“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 3:1–10 – The Pursuits of God in the Book of Jonah
Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost – September 27, 2020 (am)

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            Lord God, in the reading and preaching of your Word, help us turn our hearts to you in fear and trust and to hear what you will speak, for you speak peace to your people through Christ, our Lord. Amen.

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            Our sermon text this morning is Jonah 3, which begins the second main movement in the narrative. Jonah, ch. 3. Hear the word of the Lord:

Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.” So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days’ journey in breadth. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.
            The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he issued a proclamation and published through Nineveh, “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.”
            When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.

            The word of God. The book of Jonah is a story of God’s merciful pursuit after the nations of the world. It is surely much more than that. Indeed, it is firstly about God’s pursuit of the Israelite prophet Jonah.[1] But the book is not less than a rehearsal of God’s heart for the nations. This comes to light clearly in our sermon text. God calls Jonah to preach to Nineveh, a Gentile city. This was God’s original purpose at the beginning of the story in ch. 1, though Jonah at first disobeyed the call. Here in ch. 3, we get a new beginning, which is the old beginning enacted in newness of life. Having been baptized through the sea, Jonah is set on a path of obedience. He preaches God’s word in Nineveh. And Nineveh repents! So God relents of disaster and showers mercy on these Gentiles.[2] God cares for and has good designs for the nations in this book.

            It’s not just Nineveh. In ch. 3, through Jonah’s (somewhat) willing labor, Nineveh receives mercy and newness of life. But tucked within that larger mission to Nineveh is a subplot: in ch. 1, through Jonah’s (definitely) unwilling or unwitting help, pagan sailors are brought to the fear and worship of the one true God. When God’s good news is announced, whether whether from good motives or poor, it will conquer. One way or another, God will have the nations as his inheritance. His pursuit will not and cannot end up empty.

            Now what were the nations pursued by God in the book of Jonah like? Let’s take time to underline some interesting features of how the author purposefully characterizes the Gentile nations in the narrative.[3] We can focus primarily on the portrayal of the Ninevites in ch. 3, but we’ll also note here and there overlaps with the portrayal of the Gentile sailors in ch. 1.[4]

            Jonah 3 opens with God’s repeated command to Jonah: “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.”[5] This time Jonah heeds the call. In v. 3, the narrator says that Nineveh was a “three days’ journey in breadth.”[6] In v. 4, Jonah goes “one day’s journey,” proclaiming God’s word: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And in response, surprisingly, Nineveh “believed God” and took up practices of repentance.

            I say surprisingly because, though the city took three days to cross, it seems everyone in it repented after just one day of Jonah’s preaching.[7] A people known for their violent pride is surprisingly quick in its right response to God’s word.[8] Their response is surprising also because Jonah’s proclamation is less than encouraging: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh will be destroyed” doesn’t leave much room for Nineveh to hope for escape.[9] That’s not an invitation to repent in hope of mercy; it’s an assertion that judgment is coming, and this is what produces the city’s repentance. There may be a lesson about God’s word here, about its power when verbally proclaimed and its saving intent even in its harsh parts.[10] There’s certainly an insight here into the Ninevite’s character: they take God’s word seriously and respond immediately.

            They also respond corporately, with corporate ownership, corporate action. They call for a fast, and all of them join in. It was a citywide practice with a citywide happy result—that is, it wasn’t the decision of some few “serious” believers, who, because of the merit of their “seriousness” in comparison to everyone else, received mercy alone. It was, v. 5 says, both “the greatest” and “the least” of them—that is, it wasn’t the endeavor of some special elite class, or some socially or economically or physically or intellectually well-positioned people, with everyone else on the margins functionally ignored. It was not “every man for himself,” not “the dwarves are for the dwarves,” with individuals and subgroups choosing their own adventure of how to respond to God. Rather, the city’s response and fate was just that, the city’s response and fate. Their lives were intertwined and interdependent as one people.

            At the same time, as vv. 6–9 go on to show, this citywide repentance involved healthy royal leadership and direction in repentance (citywide response and royally led response being here not alternatives but two sides of the single coin of a well-ordered public).[11] In v. 6, the king of Nineveh[12] comes down from his throne to join the rest of the people in repenting.[13] In vv. 7–9, he issues a decree to sustain the city’s response of fasting in sackcloth for the days ahead.

            Importantly, the Bible calls sinners to respond to God’s word in these ways. That’s why I call these activities in Nineveh healthy and rightly ordered. The Ninevites fast in sackcloth and ashes,[14] and their king decrees crying out to God, saying in v. 9, “Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger.”[15] The book of Joel, another of the Minor Prophets, is just a handful of pages earlier than Jonah in our Bibles. Back in Joel 2:12–14, we read this command from God to Israel: “Return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning … for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster. Who knows whether he will not turn and relent?” The king of Nineveh virtually quotes Joel 2.[16] Of course, he’s not actually quoting Holy Scripture. He doesn’t have it, hasn’t read it. Instead, the king and the rest of the city act better than they know.[17]

            And it’s not just the Ninevites. The sailors of ch. 1 also respond to God in noteworthy ways. They learn that Jonah’s disobedience to God has brought about the great tempest that threatens their lives. And what do they do in 1:13? Instead of turning Jonah into fish food at the first possible opportunity, they row with all their might to get out of the storm. They have compassion on the guilty party.[18] What’s more, in 1:14, when they have no choice but to do what the prophet says, they pray to God, “O LORD, lay not on us innocent blood.” That’s nearly identical to Deut 21:8 and Jer 26:15, which express the kind of concern God wants Israel to have.[19] Similarly, the sailors here confess, “You, O LORD, have done as it pleased you,” which echoes refrains from Pss 115 and 135 about God’s sovereign freedom.[20] And the sailors, in 1:16, end up worshiping God with “vows” and “sacrifices,” things God calls for in the Mosaic Law.[21]

            The sailors and the Ninevites do the things we expect of Israel.[22] We could go on. In 1:6, the sailors “feared the LORD,” and in 3:5 the Ninevites “believed in” this same God. Fearing and believing in the LORD—this was Israel’s own response to God’s mighty and merciful work at the Red Sea back in Exod 14:31: they “feared the LORD, and they believed in the LORD.”[23] In Jonah, Gentiles respond to the Creator’s power and the Redeemer’s mercy just as Israel of old did at the Red Sea. The sailors and the Ninevites speak and act and emote and respond in biblical ways—indeed, in the ways that the God of Israel demands from his people Israel.[24] And this despite having little to no biblical revelation to go on! In the world of the story, the little they know of God comes from the mouth of the prophet, and that’s slim picking. They do the kinds of things that Israel was invited to do, without the benefit of having much clear instruction.

            Even more remarkably, these Gentiles seem to enjoy some of the covenantal blessings specially promised to Israel. The sailors in ch. 1 used to pray to a pantheon of false gods. But through Jonah’s witness, by v. 14 they pray to Yahweh (the capitalized “LORD” in our English Bibles represents the covenantal name Yahweh). The sailors get in on the privilege of praying to Israel’s God by his personal name, which he revealed specially to his covenant people Israel.[25] What about the Ninevites? They are blessed with nothing less than God’s glorious mercy, his covenantal steadfast love.[26] That’s what Jonah complains about in 4:2: God is “merciful and gracious, abounding in steadfast love,” the very words and the very stuff revealed to Israel at Mt. Sinai; but God has now poured this same steadfast love out indiscriminately on Gentiles.[27]

            In Jonah, the sailors and Ninevites, Gentiles in the flesh, behave like Israel should behave, seem to speak Israel’s lines, and enjoy some of the “goods” that we typically identify as the prerogative of Israel. It’s like someone made a bad casting decision, like casting Will Ferrell as Jason Bourne, or Kevin Hart as Mr. Darcy, or John Wayne as Genghis Khan.[28] That would be bad casting because the look, the personality, the personal history and associations just doesn’t seem to fit with the role. In Jonah, the role the Gentiles play is jarring for readers, so jarring, in fact, as to suggest that maybe the casting was purposeful, intended to make a point.[29] The nations in the book don’t conform to typical expectations for the nations. They don’t seem to play their expected part. It’s worth asking, is anyone in this drama cast in that role?

            Here we can observe a feature of the book that has vexed interpreters for a long time. It has to do with God’s names. God is named in mainly two ways in Jonah: as either “God” or “LORD” in all caps (which we’ve just noted is how our Bibles reproduce the covenantal name Yahweh).[30] There are a couple tricky exceptions,[31] but in chs. 1–2 God is referred to mostly as “LORD” (i.e., Yahweh). Again, when we get to ch. 3, it is the “LORD” (Yahweh) who speaks to Jonah in vv. 1 and 3. But after that, for the rest of ch. 3, it is only the term “God” that is used. Dragging your finger along the text of ch. 3, do you see the shift in how God is named?

            There’s a pretty clear pattern here, and I think there’s a decent explanation.[32] “Yahweh” is God’s special covenant name revealed to Israel in the exodus. It’s a name Scripture generally uses when God interacts with his covenant people. In contrast, biblical writers tend to use “God” (a generic term for the deity) to narrate God’s dealings with Gentiles, non-Israelites. “Yahweh” is God as he is known in special covenant relationship with Israel; “God” is God as the Creator and Lord of all nations.[33] This more or less corresponds to the use of God’s names in the first three chapters of Jonah: when the Lord interacts with Jonah the Hebrew, he appears as “Yahweh”; when he deals with the Ninevites in ch. 3 (Gentiles), he appears as “God.”[34]

            But turn to ch. 4. Something new happens here. Now the “LORD” (Yahweh) returns to usage, as we might expect since God’s attention is directed back to Jonah the Hebrew. In vv. 2–3, Jonah prays to the “LORD”; and in v. 4, the “LORD” answers Jonah. But what happens from v. 6 on? In 4:6, a plant springs up by the hand of the “LORD God”—an unusual compound name is used, which, I think, is a signal that God is up to something new.[35] Indeed, in v. 7 and in v. 8 and in v. 9, it’s not Yahweh but just “God” that deals with Jonah the Israelite. The pattern established in chs. 1–3 seems to break down at the end of the story. What’s going on here?

            It’s apparent at this stage in the book that Jonah’s life is pointed away from God’s word. His heart is at odds with God’s heart. His trust is not in God’s mercy but in his own wisdom or his own wishes or his own worth over against others—or maybe it’s in some combination of such things, anything but in the God of all might and mercy. An uncomfortable question arises at this point for Jonah. How is he, at least in what matters most, any different from Gentiles who don’t know God and thus don’t trust in God alone? The nations are those who trust in and devote their lives to things other than the one true God (the biblical term for those things is “idols”). What does it say about Jonah if he is exposed in this story to be one trusting in and devoting his life to something other than the God who alone redeems the helpless and unworthy through the sea? As the book progresses, Jonah looks more and more like the nations in character and heart. I think that in ch. 4 he begins to be treated accordingly. Now that Jonah has been exposed as unbelieving and hard-hearted like the nations, God speaks to Jonah not as “Yahweh,” Israel’s covenant God, but as “God,” the Creator and Lord of all nations.

            Consider again what happens in v. 6 of ch. 4, where the peculiar compound name “LORD God” appears. The “LORD God” causes a plant to grow up over Jonah, v. 6 says, “to save him from his discomfort.” That word for “discomfort” is important. It’s a word with a broad range of senses in different contexts—sometimes it has the sense of “discomfort,” but it can also have the sense of “calamity” or “disaster” or “misfortune” or even “wickedness” and “evil.” In other words, the Hebrew term used here is pretty elastic. And, apparently, it’s something of a key word in Jonah, being used seven different times in this short story. We should have opportunity next Sunday to explore more of the significance of this term; for now, we can simply note that the narrator uses the exact same word to describe Nineveh’s situation at the outset of the story.

            The book begins in 1:2 with God’s command to Jonah to go to Nineveh “for their evil has come up before me.” The word translated “evil” in 1:2 is the same word the author uses for Jonah’s “discomfort” in 4:6. Nineveh’s situation at the beginning and Jonah’s situation at the end are described quite literally in the same terms. Both of them, we might say, are in a pitiful situation of “disaster”[36] or “misfortune” or “harm.”[37] So God, in pity, pursues them both. He sends an Israelite to Nineveh that they may be saved from their “disaster.” And God causes a plant to grow up over Jonah that he might be saved from his “disaster.”[38]

            Here’s what I think is going on in Jonah in a nutshell: if, at bottom, you love the same things as the nations and serve the same things as the nations, should you expect to be treated any differently than the nations? If, fundamentally, the drive of your life (if what makes you “tick”) is health or self or land or wealth or nation or race or family or freedom or belonging or generic “betterment,” how are you any different than the nations? We might use the name and word of God as a tool to try to get those things that we love most, but that doesn’t reveal a heart that loves and serves God supremely. It just shows that we are a “religiously inclined” subculture of majority idolatrous culture.[39] If ultimately you love and serve what the nations love and serve, why would God treat you any differently than the nations? I think that’s where this storyline leads us.[40] God treats Jonah in the way that his heart’s pursuits reveal him to be. The God of all nations is treating Jonah like the nations who are subject to disaster.

            That’s a humbling word to hear, especially if you’re Israel beginning to recognize that Jonah’s life is being held up to you as a mirror. It’s a sobering word to hear. It’s hurtful to hear that you’re more like the nations than you’d care to admit. But if the sackcloth fits, wear it. For being like the “nations” doesn’t put Jonah or anyone beyond hope. What is the book of Jonah commonly famous for? For being a book in which God pursues the nations in love. The Creator God of the sea and dry land passionately and compassionately pursues all nations, even those that don’t think they need it—especially them. That’s what the book of Jonah is. It’s God’s pursuit of Jonah to the end, even if Jonah proves to be more “nations” than “Israel” at heart.

            So fittingly, mercifully, the very last word of the story in 4:10–11 comes again from the “LORD,” from Yahweh the God of covenant love and mercy. Yahweh will be faithful to his covenant, though all others prove faithless. And he will doggedly pursue, for their good, those who would reject or be oblivious to his faithfulness. Israelite unbelief will not have the last say.

            In the time remaining, I want to highlight the surprising strategy of God’s pursuit after this prophet who looks like the “outsiders” he would seek to exalt himself above. We’ve spent a good amount of time already unpacking one strategy in God’s pursuit after Jonah, what we might call a “negative” strategy in which God gradually exposes the true colors of Jonah’s heart and calls him to a repentance he wasn’t even aware he needed. But I think there’s also what we could call a “positive” strategy at work in God’s pursuit after Jonah, a wooing and not only a rebuking. God wants Jonah not only to see his soul in true focus; he also and especially wants Jonah to see a whole lot of other characters doing some really curious things.

            Recall that in ch. 1 God causes Jonah the Hebrew to cross paths with pagan sailors who do and say and experience things that we often associate with Israel. They pray to Yahweh by name and worship him with sacrifices and vows. In ch. 3, God causes Jonah the Israelite to suffer the Gentile Ninevites doing what God calls Israel to do earlier in the Minor Prophets: they repent with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. And, as Jonah protests in ch. 4, God bestows on the Ninevites the abounding lovingkindness promised in his covenant with Israel at Sinai.

            Imagine how Jonah feels about all these Gentiles enjoying Israelite blessings. I think he’s none too happy. As the Apostle Paul might say, Jonah is a little jealous.[41] The God of covenant love was his (Israel’s) to enjoy, and here pagan sailors and dirty Ninevites revel in Yahweh’s goodness! Seeing Gentiles doing and enjoying what he thought was his by right as an Israelite understandably leaves Jonah a little piqued. But his jealousy is, I believe, part of a conspiracy of Triune love aimed at bringing Jonah to repentance. In God’s magnificent mercy and wild wisdom, his love to Nineveh also serves as a strategic invitation, a stirring up of holy jealousy in the depths of the Israelite heart, a wooing of Jonah to enjoy what’s still available for him to enjoy, if he will only repent and return to the One he didn’t realize he had strayed from.

            One of the striking things about this story is how often God performs awe-inspiring wonders: he stirs up storms and scorching winds, performs wonders with fish, miraculously causes plants to grow and worms to do his bidding. Those are great, headline-making marvels. And they have various good effects on Jonah in God’s pursuit after him, but they only go so far. What really gets Jonah riled up, what really bothers him, and what therefore really pushes the needle in under his skin and gets at the true state of his heart and need are much more humble things, things with a lot less pyrotechnics: it’s seeing a wicked city respond to the word of God, and hearing a formerly pagan people pray to the covenant God of Israel, and smelling the burning of the ashes of repentance. It’s being confronted with, and walking alongside, a people beginning to live rightly ordered lives before God. Yahweh pursued Jonah by putting him face to face with practical, palpable, public activities of right worship and well-ordered speech and truthfully enacted fear and repentance and relationship with the one true God.

            That’s still God’s strategy today, still the chief way in which he pursues all the nations. Mighty displays of power don’t generally soften people unto repentance and joy.[42] It’s not really the “big and important” things that make the headlines or the social media feeds; that’s just the stuff that the world thinks is responsible for moving and shaking and changing things.

            Rather, it’s something humble like a people simply fearing the right thing. We all fear something. The nations fear all sorts of things—diseases, poverty, the loss of political power tied to the rise or fall of regimes, losing the esteem of others and being thought of as “not with it” or “not for the right cause.” Those are common enough fears. Such fears cannot produce assurance that our life and good is secure. Instead, such fears produce more dread and anxiety in other areas of life, being manifested in constant suspicion and blaming of others as threats to our insecure good, and in fretful labor to muster armies to fight the needed battles with “us” and against “them.” Then along comes a people who plainly fear something else, like the sailors in ch. 1. Their fear of the Creator, their fear of the right thing, produced in them, of all things, compassion for the guilty Jonah, and humble and earnest worship of God. That’s weird. That stands out. That’s something that grabs people’s attention.

            Or maybe it’s small acts of humility and repentance, such as the Ninevites’ in ch. 3, that God uses to shake people out of worldly stupor. We’ve all probably heard myriad “apologies” that weren’t really apologies: “I’m sorry you felt that way about what I did.” (Translation: it’s really your fault for being too sensitive.) Or, “I had a failure of judgment.” (Translation: it’s not that I sinned; I just misread the situation.) “I lashed out at you because I’m so tired or things are so stressful at work,” or, “I did this because you or he or she or they first did that.” (Translation: what needs to change is not my heart but what’s outside of me, whether circumstances or you.) Humble and enacted repentance is incredibly rare. That’s in part because it’s hard to admit clearly, without embellishment or excuse, “I am wrong. I sinned against you and against Heaven. I am sorry.” It’s hard because it requires an honest, hurtful word of judgment against ourselves. Receiving forgiveness requires just that—judging ourselves guilty, admitting that we need to be forgiven.[43] So many of us so much of the time cannot imagine that the goodness and freedom and joy of receiving actual forgiveness is better than maintaining confidence that we’re not the problem and being able to accuse and complain about everyone else. So when a people comes along who actually repent, who are in the habit of owning their wrongs, their sins, their responsibility, that stands out. We can’t help but take notice. It gets under our skin and troubles us, and, just maybe, it also begins to woo us to the reality they must be living into and experiencing and enjoying. Because reality, actual reality, is always more lovely and desirable than the perversions of reality that we go about in a daze thinking of as “normal.”

            Reality just is a people living humbly before the one true God, repenting when wrong, fearing the Creator alone and thus surprisingly being fueled for self-sacrificial love of neighbor, rightly ordered in speech and worship of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who has revealed himself fully in Jesus Christ. When a people begins to tap into reality, begins to live into reality, it cannot help but be noticeable, disturbing, and often attractive to peoples whose lives are marked by unreality, by disorder and disruption, by false promises and false hopes and false gods.[44] It’s like seeing color for the first time, after seeing in black-and-white for your whole life. It’s like stepping into a house where chocolate chip cookies are baking—it smells so much different from the world outside, you can’t help but take notice and want to follow your nose. That’s what it’s like in the world when the people of God live out their fear and worship of the one true God in humble, happy, hopeful, palpable and public but non-attention-mongering ways. This is an age-old strategy of God in his pursuit after the nations.

            What a strange and mysterious way! What a strange and mysterious God, who conquers unbelief less by shock and awe and more by stealth, who pursues people in love by stirring up, as it were, a holy jealousy for his love, who persistently woos people to himself with goodness and reality and exhibits all the wondrous patience that is required for such a pursuit. What God is like our God? Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! May we, by the Spirit, be ever more conformed to his ways and peculiar wisdom and perfect pursuits; may our hearts be shaped into Christ’s image. And may we praise the great glory of this God of wisdom and might and mercy. For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever.

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            Yes, Lord, to you alone be the glory, and to us be the joy of seeing you magnified in our everyday, ordinary lives of humility before you, of honest brokenness in our sin, of right fear of you alone that frees us from all the enslaving fears of the world and frees us for bold, risk-taking, servant hearted love of neighbor. Continue to work these wonders in us, for the sake of the nations which you love, and for the glory of King Jesus, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.

Notes:

[1].  It is worth noting that, as I begin writing this manuscript, it is the celebration of the prophet Jonah in the Lutheran liturgical calendar. It turns out that there is, at least in some sectors, a seasonal appropriateness to our sermon series.

[2].  Unfortunately, we will not have opportunity to explore the crucial, if challenging, connection between Nineveh’s turning/repenting and God’s turning/relenting (and the thorn in the side of fans of a high view of the sovereignty of God—namely, the narrative acknowledgement that God changes his mind). Of particular interest and significance is that God’s “turning” responds in kind to Ninevah’s “turning.” In 3:8–10, Ninevah is summoned to “turn” (3:8) in hopes that God might “turn” (3:9, 2x), so they enact a “turning” (3:10). The twofold use of the term “turn” for Ninevah’s action sandwiches and is exactly parallel to the twofold use of the term for God’s hoped-for action. The Ninevites hope for (but do not presume—note the “who knows?” of v. 9) that their activities can influence in some manner the activities of God. And, indeed, the narrator shows that their sensibility was on target: in v. 10, God saw their “acts” (מַעֲשֶׂה) of turning from their “evil” (רַע) deeds; so he, in kind, did not “enact” (עשׂה) the “evil” (רָעָה) he initially intended. God responds appropriately or in kind to the repentant actions of human agents (Magonet, Form and Meaning, 22). This a point so important, that in a book where God’s word must be fulfilled despite human (Jonah’s) disobedience (note his word of command to preach to Nineveh), it is the repentance of the Ninevites that is the one thing that halts God’s word of destruction (3:4) from coming to pass (ibid., 81). To put it in stronger covenantal terms, it is “turning” to God/repentance (3:10), bound inextricably to belief in God (3:5; we could add also fear of God; cf. 1:16), which alone can overturn the Deuteronomic prohibition of pity for Canaanites (see Deut 7:16). Everything we will say in what follows this morning (and also next Sunday) about God’s response to Nineveh and the impulses he desires from Jonah’s heart is predicated on the crucial repentance of Nineveh.
            We need to go further and note that the narrator is able to offer a still more nuanced picture. He demonstrates “the hope that lies in repentance as a way of influencing God, yet at the same time the provisional nature of this hope—‘Who knows ... ?’ God indeed ‘turns,’ but the key word of God’s ‘repenting’ (נחם) of the evil, the punishment He has prepared, remains outside the bracketing [see in 3:9, 10, used only of God], thus emphasising its provisional nature, beyond the automatic control of man” (Magonet, Form and Meaning, 22). Here we have a narrative fusion of sovereign freedom and divine self-consistency, with real divine responsiveness to the responsible actions of human creatures. Indeed, we have here theological confidence in the Godness of God harmonizing with fittingly and humbly phenomenological description of the drama of divine-human relations. We have already seen in previous weeks how God acts in this manner on another front—namely, in giving Jonah what he asks for, as it were (note the use of the verb “to go down” in chs. 1–2). In both retributive justice and in mercy, God is fittingly responsive to the responsible actions of human agents.

[3].  I have in mind here less historical details about the Assyrians or ancient pagans that we might discover outside the text, and more the textual testimony itself. Historical background details can sometimes seem to conflict with the narrative portrayal leading us down (typically apologetic) rabbit trails to try to explain (away) the tension or conflict (note, e.g., the quickness and ease with which the city’s response reaches the ears and engages the intentions of the royal court in vv. 5–9, and contrast this with the high level of separation between court and citizenship in Assyria that we know of from external sources; see Sasson, Jonah, 247). In terms of harmonization of external and internal sources, the narration is highly telescoped, so there is much room for filling in the gaps by various plausible historical reconstructions of  “what really happened.” Such harmonizing is necessarily speculative, showing plausibility only and not proving. That the narrative is telescoped simply underlines that the narrator has been selective. He has purposefully chosen to portray the characters (and more generally the events of the story) in certain ways. That purposeful portrayal is our main interest—how the text itself, how the author, intentionally portrays the Gentiles in the story. This is matter of narrative characterization.

[4].  Sasson generally and rightly emphasizes the interrelation of the sailors and the Ninevites as minor characters in the narrative, where in “the representation of the sailors mutually complements and reciprocally reinforces the portraiture of the Ninevites.” They together serve the same narrative function as “minor characters,” who contrast in important ways with the character of Jonah (Jonah, 340–41, quotation at 340).

[5].  In contrast to the commission in 1:2, God now specifies that Jonah is to call out “the message that I tell you.” This may serve two narrative functions. On the one hand, it could indicate a disposition still in the heart of Jonah to veer from the specifics of God’s mission to Nineveh, which God by this clarification would seek to stave off (cf. Stuart, Hosea–Jonah, 482). On the other hand, it leads to a surprising interpretive conclusion: Jonah’s “Yet forty days and Nineveh will be destroyed!” is what God intended for Nineveh to hear. Much has been made of the change of prepositions from עַל in 1:2 to אֶל in 3:2: while the latter preposition may be used for mere stylistic variation and thus effects no substantive change in meaning (cf. ibid.; and the LXX), it potentially has an intentionally more “neutral” sense (see Magonet, Form and Meaning, 153n133;  Jenson, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, 70; and especially Sasson, Jonah, 72–75, who argues that a change in idiomatic phrases, not merely of prepositions, is at work).

[6].  The interpretative rendering of the ESV is fine for our purposes. Stuart’s proposes “three-day visit,” arguing that the phrase is to be understood against the background of ANE protocol for diplomatic visits from foreign dignitaries (Hosea–Jonah, 487–88). But this interpretive reliance on arcane and speculative background data is unnecessary (Stuart cites Donald J. Wiseman, “Jonah’s Nineveh,” TynBul 30 [1979]: 29–52, at 38, who is simply making a suggestion without providing any corroborating evidence for “the ancient oriental practice of hospitality”—this is not to mention the fact that the narrator’s statement in Jon 3:3 surely does not have the hospitality practices of Nineveh as its chief concern). Stuart (and Wiseman) is likely motivated in this direction due to the historical conundrum that Nineveh was most assuredly not some 60 miles in breadth! But both Stuart and the critics of the historicity of Jonah which Stuart would seek to contradict may be trying to squeeze water from a narrative rock. The point of the “three days’ walk” detail, whatever its specific historic referent, is of a piece rhetorically with the detail with which it is paired—namely, that Nineveh was “an exceedingly great city.” Furthermore, the “three days’ walk” of Nineveh provides a striking contrast to the response of the Ninevites after one day of Jonah’s preaching (see below). We could also note another curious possibility: might there be a connection and parallel between the “three days and three nights” Jonah spent in the fish (1:17) and the breadth of Nineveh being a “three days’ journey”?

[7].  Sasson thinks the prophet’s eagerness to obey God is discernible in the overt time/distance references of 3:3–4 (Jonah, 236). For still one more different reading, and quite the opposite of Sasson, see Jenson, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, 72–73.

[8].  There has been much speculation in the history of interpretation and reception seeking to account for the rapidity of response at Nineveh: perhaps the sailors prepared the way by testifying at Nineveh to God’s mighty works (Ibn Ezra, Kimḥi); or maybe Jonah’s clothes and body, greatly marred by the gastric juices of the fish’s belly, offered a visible picture of the severity of judgment so great that the Ninevites were shocked into attentiveness (medieval artwork); or perhaps the Ninevites were simply impressed at Jonah’s pluck to stroll into town alone and make such a proclamation (Abravanel). For discussion, see Sasson, Jonah, 244.

[9].  The proclamation is ambiguous, both in its time-reference (is something to happen at the end of 40 days or within 40 days?) and in its expectation of that which is coming (is it “destruction” or some other kind of “turning” [נֶהְפָּכֶת], or is the term intentionally vague?). See Sasson, Jonah, 234–35, who believes that נֶהְפָּכֶת is intentionally ambiguous, and that herein lies the key for understanding Jonah’s anger at God (see also ibid., 267–68).

[10]. Cf. McConville, A Guide to the Prophets, 193.

[11]. It is an open question whether the events of vv. 6–9 came after the repentance related in v. 5 (so Sasson, Jonah, 247), or before so that v. 5 is a kind of summary statement (cf. KJV at v. 6). The decision seems immaterial to the points being made in what follows.

[12]. Though the title “king of Nineveh” (rather than “king of Assyria”) has exercised some interpreters, and led to no little skepticism concerning Jonah’s historical worth or historiographical intention, there is little substance to the criticisms of the title (note similar references to the “king of Samaria” in 1 Kgs 21:1; 2 Kgs 1:3; cf. “king of Salem” in Gen 14:18). For discussion, see Sasson, Jonah, 248.

[13]. There is an ironic paralleling of the king’s activity and movement in ch. 3 with Jonah’s in ch. 1: both “arise” in response to God’s word (וַיָּקָם in 1:3; 3:6) in order to “go down” (three times explicitly of Jonah in ch. 1; figuratively of the king in ch. 3), but Jonah’s movement is in defiance of God and the king of Nineveh’s is in repentance before God (Jenson, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, 76; also Magonet, Form and Meaning, 62). Taking ch. 4 into account, Jonah and the king of Nineveh also undergo the activity of “sitting” (ישב), but in very different circumstances and for very different reasons (Magonet, Form and Meaning, 19–20).

[14]. The terms and combined imagery of sackcloth-weeping-turning (3:5–9) is standard language and imagery for personal and corporate repentance. This is language and imagery that appears often in Scripture, but I think the most important parallel occurs in Joel 1:13; 2:12–14. It would seem that Jon 3 is the only example in Scripture of Gentiles taking up a fasting of repentance (Sasson, Jonah, 245).

[15]. The LXX concludes the king’s decree after v. 7, making vv. 8–9 the ensuing results of the decree. For discussion of the interpretive implications of this move in contrast to the Masoretic reading(s) of the text, see Sasson, Jonah, 265–67. On the translation of the question/condition in v. 9 itself, together with discussion of Masoretic punctuation which suggests an alternative reading, see ibid., 260–61.

[16]. See Magonet, Form and Meaning, 24–25, 77–79. Not insignificantly, Joel 2:13 cites the same confession about God that is cited in the interpretatively important Jon 4:2 (the substance of Jonah’s confession is, of course, common throughout Scripture, but the specific form that Jonah uses corresponds most closely with Joel 2:13, particularly, as Magonet observes, in its use of הרעה, an important Leitwort in Jonah). Similar points could be made with respect to Joel 1:13, with the additional feature there of God calling Israel’s leadership (the priests) to lead the way in this form of repentance. The king of Nineveh stands in the place which God expects the priests of Israel to take, leading his people in right forms of response to the word of God. We can note, additionally, that the king of Nineveh expresses his hope in 3:9 in terms reminiscent of Moses’ plea in Exod 32:14 (ibid., 71, 124n117). Also, the king’s call to the city to repent in 3:8 (“let them turn each man from his evil way”) appears elsewhere in Scripture only in Jeremiah (Jer 18:11; 25:5; 26:3; 35:15; 36:3–7; 23:14, 22), and there with respect to Israel (ibid., 71). In an ironic inversion of the presentation of Jonah as one who knows and confesses the truth about God but does not live in accord with it, the narrator also will “put ‘traditional Israelite’ quotations into the mouth of the ‘pagans’ (or use them in the narrative with regard [sic] the ‘pagans’), thus reversing the ironic effect—the words now sound perfectly correct, but it is the fact that they come from the last place the reader would expect, that produces the irony” (ibid., 70). Magonet speaks of these as “‘paradoxical’ quotations” (ibid., 72). He gives several examples, in addition to the “paradoxical quotation” of Joel 2:13 at Jon 3:9, a couple of which appear below.

[17]. Cf. Rob Barrett, “Meaning More than They Say: The Conflict between YHWH and Jonah,” JSOT 37 (2012): 237–57, at 255–56.

[18]. More generally on the piety and character of the sailors, see Magonet, Form and Meaning, 93–94.

[19]. Magonet, Form and Meaning, 69–70.

[20]. Sasson, Jonah, 135–36.

[21]. On the combination of “sacrifice” (זֶבַח) and “vow” (נֵדֶר), see Lev 7:16; 22:21; Num 15:3, 8; 1 Sam 1:21; Ps 50:14; Prov 7:14. Each of these references is prescribing or describing Israelite activity; but note Isa 19:21, in which it is prophesied that Egyptians will sacrifice and make a vow to Yahweh, to be joined in 19:23–25 by the Assyrians!
            Another intriguing possible point of connection between Gentiles in Jonah and the activities (historical or morally expected) of Israel is that the sailors cast lots to determine the source of their woes, like Israel before them in weeding out Achan the troubler of Israel.

[22]. We will forgo mentioning here that the OT biblical witness anticipates such a day for Gentiles. Sasson, Jonah, 140, points out that the Law itself addressed the question of offerings from non-Hebrews (Lev 22:25); that Solomon’s prayer addresses Gentiles simply looking toward the temple (1 Kgs 8:41–43); and that the prophetic word of Isaiah envisions a day of sacrifice and vows from Gentiles, and in particular Assyrians (Isa 19:19–25). Elsewhere, Sasson downplays the significance of the “sacrifices” and “vows” of the sailors. There is no hint that they are now on a trajectory of forsaking their idolatrous rites in favor of a full adoption of the Mosaic cult: “The sailors merely offer sacrifices to a powerful god, an act that any civilized pagan would gladly fulfill when grateful for divine interference” (ibid., 24). There is no reason to assert more of the sailors’ and Ninevites’ “conversion” than is expressly noted in the text; e.g., there is no reason to suppose that these Gentiles took on circumcision and obedience to Torah and became full-fledged temple worshipers (though perhaps it is worth noting that there are accommodations for non-temple worship given to Naaman in 2 Kgs 5). Stuart, for example, is insistent that the Ninevites’ response falls short of full conversion to Yahwism (“Jonah,” e.g., at 456, 464). But his position is not sufficiently nuanced, for at the same time there is also no reason to question the sincerity and appropriateness of the Gentiles’ response to God, as is not uncommon in the history of interpretation (see above). Indeed, we can truthfully say, with Jenson, that the Gentiles exhibit “exemplary piety” in the circumstances in which we find them (Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, 47, speaking in this context with reference to the sailors in ch. 1). Similarly, beyond recognizing that God speaks and enacts judgment on Assyria several decades or more after Jonah’s day (see the book of Nahum), there is no reason to speculate about the longevity/perseverance of the response of the sailors or the generation of Nineveh in Jonah’s day; the text doesn’t address it and is otherwise uninterested in the question.

[23]. Magonet, Form and Meaning, 70; see also 73–76 on the “dividing up” and “fusion” of quotations in the narrative of Jonah.

[24]. See ibid., 93, for a citation of a rabbinic midrash on Jonah to the effect that the behavior of Gentiles is more “Israelite” than Israel’s typical behavior, to Israel’s shame.

[25]. In every other place in Scripture, outside of Jon 1:14, when someone “calls on the LORD” (וַיִּקְרְאוּ אֶל־יְהוָה in 1:14), it is an Israelite who is making the plea (Judg 15:18; 1 Sam 12:17; 1 Kgs 17:20–21; Ps 99:6; 1 Chr 21:26).

[26]. In addition to the importance of 4:2 addressed below, we can also note that God’s response to Nineveh’s repentance narrated in 3:10 is a near verbatim repetition of his response to Israel’s golden calf rebellion in Exod 32:14 (also Jer 26:3, 13, 19 all with referring to response to Israel, and Jer 18:8 spoken in more generalized terms of any nation that repents). For the observation and discussion, see Magonet, Form and Meaning, 71.

[27]. Exod 20:6, and esp. 34:6–7; see also Exod 15:13. For a much bolder argument to this effect, with the Abrahamic covenant specifically in view, see Joel Edmund Anderson, “YHWH’s Surprising Covenant Hesed in Jonah,” BTB 42 (2012): 3–11. In my opinion, Anderson’s most significant observations have to do with the numerous parallels between the narration of Israel’s receiving of covenant mercy in Exod 32–34 and the narration of the Ninevites’ receiving of “covenant mercy” in Jon 3 (ibid., 5–7; cf. Benckhuysen, “Revisiting the Psalm of Jonah,” 22). That Jonah’s contention with God centers around who receives (deserves!) the “covenantal hesed” may be directly related to the disposition at work at the end of Jonah’s psalm, as he speaks in 2:8 of those who “forsake their hesed.”

[28]. This last example actually happened in the ill-conceived The Conqueror (RKO Radio Pictures, 1956).

[29]. In this light, a better analogy than the examples just noted would be Lin-Manuel Miranda in the role of Alexander Hamilton in Hamilton: An American Musical, music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda, dir. Thomas Kail, Richard Rodgers Theatre, New York, NY, February 2, 2016.

[30]. This elides (or subsumes under Elohim [“God”]) the use of haElohim (“the God”) that also appears in 1:6; 3:9–10; 4:7.

[31]. See various forms of “Yahweh [the/his/my] Elohim” in 1:9; 2:1 [MT 2:2], 6 [MT 2:7]). I take these as all of a piece, stemming from Jonah’s assertion in 1:9: Yahweh is the God of heaven who created all things. That’s his God (2:1, 6), in contrast to the gods of the nations (cf. Magonet, Form and Meaning, 37–38).

[32]. For a helpful table breaking down the usage of divine names in Jonah, with attentiveness to narrative voice, see Sasson, Jonah, 18n15. See Magonet, Form and Meaning, 33–38; and Limburg, Jonah, 45–46, for different arguments about the strategic variation of divine names in Jonah. In Sasson’s eyes, every proposal to account for the variation of divine names in Jonah breaks on the rocks of ch. 4 especially, where, as we will note below, the pattern of chs. 1–3 suggested here appears to break down (Sasson,  Jonah, 18n15; see also Magonet, Form and Meaning, 34, 38). Traditional historical critical scholarship has used the name variation as a handle to uncover supposedly divergent sources and layers of compositional history.  When once the integrity of the text as it stands is accepted (as many are now willing to accept, even if only as a heuristic concession for the sake of literary analysis), two options seem open to us. For Sasson, “The only hypothesis that makes sense is one that acknowledges the lack of any recognizable overall pattern” (Jonah, 18n15). With Magonet, I am persuaded that “in view of the precision that marks the choice of virtually every word, phrase, sequence of sentences and chapters of the book,” we may rightly assume that the use of divine names in Jonah is not haphazard but intentional, and that esp. the divine names in ch. 4 are an interpretive key (Form and Meaning, 124n110). There is much overlap in what I argue below and Magonet’s treatment, though I am more inclined than Magonet would appear to be to see a single narrative strategy at work throughout the whole book and not to distinguish the literary strategy of chs. 1–3 from that at work in ch. 4 (see 33–38, esp. 125n122; but see Magonet’s comment on 37).

[33]. There is a conceptual similarity between this general line of interpretation and Rabbinic explanations of the connotations of YHWH and Elohim in Scripture more generally (see Gen. Rab. 33:3, noted by Magonet, Form and Meaning, 125–26n129). Though Stuart does not think there is a discernible literary strategy at work in the naming of God in Jonah, he admits that, in general, the character addressing God will dictate whether the covenantal name Yahweh or the generic Elohim is used (Stuart, “Jonah,” 459; idem, Hosea–Jonah, 438).

[34]. Somewhat related to this is the fact that when the Gentiles in the narrative address or refer to the deity, they can only do so (prior to receiving Jonah’s testimony) as “God” (Elohim). See 1:5–6, in addition to the Ninevite discourse in ch. 3. That the Ninevites only expressly have to do with “God” and not “Yahweh” is not an indication of the lesser quality of their engagement or the substance of their “conversion.” It is the word/proclamation that the LORD himself gives (3:1–2) to which they respond (cf. the Targum), and it is חֶסֶד that they enjoy through repentance (4:2). See rightly Sasson, Jonah, 244.

[35]. As Jenson comments, “The phrase is unlikely to be merely transitional” (Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, 87). Occasionally (particularly in earlier scholarship) the compound “YHWH Elohim” in 4:6 was attributed to the influence of Gen 2 traditions.

[36]. Note, e.g., the ESV footnote to the word “evil” at 1:2.

[37]. HALOT claims that “the basic meaning of רָעָה is probably ‘that which is harmful’” (see in loc.).

[38]. In terms of narrative dynamics, the plant and Jonah (= symbolic Israel) function in parallel roles. In terms of theological and symbolic intent, the plant may stand for Jonah/Israel. For example, elsewhere in Scripture Israel is depicted as a plant that God caused to grow (e.g., Ps 80:14–15; cf. Isa 5:2). Additionally, the plant in Jon 4 is “smitten” (נכה) by a “worm” (תּוֹלֵעָה). Scripture frequently uses the word “to smite” (נכה) to speak of the covenantal cursing promised to rebellious Israel (see, e.g., Deut 28:22, 27–28, 35), and devouring “worms” are a form of God’s covenantal judgment (see Deu 28:39, also Isa 66:24). The plant growing up over Jonah may be an enacted parable of what’s at stake in Jonah’s (Israel’s) covenantal faithlessness.

[39]. For brief reflections on religious “subcultural reproduction” of majority culture, see James K. A. Smith, “How (Not) to Change the World” (review of James Davison Hunter, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World), The Other Journal, September 8, 2010, http://theotherjournal.com/2010/09/08/how-not-to-change-the-world/. For an argument that this was precisely the problem at Corinth which Paul tackles in 1 Corinthians—namely, that the Corinthian church had capitulated to idolatrous Corinthian culture and was reproducing it in their life and gatherings as the body of Christ—see Daniel J. Brendsel, “Socialization and the Sanctuary: The Arrangement of 1 Corinthians as a Strategy for Spiritual Formation,” in Tending Soul, Mind, and Body: The Art and Science of Spiritual Formation, ed. G. Hiestand and T. Wilson (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2019), 5–22.

[40]. We could state it positively: if the fundamental defining mark of the “nations” is unbelief, then the distinctive identifier of true Israel is belief. Or to put it in terms of (what I am persuaded is) the canonical testimony of the collection of Minor Prophets, “the righteous shall live by his faith” (Hab 2:4). The righteous, those in right standing before God, those who are God’s true people, shall live by faith (cf. also Joel 2:32). The Minor Prophets collection, of which Jonah is a crucial part, reveals that faith, and the obedience that springs from it, is the defining mark of God’s true covenant people. On the likelihood that Habakkuk (particularly 2:1–4) was seen as playing a central interpretive role in the whole collection of the Twelve by both Paul (see, e.g., Rom 1:17; 4:3) and the Qumran community, see Watson, Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith, 78–126, esp. 112ff. This does not mean that the book of Jonah (or the Book of the Twelve) suggests that for Jonah or the Ninevites there is access to Yahweh apart from the Sinai covenant. If the Ninevites and sailors enjoy “lovingkindness,” it is only because an Israelite was sent to them with the covenantal word, and it is only that Israelite’s proper blessing that they enjoy (cf. Blenkinsopp, A History of Prophecy in Israel, 243). God pursues the world through the mission and identity of Israel. Salvation is “of the Jews” through and through (and will continue to be so in the New Covenant age which is still, in Jonah’s day, to come). “The book,” Stuart rightly observes, “nowhere implies that the Ninevites somehow became, as it were, God’s chosen nation by reason of their occasion of repentance at Jonah’s preaching” (Hosea–Jonah, 434).

[41]. Though likely unprovable, I have a hunch that Jonah is one of the biblical-theological sources for Paul’s conviction expressed in Rom 11 that salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel jealous and thus to drive them to salvation (more demonstrable is the general point that Paul engaged in a contextual and constructive reading of the Minor Prophets, with Hab 2:4 at its crucial core; on which, see Watson, Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith, Part I). Perhaps this point also may be of importance with respect to the “sign of Jonah” that Jesus promises in Matt 12:39/Luke 11:29–30 (cf. Matt 16:4). Jesus admits only this “sign” to “an evil and adulterous generation,” an act that is often understood in purely negative terms. But might it be that the “sign” to this unbelieving generation is of this nature: the true prophet will undergo “three days and nights” as the instrument of salvation for the nations, with the aim of stirring up holy jealousy in the hearts of adulterers?

[42]. A similar point is, I think, being made in the Revelation of St. John, wherein the strategy of intensifying wonders of judgment is broken off. Note that the progression from Rev 6:8 to Rev 8:7, 8–9, 10–11, 12; 9:15, 18, is not followed through in Rev 10:3–4; and compare this with the (apparently failed) intent behind the sign judgments indicated in Rev 9:20–21.

[43]. On the necessary submission to a guilty verdict that is part of the warp and woof of “evangelical repentance,” see James B. Torrance, Worship, Community, and the Triune God of Grace (Downers Grove: IVP, 1997), 55.

[44]. The theme manifests itself throughout the pages of the New Testament. For example, Jesus taught with authority, uttered the truths of God without fear of man, and people took notice. Paul and Silas, unjustly imprisoned, didn’t tuck tail and run when the prison doors miraculously opened, and it was especially that, their unhurried confidence that they were safe in the Lord’s will, that shook the Philippian jailor to his senses so that he asked, “What must I do to be saved?” (Additionally, there in Acts 16, it is very likely Paul and Silas’s singing and praise of God in the prison that had a profound effect on the rest of the prisoners resulting in them, too, remaining with Paul and Silas after the doors are miraculously opened; see similarly F. F. Bruce, Acts, rev. ed.; NICNT [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988], 316–17.) And, as the Apostle Paul is firmly persuaded in 1 Cor 14:24–25, it is humble, heartfelt, rightly ordered engagements in corporate worship that lead unbelievers among us to fall on their faces in worship with us, saying “Surely God is among you.”

Next Sunday: Of Mice and Men: God’s Pursuit of the World in the Book of Jonah, Jonah 4:1–11, Dan Brendsel