Jonah and God

 

Good one!! Chapter 3 of a good old Sunday school Bible story in the lectionary for this Wednesday in the First Week of Lent:

Jonah 3:1–10

The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, "Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you." So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, "Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.

When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: "By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish."

When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.

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Our reading picks up after the great fish vomits Jonah out on the beach instead digesting him. 

The rest of the story, of course, is that, having suffered all this coercive nightmare of going to preach damnation to Nineveh as God told him, Jonah is outraged that God forgives Nineveh instead of destroying them. Peace for Jonah would have been watching Nineveh's destruction; peace for God is repentance and forgiveness

... even though Jonah is left sulking. 

Did Jonah come round? We don't know, the story doesn't tell us because while Jonah thinks the story is about himself, the story is not about Jonah, the story is about God. Here's the rest of the story:

Jonah chapter 4

Jonah’s Anger

4:1 But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning, for I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from punishment. 3 And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” 4 And the Lord said, “Is it right for you to be angry?” 5 Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city.

6 The Lord God appointed a bush and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort, so Jonah was very happy about the bush. 7 But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.”

Jonah Is Reproved

9 But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.” 10 Then the Lord said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. 11 And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left and also many animals?”

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See, Jonah would rather be mad, which is human enough. I want to go somewhere else, though. This line in the story, "When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it" reminds me of this line from Exodus 32 (KJV), "14 And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people."

It is, of course, the story of the people, let by Aaron, giving up on Moses who has been too long gone up on the  mountain with God, and forming for themselves a golden calf to worship instead of the Lord. God goes steaming hot furious and tells Moses to stand aside while God incinerates the Israelites for what they've done. 

In what is Moses' finest moment, Moses shames God, and God repents, changes his mind. Again, "14 And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people."

It makes God seem almost human, that when offended, God can react as angrily and irrationally as we do. That God can think to do evil. That God can repent. There's a theology there, waiting to be explored by a group of enthusiastic Bible students. There was a Time when I'd have loved to do it with them!

RSF&PTL

T88&c

ah, nearly forgot: clipart pinched online without permission; es tut mir leid, nomesane?