The Book Of Jonah. Day 1, Fleeing From The Lord

We have arrived at our study of the prophets and rather than studying them in the order in which they appear in the Bible, we are going to do something different by studying them in chronological order. They are not arranged in the Bible in chronological order but, after just having finished our study of the kings of Israel and Judah and the fall of Israel and Judah, I thought it over and decided that while that material was fresh on our minds it might be helpful to study the prophets in chronological order so we could go back and see what the prophets were saying during the era of the kings. If we were to go on and study the books in the order in which they appear in the Bible, the next book would be Ezra, which deals with Cyrus of Persia setting free from Babylon the captive people of Judah.

Backing up in time means looking in more detail at the reasons for the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel and for the fall of the southern kingdom of Judah. It seems good to do this right after we have completed our look at the kings of Israel and Judah. On the chronological time chart of the prophets, there is some slight disagreement among exactly which came first, but the majority of charts list the book of Jonah as the oldest. He was called by the Lord to be a prophet to the northern kingdom of Israel. His tenure as a prophet coincides with the reigns of King Jehoash of Israel and King Jeroboam II (formerly known as Amaziah) of Israel.

As the book of Jonah opens, the Lord is calling him to leave Israel and go to the Assyrian capital city of Nineveh to call the people out on the sins being committed there. You'll recall from our study of the kings that Assyria is the nation that eventually conquers the northern kingdom of Israel. If the Lord had not called Jonah to go to Nineveh, and if the people of Nineveh had not repented, Assyria would have fallen as a nation before it could ever have conquered Israel. But the Lord is working these things together according to His will. He intends to allow the northern kingdom to fall due to the rampant idolatry of the people, for the majority of them have turned away from Him to serve pagan gods. He intends to use Assyria as the instrument of discipline for Israel's idolatry. But as the book of Jonah opens, the sins of the people of the city of Nineveh have become so atrocious that the Lord can no longer tolerate them. If something does not change, He will have to destroy the city now rather than later. He commands the prophet Jonah to go there to speak out against the people's sins. But Jonah is unwilling to go.

"The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: 'Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before Me.' But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord." (Jonah 1:1-3) We don't know much about Jonah prior to his being commanded to speak to the heathen Gentiles of Nineveh. He was mentioned once before in the Bible, in 2 Kings 14:25, when we were told he had predicted that King Jeroboam II would restore the boundaries of Israel from Lebo Hamath to the Dead Sea. This passage states that the prediction came true "in accordance with the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, spoken through His servant Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath Hepher". So we see that, before the Lord sent him to prophesy against the Ninevites, He had been using him as a prophet to His people Israel.

Why does Jonah disobey the Lord? Is it because he feels speaking to sinful Gentiles is beneath him when instead he could be putting all his time toward urging his fellow Israelites to repent? Is he afraid of the Assyrians, who were well known throughout the ancient world for their atrocities against their fellow man? Is it because he thinks they will mock him, or imprison him, or torture him, or kill him? He knows he cannot expect them to welcome him with open arms; the prophet Nahum spoke out against the city of Nineveh, referring to it as "the city of blood" with bodies lying in the streets, also saying it was full of violence, lies, prostitution, sorcery, and witchcraft. (Nahum 3:1-4) This is not a city that any godly person would voluntarily choose to visit. Jonah, prophet of the Lord, does not want to visit it. 

I do think that he feels the people of Nineveh are not worthy of the Lord's concerns or his own efforts, and I do think that he's apprehensive about his own safety, but at the end of the short book of Jonah we will be provided with his primary motive in trying to run away. His reason for trying to get out of preaching to the people of Nineveh is because he does not want the Lord to forgive them! He couldn't know beforehand, of course, whether charging these people with their long lists of sins would cause them to repent, but he knows that if they do repent, the Lord will be "a gracious and compassionate God" toward them, as he states in Chapter 4. As we move on through the book we will discuss his prejudices against Gentiles in general and his outrage toward the Ninevites in particular. We will talk about why it offends his sense of justice that anyone there might escape the wrath of God. But for now he is trying to get as far away from Nineveh as possible. He cannot hide from the Lord, however. He will indeed go to Nineveh, but not in a manner he could ever have expected or predicted. He will speak the word of God to people he never imagined would take to heart what the God of Israel says. Souls will be saved because he ends up in a city he never wanted to step foot in or lay his eyes on. The Lord is merciful---even to the heathen sinners of Jonah's day---and Jonah is going to witness the miraculous saving power of a compassionate God.