“Jonah! O yes, that’s the man who was swallowed by a whale!”
This expression usually sums up what the average person knows about the prophet Jonah. The book of Jonah is generally considered by the critics to be a mixture of myth and allegory, but Jesus, by bracketing Jonah with the Queen of Sheba, sets a literary and historical seal to the writing. Jonah himself is set forth as the son of Amittai, and a reference to 2 Kings 14. 25 will show that he was of Gath-Hepher and, therefore, of the tribe of ZebuIun. It also reveals that it was during the reign of Uzziah, king of Judah, and Jeroboam II, king of Israel, that the word of the Lord came to him to give to Jeroboam II. He was contemporary with Hosea and Amos, and the fact that the book bearing his name opens with the information that it was the “word of the Lord” which came to Jonah, sets the divine seal upon what follows.
The command came to Jonah,
“Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it: for their wickedness is come up before me”.
Jonah’s reaction to this command seems, at first sight, to be very strange for a prophet of God, for we read in Ch. 1. 3,
“He rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord”.
Jonah would know that God was everywhere present by His Spirit and he would concur with the words of David,
“Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me. If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee, but the night shineth as the day; darkness and light are both alike to thee” (Psalm 139. 7-12 ) .
From what, then, did Jonah flee? Obviously not from the literal presence of God, but from the sphere of God’s operations, in this case, Nineveh. Jonah was moved by an intense hatred of the Assyrians. How could he save his people from future trouble and persecution from Assyria? He would not do that which was assigned to him; he would sacrifice himself for his people! He was afraid of one thing: that the people of Nineveh would repent. The word of God was, “Forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown” (Ch. 3. 4), so he would flee to Tarshish, the end of the earth, the farthest place he could go to, and leave Nineveh to its fate.
No doubt Jonah felt satisfied, even justified, in the course he was taking, for after all the Assyrians were a wicked and cruel people, whom he hated. If we would understand Jonah’s attitude in this matter, let us take an example which might happen to any one of us, for human nature is the same today as it was in Jonah’s day. When we accept the Truth and are baptised into the Anointed Jesus and into the Name of the Father, we become ambassadors; we come under the command,
“Preach the word, in season and out of season”.
Imagine the circumstance arising when we have the opportunity to preach the word to some particular family, but we don’t want to; we think they have bad habits and practices and though they might accept the Truth we consider that they wouldn’t be very nice people to have in the ecclesia; they might cause trouble. We are content to hide our light under a bushel, forgetting, as perhaps Jonah did, that it is in the power of God not only to forgive, but to transform Romans 12. 2.
So Jonah was content; so much so, that we read (Ch. 1. 5) “that he had gone down into the sides of the ship; and he lay and was fast asleep”, and continued so, although a mighty storm arose, so that the ship was like to be broken. Then came the challenge, “Arise, O sleeper, and call upon thy God”. Too late, what avail to call upon God, from whose word and work he was running away? The word of God is, “Them that honour me, I will honour, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed” (1 Samuel 2. 30). Our minds go to another similar occasion, but with a different ending, when one was asleep in a ship when a storm arose, and his disciples came to him saying, “Master, we perish”, and he arose and rebuked the winds and there was a great calm (Mark 4. 35-41). Jesus’ mind was stayed upon God, and the record is that if any man be a worshipper of God, him God heareth. Jonah hadn’t the necessary degree of faith. Following his experience of being cast into the sea, and being swallowed by a fish and vomitted out again on to dry land, Jonah’s outlook was not changed. Back where he started from, the word of the Lord came again,
“Go unto Nineveh and cry against it the crying that I bid thee” (Ch. 3. 2).
Jonah went, not because he wanted to go, not because he wanted to obey Or please God, but because he had to go. He realised that there was no escape from this unpleasant task. We have been called to show forth the works of the Spirit, to do the will and commandments of our Father in heaven, but how do we do it? Because we want to please our Father in heaven, or because we have to; its irksome, but still we are members of an ecclesia and we just have to keep up an appearance whether we like it or not. That that was the spirit in which Jonah went about the work is shown as events unfold. The very thing he feared came about: the people of Nineveh repented. His reaction to this is shown (Ch. 4. 1),
“But it displeased Jonah exceedingly and he was very angry”, and he said, “Was not this my saying when I was yet in my own country”. And what was his saying: I knew thee, that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness and repentest thee of the evil, and therefore I fled before unto Tarshish.”
Jonah didn’t want these attributes shown to the people of Nineveh, and when they were, he was angry and frustrated and cried, “Take, O Lord, my life from me, it is better for me to die than to live” (Ch. 4. 3). What was the use of living a life of service to God, which means denying and crucifying the desires of the flesh, if a people like these can have the mercy and kindness of God shown to them? He still didn’t think it possible that God would have mercy upon them, nor did he want it to be so; therefore,
“He went out of the city and sat on the east side of the city and there made him a booth, and sat under it, in the shadow, till he might see what would become of the city” (Ch. 4. 5).
So now God proceeds to show Jonah, in a very convincing manner, how illogical and selfish was his reasoning. God caused a small palm to grow up. in such a way that during the heat of the day it cast a shadow over him, and for which he was very grateful, because it ministered to his comfort and well-being. Then God prepared a worm, which smote the tree and it withered. The next day, instead of sheltering Jonah, its leaves hung limply down and, in addition, a hot wind sprang up, which greatly distressed him. All this caused him to have a sparing pity for the palm. He didn’t want it to die; he would have spared it and kept it alive if he was able, although he had not done anything to make it grow. So God challenged Jonah: Are you right in having a sparing pity for the tree, for which you did nothing, which came up in a night and perished in a night? Jonah answered,
“I do well to have a sparing pity for the tree”, for it had saved him from death; it was something which ministered to his personal comfort and he grieved because it died: he forgot that it was God’s gift, God’s handiwork and that he had the right to do with it whatever he pleased. His was the right to kill or to keep alive. God’s answer to Jonah was both convincing and humiliating: “Should I not exercise a sparing pity for Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons that (spiritually speaking) cannot discern between their right hand and their left?” (Ch. 4. 9-11).
Our minds go to a parallel circumstance in the New Testament, where the disciples James and John, having no pity for the Samaritans who opposed them, would have called down fire from heaven to destroy them, but Jesus said,
“Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of Man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them” (Luke 9. 52-56).
This, indeed, was God’s rebuke to Jonah: the manner of spirit we are of should desire to save men’s lives, not to seek or to wish for their destruction.
What effect God’s rebuke had upon Jonah we are not told, but enough has been told that we may be able to arm ourselves with the right “manner of spirit”, that in the day when we shall meet Him will bring us praise and not rebuke.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One