Jonah Runs the Other Way

The ship groans. Waves crash over the deck. Sailors are throwing cargo into the sea and shouting to their gods. And below deck, in the middle of all of it, one man is fast asleep.

His name is Jonah, and he is a prophet of Israel. One day God speaks to him. “Go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, because their wickedness has come up before me.” Nineveh is a city of Assyria, the most feared empire of the day, and Israel's enemy. Jonah gets up. He goes down to the port of Joppa. He buys a ticket. For Tarshish. About as far in the other direction as a ship could take him.

Out at sea, God sends a great wind. The storm is so violent the ship is about to break apart. The captain finds Jonah asleep and shakes him. “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your God!” The sailors cast lots to find out who is to blame, and the lot falls on Jonah. He tells them the truth. “I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. I'm running from him. Throw me into the sea, and it will go calm.” They don't want to. They row hard for land. But the storm only grows. At last they pray for mercy, lift Jonah up, and throw him over. And the sea goes still.

Jonah sinks. Seaweed wraps around his head. Then something enormous rises out of the deep. God has prepared a great fish, and it swallows Jonah whole. For three days and three nights he is inside it. And there, in the dark, Jonah prays. He remembers how he called out from the depths and God heard him. He ends with a promise and a shout: “Salvation is of the Lord!” Then God speaks to the fish, and it spits Jonah out onto dry land.

God speaks to Jonah a second time. Same message. This time Jonah goes. Nineveh is huge, three days' walk across. Jonah walks one day in and calls out. “Yet forty days, and Nineveh will be overthrown!” That's it. Eight words in English. Only five in Hebrew. And the whole city believes God. People put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least. Word reaches the king. He gets off his throne, covers himself in sackcloth and sits in the dust. “Everyone must turn from their evil ways,” he orders. “Who knows? God may yet relent.” God sees what they do. And he has mercy. The disaster does not come.

You might expect Jonah to be thrilled. He's furious. “This is exactly why I ran,” he tells God. “I knew you are gracious and merciful, slow to anger and full of love.” He storms out of the city and sits down to see what will happen. The sun beats down. So God makes a leafy plant grow up over Jonah to give him shade, and Jonah is very glad of it. Next morning, God sends a worm. The plant withers. A scorching wind blows, and Jonah wants to die. Then God asks him, “You cared about a plant you didn't plant or grow. Shouldn't I care about Nineveh, a city of more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who don't know their right hand from their left, and many animals too?” And the book ends there. With God's question hanging in the air.

To feel Jonah's anger, it helps to know what Nineveh meant. It stood on the Tigris River, across from today's city of Mosul in Iraq. It became the capital of Assyria, an empire that conquered its neighbours with great cruelty. In the end Assyria would destroy the northern kingdom of Israel, Jonah's own homeland. Being asked to warn Nineveh was like being asked to help the enemy.

Jonah, the storm, the fish and Nineveh. You'll find it in the book of Jonah, chapters 1 to 4. Jonah was glad of God's mercy for himself, inside the fish, but not so glad when it reached people he didn't like. So here's the question the book leaves us with. Who is the person you would least like God to forgive?