Jonah - Part 1

 

Read Jonah 1

So we begin this short book of the Old Testament about Jonah Ben Amittai. And to begin, we go to John’s gospel.  Jesus was getting everyone’s attention.  Some were amazed and some were offended or just ticked off that this man from Galilee was cutting in on their action.

The Sanhedrin sent guards to arrest Jesus. They came back empty-handed.  In their own defense, they said that they had never heard anyone speak like this man.

That had to get the goat of these high and mighty leaders who valued their own words so much.  They discounted the people who followed Jesus as an ignorant mob, but one who was more knowledgeable spoke on behalf of sanity.

Nicodemus proffered:

Does our law condemn a man without first hearing him to find out what he has been doing?

I thought we were studying Jonah?  Here’s the connection in the answer of the Sanhedrin.

They replied, “Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee.”

Let’s do what the Scribes and Pharisees directed.  Let’s look into it. We go to 2 Kings 14 and find that the Northern Kingdom, basically everything except Judah, had one bad king after another and did evil in the sight of the Lord.  We pick up at verse 23 and an introduction to Jeroboam II King of Israel

In the fifteenth year of Amaziah son of Joash king of Judah, Jeroboam son of Jehoash king of Israel became king in Samaria, and he reigned forty-one years. He did evil in the eyes of the Lord and did not turn away from any of the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, which he had caused Israel to commit. He was the one who restored the boundaries of Israel from Lebo Hamath to the Dead Sea, in accordance with the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, spoken through his servant Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath Hepher.

From this biblical and historical account, we see that Jonah came from Gath Hepher, a city about 3 miles north—northeast of Nazareth in Galilee.  Jonah was from Galilee.

We also see that Jonah had been a prophet to wicked people before.  That will have more relevance as we continue through Jonah.

So let’s dive into the book of Jonah.

The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”

In the first two verses, we have the mission statement and intent of the Lord.  Go to Nineveh and preach against it.  Why? Their wickedness is before me.  Basically, God said he could smell the stench of their wickedness.

So Jonah packed all of his scrolls containing his best sermons on repentance and headed to Nineveh.  He was experienced at preaching to the wicked and he was going to give this mission everything he had.

Not exactly…

Jonah ran.  He ran in the opposite direction of Nineveh.  Nineveh was north.  Jonah ran south to Joppa.

Nineveh was in what is present-day Iraq near Syria.  The modern-day town of Mosul might be the closest place near Nineveh that you might recognize.

Nineveh was within the fertile crescent, the route that Abram and his family took when they left Ur.  Abram, Sarah, and Lot continued along the fertile crescent into what would become the Promised Land.

Nineveh was a long trip from Galilee. It was a hike.  It was beyond the Northern Kingdom’s boundaries.

Jonah made sure it didn’t get any closer.  He ran in the opposite direction and boarded a ship bound for Tarshish. That was likely Spain, even the part west of Gibraltar.

Jonah was going to run away from God.  Jonah, the prophet who had spoken for God before, was going to run away from God. 

Do you want the theological term for this?  That’s a half-baked plan right there.  That dog don’t hunt.  Stupid is as stupid does.

We are 4 verses into this chapter and this book and God sent a storm.  It surely was a bad one because the sailors were already discharging cargo into the sea in fear for their lives.

Jonah had gone below deck and was asleep.  There is something to getting rocked to sleep while you are at sea.

The captain would have none of it and told Jonah to call on his god and make this stuff stop.  The captain and crew were obviously pagan but they knew Jonah had a different god.  They did not yet know it was the one true God.

The sailors cast lots—they drew straws to see who was responsible.  Jonah got the short straw.  Even long ago, people wanted to know who to blame.

So the crew decided it was time to get to know this Jonah a little better.

So they asked him, “Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? What kind of work do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?”

Jonah answered.

 “I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”

I don’t give Jonah any points for smarts but he does get credit for honesty.  He had already told the crew—evidently before the storm—that he was running away from God.

Who is that honest?  I know that this makes me look like an idiot, but I’m running away from God.  You all don’t have any of those Wanna Get Away fares do you?

The crew was terrified.  They had given passage to a man of God who was running away from God and a great storm comes upon them.

They asked Jonah what they should do.  He told them that they should throw him overboard. That wasn’t their first choice.  Maybe they could row back to shore.

This tells us that this was not a huge ship like a Spanish galleon with huge sales and a high deck.  The ships of this age had decks lower to the water so sail and oar could both be used.  The Phoenicians then the Romans mastered the art of building this sort of ship.

Rowing back to shore didn’t work so they did just what Jonah told them but not before they asked his God to forgive them for killing him.

Jonah went overboard.  The storm stopped.  The crew feared the Lord and made a sacrifice to him.  I don’t know what the sacrifice was, but the pagans had a paradigm shift.

Jonah was swallowed by a huge fish.  Actually, the text reads that God provided a fish to swallow Jonah and he remained 3 days in the belly of the fish.

God provided?  Who would want to be swallowed up by a big fish?  How about someone who was about to drown?

Was it a fish or a whale?  I don’t recall the taxonomy addressed in scripture.  You can get a genealogy or two along your way through the Bible, but nothing definitive in this area. I don’t think the Old Testament authors took high school biology, so a big fish is as descriptive as the author knew to be.

Kingdom Animalia

Phylum Chordata

Class Mammalia

Order Cetacea

That gets you close to a whale, but we don’t get that degree of specificity.  We don’t get genus and species. The whole binomial nomenclature didn’t come about until the 18^th Century.  Over the years that was sometimes a heated discussion.  We will just go with a big fish.

This is already a whale of a fish story.  It’s a big fish.  Not the one that got away but one in which Jonah found himself within as the chapter ends.

This running away from God business had not gone so well.

He had not pleased God.  He was thrown overboard and now was in the belly of a big fish. And not mentioned in the scripture, he was out the fare for his trip to Spain. You never know when you need to buy that travel insurance.

Praise the Lord that we never run away from God!  We don’t kick against the goads. We don’t walk on the other side of the road.  We obey his commands and they are not a burden to us.

We tithe. We give cheerfully.  Our entire lives are given to God as a living sacrifice.

We are always known by our love.  We are never afraid.  We are never discouraged. We are always people of hope!

Did anyone have to grit their teeth or roll their eyes through those affirmations?  I suspect that even as we try to follow Jesus, we all have some things in which we are still running away from him.

For now, we will leave Jonah in the belly of the fish, but let’s take some time this week to see if we still have areas in our lives where we are running away from God. 

Jesus said: Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.  You can’t follow and run away at the same time.

Let’s take some time to see if we have places in our lives where we are running away from God.  When we find them, go to God immediately in prayer.

Amen.