We the Jonah.

I just finished off a paper for my Minor Prophets class. I found some really cool stuff in my research. Here's my essay, take it for what its worth...

How often do we, as North Americans, think about our own needs instead of the needs of those around us? The prophet Jonah struggled with a similar misconception. Many people will read through the book of Jonah generally unchanged, chuckling to themselves about the message of a whiney prophet. However, the real message of Jonah is about God’s intended nature in humans, and how we need to look out for what is really important in God’s eyes. We pick up near the end of the book of Jonah where God and Jonah are talking to each other. At this time, Jonah is extremely displeased with how things are going: how could God spare an evil people such as the Ninevites?
The date is roughly 760 BC in the era of the Israelite King Jeroboam II and the Judean King Uzziah. At this time, the Ninevites are part of the rising the Assyrian Empire. The Assyrians represent everything that is twisted in human kind; historians have found that the Assyrians were gruesome warriors, slaughtering women and children, and torturing the leaders of those who opposed them. In the story of Jonah, the problem is not that Jonah dislikes Nineveh because they are Gentile, it is because Nineveh is evil (Roop 150).
The book of Jonah is split into four distinct parts: Jonah Flees the Lord, Jonah’s Prayer, Jonah Goes to Nineveh and Jonah’s Anger at the Lord’s Compassion. We will pick up the story in part four, where Jonah displays his frustration to God. Up to this point, Jonah has fled from the Lord, realized he cannot escape him, repented and obeyed the Lord’s command to go to Nineveh. Jonah preaches God’s message of destruction to the Ninevites. The NIV translates Jonah’s message to the Ninevites as, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned.” The Ninevites believed every word that Jonah spoke so they fasted, wore sackcloth, and prayed to God that he might show compassion on them. God relented. This made Jonah extremely displeased. It is difficult to understand why Jonah would be displeased.
In chapter 4, verses 2 and 3, there is a dialogue between Jonah and God. Here, Jonah is telling God the reason why he did not want to go to Nineveh in the first place.
…O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God; slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, O LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.

First of all, it is important to realize the reasons that caused Jonah to be upset. If we were in the shoes (sandals) of Jonah, would we not want wicked nations to be destroyed (Motyer 181)? And leaning on our understanding of God’s character, would we not also be inclined to tell God that the reason we do not want to go to Nineveh is because we know God is gracious and he will have mercy on those we do not like (Motyer 182)? God’s response to Jonah’s prayer is the basis of what God is trying to teach Jonah and the reader.
“…Have you any right to be angry?”
God’s rhetorical question was genuinely to evoke a deliberation in Jonah (Smith 279). “Instead of a thunderous blast of rebuke, the marvelous image of a tender God is portrayed” (Smith 279). The Hebrew word for ‘anger’ used in this text comes from the same word that the phrases, ‘to burn’ or ‘to be kindled’ are derived from. Many scholars have struggled with God’s question: was it a condemning question to which the only answer is ‘no’, or was it rhetorical, to merely counter Jonah’s accusations? In any case, it is concluded that every time God asks a question it is for teaching purposes (Roop 151).
Continuing on, we find Jonah does not reply to God’s question, but rather walks outside the city, towards the east. There he sits down to wait and see the fate of the city. At this site, Jonah makes himself a shelter to protect himself from the hot Assyrian sun. Roop suggests that the shelter was merely some stones and dead leaves (151). This area of the text has a dialogue dry spell; some believe that the silence here represents Jonah’s stubbornness, or that he was reflecting on what God had asked him in the previous verse (Smith 280). Smith also states that Jonah may have been contemplating how genuine the Ninevites repentance was (280). This is the point at which God shows his love for Jonah by providing a vine to shade him from the sun. The word “provided”, in verse 6, is the same Hebrew word used in Jonah 1:17 to describe the “preparing” of the great fish (Smith 282). The type of vine that God provided has been disputed among scholars. Some believe it to be a castor oil plant; however, the Greek word for the plant is only used once in the entire Bible, so finding its species is impossible. Jonah was extremely comforted by this plant; the text confirms, “…and Jonah was very happy about the vine.” This merely exemplifies just how self orientated Jonah is up to this point. The repeated use of “I”, “my” and “me” in 4:2-3 suggests, again, his self-concern (Motyer 190).
After the vine, God provides even more for Jonah, although what is provided is not necessarily comforting but, rather, a tough lesson. God “provides” a worm at dawn to chew the vine so that it would wither. He then provides a “scorching east wind” which pounds against Jonah’s head. Some scholars suggest that God was putting Jonah in the Ninevites situation to help Jonah evaluate whether his anger is justifiable (Smith 281). This is where the dialogue dry spell ends, and Jonah tells how he feels.
With the sun beating down on Jonah’s head and the feeling that he has lost his vine – his shelter being insufficient – he cries out to God saying, “It would be better for me to die than to live.” One can only imagine the frustration, confusion, and anger Jonah must have felt, and acrimony undertones that he spoke with here. Another reminder of how Jonah does not understand what God is trying to teach him. This is the second response from God that is in the form of a question.
“…Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?”
Another rhetorical question from God to Jonah in order to make him think about what he is saying. This time Jonah is quick to respond, possibly because he is at his emotional peak or completely fed up with the situation. “I do,” he replies. “I am angry enough to die.” One has to read into the tone of Jonah’s words once again to understand the anguish and frustration he is experiencing. However, the question still stands – does Jonah have the right to be angry? Motyer points out that Jonah could not accept two things: he fact that he could not live without grace, and how his enemies would benefit from grace(198). Smith also explains it in this way, “What right do we have to demand that God should favor us and not others?” (285). Would Jonah have come up with a more logical answer to God’s question if he had thought about what God was trying to teach him? The book of Jonah ends with God’s final response to Jonah about what he is trying to teach him and the reader.
…You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?

With this final word from God, the comparison that God set up for Jonah to grasp is clearly stated. God shows Jonah how engrossed in self-pity he had become and how that did not agree with what God really cared about. God does not care about the vine; he cares about people. God is telling Jonah what Jonah should have known all along. Through his rhetorical questions, God was getting Jonah to understand the gap in his thinking process. Now, at the end of the chapter, God gives it to Jonah straight up. The word ‘concerned’, used in verse 11, tends to not send the proper emotional power that was originally intended; Smith says that it should be replaced rather with the words, “have compassion” (286). The Hebrew word for ‘concern’ literally means “to have tears in ones eyes” (Motyer 200). One of the amazing things with Jonah is how he shows such compassion and ‘concern’ for a plant that he has not even tended to. Jonah was prepared to die for the comfort given to him by the plant, but was willing to let the Ninevites perish for their lack of taking God’s word to heart (Motyer 199). Allan puts this another way by saying that Jonah’s attachment to the plant could not be that deep considering it was present one day and gone the next. His concern was dictated by self-interest not by genuine love (234). God’s love for the Ninevites is one of magnificent, genuine love. They are his creation, his children, and it is here where the huge contrast between Jonah’s shallow love and God’s ocean deep love is clearly seen.
God also spoke about how the Ninevites could not tell their left hand from their right. This may have been their inability to distinguish various forms of religion, such as monotheism, polytheism and the worship of the constellations, which was commonly practiced among the Assyrians (Smith 287). Ogilvie states: “The Ninevites were wicked because they did not know the Law of Yahweh” (430). God showed great love for even Gentiles; did Jonah, and possibly all of the Israelites, get to the point of hording God for themselves? Perhaps they believed that God was for exclusive club members only, forgetting that God’s love is completely inclusive. Jonah’s judgmental character was possibly the result of not realizing that he, too, was being judge by God (Ogilvie 430).
Here we have ‘the story of the whiney prophet, Jonah’. What would it look like to take Jonah’s situation and transplant it to modern day? There are a couple of options to choose from. Roop describes it as the church not taking judgment into its own hands, rather, leaving it to God: “At all costs, [the church] should avoid taking up the sword, even for justice” (155). While this sounds like an extreme example of following the teachings of this passage, it would be a distinct practice for a church to portray. On a personal level this book should challenge us to re-evaluate what is important to us, to determine in what direction we are heading, and to see if that direction aligns with where God wants us to go. God’s blessings are often directly related to submission to his will. This is a statement that comes to life after studying the Israelites throughout the Old Testament. Another aspect for personal growth would be to realize that we are not to be the ones who are to pass judgment on people, or to question whether a person has truly repented. We cannot horde grace for ourselves; instead, God calls us to dispense that grace, which he has given to us, onto others. We must remember that the book of Jonah ends with God expressing to whom his true love falls – to people.