Episode 123: Jared Byas - Rediscovering Jonah - Part 1

In this episode of The Bible for Normal People Podcast, Jared begins his solo series on Jonah by taking a closer look at its genre and themes as he explores the following questions:

• Why is the book of Jonah personally significant for Jared?
• Why is asking about the historicity of Jonah a bad question? 
• What are some of the major themes of Jonah?
• What makes Jonah a unique biblical book?
• What are some significant literary features of Jonah?
• Why is it important for some people to read Jonah as historical?
• What did Jesus have to say about Jonah?
• When was Jonah written and how do we know?
• Where else is Jonah mentioned in the Bible?
• How does the book of Amos relate to Jonah?
• Why is it significant that Jonah calls himself a “Hebrew”?
• Why would the story of Jonah been upsetting to its original readers?

Tweetables

Pithy, shareable, less-than-280-character statements from Jared you can share. 

• “[Jonah] plays off of what people would have expected from other prophetic books, and that’s what makes it satire.” @jbyas
• “If we spend our time trying to prove that it is historically accurate or trying to prove how big our faith is by proving that a fish can swallow a grown man, my worry or my concern is that we actually miss the point of the book.” @jbyas
• “To respect biblical books, we have to ask what kind of book it is.” @jbyas
• “I don’t think… it matters one way or the other if you think the story actually took place or not, as long as you recognize that the value of the book isn’t about its historicity, but it’s in the message it’s trying to tell through this humorous, critical account of this character named Jonah.” @jbyas
• “The point of fiction is to relate to our real lives in profound ways.” @jbyas
• “What does God’s kindness mean and how does it relate to justice?” @jbyas
• “[Jonah] highlights some of the unhelpful practices that some Christians have when they read their Bibles.” @jbyas

Mentioned in This Episode

• Patreon: The Bible for Normal People

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[Introduction]

0:00

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

Jared: And I’m Jared Byas.

[Jaunty Intro Music]

Jared:Hey everybody. This episode is going to be a solo podcast by me, and it’sactually going to be the first part in a series. I was inspired by Pete doing“Pete Ruins Exodus,” and that’s Pete’s gig. He ruins books. But, I’m gonna callthis “Rediscovering Jonah.” We’re gonna do a series on the book of Jonah, do adeep dive here, and it will be a handful of episodes. I don’t exactly know howlong it will be. But it will be longer than, for those of you who have beenlistening to the podcast from the beginning, the first episode I did on Jonah.So, I’d ask those of you who have heard that to bear with me. There will besome overlap here in the first episode, but I want you to do like I tell mykids to do about the Rocky series. We’re just gonna treat it like it neverhappened, like we do with Rocky V, right? We just go from IV to Rocky Balboa;we just pretend that V never happened.  So,I would encourage you to do that. There will be more here than even the firstepisode, there will be more, even in this episode, and then we’ll just go fromthere.

So, we’regoing to take this first one here to talk about the big picture of the book.What kind of book is it, and tackle that one question that everyone asks, wegotta get it out of the way at the front is – is Jonah historically accurate -and I’m gonna talk about why that’s a bad question. And, of course, that’s whatwe’re gonna do. But then, in subsequent episodes, again, a handful - one, two,three – I’m not sure. We’re gonna do a deeper dive into each one of thechapters and draw out some of the richer themes about this beautifully written,wonderful messaged book called the book of Jonah. And we’ll just take it as itcomes.

So, justto set us up, I want to talk about the few reasons why I really like the bookof Jonah and thought it was worth doing a series on. So, first, it’s personallysignificant for me. So, when I was a pastor, I shared this in that otherepisode, this was a significant book for me to get through my transition. So,you know, it’s one thing to go through a deconstruction, period. I just wouldsay it has an added layer of challenge when your paycheck depends on you notchanging your mind about the Bible and what it is. And so, it was a particularlydifficult time for me of how do I wrestle with being true to myself and thequestions that I was asking, while also wanting to not damage anyone’s faithand not bring the congregation kicking and screaming along with me in myjourney, but letting them, respecting their journey and their stories, whilealso wanting to be truthful about where I was, and also be honest about what Iwas seeing in the text of the Bible. So, it was a really confusing andchallenging time for me, and the book of Jonah was one that I really grappledwith during that time, resonated with, and connected with in addition to thebook of Ecclesiastes was also a real help for me in that time. So, it’spersonally significant. So, I have this heart for the book of Jonah.

But notjust that, not just personally, but I think also critically, it highlights someof the unhelpful practices that some Christians have when they read theirBibles. And we’ll talk about some of that. Some of that today, and some of thatthroughout this book.

Andthirdly, it’s small enough to get our hands around and yet touches on some ofthe themes we find throughout the Bible. So, I think it’s a really good book tofocus on for a little bit to talk about things like repentance, and what doesit mean to be God’s people, and some of these bigger themes, theological themesthat we find throughout the Bible and maybe there’s some relevancy for us, butreally want to highlight and talk about and focus on the book itself. So, thisis The Bible for Normal People after all.

So again,we’ll start with the big picture, kinda what is the book about, then we’ll diveinto each chapter from there and talk about some of the central themes andpoints. Of course, we won’t get into everything because as small as this bookis, which in English Bibles, it’s a few pages. It’s only four chapters, itdoesn’t take up much room at all. You’d be amazed at the amount of articles andfull books, scholarly books, written on just this book. There is a lot that wecould cover, but it does really get into the weeds. We move out of Bible forNormal People and into Bible for nerds pretty quickly, so we’ll try toavoid that.  But I do want to go intosome more detail throughout the series.

4:39

So, let’sstart with this. What kind of book is Jonah? Jonah, I’m gonna argue, is asatire or maybe a satirical parable is a better way of saying it. It’s stylizedfiction with a theological point. Now, it’s important that we start with whatkind of book Jonah is because as one of my old professors used to say all thetime – that genre triggers reading strategy. All that means is we have tofigure out what kind of book it is first so that we know how to read the book.So, genre matters. And that’s important because there’s a debate in the book ofJonah, or on the book of Jonah between people, especially in more lay-circlesand pastoral circles on whether Jonah is historically accurate book or not, oris it a different kind of genre that’s less focused on history? And of course,I’m gonna say it’s less focused on history. It’s not trying to argue inhistorically accurate ways. That’s not the point of the book. It has atheological point, and there’s some stylized fiction that is a lot of reasonswhy I’m gonna argue that it’s satire.

So, let’sgo through some of these reasons. First, if we compare it to other prophets, wesee some stark differences, right? So, and if you look in your Bibles, the bookof Jonah is right smack there in what’s called the book of the twelve. It’s theminor prophets is another name for them, and they name those books tend to namethe kings, the historical situation, kind of situate it in historical, withhistorical details. But with Jonah, all that’s left out. It’s almost liketrying to be this universalizable fairy tale. In some ways, it reads like thebook of Job. So, if you read Job, there’s not a lot of context clues for whenit’s written, where it’s written, you know there’s, it doesn’t necessarily evensituate it in Israel, so Israel isn’t even mentioned in the book of Jonah. So,there’s a sense of universality to it. No names, there’s no dates, but it doeshave a lot of narrative details. It describes things in unique ways, in verycolorful ways, in very stylized ways. So, that’s one reason. When we compare itto the other prophets, it leads us to think this isn’t the same kind of book.

It alsoignores the strange relationship between Assyria and Israel. And if you readother prophetic books, Amos, Joel, those around Jonah, you’ll see there is adirect connection between the sinfulness of Israel and these foreign nationswho are going to be agents of God’s judgement and we don’t get any of that inthe book of Jonah. There’s not even a mention of Assyria as a people group. Wehave Nineveh, which is a city, and interestingly enough, which it pointsanother reason why it may not be helpful to read it as historically accurate,is Nineveh is said to have a king, but cities usually don’t have kings. States,nation states, meaning countries – they have kings. But in this story, Nineveh,the city, has a king. And the king is not named, it’s just the king of Nineveh.

And thenanother reason if we compare it to the other prophets that we find, other minorprophet books, the book of the twelve, are largely poetic in style. So, if youread in your Bible, you’ll see a lot of formatting that looks like poetry. AndJonah is largely gonna be narrative, it’s gonna be a story. And another exampleof this, when we compare it to the prophets, is that the other minor prophetsare filled with God’s words to the people, and so the prophet is a messenger ofthis message. But Jonah is largely devoid of God’s words. We actually only havefour instances of God speaking. All of them, actually, are to Jonah. We don’tactually have the message that God wanted Jonah to share directly from God,which is very different, than again, if you read the books around Jonah in yourBible, you’ll see the message from the Lord, and then it gives the message thatthe prophet is presumably sharing to the people. But we don’t have this here.

8:59

We havefour instances of God speaking in general, and they’re actually all to Jonah.In verse two of chapter one, God says to “go to the great city of Nineveh andpreach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” And then inchapter three, the word of the Lord comes to Jonah a second time, after, youknow, he goes through the whole fish ordeal. “Go to the great city of Ninevehand proclaim to it the message I give you.” But we don’t actually hear fromGod’s mouth what that message is. All we hear is in chapter three, verse four,Jonah giving this message - “forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.”That’s it. And then in chapter four, we have a dialog between Jonah and God,and God says, “is it right for you to be angry?” And then a few verses later,asks again, “is it right for you to be angry?” And then we have this littlecommentary from God. This is the longest speaking gig that God gets in the bookof Jonah. The Lord says, “you have been concerned about this plant, though youdid not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. Andshould I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there aremore than 120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from their left - andalso many animals?” So, God does get the last word. Those are the final wordsof the book, but that’s really all that we have in the book. It just reads verydifferently than the other prophets.

So, why isit in with the prophets is a good question. Well, in some ways it still isprophetic narrative. If you read the stories of say, Elijah and Elisha in 1Kings 17 – 2 Kings 5, you’ll see some similarities in this. And remember, inthe Jewish Bible, we think of Samuel and Kings and historical books inChristianity. But for Judaism, they’re actually part of the prophetic corpus.They’re part of the prophet books. They’re actually called the former prophetsbecause they focus on Elijah and Elisha the prophets and others around theKings. So, just remember, in the Jewish way of organizing the books, thenarratives of Elijah and Elisha would actually be prophet as well becausethey’re about the prophet. And that’s what Jonah is more, it’s about theprophet. So, at the very least, it plays off of what people would have expectedfrom other prophetic books, and that’s what makes it satire. So, satire istaking a form that we would recognize and turning it on its head. In a lot ofways, this is prophetic satire.

So, it startsout the same way as most of the prophetic books. The word of the Lord came toJonah, son of Amittai. That’s the common context clue, or genre clue, for beingprophetic. But then, the very next statement makes us think that something elseis going on, because Jonah arises and we think he’s gonna go do what God hasasked him to do, but he doesn’t. He runs away. So now we know something is up.This is where the satirical clues begin, right? We start the way we expect, butthen by the second verse, we know something is awry. In this way, you know, ina lot of ways actually, Jonah is painted as the anti-prophet.

So, if welook at, say, the book of Hosea, which is there right around the book of Jonahin our Bibles, the word of the Lord comes to Hosea, go marry a prostitute,chapter one. And he does it without question! And so, Hosea goes and marriesthis prostitute, you know. Name your, and then later, go to your wayward wifewho has committed adultery, and be there for her, reengage with her, have somereconciliation with her, and he does. So, we have this contrast, even with thebook of Hosea, and I pick that because those are some extreme examples of whatGod would require of a prophet, just to get the message across to God’s people.And Hosea just does it right away. And then Jonah, all Jonah is asked to do isto go and proclaim this message to Assyria, essentially, to Nineveh, and heruns away.

Now, we’renot sure why at this point. Maybe, for those who would be reading this story,and we’ll talk a little bit about the date of this, they would have in mind,well of course Jonah wouldn’t want to go to Nineveh, because the Assyrians wereknown for their brutality, and if you were an enemy of the Assyrians, youwouldn’t want to get caught up in preaching a message of repentance or whateverit is, the message that needs to be shared if you’re an enemy of Israel becausewho knows what’s going to happen to you. So, a lot of people might have assumedit’s because he was afraid. Later in the book, we’ll see maybe that’s not thecase. But it plays again, off what people would have expected from theprophetic books.

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Now, anotherreason why I would not put it in the history category, but put it in the satirecategory, or put it as different than these other prophetic books, is theliterary style, the way it’s written. So, if you read carefully, and it’s onlytwo pages, so you can read it carefully, you’ll see that there’s all kinds offun stuff going on here. So, let’s talk about a few of, we’ll talk more aboutthese fun things as we go through the book, but just for arguments sake, letsjust talk about a few that help us know we’re in parable territory.

So, thefirst is we have these rhetorical devices like personification. So, if youremember back to tenth grade English when you learned about personification,that’s giving inanimate objects human-like qualities. So, we have thisinteresting thing in the first chapter, and this ties to the theme that we’llsee in the first chapter of who really is a God-fearing person, or even aGod-fearing thing? So, for instance, in chapter one, the ship is given humanverbs. So, the only time an inanimate object is given this idea of thinkingabout or reckoning is here in chapter one, verse five, when the ship reckons orthinks about breaking up. And then a few verses later, the sea stops its rage.And again, this word rage is often reserved for the rage of a person, a king,in 2 Chronicles. So, it stops its rage. So, in this way, in some personifiedway, the ship is afraid of God, the sea is enraged; and yet we have Jonah notreally being bothered by all this. He’s asleep. But this personification givesus this stylistic sense, this is satire. It’s humorous. When you’re readingthis, you’re thinking, what do you mean the ship is thinking about breaking upor considering breaking up? Ships don’t consider things, and the same with thesea.

We also havea lot of hyperbole, which again, sorry to bring you back to English class, buthyperbole is this exaggeration or way of exaggerating things. And the way thatthe book of Jonah does this, is everything is great, or everything is big, on abig scale. So, we see this throughout a lot in chapter one. So, Nineveh is agreat city, and the way you give hyperbole in Hebrew is you double it. I’moversimplifying here, but you double the word and that makes it, you know,exceedingly great, or things like that. So, we have Nineveh is a great city,and Yahweh hurls a great wind. There’s a great storm. The men don’t just throwthe cargo, they hurl the cargo. They were extremely frightened, there’s a greatstorm. Jonah gets hurled into the sea. The men don’t just fear Yahweh, but theyfear Yahweh greatly. Yahweh doesn’t appoint just a fish, but a great fish toswallow Jonah. And then, we still have Nineveh being described multiple times,even in chapter three as a great city three days journey. So, it’s a verylocalized tale that’s given these details that make it feel grand. And that’ssomething we would expect in a fiction story. So, the literary style, thehumor, the irony, which we’ll talk about more.

Lastly, Ijust want to mention the structure of the story is very well crafted. It’sthese four vignettes that we’ve identified mostly in the chapter of the Englishgets it a little wrong, I think. But we have kind of Jonah and the pagansailors in chapter one, or Jonah running away from God’s call, and then we haveJonah in the fish in chapter two. We have Jonah proclaiming the message inchapter three, and then we have the aftermath of Jonah and the plant, or, youknow, Jonah’s dialogue with God in chapter four. So, it’s very stylized, it’svery neat.

So, whatkind of book is this? It’s satirical parable. That’s important, again, becausetoo many people focus on this question – is Jonah telling us a historicalaccount? We don’t know for certain whether it is or not, but all of these cluesabout genre tell us that it isn’t. And if we spend our time trying to provethat it is historically accurate or trying to prove how big our faith is byproving that a fish can swallow a grown man, my worry or my concern is that weactually miss the point of the book. To respect biblical books, we have to askwhat kind of book it is. We would completely miss the impact and lessons ofsomething like Aesop’s Fables if we spent all of our time and energy trying toprove that hares and tortoises can really talk, and they can really race eachother. So, I don’t think, frankly, it matters one way or the other if you thinkthe story actually took place or not, as long as you recognize that the valueof the book isn’t about its historicity, but it’s in the message it’s trying totell through this humorous, critical account of this character named Jonah.

18:40

So, I’mbelaboring this because in my tradition, there was this implicit readingstrategy. I don’t know if you’ve encountered this, but there was this implicitreading strategy when it came to the Bible that the most faithful reading isthe one where the most miraculous thing happened. There was an example in, forme, that was poignant because it got pointed out quite a bit. That say, like,in Exodus, the Bible itself says that there was an east wind that came andpushed back the waters so that the Hebrews could cross on dry land. But if youpointed that out, it was almost like you had a lack of faith, right? The properreading is that it wasn’t a natural occurrence at all, it was God’s actual handin some supernatural way coming and pushing the water back where everyonewould’ve just said, wow! You know, what is this hand coming down from heaven?That’s not actually even what the Bible itself says! The Bible says there’s an eastwind that came. But these naturalistic ways of reading the Bible, we were, inmy tradition, very reactive because a lot of “liberal scholars” were trying tode-mythologize and take all the miracles out of the Bible, which is fine. Ithink they got some of that wrong too there. You know, those scholars tended tohave an agenda, a naturalistic agenda, but then this overreaction actuallycauses us to miss what the Bible is actually saying.

So, in thesame way here in Jonah, I think to suggest that this is a parable and nothistory, for my tradition growing up, was because I would’ve lacked faith thatGod can have a fish swallow a man. But I actually just find that readingdisrespectful to the Bible because the most faithful reading, I think, is theone that respects the original author, that does the due diligence to find outwhat kind of book they were trying to write. What are the context clues tellingus? So, for me, reading it as satire says nothing about your faith, or what youthink God is or isn’t capable of.

[Musicbegins]

[Producersgroup endorsement]

[Music ends]

21:40

Jared:Alright though, there’s one more thing I want to address before we jump intothe details of the book related to reading it as history. Some people want toinsist it’s historical because Jesus refers to Jonah in Matthew 12. So, inMatthew 12:38 and following, I forget how far it is, but Jesus mentions Jonah.And so, some people say, well it has to be a historical book if Jesus mentionsit. So, in Matthew 12, I’m just gonna read a few of these verses. It says,“then some of the pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, ‘teacher, wewant to see a sign from you,’ and Jesus answered, ‘a wicked and adulterousgeneration asks for a sign, but none of you will be given it except the sign ofthe prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly ofa huge fish, so the son of man will be three days and three nights in the heartof the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgement with thisgeneration and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and nowsomething greater than Jonah is here.’”

Now again,not to get into Matthew 12, but if the whole point of Matthew 12 is to provethat Jonah is historically accurate, we miss the profound statement that Jesusis making about his generation and the people and religious leaders around himabout repentance. But again, that’s beside the point. There’s just two quickpoints I want to make about this. The first one is it makes no sense to me whyit needs to be historical just because Jesus mentions it. We do this all thetime, right? We wish, we talk about wishing we could go on an adventure likeFrodo Baggins. I have used in some of my work references to Michael Scott fromThe Office when I’m giving management advice. Isn’t that kind of the point offiction? I think it’s, the point of fiction is to relate to our real lives inprofound ways, so I’m not sure why Jesus would be exempt from using thisthousands of years old way of relating fiction to our stories and our emotionsand our communities and our societies and, I don’t, I don’t see the disconnectthere.

But moreimportantly, I think the more conclusive reason why this doesn’t hold water forme is that Jesus himself references a historical figure in one of his parables.In Luke 16, we actually have the famous story of the rich man and Lazarus. So,if you don’t know the story, a rich man and a beggar named Lazarus, who livedoutside the rich man’s gate are going about their business and they both die.And we have this in verse twenty-two and following. “The time came when thebeggar dies, and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man alsodied and was buried in Hades where he was in torment. He looked up and sawAbraham far away with Lazarus by his side, so he called to him, ‘FatherAbraham, have pity on me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in waterand cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’ But Abraham replied, ‘son,remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarusreceived bad things. But now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Andbesides all this, between us and you, a great chasm has been set in place sothat those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross overfrom there to us.’ He answered, ‘then I beg you father, send Lazarus to myfamily,’” and on and on. He and Abraham continue to have a conversation. Butthe point is, we have Jesus here himself, creating a parable using a figurefrom the past and putting new words and deeds into his mouth here to make atheological point. So, Jesus himself is doing it. Now, some people might argue,no, what Jesus is doing is telling a historically accurate account of theafterlife. But that doesn’t seem, again, we have to go back to context clues,we have to do all this over again; doesn’t seem that’s the direction that thisis pointing. Jesus is known for his parables, he tells all kinds of parables, doesn’tmake any sense why this would be any different.

So, I thinkit’s fine that Jesus references Jonah. I don’t think it has to be historicallyaccurate just because Jesus references it. He brings in Abraham into one of hisparables. I think, in fact, I would say in these few hundred years around whenJesus was born, it was a pretty common occurrence that you would, because itgives authority, it gives some weight. It also makes a connection with yourtradition, so that people recognize the characters in the stories. It wasactually getting to be pretty common that you would take these characters andyou would put new stories to them, and you would put words in their mouth, andthey would give certain messages that you would want to share. I think that wasa pretty common thing if you read other Second Temple Judaism works in the SecondTemple period.

26:40

So, there wego. Alright, so just to round out our big picture stuff, let’s end just with alittle word on who wrote the book, when, who was the historical Jonah that theauthor uses here, I would argue, as a foil for this work of fiction. We cantackle the author first because that’s an easy one. We have no idea. We don’tknow who wrote the book of Jonah, I mean, for some reason, I don’t know why,but historically, when we want to attribute something to an author, we don’tknow who wrote it, we like, pick the main character and think that they wroteit. So, you know, with Moses and the Torah, we think Moses wrote a lot of theTorah because it’s about Moses, but it seems interesting to me that that wouldbe the case. Just because Jonah is the main character doesn’t mean Jonah wroteit. In fact, it would be weird, I think, that we would have the person who themain character be actually the author of the story. That seems, actually,strange to me. So, we have no idea who wrote Jonah.

Now when itwas written is a little trickier because we can’t be certain, but we do havesome ideas, at least, on when. You know, we can make some educated guesses. So,given the themes of the book, it was likely written after the exile, theBabylonian exile. So, after about 516 BCE, but we also know it was writtenbefore. So, it was written after the exile, but we also know it was writtenbefore about 190, because the book of Jonah is mentioned in another book calledEcclesiasticus, not to be confused with Ecclesiastes. Which, thisEcclesiasticus was composed around 190. So, it was probably written between,say, 200 BCE and 500 BCE, is likely when it was written, kind of around thePersian period. Also note that when it was written is different than when itwas set, right? It’s likely set at an earlier time than when it was written.And this is pretty simple for why scholars think that, and that is thecharacters, of course, Jonah son of Amittai, who was a real person according tothe book of Kings. So, we have one mention of Jonah in the book of Kings, andhe is only mentioned this one time. It’s in 2 Kings 14, and he’s associatedwith Jeroboam II, who turns out to be one of the most evil kings in Israelitehistory. So, you know, perhaps this association with Jeroboam along with thelack of any more details about Jonah given in our Bible is what led the authorto pick him as the anti-hero in this satire.

So, I justwanted to read the only verse we have of Jonah in our Bible in 2 Kings 14:25. “Hewas the one who restored,” talking about Jeroboam now. Jeroboam was the one whorestored the boundaries of Israel “from Lebo-hamath to the Dead Sea inaccordance with the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, spoken through hisservant Jonah, son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath-hepher.” There is then,two contexts that we’re talking about here briefly, and I don’t think it’sworth going to a lot of detail, but it’s worth mentioning that there are twocontexts. So, we have the context in which the book of Jonah is written, butthen there’s also the context in which the book is set, and that’s important,because we have to assume that people would have had the knowledge of whattranspired and happened historically between when Jonah was set and when it waswritten.

So, we havea lot of background information that everyday people would at least be awareof. So, when the book was written, we talked about that, between 500 and 200,and this was a time of relative peace for Jews we have this context between 500and 200, relative peace, this is after Cyrus has come and the Persian periodbegins after the Babylonians, so we have the Assyrians, who are the worldemperors empire, and then we have the Babylonians, and then we have thePersians in about 539, Cyrus comes and brings, reestablishes Jewish people inthe land, and then we have, around 330 or so, Alexander the Great takes over.So, we have this time of Greek rule, and then, of course, we have Roman ruleafter that. But that’s kind of when the book was written.

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Now, whenthe book is set, it’s a very different historical context. So it’s just worthmentioning, this historical context of when the book was set, because we talkedabout 2 Kings, so there’s this king Jeroboam, who is in charge in Israel in thenorth. The same time there’s another king in the south called King Uzziah. Justso you remember that there were two kingdoms that split off from each other - thereis Judah in the south, and then Israel in the North. They have two differentkings, and Jeroboam II is in charge. Now it’s interesting, in 2 Kings, this,when he’s ruling, probably about 750 BCE or so, Israel is in a time ofprosperity. And so, it’s just interesting. The only reason I bring it up is becauseJonah is prophesying in a time of prosperity in 2 Kings when we’re increasingthe borders and things are going well for God’s people, and there is a sense inwhich God will always be on our side, kind of regardless of our ethics andmorals and obedience to God’s commands. And we see this in the book ofJeremiah, for example, when there’s this sense of prosperity and nothing cantouch us, and God’s people are invincible because we are God’s people afterall. And that’s important for the themes of the book of Jonah, that’s why Imention it. Now, if you were to go over to the book of Amos, Amos isprophesying about the same time as the historical Jonah is alive, the 750 or soperiod, and Amos paints a very different picture and says all of our ethicalmisdeeds and our disobedience for God’s commands is going to lead to a lot ofdestruction. And of course, within the next fifteen years, we have theAssyrians who come and start to dole out, we might say, God’s judgement. Theystart to deport the Israelites from the north, then by 722, the north hascompletely been sieged. And so, this juxtaposition of Amos and Jonah ishelpful. Again, it may just point to why the author of Jonah picks Jonah to bethe messenger of his message in the book.

But let’sjump to the book now of Jonah, and we start with the first chapter. And it’s soshort, so I may even just read large portions here, because it really won’ttake long. But I just want to point out a few things here in the book of Jonah,chapter one, if we’re talking about big themes. So, the first big theme here isabout repentance and the relationship of God’s people to not God’s people. Andfor the sake of our time here, I’m going to use the words Jews and Gentiles torepresent God’s people and not God’s people. I know in some ways, it depends onwhen we’re taking about historically framed, we could talk about Hebrews, wecould talk about Israelites, we could talk about Jews, so I’m going to use thewords Jews and Gentiles. Because that’s an important theme here in the book ofJonah is a relationship between Jews and Gentiles, and that’s important themehere in the first chapter. We get a little taste. We haven’t been introducednecessarily to this complexity quite yet in the book, but we get hints of itwith the pagan sailors. And in relationship to the pagan sailors, we also havethis Jonah’s relationship with God. And that’s represented through this descentthat we’ll see all the way through chapter two, but begins here, and we see itin the first word of the Lord that God, the first word of the Lord given toJonah.

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So, in versetwo, it says “go at once to Nineveh, that great city.” Now the word in Hebrewis actually two words for go. It’s arise and go, qum lekh, arise and go.So, it’s up. Get up and go. But in English, I think it’s clunky to have twodifferent words, so it usually just says go at once, or go. But it’stechnically arise and go, and this is important because we want to be mindfulthroughout these first two chapters of when things are going up and down. And Ican let the cat out of the bag a little bit – this is the only time it goes upfor quite some time. So, Jonah’s disobedience is leading him down the wrongpath, literally geographically and then we’ll see metaphorically in chaptertwo. So, it’s arise and go, and we’re hopeful because in verse three, itactually begins with arise, or so he arose. So, it actually starts with anotherup word, and we get very, it’s a dramatic moment. So, Jonah got up just like inHosea, it says, Hosea, go do this. And the next verse is, okay, so Hosea goesand does that. So, we expect that.

Okay, go atonce to Nineveh, so we think the readers would think Jonah then gets up andgoes, but it says he gets up and flees. And this is the dramatic moment. Oh no.Something is different. Something is awry. We’re surprised by this action ofJonah. So, he flees from the Lord’s service and he goes down. So that’s ourfirst word, down to Joppa, to see if he can go on a ship to Tarshish. So, hegoes, and then he goes down onto the boat, of course, and the Lord casts amighty wind upon the sea, and a great tempest comes upon it, and the ship againis in danger of breaking up. It’s reckoning, it’s thinking about breaking up.It’s afraid of the tempest that God has brought. And in their fright, thesailors cry out, each to his own God. That’s important, because we have toestablish that these are pagans. These aren’t Yahweh worshippers – yet. Andthey flung the ship’s cargo overboard to make it lighter for them.

All this chaosis happening, in the meantime, Jonah had gone down, there’s another word, gonedown into the hold where he lay down and falls asleep. “The captain comes overand cries out, ‘how could you be sleeping so soundly? Up!’” So, there’s an upword. He’s calling Jonah to rise up, rise to the occasion. “You call upon yourGod. Perhaps the God will be kind to us, and we will not perish.” Now, that’san interesting phrase, because later we’re going to be talking about, thisbrings up the theme of God’s kindness. What does God’s kindness mean and howdoes it relate to justice? And how is that fair and how does this all work? Butit’s, again, the captain, who thinks that God will be kind and hopes that wewill not perish. So, the captain is using Yahweh language, biblical languagehere. “Then the men said to one another, ‘let us cast lots, find out on whoseaccount this misfortunate has come upon us.’” They cast the lots, of course, itfalls to Jonah. “They say to Jonah, ‘tell us. What’s your business? Where haveyou come from?’ ‘I am a Hebrew, he says.’” Interesting use of language, Hebrew.He replied, he kind of calls us, hearkens us back to an earlier time to callhimself a Hebrew. “I worship the Lord, the God of Heaven who made both sea andland.”

Now this is thebeginning of a lot of creation language. Now there’s a lots of things that Godcould be known by, but here, it’s the one who made both sea and land. The Godwho’s in control of, of course, the stormy sea, but this is going to give us aclue to another theme. So, one theme is this relationship between Jews andGentiles, right? But another theme that we’re going to see throughout the bookof Jonah is God’s sovereignty. Who is really in control here? Who gets tocontrol things? Who is in charge? And kind of like the book of Job, there’sgonna be a question. Well, it’s really gonna be God questioning. Who really isin charge here? It’s a rhetorical question, of course, because God issovereign. God is the one who made both land and sea. Once he said that, it says“the men were greatly terrified.” So at first, because of the sea being stormyand raging, they’re afraid. But when they hear who Jonah’s God is, they aregreatly afraid and they ask him, what have you done? And when the men learnthat he was fleeing from the service of the Lord, they said to him, what do wehave to do to get this to calm down? Because it’s gotten more and more stormy.Heave me overboard, they say. Nevertheless, that’s a really importantnevertheless verse 13, the men rode hard to regain the shore, but they couldn’tfor the sea was growing more and more stormy about them. So again, these pagansare risking their own lives to save this stranger. They keep rowing becausethey didn’t want Jonah to die.

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“Oh please,”they finally say to Yahweh. Now they’re talking directly to Yahweh. “Do not letus perish on account of this man’s life.” Don’t hold us guilty of killing aninnocent person. Now, of course, Jonah’s innocence is questionable here, sincehe did flee from Yahweh, but it’s important, again, that we see thisjuxtaposition of the conversion throughout this process of the pagan sailorswho don’t know Yahweh at all, they’re worshipping their own gods, and by theend, they are following God’s commands.

And then weend with, they offered a sacrifice to the Lord, and they made vows after theyhurled Jonah over, and the sea calmed down. Now again, if you’re trying to makethis historically accurate, it seems interesting because you offer sacrificesand make vows in the temple. You don’t do it necessarily, on a boat. I wouldn’tgenerally think that you would want to offer sacrifices with fire on a woodenboat in the middle of the sea, but if it’s not supposed to be historicallyaccurate, and you’re just trying to make a theological point about theconversion of the pagan sailors and the deconversion of Jonah, Jonah’s descent.He’s going down and the pagan sailors are becoming Yahweh worshippers, and thisis going to blow minds. How can it be? How can it be that the Jew is actingvery non-Jewish, and the Gentile is acting very Jewish and blurring the lineshere. And this gives us again, a preamble of where we’re going when we talkabout Nineveh.

So, that’sthe first chapter. We have the deconversion here, and the descent of Jonah, andthe conversion of the pagans. So, they offer sacrifices to the Lord and theymake vows, which, that gives us a little foretaste of what Jonah’s gonna do inhis repentance. In chapter two, we have Jonah doing the same thing in chaptertwo where, at the end of his prayer, he says, I will sacrifice to you what Ihave vowed, I will perform. Meaning, he’s reconverted, he’s gonna offersacrifice and make vows. And we’ll talk about Jonah’s reconversion next time,but I wanted to point out, it’s the same language. So, it’s blurring theselines between Jews and Gentiles and what it means to have God’s favor and whatit means to be God’s people, and this could be pretty upsetting for people whomaybe have a certain way of thinking about what it means to be God’s people andhow we then treat other people, not even yet to our enemies, we’re just simplytalking about the pagans at this point.

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Jared:Alright, well hopefully this has been a helpful introduction to the book ofJonah. Next time, we’re gonna jump into chapter two, but we’ll just see whereit goes. We’ll see how long we want to take. Maybe just a two-part series,maybe three, we’ll see. But I hope this has been good introducing these themesand also talking about what kind of book the book of Jonah is and how we canuse the things we talked about here when we’re reading other books of the Bibleas well. Alright, thank you so much, we’ll see ya next time.

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