“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 1:1–17 – The Pursuits of God in the Book of Jonah
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost – September 13, 2020 (am)

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            Lord God, help us to know your ways; teach us your paths. Lead us in your truth, and teach us, for you are the God of our salvation; for you we wait all day long. Through Christ, our Lord. Amen.

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            The Bible is a book about God and his pursuits. It’s not firstly about us and our pursuits and self-perceived problems in marriage, finance, politics, friendship, and emotional life. That doesn’t mean the Bible has no relation to such things. It’s surely an authoritative, transforming word in relation to these things and everything. To say that the Bible is firstly about God not us is not to exclude us or anything from the Bible’s scope of concern. Rather, it is to give a caution against looking for the wrong thing, even if we may be looking, as it were, in the right place.

            It’s like learning to ride a bike: when we’re preoccupied with not falling down, we end up with scraped knees. To ride a bike injury-free, we must focus on the rhythm of our pedaling legs, the rush of wind around us, and especially the path ahead. Not falling down is a good thing. But if that’s where our focus is, we mess it up and miss other crucial things too. That’s how it is with Scripture. It has all the help in the world for our pursuits. But if we go to the Bible primarily to see if God can solve our problems, not primarily to find and know God, we’ll end up missing to greater or lesser degrees both God and the good life we’re seeking his help to attain.[1] But if in Scripture we seek first God, we may well find him and a flourishing life. It’s a matter of right ordering of attention, of putting first things first. The Bible is firstly about God.

            That’s how it is with the Bible as a whole. That’s also the case for the book of Jonah, tucked away in the middle of the Bible. It’s a brief story about God, and what God pursues in it is the most important thing, the most practically helpful thing, for us to discover.[2] In the next month, we’ll explore four interrelated pursuits of God in Jonah. It’s short enough to easily read whole every week to really soak in its language and shape. But what we’ll do here together is read one new chapter a week as a different entryway into the overall story of Jonah and a pursuit of God in it, starting today at the beginning. So if you haven’t already, open your Bibles to the first chapter of the book of Jonah. Jonah, ch. 1. Hear the word of the Lord:

Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD.

            But the LORD hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up. Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried out to his god. And they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep. So the captain came and said to him, “What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your god! Perhaps the god will give a thought to us, that we may not perish.”

            And they said to one another, “Come, let us cast lots, that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us.” So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. Then they said to him, “Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?” And he said to them, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” Then the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, “What is this that you have done!” For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the LORD, because he had told them.

            Then they said to him, “What shall we do to you, that the sea may quiet down for us?” For the sea grew more and more tempestuous. He said to them, “Pick me up and hurl me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you, for I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you.” Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to get back to dry land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them. Therefore they called out to the LORD, “O LORD, let us not perish for this man’s life, and lay not on us innocent blood, for you, O LORD, have done as it pleased you.” So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the LORD exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows.

            And the LORD appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

            The word of God. The overall story of Jonah is likely familiar to many, but it may be helpful to begin by rehearsing the basic plot.[3] It may be freshest in the minds of our younger members, since Jonah is the bread and butter of children’s Bibles and Sunday school curricula. So, kids, you can quiz your parents on this later. Jonah is a story about a prophet named, of all things, Jonah. Jonah likely lived near Nazareth and ministered in the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the early- to mid-eighth century BC.[4] The story begins with the word of the Lord coming to Jonah in v. 2 of ch. 1, commanding him to “arise” and go to Nineveh and to “call out against it.”[5] Nineveh was the “great city” of the great Assyrian empire, the superpower of Jonah’s day, a violent and godless nation hundreds of miles east, the greatest threat to life as Israel knew it. At several levels, God’s call on Jonah’s life here would have been daunting.[6]

            But God’s word always accomplishes its purpose. So when God’s word comes to Jonah at the beginning of the book, of course Jonah will heed it, right? No, that’s not what Jonah does.[7] Rather, when God says, “Arise, go to Nineveh,” Jonah “arises”[8] to go to Tarshish by way of the sea. That’s like setting sail for Australia after being ordered to go to Nova Scotia. Jonah went in the opposite direction,[9]  aiming as far away from God’s call as he could imagine.[10]

            This is not to say that God’s word here fails; it is fulfilled in rather surprising ways in the story. But the narrative is making a point about the prophet’s disposition toward God’s invincible word. It’s underlined by the precise wording used in ch. 1. God calls Jonah to arise, get up, but Jonah repeatedly and emphatically goes down: in v. 3, he goes down to Joppa, and then he goes down into the ship that would take him to Tarshish; and in v. 5, he goes down still further into the hold of the ship. The same verb is used each time,[11] the exact antonym of God’s word of command to “arise.”[12] The narrator depicts Jonah as utterly opposed to God’s purpose.

            In his refusal of God’s call, Jonah gets on a boat headed to Tarshish.[13] So, in v. 4, “The LORD hurled a great wind upon the sea,” stirring up a great storm. This doesn’t phase Jonah, who is “fast asleep” in the ship—or in a deep sleep (the word used in v. 5 is unusually strong[14]). But the boat’s crew, a bunch of pagan sailors, are doing what sane people do in a raging tempest at sea. In terror for their lives, they frantically “hurl” the cargo overboard to lighten the ship. And, despairing of life in the shadow of death, they pray to their gods.

            Eventually, the sailors think to arouse the sleeping Jonah. “How can you sleep?,”[15] the captain asks in v. 6: “Arise, call out to your god!” But who is this drowsy man’s god? And who is this man for that matter? The answer appears in v. 9, the first recorded words of the prophet in the story.[16] Jonah identifies himself: “I am a Hebrew.” Then he confesses his faith: “I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”[17] The sailors begin to realize what Jonah already knows: this is no accidental storm. The God who created the sea is after his disobedient prophet. So Jonah, in what I take to be apathetic resignation, tells the sailors to toss him overboard and all will be fine for them. The sailors try everything in their power to do otherwise, but to no avail.[18] They’re left with one option: in v. 14, they pray again but now to the one true God whom they have met through Jonah’s witness: “O LORD, let us not perish for this man’s life, and lay not on us innocent blood.” Then in v. 15, they “hurl” Jonah into the sea.

            The storm stills, and Gentile lives are spared, the prophet’s life, in a manner, given for their life. Tracing the strategic use of another repeated word in ch. 1, we can say that almighty God leads the sailors through a curriculum aimed at rightly ordering their fear.[19] First, God sends a storm that in v. 5 stirs up their “fear”; then in vv. 9–10, testimony from God’s prophet causes the sailors to grow “exceedingly fearful”; again in v. 16 the sailors “fear,” but now their fear has an object: “the men feared the LORD,” Yahweh the covenant God of Israel and Creator of all.[20] In his mercy and might, God matures the sailors’ fear so that it might be fear of the right thing. And fearing the Lord, the sailors “offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows.”[21]

            What becomes of Jonah? It is, of course, the most famous part of the story. God appoints a great sea creature to swallow Jonah. The fish proves to be the form of God’s deliverance of Jonah from a watery grave.[22] In God’s mercy and might, Jonah is caused to pass safely through the sea to dry ground. And, like the sailors whose experience of God’s mighty deeds resulted in a worship-filled meeting with their God, Jonah’s experience of God’s mighty deeds also brings him into the stuff of worship, as in ch. 2 he sings a psalm from the belly of the fish.

            We don’t need to say much about the second half of the book, except to note that it largely mirrors the first half.[23] Chapter 3 begins with “The word of the LORD” coming to Jonah, “saying, ‘Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it.’” That’s almost verbatim how ch. 1 begins.[24] In ch. 3, Jonah again finds himself among pagans, now the Ninevites. Those Ninevites wind up, like the sailors of ch. 1, engaging in the stuff of the worship of the one true God: they repent and fast in sackcloth and ashes. In ch. 4, Jonah in a huff storms out of the city, as he was hurled out of the boat in ch. 1. He asks to die, as he was resigned to a watery death in ch. 1. God again works through the creation for Jonah’s good and growth: in chs. 1–2 God uses wind and sea creature; in ch. 4 he uses sun, plant, and earth creature. And Jonah again addresses words to God in dialogue, similar to the words of worship addressed to God in the psalm of ch. 2. The book strangely comes to a close with an unanswered question from God.

            Now looking over that story, what is God pursuing? A common thought is that Jonah is about God’s pursuit of the nations, Gentile sailors and Ninevites. Many a missions conference has been themed on Jonah. God’s heart for the nations is displayed in this little narrative, and we’ll address this (with some surprising twists) in coming weeks. But we must be clear from the outset that God’s pursuit of Gentiles is a side plot in Jonah. That side plot only makes full and proper sense when we come to terms with the main plot. And the main plot centers on God’s pursuit of the prophet Jonah. Everything else in this book, every other pursuit, every other theme, revolves around that first and main pursuit and must be understood in light of it.

            There are many indicators that God’s pursuit of the prophet is the main focus of the book. Here’s just one obvious indicator: in the whole book, God says nary a word of direct address to Gentiles.[25] While this book is plainly related in some way to God’s care for the nations, importantly it takes no time to show God in direct communion with them.[26] It’s only with the prophet that God has directly and verbally to do.[27] For this story is fundamentally about God’s pursuit of and relationship with the man Jonah. To unpack this, we’ll divide the time remaining into two parts: first, the character of Jonah; and second, characteristics of God’s pursuit of him.

            First, what can we discern of Jonah’s character? What kind of man is this prophet? Well he’s resistant to God’s word. That’s clear from the outset: in opposition to God’s call, Jonah goes down as far away from Nineveh as he can imagine. News flash: it’s probably not in accord with goodness or in our best interest oppose almighty God’s purposes. But that’s what Jonah does.

            Why was Jonah opposed to God’s call? It’s harder to answer the question than we might assume. The closest thing to an answer comes in ch. 4.[28] After God gets Jonah to cry out against Nineveh and the city repents and God mercifully spares them, Jonah becomes angry. In 4:2, he complains: “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.” If there’s a specific reason there for opposition to God’s call, it’s ambiguously stated at best. There’s a missing step in the reasoning. Jonah clearly objects to God being merciful to Nineveh, but he doesn’t really specify why he’s opposed to it. In v. 5, God asks him pointedly, “Do you have good reason to be angry?,” but Jonah gives no answer. Again God asks in v. 9, now with regard to the withered plant, if Jonah has a good reason for his anger. But Jonah’s stated “reason” is no reason at all but just the mere assertion of his anger: “I have good reason to be angry, even unto death!” It’s like when I ask my kids, “Why are you upset?” and they say, “Because!” (To which I say, “because is a subordinating conjunction that introduces a reason clause; it is not a reason.” As you can imagine, they really like when I do this.) Jonah never outrightly names the precise reason for his anger. Perhaps he doesn’t have much of a reason, has never really thought it through but just assumes he must be in the right. Or perhaps he fears that if he exposes his reasons to the light, his reasons and he himself will look ridiculous. Jonah may be hiding behind vagueness and generality.

            There is much speculation about Jonah’s precise reasoning. Maybe he was a stickler for justice, demanding that Nineveh get their comeuppance. Maybe he just held an unshakable grudge against the hated Assyrians. Maybe he was selfish, nationalistic, not wanting the covenant mercy of God to be wasted on the nations but reserved for Israel alone. All of those have been suggested as Jonah’s precise thinking.[29] And they are all possible. But the fact of the matter is that the text is silent as to Jonah’s precise motivation and line of reasoning.

            But one thing that is clear in the text is that Jonah’s every thought revolves around himself, his own lights, his self-centered concerns:[30] “Is not this what I said when I was in my country? So I made haste to flee … for I knew that you are a gracious God.” And in v. 3, “Please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” I, I, I, me, me, me. Jonah is at the center of the universe of his attention and concern. His anger, whatever its precise line of reasoning, is finally tied to the annoying fact that God won’t stay in proper orbit around him.

            So Jonah opposes God’s call. And he’s quite self-centered. But to leave it at that is unfair to Jonah, and makes it too easy to not take him seriously. It’s not as if Jonah is as bad as could be. It’s more on target to call him conflicted and confused, a complicated person marked by troubling inconsistencies. He is disobedient in ch. 1, but God leads him to a point of eventually obeying even if a bit begrudgingly. He is, thus, haltingly obedient, half-heartedly obedient, a realistic mixture of disobedience and obedience. Again, Jonah prefers death to life when he tells the sailors to throw him overboard. He says twice at story’s end, “It is better for me to die than to live.” He wants to die. Yet in ch. 2, he thanks God for the preservation of his life. He wants to die, but he wants to live. He’s conflicted. He’s a walking contradiction.

            At the center of Jonah’s life is the greatest contradiction: he knows the right answers, is blessed with the gift of a traditional confession of faith, but his life contradicts his confession. We’ve already seen the two crucial verses in this respect. In 1:9, Jonah tells the sailors, “I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” And in 4:2, Jonah says to God, “I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, relenting from disaster.” Those are two wonderful confessions of faith from Jonah’s lips, professing knowledge of and faith in God as almighty Creator and merciful Redeemer.

            The prophet knows who God is, confesses the one true faith. In this, Jonah has a major leg up on the sailors and Ninevites. They know relatively little about the one true God,[31] which is why they are so tentative before God.[32] In 1:6, the ship’s captain says to Jonah, “Perhaps your god will attend to us.” Perhaps. He’s uncertain.[33] Similarly, in 3:9, the king of Nineveh issues a city-wide decree to repent before God, saying, “Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger.” Who knows? We don’t know for sure. Our minimal understanding of God gives us no confidence about how he will act. Jonah has no such uncertainty about God. He is very confident about how God will act, for he knows the true confession of faith. And it makes him bitter because he wants God to behave differently. He wants God to do what he wants God to do.

            Jonah is full of contradiction, flopping back and forth between extremes, flitting every way but Godward like a silly dove. That’s what the name Jonah means: it’s the Hebrew word for “dove.”[34] Jonah is a silly dove, flying in a sad circle. Knowing the right answers but insisting on the wrong questions. Having well-ordered confession and disordered affections and relationships. He has something that might be called “right knowledge” of God, but it is anemic, at best.[35] He has a real relationship and love for God, as I think his psalm in ch. 2 expresses, but it is a strained relationship, an immature, halting, sickly love. Jonah isn’t utterly evil; but clearly neither is he in a good place. To put it differently, the character Jonah in this story is realistic. He’s not a caricature but a normal human being.[36] I can greatly identify with him in his conflict and contradiction. Jonah is my patron saint. Perhaps there are others here today who can sympathize with Jonah. Jonah believes, and he needs help out of his unbelief.

            But unlike the man who cries to Jesus, “I believe; help my unbelief,” Jonah doesn’t seem to recognize his unbelief.[37] He’s got the right answers, after all. How could his problem be unbelief? Surely his problem is elsewhere. It’s that God, Nineveh, everyone just won’t get with the program. Jonah’s heart is twisted with bitterness, leading him to plead not for a new heart but for everyone else to stop failing him. He thinks things outside him are what need to change. He’s oblivious to the fact that God’s redeeming love is pursuing him in order to change him. That’s a helpless place to be. It’s a kind of spiritual deadness. I think Jonah’s spiritual state pictured in the deep sleep he’s in during the storm.[38] Jonah needs to be awake to the storm of God’s love, but he’s in a dead sleep. And a dead man can’t raise himself.

            This is why it’s such good news that God, of his own initiative, pursues the prophet. God doesn’t wait for Jonah to first fix his attitude, for Jonah to first want help before launching his merciful pursuit. It’ll never happen. Jonah is in a helpless spiritual stupor. So God graciously initiates, unleashes a plethora of pursuits of love, and never lets up. Let us count the ways.

            In sovereign power, the Creator pursues Jonah. God’s power is on grand display: he hurls wind and storm to stop Jonah in his mad dash to Tarshish; he appoints a fish to transport Jonah to shore; he appoints sun, plant, and parasite in ch. 4 to help reshape Jonah’s heart.

            But God’s pursuit of Jonah doesn’t just come in overt displays of sovereign power. It also comes in more hidden but no less purposeful ways. In secret providence, too, the Lord pursues Jonah.[39] Recall God’s initial word to Jonah in 1:2: “Arise, go to Nineveh … and call out against it.” What are the next words Jonah hears in the story? They’re in v. 6, as the captain of the ship rouses Jonah from his stupor, saying, “Arise, call out to your god!” It’s the very same verbs of God’s initial call.[40] Jonah says no to God’s “Arise, call out!,” and he tries to flee only to hear an echo: “Arise, call out!” That’s no accident. It’s an intentional narrative strategy, indicating that God is still pursuing Jonah, terrorizing him with echoes of what he is trying to flee from.[41]

            A similar thing can be seen in relation to God hurling a great wind in 1:4 to halt Jonah’s flight.[42] Notice what the sailors to do in v. 5: they grab cargo to hurl overboard (same verb). And in v. 15, they’re left with no choice but to hurl something else overboard: Jonah the prophet. God’s initiating activity is replayed by the activity of the minor characters in the scene. God is providentially at work in the events and circumstances of Jonah’s life, to accomplish his good will for Jonah. We might miss it, because God is often “in disguise,” as it were.[43] But the “hurling” of the sailors is, providentially, also the “hurling” of the God at work from beginning to end.

            Having been hurled overboard and left in the middle of the sea, it’s easy to imagine that Jonah might have felt that all was lost and God had utterly abandoned him. But the narrator helps us to discern God behind God’s disguises.[44] For even in the “bad circumstances” of life, especially there, God is present, relentlessly pursuing Jonah.[45] God may never be nearer to us than we think he is farthest from us, in those moments of torment and trouble and frustration and bitterness—the torment, the trouble, the stirring up of bitterness might be God trying to shakes us awake. We find ourselves at our wits end, on the brink of despair, tempted to accuse God for his apparent distance and neglect. Why did you let this job opportunity fizzle? How could you let this disease come? Why does everything keep falling apart? Don’t you care, God? Aren’t you there? It may be that he’s been there all along, in disguise but at work to bring you, to bring me, to bring all of us his people to the end of ourselves, to the end of our stubborn, insane self-assertion, pulling out from under us all the idols we are so used to leaning on, so that we might discover, there at the bottom of things, him. Maybe God has led you into a dark night of the soul, so that you might, perhaps for the first time, truly recognize the light.

            God is always at work, for the good of his people, in power, in providence, and in pity. In supreme pity, the Redeemer pursues Jonah. Jonah desperately needs pity. And it’s God’s pity—the compassion and mercy of God—that drives his relentless pursuit of Jonah.[46] This little story should be heard as a loud shout: in everything he does, God is always and at bottom merciful, not just toward the sailors and Ninevites, but also toward the prophet who thinks he doesn’t need God’s mercy. Everything God does in this book is his merciful heart in active pursuit of Jonah.

            It’s a pernicious theological error to assume that God isn’t at bottom merciful, but something else is more fundamental to who God is.[47] I think that’s the root of Jonah’s problem: he’s off-kilter in his theology of God’s mercy. Jonah is unmerciful, unforgiving, in the image of what he functionally believes God to be. Similarly, we today might view the cross as a twisting of God’s arm to be other than what he really wants to be, forcing him to rethink his default disposition of “bare justice” and un-mercy. We can imagine Christ’s death as having purchased a merciful heart that God didn’t have before and that is pasted on top of what God normally is in himself. It’s like we’ve never heard the Bible’s most famous verse: God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. The Son was sent to live, die, and rise again not to make God merciful but to reveal and enact God’s heart of hearts which is mercy and kindness and self-giving love to the undeserving. God is at bottom merciful. His pity is supreme. It is not dependent on anything outside him. It’s certainly not dependent on Jonah first grasping it in his mind and heart.

            Praise God for his sovereign power in pursuit of Jonah. Praise God for his secret providence of God in pursuit of Jonah. Praise God for his supreme pity in pursuit of Jonah. And praise be to God for his stubborn persistence in pursuit of Jonah.[48] As stubborn as Jonah is, God is even more stubborn, in a rightly ordered way. From beginning to middle to end, in overt and and awe-inspiring ways and in hidden, “disguised” ways, with unfading and un-coerced mercy, God is persistently, relentlessly, tirelessly after Jonah for his growth and good.

            I think this is part of the significance of the strange and, in part, unsatisfying ending of the book. In ch. 4, Jonah and God engage in dialogue. And to the end of this dialogue, it would seem that Jonah remains largely unchanged, maintaining his “no” to God’s invitations. But the very last word is not Jonah’s “no,” but God’s unanswered (and weird!) question in 4:11:[49] “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?” I can imagine Jonah thinking, “God, just let it drop! Let me be! I don’t want your input. I don’t want to change. I just want to be left alone. Wouldn’t that be easier?” It would, indeed. And if God were us, he’d surely take that easier route. But God won’t take no for an answer. And Jonah’s only hope (and our only hope) rests in that. I think we can take the unanswered question that concludes the book as God’s promise that he won’t let it go. He will continue in his stubborn persistence to pursue Jonah until he changes, until he responds with a maturing faith, hope, and love.

            God is stubbornly persistent in his pursuit of sinners. The work he begins will never be abandoned by him, but he will see it through to its good and perfect completion. That stubborn persistence might be maddening to us at times, but it is only so when we ourselves are mad, insanely insistent that we’re just fine in our own way. Praise be to God that he is not, and will never be, satisfied with that answer. Trust in this God. Turn to him. Let’s do so now in prayer.

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            Almighty and most merciful God, you have sought us in steadfast mercy, are seeking us still, and promise to do so faithfully until Christ returns to set all things right: help us in the days ahead to receive with humility and gladness your goodness in Christ; and grant that as we joyfully receive the good news for ourselves, so we may gratefully share it with others, and ever give glory to you, by whose grace alone we are what we are. This we pray through Christ, our Lord, who loved us and gave himself for us. Amen.

Notes:

[1].  It’s also worth mentioning that if we go to the Bible thinking that it is firstly about us and our felt problems, we will likely be sorely disappointed to find in it very little by way of specific advice that is immediately “usable” in our self-identified problems. We may then find the Bible boring and largely irrelevant to our grand and glorious twenty-first century concerns. And we may very well wind up searching everywhere else but God’s word for help.

[2].  Coming on the heels of a series on the Letter of James, we can conceptualize the present point and this new sermon series in this way. James tells us to be “doers of the word” (Jas 1:22). That is (seems) relatively straightforward for overtly didactic genres (e.g., letters, and in particular, the paraenetic material in them): James tells us to pray for wisdom (e.g., Jas 1:5), and so to “do” this word would involve us praying for wisdom. But how do you “do” a word that is a story? And what do we make of the fact that the vast majority of the Word, our authoritative “mirror” (Jas 2:23–25), is in narrative form? At least a beginning part of an answer involves beholding the pursuits of God in the biblical narratives, in the light of which the Spirit may move to rebuke or reshape or reorder or refine our typical pursuits. This series on the narrative of Jonah, and the ways in which we will seek to submit and enter into and receive Spirit-wrought transformation from it, is an attempt to expand our skillfulness at “doing” the word.

[3].  Familiarity is a great strength, which I will be taking advantage of: knowing we all have some loose sense of the basic “contents” of Jonah, I can build on that shared knowledge without needing to linger too long on review and summary. At the same time, our deep familiarity with it can also be a disadvantage, for we can sometimes miss what’s there for assuming that it’s so obvious and we know it already. In fact, as we will see, the great obstacle to knowledge and maturity in Christ which is thinking we already know and are mature is one of the primary themes and concerns of the book of Jonah.

[4].  We don’t know any of this from the book of Jonah itself but from a brief word about a “Jonah son of Ammitai” in 2 Kgs 14:25. While nothing demands that we identify the two biblical “Jonahs,” that is my operating assumption in this series (for argumentation in support, see Douglas Stuart, “Jonah, Book of,” in Dictionary of the Old Testament Prophets, ed. M. J. Boda and J. G. McConville [Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2012], 455–66). It is worth clarifying, additionally, that this identification does not resolve the question of dating or provenance of the book of Jonah, for the book nowhere claims to be directly from the prophet Jonah’s hand. It may be a later writer’s inspired biographical sketch. In fact, early rabbinic reflection apparently could withhold the naming of Jonah as a contemporary of Hosea in the eighth century, listing only Isaiah, Amos, and Micah (see b. Bathra 14b–15a; and for discussion, see Jack M. Sasson, Jonah, AB 24B [New York: Doubleday, 1990], 20–21). Miminally, we can identify a terminus ad quem in the third century BC, since Tobit refers to Jonah (Tob 14.4). Other than that, I remain largely agnostic as to dating and provenance. I am critical, e.g., of those post-exilic proposals that would see in Jonah a polemic against the nationalistic agendas of Ezra and Nehemiah, in large part because I believe they are substantially misleading about the aims of Ezra and Nehemiah, but also because Jonah does not address directly any of the specific issues looming large in Ezra–Nehemiah (see Philip Peter Jenson, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, LHBOTS 496 [New York/London: T&T Clark, 2008], 35; and on Ezra–Nehemiah, see Joseph Blenkinsopp, Ezra–Nehemiah, OTL [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1988], 173–200, 348–52; it is also worth noting that supercessionist tendencies in Christian scholarship [and particularly that of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries] likely play no small part in viewing Jonah chiefly as a satire against Jewish nationalism/particularism; on which, see esp. Yvonne Sherwood, A Biblical Text and Its Afterlives: The Survival of Jonah in Western Culture [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000]). Nothing outside of Jonah, and little within it, can clarify with any precision the time of its origination. As Sasson, Jonah, 21–22, observes, there are problems in treating the portrayal of Nineveh in ch. 3 as a sure indicator of the historical situation out of which the book of written (usually wielded to argue that Jonah was written at a time of distance from and ignorance of eighth century Nineveh and is thus of post-exilic origin; but, for the opposite and reactionary treatment of the portrayal of Nineveh seeking to show how the details of ch. 3 “fit” in an eighth century BC context, see Stuart, “Jonah, Book of,” 460–61). For further discussion on the ambiguous results of pressing things like linguistic details, quotation of other literature, and content criticism to determine the dating of the book, see Sasson, Jonah, 20–28. With Gordon McConville, I am inclined to think that it is most prudent, and truest to the lack of any other hard evidence to go on with respect to matters of “original audience,” to deduce the interpretation of the book “almost entirely from the story itself” (J. Gordon McConville, A Guide to the Prophets, vol. 4 of Exploring the Old Testament [Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2002], 192). And, indeed, I think that a basically consistent and coherent narrative-canonical interpretation of the text can be reached and maintained even when several different historical settings are entertained.

[5].  Jenson, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, 43–44, particularly emphasizes that the content of what Jonah is to call out is not revealed in ch. 1. For Jenson, this is a purposeful narrative move.

[6].  Jacques Ellul highlights the practical/logistic difficulties (quite apart from the emotional-spiritual difficulties) involved in heeding God’s call—e.g., God’s call would require a 750 mile journey on foot, Jonah’s mission involved him being alone in a massive and dangerous city (The Judgment of Jonah, trans. G. W. Bromiley [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971], 26).

[7].  In this, Jonah contradicts the expectations raised by virtually all other prophetic literature in depicting the call of God coming to the prophet at a book’s beginning. While prophetic “objection” to God’s call is an important motif in Scripture (see, e.g., Exod 4:1–17; Jer 1:4–10), such a prophetic “objection” is decidedly not what is happening in Jonah (Jenson, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, 41). Jonathan Magonet has argued for an extended and complex Elijah typology at work in the book, which involves the linking of Jonah’s flight (and later-expressed objections and complaints) to Elijah’s flight to Mt. Horeb in 1 Kgs 19. But even if Magonet is right to make the links (which I am not fully persuaded of), Magonet’s point is that Jonah is definitely no Elijah (see Form and Meaning: Studies in Literary Techniques in the Book of Jonah, BLS 8 [Sheffield: Almond, 1983], e.g., at 67–69, 75–76, 99–106).

[8].  The ESV “rose” in v. 3 translates the same קום that God uses in commanding Jonah to “arise” in v. 2. The point is ironic inversion of expectations: in the prophetic writings, often the terms used in God’s prophetic word are repeated verbatim in detailing obedience to/fulfillment of that word in order to underline that no word of God fails. Jonah 1:3 draws upon this strategy to raise readerly expectations about what Jonah is about to do, only to immediately break those expectations (see also Sasson, Jonah, 77; Jenson, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, 44). We’ll see that throughout this story, the author intentionally repeats words and phrases in a striking and purposeful manner, often in a way that plays on the ambiguity of repeated words. Magonet, who has offered the most important study in this respect, explains: “The repetition of whole phrases, both ‘growing’ ones and those that remain the same, enables us to see the same events but after some intervening experience has considerably altered their meaning” (Form and Meaning, 92).

[9].  This is not to say that the exact location of ancient Tarshish is readily identifiable. In fact, there are boatloads of proposals, with little agreement or hope for certainty (see Sasson, Jonah, 79). The great distance to Tarshish, wherever precisely it was, may be indicated by 2 Ch 9:21, which tells us that Solomon’s ships went to Tarshish and back every three years.

[10]. For a similar depiction of Tarshish as the conceptual “end of the earth,” see Isa 66:19.

[11]. In all three instances (1:3 [2x], 5), ירד is used. See Magonet, Form and Meaning, 17.

[12]. Sasson, Jonah, 69–70, emphasizes that קום in v. 1 should probably be understood, as it is frequently used elsewhere, as an auxiliary verb that introduces a verb expressing the main action. Thus, he complains of commentators who press it as having an active, standalone meaning in 1:1. Still, even Sasson himself explains that the main verb is “affected by the auxiliary.” Granting its auxiliary function in 1:1, I would contend that part of that impact is the expression of upward movement (whether literal or metaphorical). The threefold authorial use of ירד may, then, rightly, if qualifiedly, be seen as a meaningful contrast to the initial קום spoken by God (so, rightly, Jenson, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, 43). For a somewhat different reading of the significance of the repetition of ירד, see Marvin A. Sweeney, The Twelve Prophets, vol. 1; Berit Olam (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), 311.

[13]. In 1:3, Jonah pays to board the ship, but the expression is ambiguous: while שְׂכָרָהּ is usually translated by modern translations as “his fare,” it is arguably better (if more vaguely) rendered as “its wages.” As Sasson notes, “the ancient word did not have a specific word for ‘a fare,’ a charge for the purchase of space in an expedition” (Jonah, 84). More importantly, the word used has a feminine pronominal suffix, so the reference is arguably not to his (i.e., Jonah’s) payment, but to something else. What is the referent of the feminine suffix? Perhaps it is the “ship” (אָנִיָּה, feminine noun). That is, Jonah may have hired out the whole ship, with its entire crew, for his special and personal journey (is it a coincidence that no other passengers are mentioned by the narrator?), so determined was he in his flight. This possibility has also led to the speculation in the history of interpretation over whether Jonah was wealthy, being able to hire out a ship for his personal use (on this, and more generally on the possibility that Jonah hired out the whole boat [something already suggested in rabbinic interpretation; e.g., b. Ned. 38], see Sasson, Jonah, 83–84).

[14]. There are several other more common terms for sleep (both verbs [e.g., ישׁן ,שׁכב] and nouns [e.g., שֵׁנָה]). The verb רדם in 1:5 is used of a sleep so sound that someone could sneak up and drive a peg through one’s temple (Jdg 4:21), of the sluggard’s sleep (Prov 10:5), and of a supernaturally triggered unconciousness (Dan 8:18; 10:9). It is also related by root to the noun תַּרְדֵּמָה, almost always used of divinely induced states (Gen 2:21; 15:12; 1 Sam 26:12; Isa 29:10), and also, again, of the sluggard’s sleep (Prov 19:15; cf. Isa 29:10 for “deep sleep” as a spiritual state).

[15]. The LXX takes a humorous liberty here, having the captain ask Jonah how he can be snoring.

[16]. Several have argued for a concentric structure in 1:4–16 that focalizes Jonah’s confession of faith in v. 9 (see, e.g., Magonet, Form and Meaning, 56–57 [following G. H. Cohn]; James Limburg, Jonah, OTL [London: SCM, 1993], 47; cf. Willem A. VanGemeren, Interpreting the Prophetic Word: An Introduction to the Prophetic Literature of the Old Testament [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990], 147). Magonet, noting W. Rudolph’s criticisms, acknowledges that “there are problems to this analysis,” but that the loosely structural focalizing of Jonah’s confession/sailors’ fear still holds (Form and Meaning, 56). Additionally, the seeming incompleteness of Jonah’s answer in 1:9 (and the downright non sequitur of the confession of faith) in light of the fourfold question in 1:8 zeroes our attention in on the answer (ibid., 100). Differently, Sasson understands Jonah to have apparently thought “I am a Hebrew” satisfies the crucial heart of the sailors’ questions, and that the rest of the dialogue has been telescoped by the narrator who knows his readership didn’t need it (Jonah, 115, 126).

[17]. As we will have opportunity to highlight in coming weeks, that Jonah knows of God’s identity as Creator of heaven and earth makes it all the more ironic that Jonah acts as though fleeing the land of Israel could suffice to escape his God (cf. Joseph Blenkinsopp, A History of Prophecy in Israel, rev. and enl. [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996], 245).

[18]. The sailors’ desperate rowing of v. 13 is both ironic and an indication of their ignorance (or the disconnect from their newly gained knowledge of the one true God and their lived reconciliation to it): they are desperately trying in their own power to get back to “dry land” (הַיַּבָּשָׁה) having just heard in v. 9 of the One who is sovereign maker of the sea and “dry land” (הַיַּבָּשָׁה; cf. Sasson, Jonah, 131). In general, Sasson would have us see in Jonah a realistic portrait of the sailors, who harbor some level of doubt about Jonah’s claims that tossing him overboard (i.e., murdering him in their eyes) would result in their deliverance. Sasson makes the interesting observation that no mariner in their right mind would steer toward the shore in the midst of a storm, one of the most dangerous directions for them to turn in such circumstances. Perhaps, he suggests (and, it seems to me, in some tension with his earlier arguments about the sailors’ ignorance), they were casting themselves on the mercy of God who would look upon their intentions and rescue both them and Jonah (ibid., 141–42).

[19]. For the following observations about the use of “fear” terminology in ch. 1, see Magonet, Form and Meaning, 32, who points to the repetition of ירא as a chief example of what he calls the “growing phrase.” More generally, Magonet observes the sixfold use of √ירא in ch. 1 (1:5, 9 [2x], 10, 16 [2x]), which gives to the chapter a “strong undercurrent of ‘fear’” and perhaps “serves to underline, almost subliminally, the fearsome situations in which the sailors find themselves” (ibid., 16).

[20]. From a strictly grammatical perspective, an object of the verb “to fear” has already been stated in v. 10, and is repeated in v. 16—namely, “great fear” (יִרְאָה גְדוֹלָה = “they feared a great fear”). So we might say more precisely, with Sasson, that in v. 16 a second, and the crucial, object of fear is now identified (Jonah, 137, also 119–20).

[21]. On the question of whether animal sacrifice could have been possible on a ship (particularly one that has very recently been unloaded of apparently all its cargo), see Sasson, Jonah, 138–40, who surveys various proposed solutions (e.g., the reference is really to sacrifices of praise/thanksgiving, the phrase refers not to sequential acts but to a vow made in the present to sacrifice in the future; Sasson himself thinks that animal sacrifice is the intended referent, and that there is historical precedent for such practice on ancient ships).

[22]. More minimally, the fish proves to be, in Blenkinsopp’s words, “a novel form of transportation” (A History of Prophecy in Israel, 241).

[23]. See also Sweeney, The Twelve Prophets, 308. The twofold division is clear from the repeated exposition (1:1–2/3; 3:1–2/3; cf. Douglas Stuart, Hosea–Jonah, WBC 31 [Nashville: Nelson, 1987], 481), from the shift in setting (west in chs. 1–2, east in chs. 3–4), and from the general reduplication of the surface outline as described below. In terms of general outline, I follow Magonet who demonstrates that Jonah’s discourse to/with God (i.e., prayer) is the goal of Jonah’s two panels (Form and Meaning, 53, 55). It is important to note, however, that similarities of the two panels are mainly at the superficial and structural level, notwithstanding the near verbatim repetition of 1:1–2 at 3:1–2 (for concise articulation of this, see Sasson, Jonah, 16). The material differences are just as noteworthy, and, in fact, the “meaning” is conveyed through these differences appearing through the superficial similarities.

[24]. 3:1–2 is, at one and the same time, a new beginning, and the old beginning replayed. The latter point is underlined both by the narrator’s mention of this address coming to Jonah a “second time” (3:1), and, in the LXX, by the addition of reference to “the message given before, which I spoke to you” (κατὰ τὸ κήρυγμα τὸ ἔμπροσθεν, ὃ ἐγὼ ἐλάλησα πρὸς σέ).

[25]. Cf. J. McKeown, “Jonah, Book of,” in New Dictionary of Biblical Theology (ed. T. D. Alexander et al.; Leicester: Inter-Varsity, 2000), 249–49, at 248. It is true that God’s word comes indirectly to the Ninevites through the prophetic word (half-heartedly) delivered by Jonah the prophet, but not only is this a mediated speech, it is also hardly a word of direct address (it is spoken in the third person). The latter point mitigates the potential criticism that reservation of direct speech only with Jonah is owing more to his prophetic office (which the Gentiles obviously do not share in) than to a narrative strategy to highlight the main plot.

[26]. In a similar vein, but much more drastically stated, Sasson comments, “God’s opinion of Nineveh shifts from strongly condemnatory (1:3) to barely contemptuous (4:11), nowhere clearly demonstrating the boundless love of God that allegedly is the book’s central idea” (Jonah, 25). Limited to the heart of God toward the nations, Sasson’s point is exactly my point. I go beyond, and likely depart from, Sasson in suggestion that “the boundless love of God” may still be something like “the book’s central idea,” but the prophet as the object of that love is the point of focus.

[27]. Other indications that the book of Jonah’s chief focus is God’s pursuit of and relationship with the prophet include the fact that the book as a whole and the two main panels of it (chs. 1–2, 3–4) are shaped to climax in not the conversion of Gentiles but in covenantal dialogue with Jonah (chs. 2, 4). The plot is shaped to point all our attention on the results of God’s pursuit in the life of Jonah (cf. Magonet, Form and Meaning, 107). Also, Uriel Simon has noted, with respect to the response to the sailors to the little they know of Yahweh, “The gentiles’ compliance with the will of the Lord is so spontaneous and unproblematic, and the vacillations of the insubordinate prophet so severe and multifaceted, that it is perfectly clear that the former cannot be the linchpin of the story” (Uriel Simon, Jonah, trans. L. J. Schramm; JPSBC 6 [Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1999], xxxii). Still one further relevant point is the observation that the narrative tempo speeds up rapidly in the place that might, on a superficial reading, seem to be the most important and central concern of the story: the repentance of the Ninevites in ch. 3. The events of 3:5–10 are narrated more hastily and summarily—with a much quicker narrative tempo—than the events in other scenes of the book. The Ninevites call a fast, the King of Ninevah makes the decree, the Ninevites go through further rituals of repentance and entreat the Lord for mercy, and God sees and relents—all this in the span of six verses. The one place where narrative time is especially sped up is in the telling of Ninevah’s repentance. Their repentance is very important to the story, but, if narrative pacing indicates anything, it’s not the story’s primary focus and point.

[28]. In terms of narrative strategy, we could say that the “reason” is purposefully withheld until the end of the story. The narrator wants us to read the bulk of the story not knowing Jonah’s precise reasoning for disobedience. It is apparently important that we see Jonah behaving without specifying in full his thought process (perhaps for reasons of identification with the character, perhaps for reasons of maintaining narrative ambiguity, perhaps something else in addition or completely different). Even when something of a “reason” is spoken by the character Jonah, it is lacking in substance. At the same time, withholding this information till the end of the story has an important function on the truthful portrayal of God in the narrative and his sovereign freedom (see Sasson, Jonah, 328–29).

[29]. For a survey of these and still other proposals, see see Magonet, Form and Meaning, 87. Magonet covers five proposals; for an additional sixth proposal, see Ellul, The Judgment of Jonah, 75–76.

[30]. Magonet, Form and Meaning, 60, 97.

[31]. The little the pagans in this story learn of the one true God comes through the testimony of the prophet. Jenson puts it in still stronger, and on target, terms, contradicting all inclinations toward a vague universalism: “Without Jonah’s active intervention the Ninevites would have been doomed and the sailors left in mortal ignorance” (Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, 37). Salvation is of the Jews.

[32]. For the following points, see Magonet, Form and Meaning, 27–28, 79.

[33]. Sasson, Jonah, 95, cautiously proposes that the sailors’ ignorance of God, and of the nature of reality, is indicated in 1:11 and 13 by the use of the verbal form סער (“to storm”) with “the sea” as its object: in the sailors’ ignorance, the “sea” itself is responsible for the storming and they know not why. In contrast, the narrator (and Jonah) use the noun form סַעַר (“storm”), which has come about through the intervention of Yahweh (1:4, 12), for they know that “storming” is no activity of the (personified) “sea”; rather, even storms are subject to the will of the Lord who may have use of them. These observations, for Sasson, support the conclusion that to the end the sailors remain fixed in their initial cosmological convictions and have not truly “converted” to full-fledged Yahwism.

[34]. Stuart is adamant that the dove is “not symbolic in any way of Jonah’s character” (“Jonah, Book of,” 456). I remain unpersuaded by his protestations. The problem, of course, is that there would seem to be no criteria with which to judge the varying proposed “symbolic” significances to the name “Jonah/dove.” For example, different from the line of interpretation suggested above, Ellul thinks that Jonah’s name highlights his mission to be a message carrying “dove” (The Judgment of Jonah, 34–35). Still other points emphases in the possible name-symbolism have been proposed. The options become unwieldy, for “the symbolism of doves is multivalent” (Jenson, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, 43). How might we adjudicate the different possible interpretations? Or does their great variety simply result in them canceling each other out? In coming weeks, I will press the significance of Jonah’s name still further along these same lines, by way of following literary-canonical indicators.

[35]. Frequently, two kinds of “knowledge” are contrasted (note the German wissen and kennen, or the French savoir and connaître), with the result that Jonah is admitted one but denied the other. In Magonet’s words, “what Jonah knows, and what he is prepared to accept, are two quite different things” (Form and Meaning, 91); indeed, there would appear to be a “distance between his formal knowledge of tradition and his experienced knowledge” (ibid., 92, emphasis original). In neuro-psychological terms, we might distinguish between “neocortical” knowing and “limbic” knowing. But in Scripture, it is arguable that no sound or whole (healthy) knowledge is admitted to one who, at whatever level, contradicts God; rather, such a one only and ever has disordered, or even idolatrous, knowledge, whatever elements of “truth” are present. For important reflections in this regard, see Oliver O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order: An Outline for Evangelical Ethics, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 88–89. Ellul is particularly pointed and helpful on the point with the book of Jonah directly in view: “it is not enough to lean on a biblical text to be right; it is not enough to adduce biblical arguments, whether theological or pietistic, to be in tune with God. All this may denote opposition to God. It may even be a way of disobeying him” (The Judgment of Jonah, 74). Ellul goes on to note how we can do this, like Jonah, in direct converse with God, or by way of undercutting biblical authority and theological truth with erudite biblical “exegesis,” or as professing Christians seeking to undercut non-Christians or Christians with whom we disagree with Scripture—all it takes to commit this sin is thinking we have “God’s word in store to be used as needed” (ibid.). These will be themes I hope to explore still further in coming weeks.

[36]. See similarly Jenson, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, e.g., 34, 38; also Magonet, Form and Meaning, 86, 94. At the same time, Magonet finds himself more impressed by the “negative” elements in Jonah’s characterization: “One has sometimes the feeling that the author makes Jonah so bad that he is testing the reader’s ability to feel pity for the prophet, just as Jonah was tested by Nineveh” (ibid., 147n57).

[37]. Like we often do, Jonah would probably be eager to give lip service to the fact that he’s “not perfect,” and he’s “got problems.” But keep drilling down, and we find that we ultimately think our truest problems are outside us: if only my spouse would change, or my job would change, or my diet and energy level would change, or my parents or my friends or my God who always fails me would change, then everything would be fine.

[38]. With Blenkinsopp, I would link the “deep sleep” of Jonah with the תַּרְדֵּמָה of the prophets mentioned in Isa 29:10—that is, “the sleep of imperfection and spiritual dullness” (A History of Prophecy in Israel, 245; differently, see Magonet, Form and Meaning, 67–68). Sasson doubts that the reference relates to Isa 29:10, taking the other uses of the root in prophetic contexts as strict parallels to make the idiosyncratic argument that Jonah is acting in 1:5 to receive a word from Yahweh, this being the moment of his spiritual turning (Jonah, 101–2).

[39]. Though he comes at things by a much different route, and he has some fundamentally differing bottom lines than I draw here, similar and expanded reflections on God’s sovereign providence are offered by Ellul, The Judgment of Jonah, 21–26.

[40]. Magonet, Form and Meaning, 17.

[41]. That is to say, some acts in the story “are revealed not merely on the level of the narrative itself, but also on the ‘subliminal’ level of the word that repeats and repeats itself through the episode” (Magonet, Form and Meaning, 16–17; cf. Sasson, Jonah, 93).

[42]. Magonet, Form and Meaning, 16–17.

[43]. The term “disguise” was suggested to me by Magonet, who says that God’s callings and pursuits “are unconsciously present, ‘disguised’ within the course of other external events” (Form and Meaning, 17). With the doctrine of vocation in view, Martin Luther spoke similarly of “masks” worn by God (Martin Luther, Exposition of Psalm 147, qtd. in Gustav Wingren, Luther on Vocation, trans. C. C. Rasmussen [Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1957], 137–38). We might liken what is going on here as the difference between “Let there be light!” and “Let the plants bear seed after their kind!” God the Creator is responsible for all things, but for different things in different ways. God is always active, always in pursuit, always calling us to respond, and the circumstances of our lives are manifestations, mediated words of address, and ironic echoes of his call.

[44]. Importantly, the narrator is helping us (not Jonah) to discern the general truth that God works “in disguise” (not the specific instances and purposes of God’s historical disguises). We must reject both sides of the twofold natural tendency (1) to assume that since God is pursuing us individually, therefore everything of what happens in our lives is solely focused on us, and (2) to divine what the specific ways/purposes of that pursuit are. Ellul’s comments in this respect are worth underlining: “Among these events there is perhaps one which take place because of us. We must not try to puzzle out which one. It is always the one which we do not recognize at first. In face of the tempest, Jonah sleeps” (The Judgment of Jonah, 25–26).

[45]. It is interesting to note that Jonah’s attempted flight from God didn’t necessarily begin with bad (from his perspective) turns. Intending to go to Tarshish, he fortuitously happens on a boat headed just in that direction—or, as the narrator has it in 1:3, he “found” (מצא) the boat, using a verb that “often involves an unexpected discovery or good fortune” (Sasson, Jonah, 81; see 81–83 for further literary, historical, and geographical factors that may underline how fortuitous was Jonah’s finding of the right boat). At first, indications boded well for Jonah’s new endeavor, thus encouraging Jonah that perhaps straying from God wasn’t all that bad. There may be an interesting lesson here about the path, both in its inception and in its progress, of temptation.

[46]. However negative a portrayal we might discern of Jonah in the narrative, however much he is the victim of ironic portrayal, at the end of the day I am persuaded that it is meant to stir up readerly compassion not contempt in reflection of God’s own heart toward the prophet. Thus, Uriel Simon seems on target in suggesting that Jonah is better conceived of as “compassionate irony” rather than “ironic satire” (Jonah, xxi–xxii).

[47]. This is not to say that God’s mercy trumps, as it were, other attributes. But neither should we rest confident letting other attributes functionally trump God’s mercy. Of crucial importance is a healthy understanding of what theologians call the simplicity of God.

[48]. Necessarily tied to God’s stubborn persistence is a fifth quality of God’s pursuit that we might add: his singular patience in pursuit. On this point, see the various memorable comments made in Ellul, The Judgment of Jonah, e.g., at 33, 35, 72.

[49]. McConville, A Guide to the Prophets, 189.

Next Sunday: Something’s Fishy: God’s Pursuit of the Readers of the Book of Jonah,
Jonah 2:1–10, Dan Brendsel