WHY JONAH?

If you ask a man on the street about the biblical book Jonah, the response you will frequently get is, ‘oh that is the book about the guy who got swallowed by a fish.’ It is interesting to see how inconsequential details of a story will be confused with the main theme of the author. The details of the great fish have almost nothing to do with the purpose of the story of Jonah. It is a tangential curiosity at best. Like any book Jonah was written with a cohesive theme in mind. And if it is like most books, that theme will come to a climax at the end of the book where everything is tied together. In the book of Jonah the final chapter seems almost non-sequitur out of step with the flow of the book. Perhaps it was an addendum, an afterthought, a postscript? In any event the reader often asks, ‘why did God end the book with a grumpy prophet, a wilting tree, a worm and a whipping wind?” And after all, chapter three does seem to be a fitting conclusion of the book; the miraculous repentance an evil metropolis. Wow! Now that’s a story; who needs another chapter? Charles Feinberg agrees; ‘if man, unaided by the Spirit of God, were writing this account, it would probably have concluded with the close of chapter three.’ But it didn’t end with chapter three. There is another chapter. Why is chapter four there? Feinberg goes on, ‘because there is yet a greater climax, the true goal and objective of the whole book.’ In other words chapter four pulls the entire book of Jonah together into one cohesive story. And if Feinberg is correct, this means the purpose of Jonah was more than simply the conversion of the Gentiles in Nineveh. So let us dive into the entire book and especially look at the climactic chapter four to see if we can discover the overall purpose of the book of Jonah.

Many like to posit that Jesus gives the purpose of Jonah by the comments He makes concerning that book found in Matthew and Luke. In Matthew 12:39 Jesus says that Jonah by spending three days and three nights in the belly of a great fish and his subsequent ‘resurrection’ from the deep was a picture of what would happen to Him in His death, burial and resurrection. In Luke 11:32 Jesus uses the faith of the Ninevites as a rebuke against His own generation who did not believe as the Ninevites despite they having a Messenger far greater than Jonah. Jonah therefore must be a book about how the Gentiles and not the Jews will come to saving faith. Both of these views are certainly themes in Jonah and underscore the fact that Old Testament books can have both Christological and moral elements that are useful in the church today. But are either of these the major theme of the book? By looking at the entire flow of Jonah we must say that neither of these are the central theme. There is, as I am about to prove, an overarching message that holds the entire book together. So we agree with Feinberg that the main purpose of Jonah comes to light when we grapple with the final chapter which at first seems disconnected but in reality is the book’s climax.

So I will deliver my proposition at the outset. I believe that they MAJOR THEME OF THE BOOK OF JONAH IS GOD’S MERCY IN CONTRAST WITH MAN’S HARDNESS. This is the one common thread that holds the entire book together. When we see Jonah this way it solves the hermeneutical problem of chapter four; in fact chapter four highlights as nothing else could the fact of God’s exceeding mercy. That is, God is more merciful to His creation than we could ever imagine Him to be.

To prove this point we must go back to the beginning and analyze each chapter of this amazing book to see if this is the uniting theme.

We begin with chapter one. Chapter one begins with a rebellious prophet. Rather than deal severely with Jonah’s conscious choices, God shows him mercy by allowing him to board a vessel and while on the ship to survive the wrath of the mariners who are enduring a turbulent storm on his account. God is further merciful by sparing him a deserved death by putting him in the safe confines of a fish’s belly. In addition, almost as a side note, God shows mercy to these crass mariners and saves them through the forced witness of Yahweh’s guilty prophet. Thus we find that in verses 14 and 16 the mariners in desperation abandon their allegiance to the false gods and call upon the name of Yahweh. As proof of their conversion they offer up sacrifices and vows to Yahweh which are precisely the same evidences of salvation that Jonah himself exhibits in fish’s belly in 2:9. God is merciful not only to rebellious followers but clueless heathens as well. ‘His mercy endures forever.’

In chapter two, Jonah in the midst of God’s loving chastisement, prays from the belly of the fish. God’s mercy again takes center stage. God allows Jonah to pray magnificently from this strange tomb. And God not only hears Jonah’s prayer but gives him exceedingly more than the disobedient prophet would rightfully expect. As with the mariners God hears Jonah’s cry of desperation and saves his life. The chapter closes with God inducing the fish to spit out Jonah onto dry land, rattled but none the worse for wear.

The third chapter begins with God giving Jonah yet another chance to fulfill his commission. How many earthly kings give rebels a second chance to prove their allegiance? But we are not dealing here with an earthly king, but the merciful King of kings and Lord of lords. But that his just the beginning of God’s amazing mercy. He soon brings Jonah safely into this violent, bloodthirsty city and allows him to preach a message that in every other case would have led to instant execution; ‘Yet forty days and Nineveh will be destroyed!’ We see God’s mercy demonstrated both in the message and the response. The message to these heathens is nothing more than a threat. There is not a hint of the gospel it in. Yet God uses it to stir up the entire city to repentance. Again, in His mercy, God condescends to use deficient messages to bring heathens to salvation. The response is unbelievable. The entire city of nearly a million instantly respond and repent. More amazingly, the tyrannical king who answers to no one, also heeds the message and commands the entire city including the animals to comply. Why God would be merciful to this heathen nation, a vicious people bent on destroying the Jews? This is a mercy that is hard for us to understand. So once again we see this theme developing in every chapter: GO IS MORE MERCIFUL TO HIS CREATION THAN ANY MAN WOULD EVER THINK OF BEING.

This leads to the climactic fourth chapter. The author begins by using Jonah to proclaim the very merciful nature of God. He says, ‘God is gracious, merciful, slow to anger and abundant in mercy’ (Jonah 4:2).  It is stunning that this confession, taken perhaps from Exodus 34:6, comes from the mouth of a man who refuses to show mercy himself. How often do we as Christians delight in the character of God but refuse to emulate Him? God will now close the book by showing how merciful He really is by contrasting His kindness to the hard heart of Jonah. God mercifully gives Jonah the ability to build a little tent to protect him from the burning heat. Jonah sits eastward of the city and in characteristic fashion waits for God to finally punish the Ninevites. After all, doesn’t God always punish bad people? In His mercy God gives Jonah a plant to provide shade over his head. Jonah neither asks for it, or works for it; God simply gives it to him. But then comes the surprise. God immediately raises up a worm to eat the plant away and then stirs up a hot, dry wind so that Jonah bakes in the desert sun.

So why the cruel treatment? Here we must see that God is presenting to Jonah an object lesson in order to make Jonah understand the depth of divine mercy. Jonah acts upset that the plant has died. So God plays along with Jonah and asks the prophet how much he pitied the plant? Jonah responds that he cared for the plant very much. Then God brings down the logical hammer. “So if you cared so much for a plant that you neither created or nurtured, how can you deny Me the right to care about a city where there are one hundred twenty thousand children whom I created and nurtured?”

In one fell swoop God demonstrated the wideness of His compassionate heart as compared to the constricted heart of the prophet. And so we have come to see that Jonah is about God’s unfathomable mercy.  Indeed DIVINE MERCY is the main message of this book; and in case you haven’t looked, it is the central message of the entire bible. Take, for example, the second chapter of Ephesians where Paul says God’s goal in saving us is was that, ‘in the ages to come He might how the exceeding riches of his grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus (Eph 2:7). God loves to boast about His mercy. It is His most cherished attribute. He delights in it (Micah 7:18). And it is this very attribute that makes Him so unlike us. This is the point of Isaiah 55:6-9;

‘Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; Let him return to the Lord, and He will have mercy on him;
And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon. “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.”’

God is all about forgiving and pardoning erring, rebellious humans. Humans are not that way. God’s compassion is beyond our comprehension. Nevertheless the bible pounding on this aspect of God’s character so that we may never forget it. Everywhere we look we find that God yearns for sinners, weeps for sinners, actively seeks sinners. Jonah teaches us this.

Do you still doubt it? Then look, I say, at a tree standing outside Jerusalem where the Son of God cries out in agony. And why is He there? I think you already know.