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How important is the historicity of Jonah and
Jesus? Consider this,
For
if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen,
your faith is futile; you are still in your sins (1 Cor 15:17)!
That
prospect is terrorizing! Think of it; if Christ is not literally and physically
risen from the grave, there is no hope of life after death! However, Jonah is
presented in Scripture as a historical figure, as real as Jeroboam II, Amos,
Hosea, the mariners, the Assyrians, or Jesus. He is risen, as He said (Mt 28:6).
Prior
to Jonah showing up in Nineveh and preaching his forty-day warning, ca. 759
B.C., there was a plague in 765 B.C., a solar eclipse in 6.5.763 B.C., and
another plague in 759 B.C.4 We cannot discount the possibility there may have been eye-witness accounts
circulating that a man came forth from a great sea creature on land from the Great Sea
(Mediterranean). These signs may have been interpreted by the Assyrians as
divine anger that may have played a significant role in their reception of
Jonah’s message of repent or be destroyed, providentially choreographed by
Yahweh, of course.
Besides
the whale preventing Jonah from drowning, it provided transportation to
Assyrian shores. Though the dry land location is uncertain, the point is that
the indigestible Jonah survived and was ejected back on shore. If there were,
indeed, actual eye-witness accounts of him being vomited on the beach, this would
also play into the polytheistic belief of the Assyrians that Dagon (Heb., dag
= fish), half man and half fish, was sending a messenger to warn them of
impending danger. Neither Dagon nor his counterpart, the fish goddess, Nanshe,
are mentioned in the book of Jonah.
Jonah
may have been scarred by digestive acids in the belly bungalow which possibly gave him a surreal look of other-worldly, but it also served as a personal reminder that disobedience
does not pay. I, too, carry physical scars of disobedience as well but not from
a whale, of course!
These
people were gripped in fear of something foreboding and along comes Jonah to articulate what it all meant, “You are going to all be dead in forty days if you do not repent of your wickedness.” There was no more guessing about what those ominous signs were about! God had been
pounding them with “artillery” to soften them up before sending in the ground
troops: God + Jonah. What they heard was a message not from Dagon but from
Yahweh,
Yet
forty days, and Nineveh shall be over thrown (Jon 3:4b)!
When
Jonah opened his mouth, they did something Jonah feared would happen (cf. Jon
4:2),
So
the people of Nineveh believed God [not Dagon], proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from
the greatest to the least of them (Jon 3:5; see Jon 3:6-9).
I
don’t know how the Holy Spirit got their hearts and minds off of Dagon and onto
Yahweh, but that is what He did; Jonah’s job was to proclaim. The heart-work
was Yahweh’s alone, taking one from spiritual darkness into the light!
Jonah’s job
was to point to the Divine anger of Yahweh against Assyrian wickedness (Jon
1:2). There was a window of opportunity for repentance to happen for many in
Nineveh; Jonah was the final link in reaching the Ninevites, showing up out of nowhere before the window of
opportunity closed as pre-determined by Yahweh.
Repentance by the Assyrians to Jonah’s proclamation appears to have been
short-lived and is questioned whether authentic by some. If Jonah delivered
his message ca. 759 B.C. during the reign of the Assyrian king, Ashur-dan III
(772-754 B.C.), it was approximately 27 years later, ca. 732 B.C., that the Assyrians under
another king, Tiglath-Pileser II (Pul), attacked Israel and turned it into a vassal
state. To quell a revolt by Samaria, the Assyrians besieged the city in 725
B.C. for three years under Shalmaneser V (727-722 B.C.). The siege of Samaria ended in 722 B.C. After Shalmaneser V died, Sargon II (722-705 B.C.)
conducted mop-up operations and deportations. The Northern Kingdom of Israel was destroyed.
Regardless
of how we interpret the repentance of Nineveh, the fact remains that Yahweh did
not destroy Nineveh within the forty-day time frame given by Jonah. I refer the
reader to Jer 17:10 for consideration. Apparently,
Nineveh wisely shifted to the light for a time under Ashur-dan III. Then there
was a shift back to the darkness and a surge of wickedness (cf. Jon 1:2) of
another generation where there was no recovery; Nineveh eventually was
destroyed in 612 B.C., approximately 147 years after Jonah paid a visit, ca.
759 B.C.
Spiritually
speaking, the entire Assyrian empire was morally and ethically bankrupt. They
had nothing like the Mosaic Law as the Hebrews, no true prophets, no worship
and service to the one and only true Creator God, Yahweh, but even for the
Hebrews in the northern and southern kingdoms, that was no proof that they were
any more loyal to Yahweh than the Assyrians! Judah and Israel had their
self-inflicted troubles with idolatry. It was only a matter of time before each
kingdom would fall.
The
Assyrians had only their worthless deaf, dumb, and dead idols and manmade laws
of right and wrong. They were cruel people caught up in deep darkness. And though
hell was forty days away when Jonah came onto the scene in Nineveh,
it was averted by repentance. For
another generation of Assyrians, hell would be unleashed upon their capital
city in 612 B.C. Today, in Mosul, Iraq, Nineveh remains in ruins, the remnants
of a rejection of the Creator God.
Naturally,
as mentioned earlier, there is no record of any Hebrew prophet ever visiting
Nineveh. The darkness covered that up but not the Holy Spirit, hence, the book
of Jonah (cf. Mt 24:35)! The Assyrians had no idea that their messenger of
light resented being there and wanted them destroyed. Yahweh had other plans. The
destruction of Nineveh was diverted for another time and another generation of
Assyrians. Jonah wanted them all dead now not later (cf. Jon 4:1, 3)!
The reality is that disobedience can lead to dark and disturbing
things in the lives of believers (cf. Jer 17:9). Obedience,
on the other hand, does not necessarily guarantee smooth sailing from here on
out, for biblical peace does not mean the absence of conflict (Jn 14:27; 16:33; 2 Tim 3:12). I’m just keeping
it real. It
is, however, a far better thing to obey the LORD rather than the storms
created by our willful disobedience to His will for our lives. See how cold as ice
Jonah became after delivering God’s message to the Ninevites (Jon 4:1-9).
We
should never allow ourselves to lose sight of this spiritual reality; that it is impossible to run
from God, but not impossible to run from obedience to His will. We have the
freedom of choice to obey or disobey, but we are not free of the consequences
of our choices.
This
was Jonah’s jeopardy; Jonah’s jeopardy is ours! Yahweh’s love for us will never
overlook or coddle ungodly behavior from His children. I bet Jonah’s blood
pressure while in the great fish stayed above 180. I'm elevating mine just thinking about it. A God of love put him in
there for being foolish. If you said to me, “My god wouldn’t do that.” I
would tell you that your god is not Yahweh but something else.
Read
Jon 2:9 and Jon 4:9; it is like reading about two different people. When we disobey, we go deeper into the darkness as long as we remain disobedient to the will of God as evidenced by Yahweh's question to Jonah in the closing verse of the book of Jonah,
And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left—and much livestock (Jon 4:11)?
He was willing to give his life for the mariners (Jon 1:12). Why was he not concerned for the 120,000 children or the livestock in Nineveh that had nothing to do with the wickedness of the Assyrians? At that moment, Jonah was having real difficulty with Yahweh's grace, mercy, and lovingkindness! Destruction, not repentance, was what Jonah wanted for the Assyrians.
Jonah’s fear came to fruition (Jon 3:5-10; cf. Mt 12:41. Another king of the Assyrians dismissed Nineveh's behavior toward a Hebrew prophet of the Northern Kingdom in 759 B.C., and Assyria showed their gratitude by destroying, deporting, and scattering the Northern Kingdom of Israel by 722 B.C.
Honestly, chapter 4 of Jonah is hard for me to read. It reveals Jonah's disobedience had not played out. The whale ordeal did not fix his attitude. I think God was simply trying to fix his direction. Attitude adjustment would come later. Jonah’s attitude indicates to me that he wouldn't have liked the Babylonians either.
In fact, I am of the opinion that he wouldn’t have liked any pagan nation that God was going to use to bring judgment against the 10 tribes in the north and the 2 tribes in the south. Both kingdoms were recalcitrant and guilty of idolatry and all of the moral anarchy and depravity that resulted from it. Samaria’s ultimate destruction in 722 B.C. and Jerusalem’s in 586 B.C. only proved that repentance was no longer an option to avert judgment.
Reading between the lines, this anger stuff in chapter 4 exposes Jonah's real feelings toward Yahweh. What could explain Jonah's anger? He may have had an issue with Yahweh using pagan nations to punish His people? But that is conjecture. Yahweh is the Creator God and what finite creature can dictate terms to the Almighty? No matter what, sin will be addressed one way or another whether we like it or not.
Concerning the fall of Jerusalem (586 B.C.) in Jeremiah's day, Yahweh told Jeremiah that when the people ask him why Yahweh pronounced judgment against them (Jer 16:10) say to them,
...Because your fathers have forsaken Me...; they have walked after other gods and
have served them and worshiped them, and have forsaken Me and not kept My law (Jer 16:11).
What was said of the southern kingdom to Jeremiah could be said of the northern kingdom in 722 B.C.,
Each one follows the dictates of his own evil heart, so that no one
listens to Me (Jer 16:12).
Yahweh sent the Assyrians to judge the northern kingdom, and the Babylonians were sent by Yahweh to judge the southern kingdom.
What people know of us should never end in a question mark but an
exclamation point (Jn 8:12; Eph 5:8; 1 Jn 1:7). We are not free from the consequences
of our choices. Again, Jonah’s jeopardy is ours. Fear Yahweh; do what He tells
you to do out of love (agape) and reverential respect for Him.
When I say the word “disobedience,” what is the first word that comes to your mind? If you said, “Stupidity,” you are, indeed, a very quick learner! <><
When I say the word “disobedience,” what is the first word that comes to your mind? If you said, “Stupidity,” you are, indeed, a very quick learner! <><
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4.
John D. Hannah, Jonah, The Bible Knowledge Commentary, (Wheaton: Victor Books, 1985), 1462.
