Why did God send Jonah to Nineveh?
God sent a prophet to preach doom over a brutal Gentile superpower, and then forgave the whole city the moment it repented. Jonah ran from the call, raged at the mercy, and sat outside the walls hoping for fire, while the story quietly exposed his small heart beside God's great compassion. Jesus took the name of Jonah and turned it into the sign of His own death and resurrection.
This question arose from studying Why did Israel keep drifting into idolatry?.
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God's word goes to Israel's enemies too
Nineveh was a great city of Assyria, the empire that would one day grind Israel under its boot. Yet God saw its cruelty, 'for their wickedness has come up before me,' and He sent a warning instead of immediate judgment: 'Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach against it.' That is the first surprise of the book. God's attention is not bounded by Israel; even a violent Gentile capital receives a preacher before it receives destruction.
You cannot flee from the presence of Yahweh
Jonah 'rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of Yahweh,' and the verse repeats the phrase twice because that is the whole point: you can buy a ticket away from the assignment, not away from God. A storm chases the ship, and the pagan sailors who started out crying to their idols end in the opposite direction: 'the men feared Yahweh exceedingly; and they offered a sacrifice to Yahweh, and made vows.' The prophet running from God's presence becomes the means by which outsiders enter it.
But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of Yahweh. He went down to Joppa, and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid its fare, and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of Yahweh.
Then the men feared Yahweh exceedingly; and they offered a sacrifice to Yahweh, and made vows.
The fish was rescue, not reward
The fish looks like punishment, but the text says God prepared it; the same God Jonah was fleeing pursued him in mercy. Down in the dark Jonah finally prays, and lands on the old confession, 'Salvation belongs to Yahweh.' Centuries later Jesus named this episode as prophecy: as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The fish points past Jonah's rescue toward Christ's resurrection.
Yahweh prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
But I will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving. I will pay that which I have vowed. Salvation belongs to Yahweh.”
For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
Forty days, and a city believes God
Jonah's entire sermon was one short sentence: 'In forty days, Nineveh will be overthrown!' No invitation, no explanation, yet the response shames every stubborn generation of Israel: 'The people of Nineveh believed God; and they proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from their greatest even to their least.' Even the king left his throne for ashes, and 'God relented of the disaster which he said he would do to them.' Jesus confirmed it was real repentance: 'they repented at the preaching of Jonah,' and that faith will rise in judgment on unbelief.
Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried out, and said, “In forty days, Nineveh will be overthrown!”
The people of Nineveh believed God; and they proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from their greatest even to their least.
God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way. God relented of the disaster which he said he would do to them, and he didn’t do it.
The men of Nineveh will stand up in the judgment with this generation, and will condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, someone greater than Jonah is here.
Jonah's small heart, God's great compassion
At last Jonah admits why he ran: 'I knew that you are a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness, and you relent of doing harm.' He could forgive Israel that mercy, just not Assyria. So God contrasts the prophet grieving over a vine he never made grow with His own question: 'Shouldn't I be concerned for Nineveh, that great city?' The book closes with the question hanging over us too: will our hearts grow as large as God's pity?
He prayed to Yahweh, and said, “Please, Yahweh, wasn’t this what I said when I was still in my own country? Therefore I hurried to flee to Tarshish, for I knew that you are a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness, and you relent of doing harm.
Yahweh said, “You have been concerned for the vine, for which you have not labored, neither made it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night.
Shouldn’t I be concerned for Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred twenty thousand persons who can’t discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much livestock?”
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Did Jesus really rise from the dead?→Jesus Christ trail“For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to over five hundred brothers at once, most of whom remain until now, but some have also fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all, as to the child born at the wrong time, he appeared to me also.”How does God judge people who never heard of Jesus?→Who We Are trail“For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse.”Hold onto these
Verses to meditate on
But I will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving. I will pay that which I have vowed. Salvation belongs to Yahweh.”
God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way. God relented of the disaster which he said he would do to them, and he didn’t do it.
He prayed to Yahweh, and said, “Please, Yahweh, wasn’t this what I said when I was still in my own country? Therefore I hurried to flee to Tarshish, for I knew that you are a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness, and you relent of doing harm.
Shouldn’t I be concerned for Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred twenty thousand persons who can’t discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much livestock?”
The men of Nineveh will stand up in the judgment with this generation, and will condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, someone greater than Jonah is here.
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