"Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time,
saying,
‘Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message
that I tell you.'" This time Jonah is somewhat more
receptive. Having spent three days swimming in the stomach of
the fish
and having been summarily disgorged on the beach, he is in what we
might call a weakened condition. His spirit, though not willing,
has
been broken and his flesh is weak. He may be going under protest
and
he may still be of the opinion that God dwells primarily in Israel,
but
he knows at least that he cannot escape the long arm of the law.
God's
dominion, if not his presence, is extensive. "So Jonah arose
and went
to Nineveh."
Nineveh is now described as "an exceedingly great city,
three
days journey in breadth." We come here to an exaggeration that
further
accentuates the message and the moral of the author's satire.
Since
a day's journey was a unit of measure roughly equivalent to 20 miles,
this would mean that Nineveh was 60 miles across. As everyone
would
have known, no cities in the ancient world were 60 miles across.
In
fact, the city of Nineveh has been excavated, and the dimensions of
this walled metropolis were approximately 3 miles by 1 ½ miles.
The
exaggeration is intended for comic and satirical effect - to heighten
and
dramatize the absurdities in Jonah's position. Indeed, the word
great is
used fourteen times in the book of Jonah, as compared with an average
of only two times in the eleven other minor prophets. Throughout
the
story we are deluged with successive waves of hyperbole: great wind,
great storm, great fear, great fish, great city, great cry, great evil,
great
conversion, great anger, great joy - beyond all of which is the greatness
of God's steadfast love, mercy, and grace.
Overstatement and understatement are two of the most common
devices
used in jokes and comedies, and both are used repeatedly in this
part of the story to make Jonah's behavior even more ludicrous.
We are
given the image of a vast city with a vast population. Then we
are told
that Jonah only goes into the city a day's journey, utters his message,
and leaves. This contrasts the overstatement concerning size
and population
with several understatements. Jonah doesn't go throughout the
city, giving warnings. He doesn't even go to the center of the
city,
nor did he go to the king's palace from which the message might have
been more quickly disseminated. In other words, he is making
the most
minimal effort. He has agreed, grudgingly and under duress, to
preach
to the Ninevites, but he has hardly put his heart and soul into it.
He is
going to do as little as he can get away with.
This juxtaposition of overstatement
and understatement is carried
further: Jonah not only makes no attempt to ensure that his message
is
heard by more than a handful of passersby. He also delivers the
shortest
message possible (only five words in Hebrew): "Yet forty days,
and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" There is no reference to who
or
why, no reading of charges, no invitation to repent, no attempt at
persuasion, just an announcement of the demise of Nineveh.
The story then returns abruptly to overstatement.
The result of this
Lilliputian effort, perfunctorily delivered, is that the entire 60
mile
wide city is converted. The world's shortest and poorest sermon
becomes the world's most successful sermon. "And the people of
Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth,
from
the greatest of them to the least of them." Even the king - to
whom, if to anyone, the message should have been delivered - when
the tidings reached him also put on sackcloth and ashes and proclaimed
a fast and a time of penitence. "Let man and beast be covered
with
sackcloth, and let them cry mightily to God; yea, let everyone turn
from his evil way and from the violence which is in his hands."
As a result of this mass display of contrition, God decides not to
destroy the city.
And what is Jonah's reaction to this incredible evangelistic
success,
unparalleled in the annals of preaching, either before or after?
What is
the response of one who was more successful by far than Amos, Isaiah,
Jeremiah, of all the prophets put together? "It displeased Jonah
exceedingly, and he was angry." Indeed, Jonah's reaction is even
more opposite than this. He would rather die than witness God's
mercy
and pardon bestowed on the Ninevites. "Now, O LORD, take my life
from me, I beseech thee, for it is better for me to die than to live."
Jonah finally reveals the true motives behind his peculiar
behavior
throughout the story. He has long known that God is a God of
love
as well as wrath. Has not Israel many times been a recipient
of divine
forgiveness and restoration? He has feared all along that if
he should warn
Nineveh of an impending judgment and they should repent and turn
from their evil ways, God would also spare them. "Is not this
what I
said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to
flee to
Tarshish; for I knew that thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow
to
anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and repentest of evil."
The opening words of verse 2 are taken directly from Exodus 14:12,
in
which the Israelites were complaining about God's leading them out
of
the "security" of slavery in Egypt to the uncertainty of the wilderness.
Jonah would rather stay within the false security of unredeemed vengeance
and destruction than venture into the uncertain realm of mercy and
forgiveness.
Jonah is now totally frustrated. We can picture
him stomping out of
the city, muttering, "I knew it, I knew it, I knew this was going to
happen!" He then builds a booth for himself - a kind of grandstand
seat - from which to "see what would become of the city." He
is
obviously still harboring the hope that God will change his mind once
more
and destroy the city. An 8.5 reading on the Richter scale will
do just
fine. Jonah is going to sit in his booth in the gleeful prospect
of seeing
the city go up in smoke, like Sodom and Gomorrah. This would
finally
make his trip worthwhile. (How many Americans have secretly,
or
openly, and for many of the same reasons, cherished the thought of
dropping atomic bombs upon Moscow?
The absurdities for Jonah's position come to a climax
when God,
wanting Jonah to be as comfortable as possible while he waits to witness
the incineration of Nineveh, causes a large-leafed plant to grow
over his head to shield him from the heat of the sun. "So Jonah
was
exceedingly glad because of the plant." Note the comical way
Jonah races back and forth between extreme elation and extreme
depression, between exceeding gladness and exceeding anger, like an
accelerated manic-depressive.
Then comes the lesson and the moral. While Jonah
is comfortably
lounging in the shade of the plant in eager anticipation of the death
and
destruction he hopes will be played out before him, God causes the
plant to wither, exposing Jonah to the sun. To this God adds
a wind off
the desert, carry biting dust and burning heat, causing Jonah to become
faint and miserable just as he nears his moment of supreme triumph.
Again - for the third time in the story - Jonah wishes to die: "It
is better for me to die than to live" (4:8). "But God said to
Jonah, ‘Do
you do well to be angry for the plant?' And he said, ‘I do well to
be
angry, angry enough to die!'" A perfectly healthy plant, which God
has created, has been summarily destroyed.
Now we are given that marvelous punch line, which totally
collapses Jonah's self-contradictory theology and behavior: "And the
LORD said, ‘You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did
you make it grow, which came into being in a night, and perished in
a
night. And should not I pity 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 much cattle?"
Again overstatement and understatement accentuate the
absurdity
of Jonah's position. The figure of 120,000 infants ("persons
who do
not know their right hand from their left") suggests a total population
of 1 million, which Jonah thinks nothing of seeing exterminated,
though he is "angry enough to die" over the destruction of a plant.
Furthermore, even if Jonah were justified in his vengefulness toward
the accountable citizens of Nineveh, he could not be justified in the
slaughter of 120,000 innocent children or the untold numbers of animals
("cattle" in the broad sense of domesticated animals in and
around the city). Jonah himself has acknowledged this unwittingly
in
having such compassion on a single, innocent plant and in being
outraged at its destruction. Perhaps if Jonah has no compassion
for the
citizens of Nineveh, he may have compassion for the host of the innocents,
and, if not for the innocents, perhaps at least for the cattle.
Yet Jonah is not justified in his attitude toward the
accountable
citizens of Nineveh either - as much as he has assumed the justice
of his
position throughout the story. Jonah has acknowledged that the
God of
Israel is a God of mercy and grace. How does he know this?
Because
Israel itself has many times been the recipient of unmerited forgiveness
in the seasons of its own wickedness. The wording at this piont
in the
story (3:10) is identical to that in Exodus 32:14 in which God forgives
the Israelites after their idolatrous worship of the golden calf? "God
repented of the evil which he had said he would do unto them" (3:10).
Jonah, too, only days before had been the recipient of unmerited
deliverance despite his own unfaithfulness and disobedience!
If God
should not spare Nineveh, why should he spare Israel or spare Jonah?
On the other hand, if there is hope for Nineveh, with its great wickedness,
there is hope for anyone.
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