“I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”
”… for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.” Jonah 1:9b and 4:2b

Jonah 4:1–11 – The Pursuits of God in the Book of Jonah
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost – October 4, 2020 (am)

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            Lord God, let the words of your servant’s mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and Redeemer. Through Christ. Amen.

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            Today’s sermon text is the final chapter in the book of Jonah, Jonah 4. We’ll read it to begin our final installment in this series on the book. Jonah, ch. 4. Hear the word of the Lord:

But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the LORD and said, “O LORD, 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 you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” And the LORD said, “Do you do well to be angry?”
            Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, till he should see what would become of the city. Now the LORD God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint. And he asked that he might die and said, “It is better for me to die than to live.” But God said to Jonah, “Do you do well to be angry for the plant?” And he said, “Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.” 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 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?”

            The word of God. Over the past three weeks in our series on Jonah, we’ve spent a good deal of time in this final chapter. For good reason: to know the meaning of anything, we have to know its end. Whether it’s a poem or a historical event or a marriage or a symphony or a river or a life or a story—to know what it means, we must know how it ends.[1] So we’ve turned many times already to this ending of the story in ch. 4, as we’ve explored God’s pursuits in the book of Jonah. Much of what we’ll say about this final scene as we begin this morning will hopefully feel familiar as review or as further confirmation of themes we’ve encountered.

            In ch. 4, God’s pursuit of his disordered prophet comes to a head, fittingly, in a covenant dialogue.[2] Jonah complains about God’s ways toward Nineveh, explaining his “reasons” for opposing God. But it’s more smoke than fire—Jonah doesn’t really give a clear rationale for his actions; he just repeatedly asserts that he’s angry with God to the point of death.[3]

            In protest, Jonah goes into a kind of self-chosen exile, departing, v. 5 says, “to the east” of the city where God’s lovingkindness is being enjoyed.[4] And Jonah decides to get comfortable there. He builds for himself a booth for shade from the burning sun, as he waits “to see what would become of the city,” perhaps in a sour hope that the Ninevites would renege on their commitment to God.[5] In response, in v. 6, the LORD God miraculously causes a plant to grow up over Jonah “to save him from his discomfort.”[6] That might, at first, seem unnecessary. After all, Jonah had just built himself a shelter from the sun’s heat. The seemingly gratuitous nature of God’s miracle is a clue to a larger intent: the plant isn’t meant merely to “save” Jonah from the “discomfort” of the sun’s rays. Jonah needs deliverance from a more profound disaster (another way to translate the word for discomfort).[7] God is doing double (or triple) duty with the plant.

            After Jonah exhibits great joy for the plant,[8] in v. 7 God seems to do an about face: he appoints a worm to smite the plant so that it withers. Then in v. 8, God appoints a scorching east wind and the sun’s heat is intensified upon Jonah’s head.[9] What does Jonah think about all this? It makes him, once again, angry. But I think there’s a difference this time with his anger. It’s rooted in a kind of compassion. In v. 10, God says, “You pity the plant.” God isn’t speculating there or asking a question; he’s stating a fact. And, importantly, he doesn’t criticize Jonah’s pity for the plant. He doesn’t say, “How dare you pity an unimportant plant!” Rather, God affirms such compassion in principle, and uses that basically acceptable pity to argue a point about his own pity. In vv. 10–11, God argues from the lesser to the greater: If your pity for the plant is in some way appropriate (I’m not disputing it), then how much more is my pity for a great city.[10]

            Jonah could appear quite unpredictable and inconsistent: he’s angry that Nineveh is not destroyed then angry that the plant is destroyed; he’s full of pity for the plant on the heels of being merciless toward Nineveh. Those responses to events seem exactly opposite. But the contradiction is only superficial, for there’s a strong connecting thread linking his compassion for the plant to his non-compassion for Nineveh. It’s himself, his convictions, his comfort, his own formulations of what is “biblical” and needed.[11] He approves of pity for a plant because it provides him with more shade from the sun.[12] He disapproves of pity for the Ninevites because it contradicts what he thinks is best for his people and God’s glory. Jonah is very consistent throughout—consistently for his own good, his own outlook, his own agendas, his own wisdom.

            Jonah is capable of something of a proper compassion when it’s convenient for him. Jonah looks at the plant and sees less an object to love for its own sake and more an opportunity for personal benefit.[13] This gets at Jonah’s real problem. It’s a matter perceptions and orientation. When Jonah looks at Nineveh, he sees great “evil,” stirring up pride and contempt. God looks at Nineveh and sees great “disaster,” stirring up pity and compassion.[14] They look at the same object but see very different things. Jonah sees but does not see. His perceptions of reality are off-kilter.[15] And they’re off-kilter because his orientation is so inwardly curved. In his exercise of compassion, in his relations in the world, Jonah is decidedly curved in on himself. God causes a plant to grow up over Jonah to deliver him from this disaster.[16] And it is a disastrous state to be in.[17] The inward curve of sin causes one’s soul to shrivel and die with increasingly smaller joys. It spreads death throughout one’s relationships. It will lead, on the last day, to eternal death.

            God will not allow his prophet to remain there. He pursues Jonah tirelessly to the end of the story, and beyond. The book ends with a non-ending, an unanswered question. Jonah’s unbelief and self-love will not have the last say. God’s word has the last say, always. God keeps inviting Jonah, “Won’t you relinquish your insistence on seeing things your way, and begin to see reality how I see it? It just might be better sight than you’ve been practicing. It just might lead to real joy.” God is, as Jonah himself confesses in 4:2, full of grace and mercy, abounding in steadfast love,[18] so much so that his merciful pursuit spills over the pages of this narrative.[19]

            We’ve repeatedly returned to Jonah’s confession of faith in God’s mercy and abounding steadfast love in 4:2. It’s a crucial key to the story. But Jonah utters another vital confession of faith in the book. Remember what it is? It’s his profession to the sailors in 1:9: “I fear the LORD, the God who made the sea and dry land.” In addition to confessing God as merciful Redeemer at the end, Jonah also confesses faith in God as mighty Creator at the beginning. Both aspects of God’s identity are crucial. In fact, we cannot properly understand God’s redemptive pursuit apart from his creational acts and aims.[20] So to wrap up our series, I want to focus on this: the God Jonah confesses and with whom he has to do is the God who created everything. I think it’s worth highlighting three “C’s” in the Creator God’s relationship with the whole of his creation.

            First, the Creator exercises sovereign control over the whole creation, from men to mice, from the big and important things like humanity, to the small and seemingly insignificant or otherwise unnoticed things like mice and microbes. But God’s sovereign control is exercised in different ways toward different parts of the creation. In Jonah, when it comes to the non-human world, God hurls great winds and stirs up storms on the sea. He “appoints” a fish to swallow the prophet; he “appoints” a plant to grow up over him; he “appoints” a worm which devours the plant; he “appoints” a scorching east wind to blow. The verb “appoint” is used four times to emphasize that God commands the earth to do his bidding. And it obeys him. But one thing in the book does not obey the command of the sovereign Creator—the prophet Jonah. Unlike a fish or a plant or a worm or wind, Jonah can disobey the word of the Lord; he wants to disobey and does. But this doesn’t mean that God’s fails to accomplish his purposes in Jonah’s life. Though Jonah first disobeys, he still ends up going to Nineveh as God intended. Similarly, if Jonah had his druthers, Nineveh would see none of God’s covenant mercy; but he still proves to be the God-ordained channel of grace coming not only to Ninevites but also to pagan sailors.[21]

            God accomplishes his will even through the life of the disobedient prophet, but clearly his sovereign power is exercised differently for Jonah than for the non-human creation.[22] For human creatures made in God’s image, who think and will and love and worship, God tends to work by stealth and surprise, ironic reversal and persuasion;[23] less through “bare power” forcing immediate “results” and more through patiently exposing selfishness and wooing toward goodness and order.[24] But one way or another, God controls the whole of his creation; there’s not some part of it that ultimately frustrates his purposes or is out of his hands.

            God not only controls his creation, all of it; but he also cares for it, all of it, both men and mice. The logic of God’s final question to Jonah operates on the assumption that Jonah’s pity for the plant is in itself good. It’s good to care for plant life, ultimately because God has that concern. God cares for plants. He cares for all that he has made. God continually feeds birds of the air and clothes lilies of the field because he cares for them. He knows and calls every star by name according to Isa 40:26. He is wisely, lovingly, gladly attentive to his works of creation according to Ps 104. The Creator judges everything he has made to be “very good” according to Gen 1:31. From big to small, from the noticeable to what is unnoticed by us, God’s heart is for his creation. But in case we forget or ignore it, Jonah ends with a reminder. I think that’s part of the effect of God slipping in, as the final words of the book, that he cares for a city of 120,000 persons “and also much cattle.”[25] The God who made the sea and dry land and everything made all things in love and loves all that he has made. This book, so full of and focused on God’s merciful and loving pursuit of Jonah, does not, for that reason, overlook God’s compassion for the rest of creation. In fact, God’s pursuit of Jonah and his compassion for cattle are tightly bound in one single divine mission of love, as we’ll consider further in a bit.

            For now we can add that, on top of God’s control over his creation and his care for his creation, God is also and therefore committed to his creation, to all of it. He is committed to seeing his good purposes for the whole world come to fruition. Whereas Jonah has a tendency toward small, self-concerned purposes and pursuits—and whereas I might be inclined toward good only for me, or only for me and my family and peers and nation, or only for this limited sphere that I pay attention to—the Creator God’s commitment is to nothing short of the good of everything, all the creation he has made in wisdom and love, and to the glory of him alone.

            Jonah is a book about God’s pursuit not only of the prophet Jonah and the readers who pick up this story and the Gentile nations, but amazingly also of every square inch of creation. And this is good news for Jonah and for us. Let’s transition now to unpack two (of many) reasons why God’s pursuit of even the non-human creation is good news for Jonah and us.

            The first reason has to do with what God’s good purposes are for creation. When the Creator created the cosmos, how did he purpose to bring about the best good for all of it? Back in the opening chapter of the Bible, where we read of God creating all things, we also read of the crucial last step in that work: God created Adam and Eve in his image and commissioned them to rule and subdue the world. As Ps 8 puts it, the Creator “crowned man with glory and honor,” giving them authority over all the work of his hands, sheep and oxen, the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, the fish and all creatures of the sea. Why did God do this? I think he intended for humans in his image to care for the earth and cultivate it wisely, so that it might realize its good, God-given potential[26]—so that wilderness might become garden, so that time and space might be transformed into truthfully ordered cultures and God-resounding environments and joyful feasting to the divine King’s praise. That’s why matter matters. That’s why stuff exists: it exists for the festive praise and epiphany and exaltation of God.[27]

            The heavens exist to declare God’s glory, though without audible words.[28] The trees and plants of the field exist to clap their hands in praise of their Creator.[29] The beasts of the earth exist to revel in the provision of their King.[30] The mountains and hills exist to sing for joy to the Lord.[31] Scripture is filled with stunning statements like these. But the wordless shouting of the heavens can also be rendered audible by human voices expressing on the heavens’ behalf the glory of the Creator.[32] Grains and grapes can be developed into bread and wine so that God’s goodness might be celebrated and feasted upon. Beasts can be domesticated and lovingly guided to join in the labor of cultivating the land. Metals can be mined, heated, hammered, and molded into trumpets and guitar strings so that God’s praises might be more heartily sung. The Creator means such cultural development to happen in his creation, culminating in full-bodied worship, as the form of creation’s peace and flourishing and fullness.[33] But if any of it is going to happen, then there needs to be faithful zoologists, and patient gardeners and farmers, and skillful carpenters and craftsmen, and discerning lyricists and musicians, and knowledgable chefs and cooks, and humble and attentive students of things like rocks and sound and bodies and language and microscopic worms and economic order and historical change.

            We can sometimes think that God is concerned only about private, “invisible” human thoughts and emotions and “spirits” floating in some other dimension, and that the rest of our lives is unimportant at best and distracting and dirty at worst. But should not God care for Nineveh, that city of 120,000 who do not know their right hand from their left,[34] and also much cattle? God cares about cattle, about their care, and about the people called to that labor. God cares about our ordinary, everyday vocations in creation; he has written them into his story and intends for them to play a key part in his cosmic mission. For the world to experience the full goodness and gladness and peace and potential for which it was created, it’s going to need wise, loving, attentive, servant-hearted, godly kings and queens and priests cultivating it in reflection of their great God and Father. That’s what Adam and Eve were created for.

            What’s at stake, then, if Adam and Eve sin against God’s love and his good and righteous way? What’s at stake is the flourishing of nothing less than earth and cosmos—not just eternal destinies of invisible souls and a loss of a sense of “inner peace,” but what the Bible calls shalom for everything. The Fall was truly a cosmic tragedy. After Adam and Eve’s sin, the world falls prey to rulers who do not shepherd creation into goodness, who do not voice God’s praise that all creatures of our God and King long to offer, but who voice their own praise and who wield things as tools for their own selfish agendas. Now the created world and all its inhabitants know not peace and goodness but abuse and perversions of power.

            So it’s not surprising that the Bible says, for example in Ps 98, that when God comes to finally judge and bring all things to rights under his perfect kingly rule, then the sea will roar and the rivers will clap their hands and the hills will sing for joy. The non-human creation groans for God’s just and benevolent rule. But the Bible is even more specific about what the whole creation groans for. It’s a fairly familiar passage. In Rom 8, Paul tells us that the creation endures its present brokenness with much groaning. Groaning for what? For the “revealing of the sons of God,” for our “adoption as sons” which Paul explains to be the “redemption of our bodies.” Why would the non-human creation groan for human redemption and resurrection? I think part of the answer is this: then, redeemed and renewed in Christ, we can get on with caring for and cultivating the world into the God-exalting fullness God intended all along. [35]

            When we read Jonah abstracted from the larger biblical drama, or only with our inwardly curved interests in view, the final words of the book “and also much cattle” can feel curious and quaint, as if God has two concerns in this book, a major concern and another very minor one tacked on as an afterthought to the main event. I think that, in fact, there are not two separate concerns of major and minor value to God, but one cosmic drama and one divine pursuit of love. God pursues the Ninevites and the sailors and Jonah and us to redeem us from sin, self, and Satan, not in love for humankind abstracted from the rest of the world God has created, but, in fact, as a manifestion and a means of his love for the whole world. The best good for cattle rests in their God-given rulers being restored to God and re-sent into the world for a good and great mission of love. God desires good for even cattle. And because he does, he will restore the cattle’s rightful rulers to the glory they were created for. Jonah is a book about God’s pursuit of every last bit of creation, which proves to be good news for us as part of it.

            Here’s the second reason why the Creator’s pursuit of even the non-human creation is good news for humans like Jonah and us. If the almighty Creator controls all that has made, cares for all he has made, and is committed to all that he has made, then his loving purposes for his world, us included, will most certainly come to pass. God’s purposes and pursuits, all of which are wise and good beyond imagining, are invincible. What good news!

            Of course, in the mundane or painful or problematic present in which we always must find ourselves, we might not perceive how God’s good purposes could possibly be being worked out, and it might not seem like they could ever come to fruition. In those moments, the temptation is enormous to second guess God and to lose heart about his ability and goodness.

            At the beginning of Jonah’s story, catastrophe is on the horizon for Nineveh. A nuclear bomb of wrath is about to drop on a city of 120,000, with much cattle besides—indeed, on a whole culture and ecosystem that God cares about. Think about that kind of threat hanging over Naperville, which is roughly the numeric equivalent.[36] This is a major crisis. God act, quickly! God does act. He calls Jonah to go. Jonah! Come on, God! Couldn’t you find a better candidate, a more willing prophet, a more skilled and earnest preacher, one who wouldn’t delay the saving program by fleeing in the opposite direction? There’s a better way, God, an easier way, a more efficient way, a quicker way, a way more fitted to the present crisis level. Yes, and all those ways would leave a group of sailors still imprisoned in idolatry, not to mention that opting for the “quicker, wiser, better” route would leave Jonah in his awful state of oblivion and disaster.

            In one of the most impactful sermons I’ve ever heard, the preacher proclaimed, “God is always doing a thousand things in every thing that he does, that you know nothing about.”[37] God is the Creator of everything, he exercises sovereign control over everything, he cares about everything, he is committed to all that he has created, and everything he does has all of that in view. And we creatures, with our limited, localized, sometimes sinfully disordered and inwardly curved perceptions look around us and, on a good day, maybe can identify four or five, or ten or twelve, or seventeen good things for God to do, and it looks to us like he’s maybe doing three of them. And we throw God in the dock as if he needed to defend himself.

            I often use a holding pattern analogy. Perhaps you’ve been on a flight, arriving at or above your destination city, apparently ready to begin your descent. But instead of descending, you wind up circling in the air. You can see the city below, you can see the lights of O’hare. It’s right there! Just go for it, pilot! Why are we circling around forever (i.e., 20 mins.)? From what we can perceive, it literally looks like going in circles pointlessly. But we can’t see what air traffic control sees—six flights arriving at the same time, or a patch of turbulence just below, or snowplows clearing the runways. Calling Creator God to account for his sovereign, wise, but often inscrutable ways is like calling air traffic control to account while in a holding pattern, times seven for the perfection of God, plus infinity for the qualitative difference between God and air traffic control. It’s foolish. It’s to succumb to an idolatrous perception of reality.

            And it’s unnecessary. For true life is not in demonstrating that God is somehow wrong in his decisions or apparent inactivity. Neither is our truest life and most enduring joy tied to becoming “well informed” about all the ins and outs of God’s hidden purposes and how his sovereign pursuits are being worked out in our present circumstances. God never promises to reveal to us the inside scoop on all his mysterious ways, and our best good doesn’t lie in us figuring it all out or in him giving us “answers” about his inscrutable wisdom. Our best good lies in God exercising his inscrutable wisdom as Creator and his incomparable mercy as Redeemer for the everlasting good of us and of all creation. And always, in a thousand and more ways at a time, in ways that far transcend our ability to perceive them, he is doing that.

            God displays his awesome power by stirring up hurricanes at sea, while at the same time, and through that powerful display of glory, pursuing a disobedient prophet. His pursuit of that disobedient prophet doubles as a pursuit of pagan sailors. In showering unthinkable mercy on a wicked Gentile city, God also stirs up holy jealousy in the heart of his covenant people. God exercises the care of a gardener and the severe mercy of one who prunes, and he provides food for a worm,[38] and he orchestrates the weather, and he exposes the selfishly disordered affections of a prophet—all in the single set of circumstances we read of in Jonah 4.

            God is always doing a thousand things in every thing he does. From our vantage point, we can’t see all he’s doing. Sometimes, from our vantage point, seems like he’s not doing the right or necessary thing, or is completely aloof or absent. Sometimes, from our vantage point, we see nothing but the tragedy of a defeated, abandoned, slaughtered Son of God. But precisely there God is most present, most working for our good and the good of all things, most exercising is royal rule over the creation, most at work to redeem everything to himself. For God sees more than we see, and God acts in a wisdom that far transcends our own, and God is always doing infinitely more than we could ever know about, and God can see the end of the story which comes not with the cross of Good Friday but the empty tomb of Easter Sunday.

            God is always doing a thousand things in every thing that he does, and every one of them for your good and the good of all creation.[39] And at the end of the day, his thousands and more good plans and purposes and pursuits are invincible. The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. But never for the Creator and Redeemer. Trust him for it. Lament the truly sorrowful realities of the present, and trust him for it. Grip your hand on the plow to continue working in the field in big and small ways, and trust him for it. Serve your neighbor in self-sacrificial love, and trust him for it. Lift up your pleas, “Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” and trust him for it, trust him that he will bring this about fully and publicly at the right time, the time of his wise choosing.

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            Lord, we believe; help our unbelief. Father God, strengthen our souls to hold fast in faith to the truths and promises of your word. Lift up the sinking heart. Strengthen the knees that are feeble. Mold our disordered affections and lives. Bend them outward to the reality of the world around us, the creation that you love, that we may join you in your good pursuits, full of hope, strong in faith, and persevering in love until Christ returns. We pray this in the name of this same Christ Jesus our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, one God, world without end. Amen.

Notes:

[1].  On the hermeneutical and philosophical point, see Peter J. Leithart, Deep Exegesis: The Mystery of Reading Scripture (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2009), 35–74. With respect to Jonah in particular, Sasson comments rightly that “what transpires between God and Jonah in this, their last meeting, controls our grasp of the whole book” (Jonah, 270).

[2].  Magonet suggests a chiastic structure in ch. 4 (Form and Meaning, 57–58). The proposed chiasm is less than persuasive (though there is a remarkable symmetry in the number of words in Jonah’s discourse and God’s discourse throughout ch. 4; see Sasson, Jonah, 317). But Magonet rightly and importantly highlights that the chapter operates by way of a dialogical word/act and response between Yahweh and Jonah (cf. Jenson, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, 80–81).

[3].  Sasson thinks it best to understand Jonah’s response (esp. in vv. 1–5) as less anger and more distress and confusion (Jonah, 274–75), but, in the end, I agree with Jenson that “there is no need to soften the anger idea” (Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, 84).

[4].  “East” is the direction of Adam and Eve’s exile from the garden (see Gen 3:24), and from there on out “east” is the direction of exile (e.g., Babylon), the theo-geographical signal of life away from the covenant goodness of the Lord. The irony of Jonah’s “exile” is that it is self-chosen. For different interpretations, see Jenson, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, 86–87.

[5].  That Jonah is squarely focused on the city is underlined by the narrator’s threefold use of “city” in the single verse 4:5 (Sasson, Jonah, 287). On the question, “What was Jonah anticipating?,” and the slew of interpretive and text critical gymnastics it has stirred up, see ibid., 287–89; also helpful is the related discussion on the sequence of the “story time” offered by Jenson, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, 81–82.

[6].  The identification of the plant has eluded the many attempts to try to nail it down, perhaps because the narrator has not given us any firm clues to work with (which, to my mind, clearly indicates the [lack of] importance the question has for understanding the story). See Sasson, Jonah, 291–92, for a helpful discussion.

[7].  Cf. Magonet, Form and Meaning, 25.

[8].  The statement at the end of 4:6 is emphatic, using a verb with a cognate object modified by the adjective “great”: Jonah “rejoiced … a great rejoicing” (וַיִּשְׂמַח … שִׂמְחָה גְדוֹלָה). As Sasson, Jonah, 272, notes, it also exactly reverses Jonah’s state from 4:1: Jonah “was devastated … with great devastation (וַיֵּרַע… רָעָה גְדוֹלָה; the phrase is impossible to reproduce quite rightly in English).

[9].  Like the plant, the “scorching east wind” is shrouded in mystery. To wit, no one is quite sure what חֲרִישִׁית (typically rendered as “scorching”) means (Jon 4:8 is the only use of this term in Scripture). See Sasson, Jonah, 302–3. An additional mystery is what this חֲרִישִׁית east wind is for in Jonah; it comes, and then the next clause speaks of the sun smiting Jonah. Why the חֲרִישִׁית east wind? Sasson, following a suggestion from medieval Jewish exegesis, thinks its purpose was to knock down the hut that Jonah had built (Jonah, 304). This is an intriguing possibility, though in the comments above I align with the more common suggestion that the wind intensifies the sun’s heat. In any case, we can say that the חֲרִישִׁית east wind is intended in some way to devastate Jonah’s short-lived comfort. Perhaps not insignificantly (in view of the potential that the Book of the Twelve functions as a meaningfully interconnected collection), “east wind” (קָדִים) last appears in Hos 13:15, where it functions in God’s word of judgment to end the flourishing of Ephraim.

[10]. Cf. Sasson, Jonah, 307–10. However, Sasson (with many others) thinks that the verb חוס cannot have the sense of “have pity/compassion” here, since it nowhere else has that sense when used with a non-human object (but see Gen 45:20, noted by Sasson). Sasson thus sacrifices the clear parallelism of God’s statement for the sake of a supposed lexical precedent (Jonah was “fretting over” the plant, and God “had compassion” on Nineveh; see ibid., 300, 309–10). I place a higher value on the parallelism and the intentionally repeated word; additionally, as I seek to show below, there is a larger biblical-theological background for understanding a relational concern for the non-human world. See rightly Jenson, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, 92.

[11]. The point was first suggested in this form to me by Magonet: “The common point here is Jonah’s self-centredness, for both events are not for him significant in themselves (the suffering the Ninevites have been spared; the ‘suffering’ of the destroyed gourd) but only in so far as they affect Jonah’s personal desires or comfort” (Form and Meaning, 33).

[12]. All the better that Jonah didn’t have to work for this extra shade, in contrast to all the sweat and toil he expended on his self-constructed booth!

[13]. As many of us do (indeed, as is the characteristic posture of our modern technological age), Jonah can be said to know the plant only as what the philosopher Martin Heidegger called “standing reserve,” raw material to be manipulated in our agendas of becoming and attaining, or ignored until we may feel we have such a need. I have unpacked Heidegger’s thought in this regard (leaning heavily on Brian Brock, Christian Ethics in a Technological Age [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010], 31–65) in “The Path More Traveled: Of Paths, Roads, and the Place of the Church in Christian Engagement of Technology,” in Techne: A Christian Vision of Technology, ed. G. Hiestand and T. Wilson (forthcoming); a video of the same message from the 2019 Center for Pastor Theologians Theology Conference is available at https://www.pastortheologians.com/media/the-path-more-traveled. In this paper, I also develop themes of cultural calling and eucharistic ends for creation that are directly related to what appears below.

[14]. The noun רָעָה appears seven times in this short story (1:2, 7, 8; 3:10; 4:1, 2, 6; additionally the adjectival form of the root appears in 3:8, 10, and the verbal form appears in 4:1; it is possible, also, that 3:7 puns רעה, on which, see Sasson, Jonah, 256). Magonet notes that the author could have used different terms throughout, more precisely specifying the denotation that best fits each individual context, but has purposefully chosen to use a single and elastic term to link together many different contexts in some manner (Form and Meaning, 22; see further 22–25; Sasson, Jonah, 272–73, argues that the appearance of the verbal form רעע appearing in 4:1 is highly significant). The word’s ambiguity is crucial, showing the possibility of quite differing perceptions of the self-same reality. A similar point can be made with another equally important repeated term, גָּדוֹל (in Jonah, 14x; see 1:2, 4 [2x], 10, 12, 16, 17 [MT 2:1]; 3:2, 3, 5, 7; 4:1, 6, 11). For the basic point about the importance of the two ambiguous or multivalent key words in Jonah, see Stuart, “Jonah,” 458–59; idem, Hosea–Jonah, 437.

[15]. As Iris Murdoch once noted, “How we see our situation is itself, already, a moral activity” (Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals [New York: Penguin, 1992], 315, emphasis original). Jonah is, in Sasson’s words, “victim of a particularly human illusion, that his own imaginations and responses cannot be different from God’s” (Jonah, 297).

[16]. In ch. 4, Jonah wants what we might call “destruction without mercy” for Nineveh, so God shows him what that looks like by bringing destruction on the plant and the ensuing suffering of “evil” on Jonah (who is acting like the nations). As Magonet comments, “God allows Jonah’s choice of action to dictate His method of reply” (Form and Meaning, 58). As we have seen a number of times in preceding weeks in Jonah, God again responds to Jonah in kind, with a manner of retributive justice wherein Jonah is disciplined by getting what he asks for.

[17]. See Matt Jenson, The Gravity of Sin: Augustine, Luther and Barth on homo incurvatus in se (London: T&T Clark, 2006).

[18]. For discussion of the relation of Jonah’s confession to Joel 2:13, with which Jonah’s statement most closely corresponds, see Magonet, Form and Meaning, 24–25.

[19]. We could also note that the first half of the book concludes with Jonah’s safe deliverance on land after his address to Yahweh in the psalm (2:10), and the second half offers an incomplete (but expected) parallel: Jonah’s address to Yahweh anticipates his final deliverance. There is, interestingly, a long line of Jewish speculation on Jonah’s eventual repentance; see the survey in Sasson, Jonah, 320. I take the book’s very existence itself as some small and indirect testimony to the repentance of Jonah being not only hoped for but, eventually, actual. God’s merciful pursuit spills over the pages of the narrative, and, in the end, overcomes Jonah’s unbelief. This conclusion depends on the twofold assumption of the prophet Jonah’s responsibility for the present shape of the narrative and of the narrative’s basic historicity (see Stuart, “Jonah,” 462–63).

[20]. God’s work of redemption is always set in Scripture within the larger story begun in creation. Creational ends precede, and order, redemptive means. As Geerhardus Vos provocatively comments: “The eschatological is an older strand in revelation than the soteric” (Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948; repr., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2000], 140). Since God is committed to the creation he has made, he will not let it be ruined indefinitely by sin and evil but will bring about a redemption ordered unto the fulfillment of creational ends. On the flip-side, God redeems his people not only so that they might be freed from sin and wrath, but also so that they might be freed for living out the purposes for which they were created. Creation and redemption, therefore, go hand in hand. Thus, for example, Isaiah can appeal to God’s identity as Creator to assure about his promised work of redemption (see Isa 43:10); and Paul can parallel the work of God creating in Christ with the work of God redeeming the church in Christ as mutually interpreting works (Col 1:15–20).

[21]. Cf. Magonet, Form and Meaning, 107.

[22]. Attending to the grammatical details of Jonah, we could add that God’s control over the non-human creation also works in a diversity of ways, tied to the ends in view. Of particular significance is the verb “to appoint.” When blessing is being worked for Jonah, God’s “appointing” can be explicitly stated as unto that end, expressed by way of an infinitive modifier: God “appoints in order to X” (in 2:1, the fish to swallow and thus deliver Jonah from drowning). But when some scourging is being worked for Jonah, God’s “appointing” is separated from the scourging activity itself, with the agents being appointed stated as the subjects of that scourging activity: in 4:7, God “appoints” a worm, and the worm smites the plant; in 4:8, God “appoints” a scorching east wind, and the sun smote Jonah. Though sovereignly orchestrating these turns of events, God is not stated as the direct grammatical agent of such action (Sasson, Jonah, 300–301). The grammatical reservation can be seen to reflect (to convey) proper theological nuance.

[23]. Thus, in ch. 4, “God seeks to persuade [Jonah] rather than to overwhelm him” (Jenson, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, 80). For Jenson, God’s method in ch. 4 differs from that taken in chs. 1, 3, but I am inclined to see God’s pursuits of Jonah as more consistent throughout, if also complex and variegated in historical unfolding, as well as inextricably intertwined with several other good pursuits (see below).

[24]. As the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith (which basically reproduces the paradigmatic Westminster Confession of Faith at this point), “From all eternity God decreed everything that occurs, without reference to anything outside himself. He did this by the perfectly wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably. Yet God did this in such a way that he is neither the author of sin nor has fellowship with any in their sin. This decree does not violate the will of the creature or take away the free working or contingency of second causes. On the contrary, these are established by God’s decree.”

[25]. Cf. Ellul, The Judgment of Jonah, 94–95; Magonet, Form and Meaning, 95; Jenson, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, 39; see also Sasson, Jonah, 255, on 3:7.

[26]. Jeremy Begbie is especially helpful in articulating the human calling to “develop” the God-given potential in the creation, situated in broader responsibilities to “discover” what it is God has made, “respect” its God’s given meaning/order/purpose, “develop” its God-given potential, “heal” it from the disorders and deformations of sin and evil, and “anticipate” its future restoration and consummation, all “together” as a people under God’s reign and love (see Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music [Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007], 207–9).

[27]. In addition to my “The Path More Traveled: Of Paths, Roads, and the Place of the Church in Christian Engagement of Technology,” see also and especially Peter J. Leithart, “The Way Things Really Ought to Be: Eucharist, Eschatology, and Culture,” WTJ 59 (1997): 159–76, whom I lean heavily on.

[28]. There are dissenters to the NASB rendering of Ps 19:3 (“There is no speech, nor are there words; / Their voice is not heard”), which seems to contradict the claim of the surrounding verses that the heavens are proclaiming and pouring forth speech and voice (see, e.g., ESV; NIV; John Goldingay, Psalms 1–41, BCOTWP [Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006], 288). But בְּלִי, introducing v. 3b, might in poetry be expected to be a simple negative adverb parallel to אַיִן (see Bruce K. Waltke and M. O’Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax [Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990], 660n58).

[29]. See, e.g., Isa 55:12; cf. Ps 98:8 of rivers.

[30]. See, e.g., Ps 104:10–11, 14, 21, 27.

[31]. See Ps 98:8; cf. 1 Chr 16:33 of trees; Ps 65:13 of meadows and valleys; Ps 96:12 of forests; and possibly also Job 38:7 of stars.

[32]. Emphasis on the kingly (cultural) development of the world is not uncommon (at least in Reformed, and esp. neo-Kuyperian, literature). But the priestly calling of humanity is equally important in understanding the biblical storyline and the meaning of our life in the world. See, e.g., the brief and beautiful theological meditation of Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy, rev. and expanded ed. (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1973). In particular, Schmemann states that the human “stands at the center of the world and unifies it in his act of blessing God, of both receiving the world from God and offering it to God (ibid., 15). Our priestly identity and responsibility involves “a double movement. On behalf of God, as God’s image bearers, humans are to mediate the presence of God to the world and in the world, representing his wise and loving rule. But this is so that on behalf of creation humans may gather and focus creation’s worship, offering it back to God, voicing creation’s praise” (Begbie, Resounding Truth, 203, emphasis original). More boldly, we might say that Adam and Eve and their children are to take into themselves the creation—water, air, dirt, and fire in breathing and in the cooking/consuming of creation for food—so that the whole of creation might representatively be transformed and transfigured into the image of God. See further Begbie, Resounding Truth, 344n65, for a response to those who are critical of the supposed hubris of thinking the non-human creation (or anything/anyone else) needs our priestly mediation; cf. Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2006), 332.

[33]. With the exception of culinary development, all of the cultural labors listed in the preceding sentences are things appearing in and pursued by the line of Cain in Gen 4, which signals the possibility of disordered and idolatrous cultural pursuits in the world alongside cultural labor ordered to worship of God. The possibility of confusion and conflict (though also overlap) between these two cultural projects (these two “city-building” endeavors) proves to be one of the central threads in the overall plotline of Scripture and of our contemporary lives (which are rightly seen as enfolded into the biblical drama).

[34]. I take “people [אָדָם] who do not know between right and left” as a reference to people in general and not just to children, since אָדָם is hardly the right word for children (in Jonah it is used consistently of humanity; see 3:7, 8). See similarly Magonet, Form and Meaning, 97; Sasson, Jonah, 314. It is perhaps significant that God here speaks of אָדָם (adam) rather than using other more common words for persons (e.g., אִישׁ ,נֶפֶשׁ; note also Sasson, Jonah, 313). While אָדָם is perfectly understandable as an unexceptional collective term, the terms and descriptions to which it is attached cause me to pause and consider: adam, who in some way is desired to know between one thing and another, is spoken of in direct relation to (responsibility over) beasts. Is there an Adam theology lurking in the background? That is, indeed, part of my larger argument here. We could take this flight of fancy still further: in the biblical author’s idiom, Nineveh is not “more than 120,000” but, literally, “more than 12 myriads” (הַרְבֵּה מִשְׁתֵּים־עֶשְׂרֵה רִבּוֹ). The use of 12 catches my attention. Nineveh is being rescued by God for a “new Adamic” (אָדָם) vocation; but, of course, the biblical story has already given us a people with a new Adamic vocation—namely, the 12 tribes of Israel. Might it be more than a coincidence that Nineveh, having newly received the covenant hesed of God (4:2), are in God’s eyes an אָדָם that is 12 myriads strong?

[35]. Jonah ends with an unanswered question, still awaiting the day when the next step in this cosmic project of God will take place. Today in Christ, we have the good news that the crucial and climactic linchpin of God’s mission for the good of the world has happened. As the author of Hebrews says, in Heb 2, we do not presently see all humankind ruling over the works of God’s hands in wisdom and righteousness for the glory of God and the good of the world. But, according to Heb 2:9, we do “see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor.” The crucified and resurrected Jesus fulfills God’s purposes for Adam and Eve, his purposes as they were expressed back in Ps 8, which the author of Hebrews here quotes. Jesus now lives and reigns over all things in the way God intended for humanity to live. And by the Spirit he pours out on us his forgiven people pursued in mercy, Almighty God makes us new in Christ so that we might live in the world, and for the life of the world, in the ways that our good and wise Creator intended all along. In the resurrected Christ, our labors are not in vain.

[36]. This analogy obscures the possibility that 120,000 in Jon 4:11 may not be the entire population of Nineveh; it could even be less than half. See Sasson, Jonah, 311–13.

[37]. John Piper, “To Be a Mother Is a Call to Suffer,” sermon delivered at Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, MN, May 13, 2001, audio available at https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/to-be-a-mother-is-a-call-to-suffer.

[38]. Admittedly, the worm is only said to “smite” the plant, but we may presume (as it appears Sasson does; see Jonah, 301) that it was of dietary use for the worm.

[39]. Here I develop Piper’s point a step further than he does. Piper says rightly, “God is always doing a thousands things in every thing he does that you and I know nothing about, and all of them designed for the good of his children—that is, your good if you’ll trust him” (“To Be a Mother Is a Call to Suffer”). I would simply expand to include the ends of the cosmos within God’s good and sovereign designs.

Next Sunday: Calmed and Quieted, Psalm 130–131, Pastor Daryle Worley