Reflections on Jonah

Jonah is commanded by the Lord to go to Ninevah and cry against it as its wickedness had come up to God

The text indicates and even emphasizes that Jonah flees to Tarshish "from the presence of the Lord".

The Lord sends a big storm which jeopardized the ship. While the sailors reacted by fervently praying to their gods, Jonah slept.

Being woken up, Jonah is encouraged to pray to his god, though it appears he does not. The crew cast lots to determine who is responsible, and the lot falls on Jonah. As they ask Jonah more about his God and his background, they realize the power of the God of Israel, and were afraid that Jonah would flee from such a powerful god. Asking Jonah what to do, he replied to throw him into the sea, which they ended up doing, in fear and trembling. The men even offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows after Jonah was cast overboard.

Jonah is of course consumed by the sea creature, where he becomes more humble, quoting various psalms.

The Lord forgives Jonah and he is cast out of the fish, and goes to Ninevah to preach. Unfortunately for Jonah, the people repent. This actually makes him upset. He was prophesying destruction and doom and gloom on them, not mercy and blessings of repentance.
 So when they repent, he struggles.

To teach him a lesson, the Lord provides a shelter from the hot sun with a vine that grows on it. When the vine withers and dies, Jonah feels great sorrow and sadness for it. The Lord chastens Jonah for feelign sorry for a vine dying, when the city of Ninevah has thousands of his children.

This book has a couple of odd stories which seem almost smashed together. Each could be read separately, but they also work together. Sometimes, we are afraid of what God is asking of us, or we may even disagree with the direction that we are receiving. We may want to ignore it or move away.

Sometimes we are confronted with the idea that those who do not worship or live as we do in many ways are more admirable and respectable to God than we are, particularly if (when?) we are prideful, hypocritical, arrogant, stand-offish, or self-righteous.

This can be humbling, and is a call to repentance of a sort.

At other times, we may see that those things that we value, that we treasure, either by our money or our time or our thoughts, are really of very little significance. Sometimes we find that we neglect or even refuse the seek the welfare of those who are most in need of our friendship, our fellowship, our blessing, our attention, our message, our love, our time.

Sometimes we struggle when things do not turn out according to our plans, to how we see the world. Hopefully we are humble enough to realize that we are not God, and that He has his plans, and we have ours.

Sometimes we may feel anger or a desire for vengeance or justice against someone or some organization that has harmed us or someone we car about, or has been complicit in harm. But God in this book invites Jonah (dove) to call the people of Ninevah to repentance, which they do. Jonah struggles with this, seemingly thinking that the Ninevahites should pay for what they've done. Jonah seems to demand justice most of all, and really struggles when God forgives instead of when he punishes. Do we struggle when we see God's judgments (or what appear to be God's judgments)? Are there those we strive to punish, and who we refuse to accept unless they are punished?