Jonah, Part 2 (Rated R)

You didn't know the nice little Sunday School story about Jonah and the Big Fish was rated R, did you?  Neither did I!

This isn't my usual light and fluffy blog fare, so proceed at your own risk.

Jonah 4:2 is an intriguing verse to me because it tells us why this whole fiasco with the fish and storm and everything started...why Jonah ran from God's presence and why he didn't want to go to Nineveh. 

Usually I forget about this verse, and just assume Jonah ran away because he was afraid...or just didn't feel like going to Nineveh.  Maybe he didn't like the food there?

Nope.

Jonah ran from God's presence because He was angry with God.

That makes sense.  Lots of us run from God's presence because we are angry with Him.

Here's the part that was really hard for me to understand:  Jonah was angry with God because he knew that God was loving and gracious, and that He was going to forgive the people of Nineveh if they turned from their wicked ways.

So he prayed to the Lord, "Ah, Lord, was this not what I said while I was still in my country?  Therefore I fled previously to Tarshish; for I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm" (Jonah 4:2).

Seriously?!  That's why he was angry at God?  What the heck was Jonah's problem?  I realize Nineveh was Israel's enemy, but still...how cruel and bitter could Jonah be to not want God to show them any mercy?

I tried to find an application in this verse for myself, but it was hard.  I have some people I don't really like that much...I guess you could sort of call them my enemies...but I don't wish God wouldn't ever show them grace and forgiveness.  Gosh Jonah, you're a prophet.  Get it together.

I kept thinking about this verse for a couple of days after I read it.  It just didn't make sense to me.  There had to be something I was missing.  So I asked Josh what he thought about it.

Josh pulled out some notes from a class he took and showed me something I will never forget.

Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, was a WICKED city.  Grotesquely, horrifically wicked. 

So that you can see what I mean, here are some actual historical quotes from Assyrian leaders boasting of their own brutality.  And they are pretty awful.  I copied them from an article titled "Grisly Assyrian Record of Torture and Death" from the Biblical Archeology Society.

"I slew one of every two.  I built a wall before the great gates of the city; I flayed the chief men of the rebels, and I covered the wall with their skins.  Some of them were enclosed alive within the bricks of the wall, some of them were crucified with stakes along the wall; I caused a great multitude of them to be flayed in my presence, and I covered the walls with their skins."

 

"I felled 50 of their fighting men with the sword, burnt 200 captives from them, [and] defeated in a battle on the plain 332 troops...With their blood I dyed the mountain red like red wool, [and] the rest of them the ravines [and] torrents if the mountain swallowed.  I carried off captives [and] possessions from them.  I cut off the heads of their fighters and built [with them] a tower before their city.  I burnt their adolescent boys [and] girls."

"In strife and conflict I besieged the city.  I felled 3,000 of their fighting men with the sword...I captured many troops alive: I cut of some of their arms [and] hands; I cut off of others their noses, ears [and] extremities.  I gouged out the eyes of many troops.  I made one pile of the living [and] one of heads.  I  hung their heads in trees around the city."

"I cut their throats like lambs.  I cut off their precious lives [as one cuts] a string.  Like the many waters of a storm, I made [the contents of] their gullets and entrails run down upon the wide earth.  My prancing steeds harnessed for my riding, plunged into the streams of their blood as into a river.  The wheels of my chariot, which brings low the wicked and the evil, were bespattered with blood and filth.  With the bodies of their warriors I filled the plain, like grass.  Their testicles I cut off, and tore out their privates like the seeds of cucumbers."

Um, yeah.

All of a sudden, I "get" Jonah.

I'm no longer wagging my finger at him, wondering what his self-righteous problem is.  I'm standing with him now.  If those atrocities were happening anywhere near me I wouldn't want God to forgive those people, either. Even if they did turn away from their evil ways, and stop their violence (and they did; history shows that Nineveh stopped her cruelty at this time for about 100 years)!

How can God be willing to forgive and change even REALLY horrible people like those described above?

He saw a glimmer of something...crushing guilt, fear, desperation, a yearning for something true and pure and beautiful...deep in the hearts of that generation of wicked Ninevites...that no one else could see.  

There is no partiality with God.  He is, beyond anything we can ever comprehend, a God of love.