Jonah

This is certainly a story that everyone knows backwards and forwards. It is also a story that most skeptics point to as being totally unbelievable. I remembered hearing about a modern-day Jonah in the form of a man being swallowed by a whale and surviving, and actually got many hits when googling it. But that particular story is unfounded. It should be enough, however, to chalk this account up to a miracle. If God can make a donkey talk, part the Red Sea, and raise a man from the dead, why couldn't he "prepare" a fish to swallow a man? He certainly could, and yet I love for things to make rational sense. Amazingly, this does. Apparently, there are at least three big fish that have stomachs capable of swallowing a man whole. And their stomachs would contain air such that a person could breathe. Furthermore, the digestion process would not begin until the person had died, such that as long as Jonah survived, he would not be eaten. Now, it is also possible that the fish (translated from the Hebrew as big fish-not "whale") was a special creation of God made for the sole purpose of sparing Jonah from a drowning at sea. So the story is one that could have happened, and did, because the Bible says it did.

Some theologians want this story to be taken as an allegory foreshadowing Jesus' being in the belly of the earth (death) for three days. But there is nothing in the account that gives us permission NOT to take it literally. All the characters are real historical figures, with Jonah's father even being mentioned. Furthermore, the existence of Ninevah is well substantiated. It was the Capitol of Assyria, which was a dominant and imposing nation at that time. The ruins of Ninevah have been excavated resulting in two mounds, one of which is called "Nubi Yunas", which translated means "Prophet Jonah". The fact that his name is found in the ruins of that great city, which was destroyed just 100 years after Jonah's message, is hard evidence of his historical relevance to the city.

The prophets Amos and Hosea were prophesying concurrently with Jonah and were foretelling Israel's eminent demise at the hands of Assyria. And Jonah would likely have known of this prophecy as well as Assyria's brutal reputation. Read the following excerpt regarding the Assyrian empire...

The Assyrian Empire was known for its cruelty. "Judged from the vaunting inscriptions of her kings, no power more useless, more savage, more terrible, ever cast its gigantic shadow on the page of history as it passed on the way to ruin. The kings of Assyria tormented the miserable world. They exult to record how 'space failed for corpses'; how unsparing a destroyer is their goddess Ishtar; how they flung away the bodies of soldiers like so much clay; how they made pyramids of human heads; how they burned cities; how they filled populous lands with death and devastation; how they reddened broad deserts with carnage of warriors; how they scattered whole countries with the corpses of their defenders as with chaff; how they impaled 'heaps of men' on stakes, and strewed the mountains and choked rivers with dead bones;how they cut off the hands of kings and nailed them on the walls, and left their bodies to rot with bears and dogs on the entrance gates of cities; how they employed nations of captives in making brick in fetters; how they cut down warriors like weeds, or smote them like wild beasts in the forests, and covered pillars with the flayed skins of rival monarchs." (Farrar, The Minor Prophets, pp. 147,148).

So it was not without justification that Jonah was reluctant to go. He may partly have feared for his own life but we know he was revolted at the thought of those people receiving any grace from God. I read that his preaching repentance to Ninevah is akin to a Jew being asked to preach repentance to Germans of the post-war 1940s. Interestingly, Jonah was the only prophet who was asked to preach outside of Israel at that time, (Nahum would later be given the same charge to preach to the Assyrians). The M.O. of the Old Testament was to preserve the godliness of Israel so that other nations would see God through her. It was not until the time of Jesus, and salvation by grace, that the methodology was changed to preach to the Gentiles. So this was a strange and uncomfortable request all the way around for Jonah. Even after he obeyed, he camped out on a hill overlooking Ninevah to see what would happen-almost certainly assuming that the people would not repent and he would get to witness their demise. Due to their repentance, they were not destroyed at this time. However they did return shortly thereafter to their evil ways, eventually taking Israel captive just 35 years after Jonah's message was delivered.

Tomorrow's reading: Amos 1-6:14