Episode 146: Jared Byas – Rediscovering Jonah – Part 3

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Pete: You’re listening to The Bible for Normal People. The only God-ordained podcast on the internet. I’m Pete Enns.

Jared: And I’m Jared Byas.

Jared: Welcome, everyone, to this episode of The Bible for Normal People. What you’re in for today is part three of my series that I’ve been doing this year on rediscovering Jonah. This is the final part to this series. Of course, there is so much more we could cover, but we’re going to end it here. If you haven’t already, you can go back to listen to part one, which is Episode 123 back in April and then Episode 142 which came out in October will be part two, this is part three.

So, what has happened so far? Again, this is a very small, short book, just a few pages in our English Bibles. Jonah is called to preach judgment against Nineveh. This is where we begin our story. Jonah refuses and flees from God. This ends up in a whole world of trouble for Jonah on the way to fleeing from God. God finds Jonah and Jonah asked to be thrown overboard when a great storm comes, and he descends to the bottom of the ocean and then out of, as we learned last time, creation itself shut up into Sheol, or the underworld. The fish, then, is this vehicle of salvation and comes and rescues Jonah. Jonah is rebirthed and vomited onto dry land. Now, what’s the rest of the story? We’re gonna just take a quick minute to do an overview and then we’re going to dig into the second half of the book by digging into the overall themes and questions of the book. It seems a little easier to do it that way than to go chapter by chapter partly because I don’t want to lose everyone in the details if you don’t have a book in front of you, you don’t have a Bible there that you’re reading along with, but also, it helps to solidify what this book may be about. Again, scholars don’t completely agree on what the book is fully about.

But what’s the rest of the story before we go there? Jonah is given a second chance in Jonah 3. Chapter three actually starts almost identically to how chapter one began with a couple of noticeable differences, but it’s similar. “The word of Yahweh came to Jonah a second time, go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it what I tell you.” So, Jonah is given a second chance, and this time he goes at once to Nineveh in accordance with the Lord’s command. Nineveh hears the word of God in a five word sermon that Jonah will give, and out of that response, the Ninevites repent and that ends chapter three. And then chapter four is this debate between God and Jonah on what just happened, what it means, and these object lessons that God provides for Jonah. And in that chapter, we enter into wisdom territory. We see that Jonah is cut from the same cloth as Job and Ecclesiastes. All three of these books have the goal to go toe to toe with God and ask God the hard questions, it’s one of the things I love about all three of these books is that they’re not afraid to ask the difficult questions and they don’t actually give us simple answers. They end sometimes with more questions than answers. They end with mystery and we get no different in the book of Jonah, which ends in a question. We don’t get a clear-cut answer of who God is or what God is up to, because there maybe isn’t always a clear answer for some of these more difficult questions. But we are going to talk about some of those questions and explore these themes in our time today.

Again, we’re going to, rather than going chronologically like we did with chapters one and two, we’re just going to be hitting a few themes as we wrestle through what it means for the Ninevites to repent and for Jonah to be involved. The first one we’re going to talk about is prophecy. First, we run into this question of prophecy because Jonah is a prophet. And Jonah is commanded to go to the Ninevites and preach and proclaim to them what God tells him. So, to go back, I said, chapter one and chapter three start almost identically. There are a few differences. The primary difference is that in chapter one, Yahweh tells Jonah to go to Nineveh and proclaim judgment. In chapter three if you notice, that word is noticeably absent. Yahweh tells Jonah to go to Nineveh and proclaim what I tell you.

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This change from judgment to what I tell you starts to make a little more sense in verse four when we get to Jonah’s five word sermon. Now, this is five words in Hebrew, not English, so don’t be snarky with me and tell me that I’m about to say more than five words. I know that. But in Hebrew it says, “forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” Now, you may not, that may not be a big deal in English, but if we look at the Hebrew, that word translated “overthrow” is actually ambiguous. It could mean overthrow in terms of destroyed, overturned, or it could mean turned over or to be changed. This is now an ambiguous message from the prophet. Forty days more and Nineveh will be destroyed or changed? We don’t know. And that starts to ask questions in our minds about the purpose of prophecy and the office of a prophet. It, does the prophet preach doom or does the prophet preach hope or does the prophet preach doom which leads to hope? Do they preach repentance? Do prophets predict the future? How does this all work? And if we look at, in the Hebrew Bible, the various ways that prophets work, we start to understand why these questions are important. If the prophet preaches doom, right, so a lot of prophets, Jeremiah and others will preach doom, but if the people repent and actually change has the prophet done well or did the prophet fail? Right? Because if we go back to Deuteronomy, we’ll see that one of the primary ways that we can tell if a prophet is a prophet that’s a false prophet is if they predict something that doesn’t come to pass. So, for the prophets, this ambiguity, this question is a matter of life or death because if a prophet says something that will happen and it doesn’t end up happening, that prophet is a false prophet and should be put to death. If Jonah had gone to Nineveh then straight away, right, back in chapter one, and preached judgment as Yahweh had said, and then the Ninevites repented and no judgment came, wouldn’t that make Jonah a false prophet? This is all very confusing for the prophets.

As such, you know, James Kugel, who we’ve had on the podcast, suggests that Jonah isn’t actually running away in some malicious way in chapter one, but is actually trying to protect himself and the office of the prophet. What if I go, and then I know how God is and God will relent, what does that mean for me as a prophet? So, in this way, Kugel suggests that Jonah feels betrayed. Of course, the ambiguity helps here for the drama of the narrative as well, right? We’re wondering, forty more days and what? Will Nineveh be destroyed, or will Nineveh be restored? On the one hand, the ambiguity gives Jonah a way out, right? If judgment doesn’t come, he’s not a false prophet because it’s ambiguous. We could just say, no, God’s message, the sermon was forty more days and Nineveh will be changed. On the other hand, we don’t get the idea that that’s the only problem with Jonah is this ambiguity of the office of prophet. Because we see in chapter four, it seems as though Jonah would have preferred judgment. So, the question is raised in the background, though, when we are a prophetic witness, do we desire retribution or restoration? Do we want people to be overturned or turned over? Do we want them to be destroyed or to be changed? And that is a tricky question and it plays on one of the major themes that we’ll talk about last, which is God’s mercy versus God’s justice. And what is the relationship between those, and maybe there’s not a clear answer. So, the first theme that we run into here in chapter there, and it really goes to the whole book as prophecy.

The second one that goes through the whole book as we see through chapter one, two, and three is repentance, which again, is tied to the idea of prophecy. Whether they will be overturned or turned over depends in some sense, it seems like, on how people take the news.

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We see the response of the sailors in chapter one, that’s then mirrored in the response of Jonah in chapter two, and the Ninevites in chapter three.  Repentance is an important theme in the book of Jonah. Frankly, it’s an important theme throughout the Hebrew Bible. As the Israelites continue to mess up, there is often then this call to repent, to change, to change our ways, to change who we are, to change how we are in the world, and this is no different. Of course, it’s a little bit different because the focus of the repentance isn’t on Israel, which it often is, but is on a non-Israelite group, the Ninevites.

But let’s look for a minute at the repentance of the Ninevites here in chapter there, and in some ways, it reminds me of the book of Job. If you read that story, the author is painstakingly hyperbolic. That means, the author exaggerates quite a bit to let you know that Job is about as perfect as he could be. He’s over the top in his righteousness, even offering sacrifices for the sins that his kids might’ve committed in their heart without Job even knowing about it, or without even them, frankly, doing anything. It’s sort of like Minority Report where Job is just sacrificing just in case they maybe sin. And so, this over-the-topness is similar to what we see in the Ninevites who are over the top repenters. There is a painstaking detail at the extent at which these Ninevites repent.

So, in chapter three, we get this story of the Ninevites repentance before the king even has to declare it. Just right after Jonah goes one day’s journey into the city and proclaims this five word sermon, the people already proclaim a fast, they put on sackcloth, they put it on them and their kids. Then, the news reaches the king and the repentance goes even further. The king takes off his robe, puts on sackcloth, and sits in ashes. Now, it’s important to note, sackcloth and ashes is a pretty Israelite way of repenting. If this wouldn’t have been necessarily a common thing that we find in other ancient near-eastern cultures for repentance. So, that’s important just like Job who hides from the land of Uz and yet acts righteously in very Israelite ways, so too we have here the Ninevites who are repenting in particularly Israelite ways. I mean, the question even raised, how would they have even known to repent in this way as foreigners? But again, that’s maybe beside the point and only goes to show that this is really not about some historical activity, but about these themes of prophecy, repentance, God’s justice, God’s mercy, and in that way, again, reminds us of more of the wisdom element to this book.

Anyway, he decrees not only does he take off his robe and put on sackcloth and ashes, he decrees a complete fast, both for people and animals. And this is where we get almost a humorous in the extent in which they repent. The animals are also called to fast. No food, no water, the animals are also covered in sackcloth and called to cry out to God. So, everyone, everything, must turn from their evil ways and injustice. And this goes to show too, that this isn’t just about show, this isn’t about just doing it as a show on the outside, but it’s also about changing your ways. And then, there’s an interesting phrase which is helpful because it, in some ways, says that this repentance is also not just to manipulate God as though God is some divine calculus A+B=C, the divine vending machine that if we put in the quarter, we’ll definitely get to live. It actually says, “Who knows? Maybe God will turn away from wrath and not kill us.” So, it’s coming at the end of all this repentance and saying, who knows? We don’t know. There’s a deep humility that comes from the king. Who knows? Maybe God will turn away and not do what God said that God would do.

And this, again, reminds us of chapter one with the sailor, the captain who also had similar humility and said, you know, who knows? Maybe the God will be kind to us, and we won’t perish. So, that humility is part of this repentance as well.

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God sees, again, just to finish out what happens in the chapter, God sees that they’re turning away from their evils ways and God doesn’t carry out the punishment and just like Job, then, we have this non-Israelite group acting like perfect Israelites. So, let’s talk a little bit more though, about this question, this statement, “Who knows? Maybe God will turn away from wrath and not kill us.” Because this question, this statement, gets at the heart of a lot. It ties together a lot of the themes that we find in Jonah, you know, prophecy, repentance, but also themes of God’s freedom, which we’re not going to talk about too much in particular, but only as it relates to God as a creator, as well as God as redeemer and again, this relationship between God’s mercy and God’s justice. A lot of that is tied up in this question, “Who knows? Maybe God will turn away from wrath and not kill us.” Implied in that is, well, no one knows, no one knows what God’s going to do. Maybe God will turn away from the wrath and not kill us, maybe God won’t. And again, this idea of God’s freedom is important, partly because this had happened in Israelite history where Israel treated God as some sort of magic, magical formula or magical equation where A+B=C, and Jeremiah talks about this in his book and in his prophecies where it seems like the Israelites sometimes had this idea that they could manipulate God with the right rituals. If we pray this way, if we go through these rituals, he uses this phrase “the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord” as though it’s some mantra that would get God to do what we want, that the temple is this magic place where God would never transgress or tear it down or we, because we have the temple, we are safe forever. That’s contrasted here with this humility. Who knows what God may do? Right? God’s free to do whatever God wants.

It’s, if you remember, though, the life of David, this question “who knows, maybe God will relent,” is, might come to mind. And I want to bring it up only because it does highlight this contrast between a story where this shows up in the history of Israel and then the story here in Jonah with non-Israelites. We have this heartbreaking story of David in 2 Samuel 12 where a very similar question is asked and it starts with the same first two words, who knows, it’s the same two words in Hebrew as well. And if you remember this story, it’s where Nathan confronts David for raping Bathsheba and murdering Uriah. Nathan tells this parable and then basically traps David. It’s similar to how God is going to kind of trap Jonah here in a minute. But as punishment, Nathan says that God is going to kill the baby that was born to David and Bathsheba. Listen to this passage and just note the similarities between the Ninevites and David.

Jared: Stay tuned for more Bible for Normal People.

Jared: “David pleaded with God for the child. He fasted and spent the nights lying in sackcloth on the ground. The elders of his household stood beside him to get him up from the ground, but he refused, and he would not eat any food with them. On the seventh day, the child died. David’s attendants were afraid to tell him that the child was dead, for they thought, while the child was still living, he wouldn’t listen to us when we spoke to him, how can we now tell him the child is dead? He may do something desperate.”

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This story goes on to talk about him after the child had died, he gets up and he starts to eat again and his attendants ask him, you know, why are you doing this? While the child was alive, you fasted and wept, but now the child is dead, you get up and eat. And this is David’s answer in verse 22, this is where that question comes in. He answered, “while the child was still alive, I fasted and wept. I thought,” there it is, “who knows, the Lord may be gracious to me and let the child live.” This would’ve been a hard thing to recall in the context of Jonah because here it is an Israelite, not just any Israelite, but King David, for many, the man after God’s own heart who repents and then God does not relent and God does not listen to him. And then to have the Ninevites, the people who would’ve historically been known as brutal murderers, enslavers of the Israelites repent, and God listens to them? The questions that this book raises go deep.

Now, a brief side note here, just because it’s in chapter three and worth noting. We have this phrase that we talked about in part two, a three days journey, right? The fish had a, Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. At the beginning of this chapter, it’s presented as though Jonah is about to go on a journey. This is how the NIV starts chapter three: “Now, Nineveh was a very large city. It took three days to go through it. Jonah began by going a days journey into the city, proclaiming,” and then we have our five word sermon in there. Now, that might just be there to let us know that it’s a big city, but it is curious that it’s presented as though Jonah is going to go on another journey because he just went on a journey in chapter two and this three days also connects us to chapter two. So perhaps this is a way of saying something more profound. Just as the fish went down on a journey to Sheol to be Yahweh’s vehicle for Jonah’s salvation, right, so the fish had to go down into these scary, chaotic, murky waters all the way to Sheol to be Yahweh’s vehicle for Jonah’s salvation. Now it’s Jonah’s turn to return the favor. Jonah is about to go down on a journey to Nineveh, a kind of Sheol, not the kind of place that he would necessarily want to be going to be Yahweh’s vehicle, now, for Nineveh’s salvation.

Okay, so, we’ve talked about prophecy, we’ve talked about the importance of repentance, and these are themes now that you go back and look in Jonah, look for these themes, prophecy, repentance, not necessarily because it’s giving a lot of answers, but because it’s asking a lot of really good questions. But this brings us to our third big theme, grace and justice. Scholars don’t agree on what the main theme of Jonah is or even if there is one, but it’s clear that this question of the relationship between God’s mercy and God’s justice is one of the top contenders for a major theme. And we see this most play out in chapter four, it’s sort of the climax of the book, because it’s the debate here between God and Jonah on what is this whole story that we’ve been telling, what’s it about?

Now, as an overview, it’s a little bit of a strange story, so I’m just going to give you the highlights and then we’ll jump into it a little bit. Nineveh repents again at the end of chapter three and we start with chapter four with Jonah being displeased greatly. Jonah is unhappy that the Ninevites repent. He prays to God and says, “God, isn’t this just what I said when I was still in my own country?” So, now we have a hat tip to what was the real reason at the beginning. “Just what I said when I was telling my own country, that is why I fled beforehand, for I know you are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in kindness, renouncing punishment. Please, Yahweh, take my life, for I would rather die than live.” Then Yahweh replied, “are you that deeply grieved?”

So, that’s how chapter four starts, and then we have this interesting story where Jonah makes a booth, I use that word specifically, but it’s a shelter, to see… the way I think of it is, it’s actually Jonah is going out to see, who knows, maybe God won’t relent. So, in the same way the king asks the question “who knows, maybe God will relent.” It’s almost as though Jonah is sitting out east of the city, watching to see who knows, maybe God won’t relent.

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And then, while Jonah is sitting out there, Yahweh appoints a qiqayon plant, which some translate it as like a castor oil plant, it’s likely what it is but we don’t really know for sure. So, a lot of translators or scholars will just say the qiqayon plant. And so, Yahweh appoints this qiqayon plant. If you remember I mentioned in part two that there are four things that God appoints, uses that word, appoints in the book. The first was the fish and now in these few verses we have the other three. First, Yahweh appoints the qiqayon plant to give Jonah shade. Jonah is happy about the plant and then God appoints a worm to attack the plant, and then God appoints an east wind and Jonah begs to die because he is deeply grieved about the plant. And then, we get Yahweh’s final speech, and this is what it says: “You have been concerned about this plant that you didn’t tend to it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight, and should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh in which there are more than 120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from their left and also many animals?” So, that’s the end of the book. It ends with that question, which is a haunting question. And we’ll get there in a minute, it’s tied up in these themes of God as creator, God’s relationship with humanity and grace and justice, mercy and justice, and God’s relationship with Israel.

So, but before we get there, I just want to make a point on how structured chapter four is. You know, we talked about in the first part one of the reasons we don’t necessarily take this as a historically accurate account is just because of how stylized this work really is. We saw it in the prayer of Jonah in chapter two, which is a pastiche of all these Psalms that are stitched together to make the larger communal point, rather than this being about one individual, Jonah, we start to maybe think this is about a community of people, Israel, and we see that through this pastiche in chapter two.

Well, chapter four is highly structured too, and this is, it’s clearly a wisdom-like chapter with Yahweh getting the last word, but importantly, ending with a question. And also, Yahweh and Jonah in this chapter both get exactly 47 words each. So, it indicates that the author wants you to know that there isn’t a clear winner in this debate between God’s grace, God’s mercy, and God’s justice. I mean, sure, it’s important, Yahweh gets the last word. That does mean something. But Jonah has a case, and we can’t dismiss it too quickly.

Now, just to finish that thought for those of you who like to be detailed and particular like me, I’ll just kind of lay this out. So, Jonah has the first 39 words in verses 2-3, and then Yahweh replies with three words, and then Jonah has three words, and then Yahweh has five words, and then Jonah has five words, and then Yahweh ends with his 39 words to round out the book. So, it’s pretty interesting if we pay close attention that the structure can actually give us some hint as to what the author is trying to tell us.

So, this chapter four represents, again, this debate. Jonah represents the argument for God’s justice and Yahweh represents the argument for God’s mercy and God argues the case with Jonah through this odd lesson. It’s an object lesson at the end of the book, right, where we have Jonah sitting out in the shelter that he’s made, God providing a plant, which provides shade. Jonah is happy, but then God provides a worm which eats the plant, and then the sun rises, God provides this east wind that beats down on Jonah and he begs for death and then God gives the final words. So, what are the lessons and what are the themes that we find here that are tied to this grace and justice theme? One is, and if we go back, we’ll see it through the whole book, that God is creator. We see this again in the four appointments of the fish, the qiqayon, the worm, the east wind, but we see it also in chapter one as God brings about and then calms down the storm. We see it in the animals who repent, we see it in the call back to creation in, at the end of the fish ordeal when Jonah is spit back up on dry land. That’s clear resonance with Genesis language.

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God has created everything, and as such, gets the final say in who receives mercy and who receives justice. And if you remember in many of the things we’ve talked about on the podcast, and I know Pete has definitely talked about this on many occasions, that God’s relationship to humanity as creator is tied to God’s relationship to humanity as redeemer. This is true in the life of Israel and in some ways, the book of Jonah is starting to maybe ask the question of whether or not it makes sense that because God is creator of all things, God can also be redeemer of all things. Whereas that had been localized within the people of Israel before, now it’s starting to get universalized and we’re starting to run against these questions of what is the relationship of God to Israel and God to all the rest of humanity? How can we have a special relationship with God, and yet see that God is both creator and redeemer of all creation?

So, this idea of God as creator can’t be separated fully from the idea of God as redeemer, and that is actually the one primary point in this final episode with Jonah, this is the argument that God is going to make. This reminds me of Jesus’ point at the end of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, it says this: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor, and hate your enemy,’ but I tell you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you that you may be children of your father in heaven. God causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect.”

If you notice, we have these same themes of God as creator, God as redeemer, and therefore our call to love our enemies. God as creator who sends rain and sun is tied to God’s mercy and Jesus’ call to love our enemies. So, Matthew 5 is very Jonah-like and it’s tied to God as creator and therefore, God as redeemer and this question of what does that mean for this us versus them mentality that we might have, especially as it comes to us through our enemies. We see this more starkly toward the end of the book with Jonah and this object lesson as Jonah is revealed to be hypocritical. In some ways, God tricks Jonah into agreeing with him. God creates this qiqayon plant to give Jonah shade, which he’s happy about, but then he’s upset to the point of death when the plant is taken away from him. And God says essentially this, this is sort of the argument at the end of the book. So, you’re allowed to care for something you didn’t create, so much that you want to die if it dies, and yet you’re telling me, God, I can’t care for something that I did create? Which then leads, again, to this theme of God’s relationship to outsiders, well, specifically Gentiles, of course, in this case. Importantly, we find in Jonah 4:2 when Jonah first gets upset with God, he quotes in the surprising way this important creed that we find in Exodus 34 and again throughout scriptures about who God is. It says, “that is why I fled beforehand, for I know that you are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in kindness, renouncing punishment.” So, this is from Exodus 34, a statement that we have found throughout the Hebrew Bible that Israel would pronounce and confess about who God is. This is the kind of God that we have this creed of sorts, but it has yet to be applied outside of Israel’s relationship with God. Is God this kind of God to everyone? And here, we have it expanded through Jonah’s unlikely confession, he almost, he’s almost resentful of this idea. And yet, I mean, we have hints of this, of course, throughout the Bible. We have Hagar in Genesis 21, we have Ruth the Moabite, we have Jethro, we have others. So, it’s clear that God has some kind of relationship and is gracious to outsiders, but we’re not real clear on what that is.

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And then later in the prophetic books and then clearly here in Jonah, we see that while God has a special relationship with Israel, God cares deeply for all of God’s creation. And as such, can be merciful, again, God is free to be merciful whenever God wants to be, but can be merciful to God’s creation. How can it be that we are God’s people and yet increasingly see God as the God of everyone, not just us? This is an important theme here as we talk about the relationship between God’s justice and God’s mercy. The book doesn’t answer the difficult question of how we balance mercy and justice in our own lives or as people or society, but it does raise some important questions about our relationship to God, our relationship to our enemies, what it means for God to love, this is exactly the kind of question, the kinds of questions that Jews would be wrestling with as they find themselves as a conquered people, spread out among the known world, starting to see that the God they had held for themselves might just be bigger than the one that they originally imagined.

Jared: Thanks again for listening to another episode of The Bible for Normal People. I hope this has been helpful and helped you to have a different vision and view of the book of Jonah than maybe you would’ve had growing up or that you had more recently. Be sure to check us out on Patreon, https://www.patreon.com/thebiblefornormalpeople, where you can engage with a whole community of people around questions like these that the book of Jonah asks and doesn’t answer for us. Perhaps the wisdom is working it out in community together. Thanks so much, we’ll see ya next time.

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