 |
| Sperm whale (Physeter microcephalus) illustration by Uko Gorter |
(Jon
4:6) And
the LORD God prepared a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be
shade for his head to deliver him from his misery. So Jonah was very grateful
for the plant.
(Jon
4:7) But
as morning dawned the next day God prepared a worm, and it so damaged
the plant that it withered.
(Jon
4:8) And
it happened, when the sun arose, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and
the sun beat on Jonah's head, so that he grew faint. Then he wished death for
himself, and said, It is better for me to die than to live.
(Jon
4:9) Then
God said to Jonah, Is it right for you to be angry about the plant? And
he said, It is right for me to be angry, even to death!
(Jon
4:10) But
the LORD said, You have had pity on the plant for which you have not labored,
nor made it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night.
(Jon
4:11) 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?
We
find Jonah on the east side of Nineveh watching from a vantage point to see
what was going to happen to the city on day-41. We figured that he probably
left the city at sunrise (~0700, the 12th hour into day-41). It
could have been later that morning, but sunrise seems to fit with Jonah’s sense
of urgency to leave the city to see what would become of Nineveh. But he was
also running (he was good at that) from the unanswered question posed to him by
Yahweh about his anger (Jon 4:4). His anger at the Assyrians was a way of not
focusing on the real issue – rejecting God’s right to rule in his life.
To
be clear, Jonah is out on the east side of the city because Jonah put himself
out there, not because he was directed by Yahweh to go there (cf. Jon 3:10). Even
though it was his temper tantrum that drove him outside the city (Jon 4:1, 5),
Yahweh did not ignore His prophet; He wanted to bring him back into the fold.
Anger
is a strong and unstable emotion that makes us say or do irrational things;
things that we might regret later on; being merely upset does not drive someone
into the wilderness. He was exceedingly displeased; we cannot lose sight of
that. Four times the verb prepared is used of Yahweh; He prepared a great fish, a plant, a worm,
and a vehement east wind (the last three concentrated on the east side of the
city). It looks as if the only created thing that has a problem with the will of the Creator is the son of Adam. Go figure.
His
anger is what introduced Jonah to the great fish, the plant, the worm, and the wind.
The great fish saved him from drowning; the plant relieved him of his misery
for a spell; the worm killed the plant and caused Jonah to be angry even to
death; and the scorching wind made him want to die.
We
see by these prepared things that Yahweh goes through extraordinary measures to
bring us to a place of blessings rather than burdens. That’s a good thing! Because
left to our own devices, we tend to dig a hole for ourselves and go south on
God.
It
is embarrassing to read Jonah’s answer to Yahweh’s interrogative concerning his anger over the death of the plant
that shielded him from the sun. Here is the question,
Is it right for you to be angry about the plant (Jon 4:9a)?
Recall that he dodged the first anger question. He has nowhere to go but to answer, and he does so in a disrespectful tone,
It is right for me to be angry, even to death (Jon 4:9b)!
He
was expressing more concern over plant life than human life! Anger has a way of
devaluing the intrinsic worth in others. Yahweh offering a stinging rebuke to
Jonah suggested that his pity was irrational, misdirected, unwarranted, cruel, and selfish.
(Jon
4:10) But
the LORD said, You have had pity on the plant for which you have not labored,
nor made it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night.
Jonah
seemed to be more concerned with his own comfort than for those he wanted to be destroyed, even those innocents of any guilt, the children and the livestock. He is so egocentric at this juncture, he doesn't even realize what he is saying or doing? This is a very sad and unpleasant thing to read about Jonah!
(Jon
4:11) 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?
Some
have estimated the population of Nineveh and its suburbs to be 300,000+; it was
one of the largest cities in the world in its day – an exceedingly great
city, a three-day journey (Jon 3:3). It sprawled over 60 miles. Nineveh’s walls were said
to be ~100-150 feet in height and ~40 feet wide.
Yahweh’s
reference to the more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot discern between
their right hand and their left is a natural reference to children. Yahweh included livestock to provoke Jonah’s
thinking of the needless killing of innocent children and animal life. It would
suggest the question, “What have these children and animals done to you that
you would have Me destroy them?
You
know that Jonah was evading the real issue? That word “anger” had to have
evoked something in Jonah because it was the bridge to its source. The real
source of his anger was not limited to the Assyrians, but I believe it was also
directed at Yahweh for allowing the Assyrians to enter his personal life in
some way in the past before the commission. Naturally, that is as far as we can
take it. This would explain Jonah rejecting his commission initially and his
racial hatred of the Assyrians; that’s my theory anyway.
God, in His wisdom, was killing two birds with one stone commissioning Jonah to go to
Nineveh, of all places! Yahweh sending Jonah to Nineveh was ironically helping
the Assyrian people, and God was using that mission to flush out into the open and
address Jonah’s hatred, which had a negative impact on God’s right to rule in
his life. The quicker we square that away like Job the better; trust me on this
one.
This
flushing out reminded me of the times during my teenage years in going with my
grandfather quail hunting in southwest Florida. The bird dogs would be running
through a field of palmettos. Then one of the pointers would stop dead in its
tracks, and remain rigid while looking at a particular patch of palmettos, its
nose was pointing to a specific area and its tail was pointing straight out. It
is a sight to behold!
The dog had detected a covey of quail hiding under the bushes. My grandfather would
give a command, and the pointer would flush out the quail hiding under the
palmetto bushes. The air would erupt with a chorus of wings then came the
thunder. The pointer would then retrieve any fallen birds. I think that Yahweh
had been bird-dogging Jonah. Once the wickedness of Nineveh was addressed, He
flushed Jonah out into the open to put an end to his hatred that caused him to
reject the first commission and flee to Tarshish. Please don’t press the
analogy, but you get the idea.
I
can even perceive of Jonah thinking before that that God would not kill his
prophet along with the wicked (that was a right opinion) and by leaving the
city, he might accelerate Nineveh’s destruction should his presence in Nineveh be
the cause for the delay (he was wrong about that, too!).
This
getting out of town suggested that he intentionally overlooked the markers that
indicated that Yahweh was not going to destroy the city along with its inhabitants
and livestock! I can see Jonah’s irrationality bleeding through his thinking,
“Yahweh
has to destroy Nineveh! He must destroy Nineveh! He will destroy Nineveh! I am
waiting; I am looking to see it coming at any time now! Your end draws ever
nearer, O Nineveh!”
Jonah
was getting tripped up over a fundamental truth; God’s right to rule in our
lives. The truth is that nothing enters our lives unless God approves of it,
absolutely nothing. It is a transcending principle throughout human history. Believers
embrace this truth when good things happen, but when something goes south, they
don’t always take the road Job took (Job 1:21b),
The
LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.
People
can quote Rom 8:28 all day long, but if it rolls off like water on a duck’s
back that person may be angry with God over something that doesn’t fit their
narrative. “Why did you allow this?” kind of thinking. This is a sovereignty
issue, the right to rule in our lives. This may explain Jonah’s hatred and
wanting Nineveh destroyed. Let’s follow the logic on out; he hated the
Assyrians because God allowed such and such thing to happen _______. Do you
have a fill-in-the-blank in your life that has your will and Yahweh’s will tied
up in a Gordian knot?
Jonah did not make his situation better by thinking that Yahweh had no
right to be sovereign in his life. We first witnessed this challenge to
Yahweh’s authority the moment he took off for Tarshish; did we not? We should
not overlook the detail that he was the only prophet to reject his commission. Hmm.
So, we know something was troubling Jonah. This wasn’t normal!
It was okay for God to allow bad things to happen to others but not him, family,
friends, and countrymen. I know; we never think that way! But there was a root
cause for his unusual hatred towards the Assyrians; he wanted them all dead! Maybe
these particular Assyrians that entered his life in the past were from Nineveh,
eh? Only God knows.
It
is impossible to know for sure what fueled his hatred, but the only pity found in Jonah was for
a plant (Jon 4:10)! What a terrible testimony! Hatred and pity cannot grow from
the same soil. The fact that Jonah wrote his book under inspiration later
suggests to me that Yahweh addressed it with Jonah outside of the biblical
record, and when he returned to his hometown in Gath Hepher, I suspect he was
not the same Jonah we read about in Nineveh.
Though
the book of Jonah was written in the third person as was the Torah, the first
five books of the Hebrew Scripture, I believe Jonah was the author of his book
as Moses was the author of the Pentateuch. Admittedly, I felt somewhat
dissatisfied that the only book in Scripture that ended in a question was Jonah’s;
that was until Yahweh directed my thinking that the book of Jonah’s is included in
the canon of Scripture. It suggests that He was healed of that which plagued
him so.
I
am so glad that Yahweh in His wisdom had Jonah write his account (cf. Rom 15:4;
1 Cor 10:6, 11; 2 Tim 3:16-17). Because there will be times when we are tempted
to reject God’s rule in our lives because He allowed something to enter into our
lives that we didn’t like. I have witnessed this in my own life and with other believers. Reread
the book of Jonah and count up all the benefits of disobedience! It will make
you think twice about being stupid and rejecting God’s right to rule in your life.
Jonah’s
situation is actually a secondary theme. The main theme is about Yahweh, and we
see this in a dramatic way of what Jonah knew of Yahweh being played out throughout the
book,
You
are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in
lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm (Jon 4:2).
That
is quite contrary to the GOWO label pinned on Yahweh, yes? It doesn’t pay to
disobey; the warning cannot be any simpler than that. Willful disobedience,
however, can become very messy, complicated, and consequential. You may not accept
this, but God is never wrong. I am very thankful for that. We can trust Him emphatically
to do the right thing by us because of who He is and His unfailing love for us,
but it is impossible for Him to make a mistake. We serve the same God as Jonah
did. For us to prevent Yahweh from ruling in our lives would be a huge mistake in light of what we read in Jonah. To my
shame, I’ve been there and done that.
We
need to be forewarned; Yahweh will not play second fiddle to any person, place,
or thing in our lives (cf. Col 1:18). You can take that to the bank. His will
takes priority over all other wills. There is absolutely no positive derivative going against the will of God. God wants His people to obey Him and
not to put limits on His love. Truly, it does not pay to disobey; salvation is of Yahweh for all who seek Him! <><
%20MG%20t-bkgrd%2060x44.png){kind=small}
%20sunflower%20makeover%2045x63.png){kind=small}
