonah is asleep while the pagans are praying. The captain sounds like a prophet himself. The sailors repeatedly try to preserve life. They're not trying to cast him overboard. And there is a contrast between the sailors' fear of God and Jonah's fear of God.

 

[00:29:41] And so even though Jonah is being rebellious, he's trying to hide, he's trying to run away from what God wants, he can't escape being a witness for God in the end, even here on the ship. Because his confession is concise but theologically substantial. He is a Hebrew. He fears Yahweh. Yahweh is God of heaven. Yahweh made sea and dry land.

 

[00:30:04] So he's not at least a liar. But the irony is that Jonah speaks all this orthodox theology while behaving as though it's not true. And so in his attempt to escape his mission to Gentile people, he nevertheless becomes an unwilling witness among other Gentiles. Now, maybe Jonah doesn't have so much a problem with these sailors as he does with the Ninevites. Maybe Jonah has a particular beef to pick against the city of Nineveh. But nonetheless, he is remaining successful in preaching God even unwittingly.

 

[00:30:48] Now, the context of Jonah being tossed into sea as a form of chaos or judgment is also not to be missed here. Jonah confesses that God is the God of heaven who made sea and dry land. And so it's very absurd that he's running away from this God. But he knows that the storm is the divinely directed judgment against him, and that he is the guilty party. And in the end, he is given over into that sea and that judgment.

 

[00:31:22] And by his giving over, he saves the sailors. Now, okay, so there's a couple of different things that we see as a trend or a theme in Scripture. That is the righteous one who offers himself not as a substitute, but to accomplish something by giving himself, right? Often this is not actually enacted. Often God will reject it. But here, Jonah is not an innocent self-giving servant, but he is still given over, and Jonah still recommends that the sailors throw him overboard. He does recommend the action, and he's not stopping them from doing it, and he admits his guilt. There is some of this self-sacrificial theme going on, even though it's not fully there.

 

[00:32:16] Okay, so I said we would talk about the fish, so it's time to talk about the fish. This isn't a full-on fish episode, although I really ought to do that. Even though, you know, fish aren't as cute and lovable and adorable and amazing as donkeys, but they still have their worth to study. We have fish imagery all over Scripture, and I should do a whole dedicated episode just on fish, and I'm sure that I will.

 

[00:32:43] But for now, we're just gonna talk about Jonah's fish. We often hear about Jonah and the whale. And of course, we think of the whale because a whale is a sea creature that is like a fish. It's the biggest thing that we know of that can swallow a human in the sea. But the Hebrew itself doesn't call this a whale precisely. It is called a great fish or a large fish.

 

[00:33:12] Dag gadol is the word in Hebrew. Dag is just an ordinary Hebrew noun for a fish or an aquatic creature. We have no identification of a species. And then we have the word gadol, which means great, large, or important, depending on the context. And here, the size is clearly involved. And it's helpful to notice this because Nineveh is called a great city. So there's just a lot of themes going on and repetition of these words that suggest some things to the ancient mind, right?

 

[00:33:49] The idea of the whale comes from later translation and reception history, certainly not from the Hebrew wording. The Septuagint word is a broad Greek term for a large sea creature, sometimes a sea monster, but again, not necessarily. In Matthew 12, verse 40, the same Greek term that we find in the Septuagint for this creature is the word that is used in Jesus' reference to Jonah. Again, not biology, not classification.

 

[00:34:21] The theme of greatness flows through the Book of Jonah. Nineveh is a great city. Yahweh hurls a great wind. There is a great storm. The sailors fear with a great fear. The fish is a great fish, and Jonah later rejoices with great joy over the plant at the end. So the recurrence of this word helps give a heightened, almost exaggerated narrative scale of the story, because everything in this story becomes enormous: the city, the storm, the fear, the creature, the emotion. And yet, even in spite of all of this greatness, Jonah himself is still resistant and very small within the story.

 

[00:35:11] Now, if you read Hebrew or if you listen to a preacher or a scholar who talks about Hebrew phrases, you might know that there is a change of form in this term fish. It's very curious. In Jonah chapter one, the creature is called a dag. This is a word that is grammatically masculine. And in English, we don't have masculine and feminine and neuter forms of words. A lot of other languages do. But this is a masculine word that is used at the end of Jonah chapter one. But then in Jonah chapter two, when Jonah finally does pray, the text uses a different word.

 

[00:35:57] It uses a grammatically feminine form. But then in chapter two, verse ten, it returns to the masculine word for fish. And of course, there is an enormous amount of interpretive conversation surrounding this difference in the words here. Do we have a male fish that is followed by a female fish? Is the fish becoming pregnant with Jonah? Is this about womb or rebirth symbolism perhaps? Is it a scribal variation in the text that really doesn't mean anything at all? Is it just interchangeable vocabulary? And of course, you have many other really very strange ideas concerning this change in form.

 

[00:36:46] First of all, I want it to be pointed out that the grammatical gender of a word doesn't establish biological sex of the creature. The masculine and the feminine nouns that refer to fish really just refer to fish. It's not a male fish and a female fish necessarily, okay? There's just two different words. So this isn't about the sex of the creature. That doesn't mean there's no symbolic significance, however.

 

[00:37:18] Personally, I think there might be a lot to the idea that it's pointing to the fish as being a kind of womb, because although we do not have Sheol expressly described as a kind of womb, we certainly do have that described in church history as interpretive forms of various ideas, especially when we get to Christ and what happened in His death and how He went into the earth and came out and so on. So I think there's theological ideas there. How much we can press that into what's going on here? Well, we shouldn't press it too hard, but it is a very interesting interpretive choice, especially within the theme of refuge, because like I said, a womb in Scripture is not characterized specifically as a refuge, but thematically and in some other trajectories you can kind of go there.

 

[00:38:19] Does it really ultimately matter? Not really, but it's an interesting little tidbit to think about, right? So then the question might be, is the fish Jonah's refuge or is it something else? A lot of people will suggest that the fish is actually a symbol of Sheol and that Jonah wasn't really swallowed by a fish, but he actually died in the sea and then he came out on land and was resurrected or, something along those lines. Again, there's reasons theologically to kind of go those directions.

 

[00:38:54] But I think at first, the fish is not really a refuge, but it could form something like it. We have the connection with the fish and Sheol directly and the pit in the Book of Jonah. The fish is part of his descent into a realm that he describes as Sheol, whether it really is, whether he actually died, maybe is kind of aside from the point. In retrospect, as the story goes along, we realize that his being swallowed prevents him from finally drowning. So the fish looks like a final stage of Jonah's judgment in one moment, but it does end up being the means of preservation. This is why the theme of refuge is so complicated and so vastly interesting when you really dig down into it. Because refuge can happen within judgment, it can be both good and bad things, and so on.

 

[00:39:55] But since the fish is described as Sheol and we have references to the pit, things like that, the really interesting thing in my opinion is that in other stories where we see this happen, there is often a transformation. At least there is a transformation if the person undergoing what's happening is not really all that righteous to begin with. Jonah is certainly not all that righteous because he's running away from God. And so we would presume that this experience in the belly of the fish is going to be a transformative one to Jonah, that when he comes out of it, that he will then be a willing participant in God's goals, that Jonah will then happily go on his way as a prophet and go tell Nineveh whatever God wants him to say.

 

[00:40:50] But that doesn't happen with Jonah. We don't really see a transformation that is that direct and clear. So for me, one of the most fascinating pieces of the story of Jonah is that we don't just have that kind of a narrative change, and yet Jonah still does accomplish what God has him set out to do. And, you know, in the end, there's really no full resolution for Jonah and his faith situation.

 

[00:41:21] Here is an interesting point too, that Jonah's name means dove. So we have a fish, and we have the fish swallowing a human who's named dove. From an ancient cosmology perspective, this is absolutely fascinating how it is actually collapsing realms together. Because we have the fish, who is obviously a sea creature. The sea is kind of like the underworld. We have Jonah, who is, of course, a man who belongs in the earthly land realm. But that man is named Dove, and birds belong in the sky realm. So we have a collapsing of all three realms in the situation.

 

[00:42:10] I also do think that this is a direct callback to Noah's dove that moves over the water in search of habitable ground. Jonah, the dove, flees across the sea, which is kind of like moving over the water. But he goes down into the water, and he has to be spit out and returned to dry land. So he's not really the faithful dove here like we see with Noah's dove.

 

[00:42:38] I don't have time to get into all of the really fascinating interpretive ideas surrounding Jonah's name, but there's a few of them, and I will mention some of them. First of all, some scholars think that the name is present simply because the author is using Jonah son of Amittai from 2 Kings 14. So we don't really require any symbolism. It's just a historical identification.

 

[00:42:59] Second really interesting idea is that Jonah is a picture of Israel or Ephraim. Hosea calls Ephraim a dove easily deceived and without sense in Hosea seven, verse 11, and describes Israel returning like a dove in Hosea 11, verse 11. So some scholars see Jonah's theme as supporting his representative relationship to Northern Israel. They are flighty, they are politically foolish, but they're still pursued and restored.

 

[00:43:43] Of course, we have the connection with Noah's dove. And then we have kind of a more modern perspective where modern readers will associate doves with the idea of peace. But the biblical dove imagery is much more varied. A dove can be foolish, it can be vulnerable, it can be mourning, it can have symbolism of flight or return. Jonah might be an ironic kind of biblical dove where the messenger is sent toward reconciliation, but instead he flies away and resents peace for Nineveh.

 

[00:44:23] Let's look at Jonah chapter two. He's in the belly of the fish, and now suddenly we have this really beautiful chapter. Jonah chapter two is almost entirely a poem, and it's very much like one of the Psalms. In fact, it echoes a lot of Psalms very directly. Jonah seems to have resisted praying to God from the belly of the ship, but now that he's in the belly of the fish, he is going to pray.

 

[00:44:53] I won't read the whole chapter here, but I will point out a couple of different places in the Psalms where it parallels the lines so that you can go and read it yourself. Psalm 42, verse 7, calls to waves and breakers that pass over the sufferer, very much like some of the language here. Psalm 69 talks about waters reaching the throat and the deep enclosing. Psalm 30 talks about life brought up from the pit. Psalm 120 talks about calling from distress and being answered. And Psalm 116 talks about vows and sacrifice after deliverance. And those are just a few of the examples. Some of them are very direct in Hebrew, others are a little bit looser, but there's quite a few parallels here.

 

[00:45:35] There's also an orientation toward the temple, and this might be a possible connection to 1 Kings 8, which is Solomon's dedication of the temple. And Solomon imagines prayers offered from distant places going toward the temple, asking God to hear from heaven. And so then the temple acts as kind of an axis mundi, or a connection from Earth to heaven.

 

[00:46:18] An interesting point to note about Jonah chapter two is that the prayer is a thanksgiving psalm, not primarily a plea for rescue. Jonah has not yet been rescued, and yet he's praying this thanksgiving psalm. Jonah also blames God for his descent into the deep, even though it was the sailors who physically threw him overboard. But Jonah here is recognizing Yahweh as the ultimate agent behind the event.

 

[00:46:49] And Jonah, fleeing from the presence of Yahweh in chapter 1, now laments being driven from before Yahweh's eyes and looks toward the holy temple. So his movement is reversed.

 

[00:47:02] Now, does the prayer prove Jonah's repentance and now that he is fully allegiant and on board with what God wants? Well, probably not, because even though he thanks God for deliverance and recognizes divine agency and promises worship, well, he wasn't really denying those things exactly in chapter one. He's still not explicitly confessing disobedience. He doesn't mention Nineveh. He doesn't accept a commission. He's not asking for forgiveness.

 

[00:47:36] And so Jonah is speaking like a faithful psalmist, but the whole narrative is complicating his words. And it makes me wonder if we're supposed to take this story and think about our use of the Psalms. Are we truly praying the Psalms if we pray them and if we read them as prayers? Are we really inhabiting those words in allegiance? Or are we just kind of saying the words?

 

[00:48:05] Now, I'm not saying that Jonah's prayer is fake or anything like that. You know, it could very well be that he is genuinely rejoicing in his own salvation, but he is still remaining unable to welcome the sovereign freedom of God to save other people.

 

[00:48:24] The beginning of chapter three is a major hinge point because here we have the word of Yahweh coming to Jonah a second time. So I think here at this point, we have the opening question to our episode partially answered. God saves Jonah because God has not abandoned the prophet Jonah or his intended hearers of the prophetic word through the means that God originally set up. But our question now is what exactly has been restored when Jonah reaches the dry land and he receives this second prophetic word?

 

[00:49:04] The first verse of chapter three deliberately echoes the first verse of chapter one, and the wording emphasizes not Jonah's survival in chapter three, but his restoration and perhaps continuation to prophetic service. And the second command is substantially the same. Arise, go to Nineveh, proclaim. God has not revised the mission to accommodate Jonah's resistance.

 

[00:49:32] The commission is still active because Nineveh has not heard the warning that God intends it to hear. We do have a little bit of difference between chapter three and chapter one, because the wording is now stressing proclamation that I tell you. Jonah is not controlling the message. His authority remains derivative and only what God is to tell him. This reminds me of Balaam and the donkey incident, where it kind of doesn't matter what the prophet intends. God will get his word out through the prophet that he selects.

 

[00:50:10] Now this time, Jonah does outwardly obey, but as we go through the story, his compliance is still not inward alignment with the idea. Again, it's fascinating to me that this situation did not transform him, because when you go down into the deep and you come back up, you are supposed to be the transformed human. And in spite of Jonah's psalm, that doesn't seem to be the case.

 

[00:50:39] Now let's look at this proclamation that Jonah actually gives. “Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overturned.” Of course, we can still ask if this is really the only thing he said or just a summary. Many people wonder, why does Nineveh respond so dramatically if it's really that short? And another question is, does this word overturned suggest destruction, transformation, or intentional irony? Most people are presuming the word overturned is suggesting a destruction judgment.

 

[00:51:20] Personally, that's the direction I go, but I don't think it has to remove the possibility of the actual outcome that happens, that Nineveh is indeed overturned in a moral and social sense.

 

[00:51:35] A point that I wanna make here is that we really need to understand what a prophet is and what a prophet does. Prophecy is more than just prediction. While Jonah's announcement or proclamation concerns the future, certainly, biblical prophecy is not just advance information about what's gonna happen. But really, the prophet is supposed to bring God's interpretation of the present. The prophet is telling the people the situation right then, because Nineveh's violence has reached God. The present course of that violence is going to lead toward overthrow, and the announcement demands some sort of response.

 

[00:52:23] So the prophet is revealing the meaning and the trajectory of a situation before its consequences fully arrive. So even though, like we've said, these words that Jonah uttered are very brief, but a prophecy is also not only the words that a prophet speaks. Prophetic warnings are often also performative. It can involve the actions and the life of the prophet himself. And when people see that, then both the words as well as the actions can describe a possible future, but not necessarily an inevitable future.

 

[00:52:56] So by being spoken and heard, the warning of the prophet can change the situation. It doesn't change the situation because God suddenly changes his mind. It changes the situation because the people change. The people are gonna go and fast. The king of Nineveh issues a decree. Violence is renounced, and God relents, not because God suddenly changed his mind about the judgment, but because the people have changed, making the judgment no longer applicable in a situation of justice. Because repentance changes the situation.

 

[00:53:43] I know that might be really uncomfortable for a lot of people. Like, “Oh, does that mean we save ourselves?” And questions like that. No, we do not save ourselves because it is still God's actions. We are not saved because we do it ourselves. We are saved because God just wants to be merciful towards us. He doesn't want to judge us. He doesn't want to destroy people. He wants to change them. He wants to move their hearts in relation to Him. The change that goes on is not within God, it is within people.

 

[00:54:27] Now we've talked about Jonah mentioned in the Old Testament. Obviously, we're talking about the Book of Jonah. But let's talk a moment about Jonah in the New Testament. Luke says that Jonah becomes a sign to the Ninevites, but we're never told exactly how. Possible interpretations include the prophetic warning itself. Perhaps there was even more said than what is recorded here.

 

[00:54:54] Jonah can also be a sign to the Ninevites because of his own person and presence. His emergence after passing through death-like waters, and possibly the totality of his mission and everything that he has gone through. For all we know, the Ninevites knew some of the sailors or heard tell of everything that had gone on, so they knew who Jonah was. We don't know. But there's all these different ideas. It can be more than words, is what I'm saying.

 

[00:55:20] Another point to notice is that the credibility of the prophet is not dependent on his moral perfection or even necessarily his character. So again, calling back to Balaam, we don't think Balaam was the model human, right? And yet he was an accurate prophet. So there is a difference between the people and the Word. And clearly also, the prophet is looped into the prophecy itself.

 

[00:55:59] Jonah delivers the warning, but he has not absorbed its logic himself. His own experience should have taught him that judgment doesn't have to be final, that God can preserve the guilty, that salvation and mercy belongs to Yahweh. But Jonah is just not happy with all of that.

 

[00:56:18] I mentioned earlier this idea of mercy, and I've mentioned it before. I will mention it many times in the future because our idea of justice tends to be wrapped up in retribution. Justice and judgment is about meting out a sentence on the guilty. At least that's usually how we read it. But in biblical judgment and biblical justice, mercy is just as much a piece of that.

 

[00:56:48] We see that all over the place, including in the Book of Jonah. I won't stop to read all of these, but go read Jeremiah 18, verses seven through 10. Go read Joel 2, verses 12 through 14. And go read Amos chapter seven, verses one through six, and Jeremiah twenty-six, seventeen through nineteen. A warning of judgment is not necessarily evidence that judgment is fixed, and it's not all about retribution. The warning and the idea of retribution itself can be one of God's means of preventing the future that those things announce.

 

[00:57:30] In fact, Jonah fully understood this, and that is why he fled. Let me read Jonah chapter four, verses two and three, which say, quote, “And he prayed to the Lord and said, O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish, for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” End quote.

 

[00:58:01] He knew Yahweh was gracious, compassionate, and slow to anger, abundant in covenant loyalty, and the one who relents from disaster. All of that echoes Exodus 34, verses six through seven, by the way. It echoes Moses and Jonah, a very powerful contrast there. But here, Jonah wants to have his life taken, not for the Ninevites, but because he can't stand the Ninevites receiving mercy.

 

[00:58:42] Like Moses in Exodus 32 fears that Israel will be destroyed, but Jonah fears Nineveh will not be destroyed. Moses intercedes for the people, but Jonah withdraws and waits for the destruction and asks for death because he can't stand to see that not happen. Moses wants mercy for the people, but Jonah would rather die than see mercy reach his enemy. Like Jonah's theology and understanding of God is accurate. His problem is not that he misunderstands God's character. His problem is that he does not want God to be that God for Nineveh.

 

[00:59:25] Now, a really fascinating question in the Book of Jonah: where is Israel in the story? Is Jonah only an individual prophet, not really associated with Israel? We know that he is in 2 Kings. Does his behavior expose something about Israel's vocation among the nations?

 

[00:59:49] My suggestion to you is that Israel is absent as an acting kind of character or nation, but it is present through Jonah himself. Because Jonah's identity as an Israelite prophet allows his resistance to kind of dramatize a problem that Israel itself must confront, receiving divine compassion while resisting its extension to the nations.

 

[01:00:18] So even though Israel never directly appears in the story, this contrast between Jonah and the Gentiles has these national implications that Israel itself should understand. So Jonah's conduct is the point of the story, I think, in large part. His story invites Israelite readers to examine themselves in him. And I would suggest that we ought to do the same.

 

[01:00:48] Even if we possess knowledge of God, even if we are chosen, and even if we are in Christ and we receive the Spirit, if we are not cooperative with that situation and if we are resistant, and that includes seeing people that God wants to be merciful towards as being enemies and being people that we don't want to be saved, then that does not bode well for the revealing of our own character.

 

[01:01:19] Now, there's quite a few really interesting points we could add towards the end of the Book of Jonah. We probably will a little bit more when we get into more animal context and animal themes. But I wanna just point out that animals appear at both ends of Nineveh's deliverance. In chapter three, verses seven through eight, the animals themselves fast and wear sackcloth with the people.

 

[01:01:46] And in Jonah chapter four, verse 11, the animals are explicitly included in God's concern. So that makes them part of the whole book's argument, and their participation is, I think, deliberately extravagant. Perhaps it continues to the satire of the account or the hyperbole, but it for sure expresses the totality of the city's response and the totality of God's concern. I think it also strengthens the connections with the flood. And the actual last words in the book are about animals. The Book of Jonah ends without recording the prophet's answer.

 

[01:02:29] So just backing up to the story as a whole, Jonah is a very strange prophetic type. Not just because he's swallowed by a fish and that's a really weird situation to have happen, because he has spoken positively in other places in Scripture, and yet here there's a lot of question as to his character, as to his faithfulness, as to his response to God, and all of these things, and yet it doesn't prevent him from being a prophet.

 

[01:02:58] So the character of Jonah is very valuable as a type and a contrast of various types. He's a very imperfect type of prophet. He descends because of disobedience. He's guilty of the crisis that he instituted. He resents the people to whom he is sent. He does not embody God's compassion. Yet God still uses his descent and his restoration to bring life to others. The sailors are delivered. Jonah's recommissioned. Nineveh hears and responds.

 

[01:03:34] I think also we see Jonah as a very strong type of Christ, right? That's not to say that everything that his character is is going to be reflected in the Messiah, but he shows the need for a prophet whose mission and message and suffering and obedience and compassion are fully aligned with God's.

 

[01:03:59] In the New Testament, we see Jesus described as greater than many other prophets and priests and so on. The connection between Jonah and Jesus is not just the three days in the belly of Sheol, but it's also that Jonah is a sign to the Gentiles. We have response by the Gentiles. And Jesus contrasts that response with the resistance of his own hearers in the New Testament.

 

[01:04:28] So Jesus is greater in the resurrection in the three days. So that plays its part. But Jesus is also greater in prophetic faithfulness. He is everything that the faithful prophet Jonah fails to be.

 

[01:04:44] So I decided to start with the Book of Jonah in relation to talking about the prophets, because I think this book opens the prophetic literature through a very hard question, which is, can a person carry God's saving word without sharing God's saving purpose? But my bigger point is that God's mercy and His prophetic word will be applied and will have its way in spite of us.

 

[01:05:15] And all of that leaves us with some very deep questions for our reflection on ourselves and the way that we understand justice and forgiveness and other people. Jonah returns from the deep and Nineveh returns from violence, but the book ends before the prophet turns faithfully to God in that last question. And that final question is one that remains unanswered, and I think we are supposed to answer it for ourselves.

 

[01:05:47] Okay, I am gonna go ahead and leave it at that in this episode. The Book of Jonah is absolutely fascinating, so many interesting details, and I hope you got something out of this discussion today. As always, I am so grateful to all of you who listen to the episodes, who share them to other places and with other people, so that other people who might be blessed with this material can also find it. Really deeply appreciate your prayers and also those of you who help support me financially through Patreon, PayPal, and my Biblical Theology community. But that is it for this week, and I wish you all a blessed week, and we will see you later.