The word of the Lord came to Jonah, saying ‘Arise, go
to Nineveh, that great city, and call against her, for their evil has come up
before my face.’ Nineveh was the powerful city-state at the heart of the mighty
Assyrian empire. Like all empires—the Babylonian, the Roman, the British—Assyria
always threatened to destroy the peoples it conquered. Jews in both the
northern kingdom, Israel, and the southern kingdom, Judah, were painfully aware
of how powerless they were to stop Assyrian and Babylonian armies from ravaging
their lands, and carrying off their leaders into exile. Like the sea monster in
chapter 2, such empires had the power to swallow up conquered peoples and make them
disappear.
For a modern analogy, think of the Syrian ‘rebels,’ pounded
to pieces by Syrian and Russian bombs. Or
the Palestinians. Or 1500 British troops marching into Parihaka in 1881,
arresting and imprisoning without trial Te Whiti, Tohu and the ploughmen, and
sending them into exile in darkest Dunedin. Jonah hates the Ninevites. They are
the enemies of God’s chosen people. Jewish readers over the centuries, all too
familiar with Assyrian, Babylonian, Roman, or, in medieval Europe, Christian
power, had little difficulty understanding why Jonah revolted at God’s command
to preach to Nineveh.
Friday’s ODT ‘Faith and Reason’ column called Jonah ‘A
Whale of a Tale for Today’s World.’ I agree with Ian Harris, a ‘Sea of Faith’
fan, that reading Jonah literally and ‘treating it as a news report misses the
mark by a country mile.’ The Assyrian and Babylonian conquests of Israel and
Judah sparked ‘hatred’ for the Ninevites and Jewish leaders decided, writes
Harris, that, since ‘their God was exclusive to them,’ they must ‘honour him’
by strict ‘racial purity’ and keeping ‘themselves free from contamination by
other peoples.’ Reading modern concerns about racial purity back into Jonah’s
world is anachronistic. More troubling, though, is Harris’s claim that ‘Jonah
lived and breathed’ the ‘intolerance and bigotry’ of the Jewish people and their
‘exclusive’ God. This is all too reminiscent of a long and tragic Christian
tradition of interpretation that contrasts legalistic, exclusive,
self-righteous and intolerant Jews, with their angry OT God, over against
liberated, law-free, gracious, and loving Christians, with their compassionate
NT God. This tradition has fueled terrible anti-Semitism for centuries. I have
more sympathy for Harris’s conclusion that the Jonah story challenges any
country—including Israel and the United States—‘so consumed with its own
special identity and status that it dismisses other nations and their people as
unworthy of consideration or care.’ Jonah ‘challenges every age and nation to
be more human, more humane.’ While that’s surely right, I’m going to suggest
that Harris’s interpretation is a bit too easy. It avoids Jonah’s more
difficult challenge.
How did Jonah respond to God’s call to preach against the
violence of pagan Nineveh? He ‘ran away
from the Lord and headed for Tarshish’-- exactly the reverse of what God told
him to, traveling in the opposite direction to Nineveh. We’re not sure exactly what
or where Tarshish was, but some scholars think it may have been the city the
Apostle Paul came from, Tarsus. It was a bustling trading port where people
were busy getting and spending. Perhaps pursuing the goods life—acquiring stuff
you don’t really need to keep up with people you don’t really like—is what you devote
yourself to when you’re running away from God.
Jonah gets on a boat. Everyone else, the sailors and
the captain, are pagans. When the storm rages, they call on their gods for
help. But it’s the pagans, not Jonah, who behave superbly. When Jonah tells
them that he’s a Hebrew who worships the Lord who made sea and land, the fear
of the Lord which Proverbs tells us is the beginning of wisdom comes upon the
sailors. They’re terrified. When Jonah tells them to throw him into the sea to
calm the storm they’re too troubled to do so. They don’t want to kill an
innocent man, and try desperately to row back to land. But the storm grows fiercer
still. Please don’t hold us accountable for taking an innocent man’s life, the
sailors cry to the Lord. They’re the kind of pagans Paul refers to in Romans 1
who have the law of God written on their hearts. But Jonah insists, and so they
reluctantly throw him in. The sea calms down. The sailors offer sacrifice and
make vows to the Lord. The pagans are behaving like the people of God should.
At the end of chapter one we see the gentiles worshipping the Lord while the
Lord’s prophet sinks alone into the fathomless deep.
Jonah is swallowed up by the waters and then by a
great fish ‘prepared by the Lord’. Ancient Middle Eastern mythologies used sea
monsters to symbolize chaos and destruction. But Jonah can live in its belly.
The words of Isaiah 43: 1-2 come true: ‘Fear not, for I have redeemed you, I
have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will
be with you.’ Jewish readers would have seen the point right away: Israel
passed safely through the sea fleeing from Egypt; more recently, Judah was
swallowed up by the great beast Babylon, an empire that under Nebuchadnezzar
‘swallowed me up like a sea monster’ (Jeremiah 51:34). Jonah was in the belly
of the beast 3 days and 3 nights. He has hit bottom. Chapter 2 tells us that
Jonah shouted ‘from the belly of Sheol,’ the OT place of the dead, beyond all
help. Jonah’s as far down as you can get. Sin is its own punishment because the
Lord made humans to live in his sight, so when they turn away from him they
turn inevitably to death. Only God can help Jonah now.
In Matthew 12, Jesus says that, like Jonah in the
belly of the sea monster, he will be ‘in the heart of the earth three days and
three nights.’ Even after performing many signs and wonders for his fellow Jews,
they demand more. Angry at their unbelief, Jesus replies that this evil and
adulterous generation will get nothing but the sign of Jonah. He can give no
sign greater or clearer than himself. But, like the Pharisees and Sadducees, we
look for something else, a greater and better sign, something dramatic to prove
that he’s with us. We don’t want to be stuck with nothing but Jesus. We don’t
want to hunger and thirst for righteousness. We try to avoid a broken and
contrite heart. We don’t want to be poor and afflicted. We seek all kinds of
glory and righteousness beside that of the upside-down kingdom where Christ
reigns. Insofar as we want something more than the sign Jesus has already given
us, we, too, are that evil and adulterous generation.
But the sign of Jonah is good news, because, as
chapter three tells us, the Ninevites repent and believe when Jonah preached,
without needing a miracle. Even their cattle do. That means that we can too.
The Ninevites, arrogant enemies of God’s chosen
people, repent and turn from their violence, begging God to spare them. He does.
Jonah is mad—like the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son. That’s
why he fled to Tarshish, he tells God. He knew the Lord was gracious and
compassionate, ‘slow to anger and abounding in love.’ Suicidally angry, he
walks out of the city to sulk. God makes a plant spring up to shelter him from
the heat of the sun. Jonah’s happy. Suddenly a worm eats the plant and it withers.
The heat’s unbearable. Jonah wants to die. Do you have a right to be angry about
the plant, God asks gently? Too right, barks Jonah. You’re upset about a plant
that you didn’t plant or grow, God replies. Well then, shouldn’t I be concerned
about the more than 120 000 Ninevites who can’t tell their right hand from
their left, to say nothing of the animals?
What’s the take-home message? The identity of Israel,
God’s chosen people, is to be a blessing for all nations. The chosen people are
never chosen for their own glory, greatness, goodness, or to feel superior to
others. The Lord who is gracious and merciful elects a people to bless others,
including enemies. That’s the calling the Christian church shares with the
Jewish people. That’s the calling of this congregation.
Here, finally, is the disturbing part. The easy answer
to the Jonah story, and to the parable of the prodigal son, is to say that
we’re not meant to be like Jonah or the elder brother. We’re not meant to be
angry, jealous, exclusive, intolerant, or self-righteous. The easy reading that
Ian Harris offers is of Jonah as the bigoted, intolerant Jewish Other, unlike
tolerant, inclusive, and humane Us. That’s a bit too easy. It’s the genius of the
book of Jonah, and of the prodigal son, that as soon as we think we’ve got the
message about the self-righteousness of Jonah—and of the elder brother—(applying
it, of course, to others) we fall into the same trap ourselves. The brother to
be celebrated in the parable is the one who says: ‘I am not worthy to be called
your son.’
Should I not pity?, the Lord asks in the final verse. Only
one of us has consistently given the right answer. The rest of us might be
better to class ourselves with the ignorant pagan sailors and bloody Ninevites
as those unworthy to be called children of our Father. The Lord is asking all
of us who, like Jonah and the elder brother, think we are not disobedient and
resent those who are to join in celebrating a God who loves sinners, the
unworthy and enemies.
Who are our Ninevites?
John Stenhouse
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