Michael-Grams: M-G: 1.11.20 // Some Observations in Jonah 4:5

Sperm whale (Physeter microcephalus) illustration by Uko Gorter

Then Jonah went out from the city and sat east of it. There he made a shelter for himself and sat under it in the shade until he could see what would happen in the city.

Nineveh

Yahweh was going to destroy Nineveh (Jon 3:4). I am of the opinion that God would give them literally a full forty days of sunset to sunset, no less, to repent. The Assyrians would know at the conclusion of the second sunset of the 40th day if they would be spared.

They finished out day-40 at sunset (~1900 or 7 PM) and had not perished! They had to be rejoicing over the fact that their prayers were answered (Jon 3:9). I can imagine people jumping, hooping, and hollering, lifting their hand and voices to the sky,

“We’re alive! Praise God! We are not going to perish! Thank you, God!”

Something to that effect! It had to have been a strenuous forty days of not knowing whether you are going to live or die; they were elated and relieved. Jubilation ensued and rightly so! The darkness had settled in with the sunset, but the darkness in their heart had turned to day!

If God intended to destroy Nineveh in forty days, it could have begun right at sunset with the changing of the days (39 to 40). If by the end of the second sunset of day-40 (~1900 hours or 7 PM, day-41), it would have triggered a celebration that they were spared. The problem was that Jonah was still in the city with them! He had been given no orders to leave Nineveh all through the supposed judgment day, day-40!

I am sure he reasoned that God would not destroy His prophet with the wicked. So, he remained because he did not want to be guilty of deserting his post as he did when rejecting the first commission. Jonah could hear and see the jubilation among the people! This had to have torn Jonah out of the frame given his hatred for these people? “How could this be!?” He may have thought. Things were not turning out like he thought they would.

If you think about it, though Jonah knew that Yahweh could possibly relent from doing harm, there was also a chance in his mind that God would inflict harm upon Nineveh because of their wickedness. This wickedness was entrenched! Who would repent from such a lifestyle? I believed he had this 50-50 thinking while in the whale praying to God that he would pay his vow (Jon 2:9). Keep in mind that his attitude towards the Assyrians was not addressed while in Jonah’s organic sub. That would come later while keeping the root cause confidential.

The time that elapsed between Jon 3:10 and 4:1 is unknown on day-41. There is no record of Yahweh telling His prophet of His intentions (Jon 3:10). So, day-41 start at ~1900 hours at sunset. I speculate that from that time until sunrise the next day Jon 4:1-4 took place. Jonah had to assume one of two things; Yahweh either relented as he feared or judgment was delayed. I am of the opinion that probably the former was weighing on his mind. We have to conclude this explains Jonah’s anger towards Yahweh (Jon 4:1).

Keil (Keil & Delitzsch are German commentators on the OT; Keil wrote on the Minor Prophets.) makes a compelling argument that Jonah “could not have been angry at its non-fulfillment before the time arrived, nor could God have reproved him for his anger before that time.”1 He goes on to say,

“Jonah did not become irritated and angry till after God had failed to carry out His threat concerning Nineveh, and that it was then that he poured out his discontent in a reproachful prayer to God (Jon 4:2), there is nothing whatever to force us to the assumption that Jonah had left Nineveh before the fortieth day.”2

There is nothing in the text indicating that Jonah took more than 3 days to preach Yahweh’s message to the inhabitants of Nineveh, but there is nothing to say that he didn’t? It had a very large sprawl and populace.

After day-40, Jonah had to have concluded that Yahweh was not going to destroy Nineveh. He received no further dispatch from Yahweh since entering the city. There was no communique to leave the city, and he is at ground zero, and Nineveh is still standing.

We learn that the calamity which Yahweh had declared that He would bring upon them via His messenger (Jonah), He did not do it because God saw their deeds, that they turned from their wicked way (Jon 3:10). That was Yahweh’s assessment, not Jonah’s prejudiced point of view.

Yahweh’s unseen actions and seen inactions greatly displeased Jonah and he became angry (Jon 4:1). And you know about his prayer in Jon 4:2-3 and Yahweh’s response (Jon 4:4) while he was still in the city after day-40. Rather than answering Yahweh’s question (Jon 4:4), Jonah went out from the city and sat east of it to see what would happen to it (on day-41?) after sunrise ~0700 hours (7 AM) on day-41.

C.F. Keil liked Calvin’s explanation on why Jonah went east of the city and waited to see what would happen to it, even on day-41, when it should have been self-evident by seeing the inhabitants rejoicing that they did not perish,

“Although forty days had passed, Jonah stood as if fastened to the spot, because he could not yet believe that what he had proclaimed according to the command of God would fail to be effected [sic]... This was the cause, therefore, of his still remaining, viz., because he thought, that although the punishment from God had been suspended, yet his preaching had surely not been in vain, but the destruction of the city would take place. This was the reason for his waiting on after the time fixed, as though the result were still doubtful.”3

Okay, that is John Calvin’s opinion (1509-1564). Maybe, it’s the best one going or no one has offered a better one since the 16^th century? Jonah may have been thinking along these lines, “Yahweh was delaying, but destruction is coming,” but this thinking does not square with Jonah prayer to Yahweh in Jon 4:2-4.

God questioned his anger (Jon 4:4) because of His actions in Jon 3:10. Jonah knew the reason Yahweh did not do it; Jonah even articulated it back to Yahweh! Jonah, you, nor I have any rights or power to leverage on Yahweh. We have no right to be angry because He does something different that doesn’t fit our narrative. Jonah had anger issues and all-about-me issues. Why didn’t Jonah accuse Yahweh of being at fault for his attitude because He allowed whatever it was to enter his life that forever warped his perception of the Assyrians!? All courtesy of Yahweh, of course. He didn’t man up!

How many ungodly attitudes are harboring in the subterranean caverns of our hearts because God had allowed it to happen to us or our family? Remember, nothing enters our lives unless God allows it. We do need to flush stuff like this out of our hearts with help from the Holy Spirit because left unattended, it only becomes a tool of the evil one to use against us.

Whatever it is, given the right circumstances, it will resurface in a time when we think there is a self-made-up or real crisis. You have heard the saying, “Don’t give ammunition to the enemy?” Whenever the stuff hits the fan, our adversary uses the ammunition we have given to him against us! This, I believe, is what had happened to Jonah.

He is so angered (Jon 4:1) that Yahweh is his whipping post (Jon 4:2, yeah, its Yahweh’s fault?) for this situation has now tapped into that area of the root cause of it all, the thing behind the hatred. Again, that unknown element is between Yahweh and Jonah. Perhaps in Jonah’s mind, those wonderful attributes in Jon 4:2 were the same wonderful attributes that germinated his anger towards Yahweh for allowing something to take place in his life with family or friends or countrymen.

He definitely was not thinking clearly, and we cannot rule out as if incidental just how strong the influence of the unknown root that was fueling the hatred for the Assyrians that drove him not only to reject Yahweh’s commission in Jerusalem and run in the opposite direction of Nineveh to Tarshish in Spain, but to place all the blame on Yahweh for not punishing Nineveh; he is totally beside himself on the east side of the city.

When we talk about Jon 4:6-11, it gets weirder. The real destruction is taking place within him. He is in need of healing. I think it happens beyond the narrative here. This canonical book on Jonah, in my mind, suggests that whatever it was between Jonah and Yahweh is settled. God is immutable so there was nothing for Yahweh to settle; it was all on Jonah, and if my theory is correct, everything is white as rice. This is what I would like to believe, but the prophets were not stained-glass men. They struggled as we do with flesh, the world-system, and the devil, our adversaries.

If in his sagaciousness, Jonah was convinced that the Assyrians were so wicked that justice could only be derived by divine destruction after spending forty days in their midst, why did he zip off to Tarshish earlier? What was it that changed his mind from believing that “Yahweh may let them off the hook” to “God is going to burn them for their wickedness?” I am glad Yahweh didn’t think like Jonah or like any of us, for that matter (cf. Isa 55:8-9).

I want to give you a historical marker to think on; if Jonah was there in 759 B.C., following the second plague that hit Nineveh, that after the forty days had expired, he went out to the east side of Nineveh so that he might see what would become of the city. Jonah would have to have stayed out there for 147 years to get a visual of its destruction and some sense of satisfaction!

Why 147 years, you might ask? Nineveh was destroyed all right, but it was not until 612 B.C., not 759 B.C., by the combined forces of the Babylonians and the Medes. Nahum prophesied the fall of Nineveh; it never arose again.

Who is the monster here at this juncture, really? I thought it was the brutal and notorious Assyrians who deserved to die for their heinous and egregious crimes against humanity by the hands of Yahweh? Now, it looks as if Jonah was the real monster, not the Ninevites; he became the very thing he despised the most in the Assyrians; he was as cold as ice like they used to be, namely, those who truly believed, – death was prominent on his mind like some of the Assyrians of old.

If we are not careful, my friends, we can passionately oppose something or someone to such an extent that it becomes obsessive; that we become the very thing we dislike, legalistic and hypocritical, for instance. It is chilling, for it reminds me that because we have retained our sin nature, within every believer lies the potential of committing the most ignoble of things. Jonah had in effect become as heartless as the Assyrians who knew not Yahweh (cf. Jon 4:11).

There is a part of me that wished that the biblical record had ended there at the vantage point east of the city of Nineveh because it only gets more unpleasant, but I will go there and share my observations with you, if you so desire. With that said, there is the spiritual man inside of me that is glad God took it where it needed to go and end. Jonah healed up and wrote the book of Jonah. <><

Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life (Prov 4:23).