Jonah - Saint and Sinner



Jonah 1:1-3
1 Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” 3 But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.

The events in Jonah’s story take place about 750 years before the birth of Christ. He is a prophet to the Northern Kingdom of Israel during the reign of Jeroboam II (ca. 786-746) and quite possibly friends with Elisha, Amos, and Hosea. Jeroboam II is economically successful but spiritually bankrupt. We learn of Jonah’s association with Jeroboam in 2 Kings 14.

2 Kings 14:23–27
23 In the fifteenth year of Amaziah the son of Joash, king of Judah, Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel, began to reign in Samaria, and he reigned forty-one years. 24 And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. He did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which he made Israel to sin. 25 He restored the border of Israel from Lebo-hamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which he spoke by his servant Jonah the son of Amittai [same Jonah as in the Book of Jonah], the prophet, who was from Gath-hepher. 26 For the Lord saw that the affliction of Israel was very bitter, for there was none left, bond or free, and there was none to help Israel. 27 But the Lord had not said that he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven, so he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam the son of Joash.

One of the ironies of Jonah’s story is that even though his own people, the Children of Israel, are spared from deserved destruction by God, Jonah is completely unwilling to see the same grace extended to the people of Nineveh. He flees from the call to share the message of God with them.

Here again we see an example of what I said at the beginning of this prophet and have said often in other places and Scripture everywhere expresses: There still remain in the saints remnants of the flesh, and the saints do not get rid of them until that old Adam is completely destroyed.
Martin Luther. AE 19:26–27

This means that as sinner and saint at the same time, Jonah is a divided man. He exhibits signs of faith as well as signs of unbelief. Jonah can pray and express the faith of Israel and yet flee from Yahweh, quarrel with Yahweh, and even seek his own death.
Lessing, R. R. ©2007. Jonah (p. 84). St. Louis, MO: CPH.

So, why does Jonah hate Nineveh? Why the need to escape this call to share the message of God when he is clearly already prepared to do so? For the answer to that we need to understand a little bit about Nineveh, which was the symbol of the Assyrian Empire, the mortal enemy of Israel, and renowned for brutal conquest and butchery.

Nineveh was 500 miles from Gath-hepher (Jonah’s home). Its ruins lie across the Tigris River from what is now Mosul, Iraq, 220 miles northwest of Baghdad. Due to some political instability in Assyria at the time of Jonah, Nineveh was basically left alone to govern themselves and achieved not a small amount of power and wealth. For the Assyrians, Israel was just a small blight on the landscape. Assyria felt free to kill or enslave anyone who was not part of their culture and that made Israel a prime target. For Jonah, these were not a part of “God’s people" and they did not deserve God’s mercy and grace.

This is the perfect book for us to study in 2017 as our culture seems to be sharply divided (sometimes) along racial barriers. What God shows us with every single word of the text is that He does not recognize those borders and will not be held by them. If that is how God sees things, then so must we. All of the Bible is filled with completely inclusive language. No nationality is exempt from God’s merciful reach. Jesus came for all and we are grateful.

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