(Jonah 2) – 5 December 2021
Neil Millar
After a chapter spent evading God, through whirlwind and wild waves, and three days in the dank, dark confines of a large fish, (the dark night of the soul) our dejected prophet seems suddenly to have found his voice. ‘On the third day, or so the story may be read, the silence is shattered by prayer’ (Millar 2009.152). Chapter two, verse 1, ‘Then Jonah prayed to YHWH his god from the insides of the lady-fish’.
According to Karl Barth, the great 20th century German theologian, ‘theological work can be undertaken and accomplished only amid great distress, which assails it on all sides… theological work does not merely begin with prayer and is not merely accompanied by it; in its totality it is peculiar and characteristic of theology that it can be performed only in the act of prayer’ (1963.148). If this is so, then Jonah is well situated. I mentioned last week thatbeing swallowed by this fish (though constricting) seemed somehow pregnant with possibility (Mathews 2020.209), and so it happens that in this watery ‘tomb’ / ‘womb’, words begin to form … Words of complaint, initially; words of prayer, nonetheless. Before Jonah can find peace, he must protest. And in this regard, he’s in good company, for the Psalms are brimming with such prayers. Indeed, almost every phrase of this prayer is drawn from the Psalter. He will gain insight, but after he releases his affliction. And, release it he does!! ‘Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice: You threw me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me … I am driven away from your sight. God, I’m drowning here and YOU did it! Note the accusation: You threw me, your waves and your billows. Jonah has defined himself as one who worships YHWH, and this is what it means to worship in situations like this: speaking freely and forthrightly. ‘This is serious spiritual work’, Anstey writes: ‘demanding, argumentative, unmasking work’ (2009.40). Have you ever prayed like Jonah did here? Prayer as lament; it’s not how we’ve been taught to pray but it is part of our tradition. A scripturally honoured aspect of our healing and growth. When the silence of Jonah’s confinement is broken it is shattered by complaint, lament.
And then, in the midst, as if from nowhere, a flicker of light (missed in our English translation): ‘Yet, will I again look upon your holy temple’.[1] Where did that come from; such a contrast? The temple was the earthly focus of God’s glory. Symbolically, to look on the temple is to orient oneself in God’s direction (like facing Mecca). What a change! Could this be the first sign of a dawning (of advent) in Jonah? I wonder.
If the troubled waters did part, it wasn’t for long. In the very next verse, he’s back in the swamp, back to lamenting; though notably now, less accusingly: ‘The waters closed in over me, the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains, I went down; the underworld with its bars is around me forever.’ It’s a deathly descent he describes. Down, down, down he goes, into the place of the dead. It sounds like the end. And, then it happens again! Stronger this time. The dawning of hope, and faith. And again, seemingly from nowhere. And this is a pattern in prayers and psalms of lament. They plummet like a stone, and then at some point, in the midst of dismay; a change of perspective.
And, so it is with Jonah. What starts in accusation, ends in faith, with a pledge of obedience: ‘But you brought up from the pit, my life / YHWH my god. As my breath was weakening over me/ YHWH, I remembered. And my prayer came to you/ to your holy temple. The ones paying regard to idols of worthlessness// Their kindness they will forsake. But I myself with a voice of praise / I wish to sacrifice to you. That which I vow I wish to fulfil / Deliverance to YHWH!’ This sounds like a radical change; like repentance! And in the story, the effect is dramatic. ‘And YHWH spoke to the fish and it vomited Jonah out onto dry land.’
You’ve got to love this story! All that struggle, and then this!! Imagine the Jewish kids hearing this in the synagogue – Urr! Yuk! Gross!!! Imagine the headline in the Jerusalem Post!! THROWN UP! Love of God revealed as prophet gets spewed on beach.
And so, we begin again. Chapter three, verse one: And the word of YHWH happened to Jonah a second time, saying: ‘Get up, journey to Nineveh the great city and call out to her the warning call which I am speaking to you.’ The call hasn’t changed, so what about Jonah? How does his anguished experience of rebellion and ‘recapture’, of being ‘hurled’ hither and thither shape his response?
Verse three: ‘And Jonah got up and journeyed to Nineveh according to the word of YHWH.’ It sounds promising. Last time his movement was all down and away, this time he at least starts in the right direction.
‘And Nineveh was a great city to God, a journey of three days. And Jonah began to go into the city, a journey of one day, and he called out and said, ‘Yet forty days and Nineveh is overturned.’
In stark contrast to the dimensions of Nineveh, Jonah’s message is ‘famously brief’ (Mathews 213). There’s no mention of God, no call to repentance, just a blunt pronouncement – ‘Yet forty day and-Nineveh overturned’ (5 words in Hebrew). And we wonder, does this suggest some reticence on Jonah’s part, or is it a sign of great gifting and authority; that these five words are enough? It’s ambiguous, but there’s no mistaking the response.
As the chapter unfolds, it’s clear that Nineveh is indeed overturned – ‘not in destruction but in extravagant repentance’ (Mathews 213). ‘And the people of Nineveh believed God and they called for a fast, and they put on sackcloths, from the greatest to the smallest of them.’ Even the king, the most powerful man in the world at that time, ‘got up from his throne’ ‘removed his robe’, ‘covered himself with sackcloth’, and ‘sat on the ash-heap’. He commands the whole community to fast and pray, including the animals (‘the herd and the flock’); and ‘turn back’, ‘each one from his bad way, and from the violence that is in his hands’. ‘Who knows?’ he says. ‘God may turn and relent’ and ‘we will not perish’. And, so it happens. Says the narrator: ‘And God saw their deeds, because they turned from their bad way; and God relented from the bad that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.’
I don’t know about you, but to me, that such a brief (dare I say, stingy) message should ignite such widespread and wholehearted repentance in Nineveh seems implausible, as do other elements of this story. It sounds exaggerated, and I think it’s meant to, because ultimately this story isn’t about the badness of the Ninevites or the completeness of their repentance, as striking as it is. It’s about the goodness of God; it’s about the reach, the range, the scope, the span, the extent, the extravagance, the consistency, the coverage, the magnitude of God’s grace; the wideness and patience of God’s love – for Nineveh, for Jonah, for Israel and ISIS, for creation and all the animals (land and sea), and for us. It’s about the steadfastness of God’s kindness, compassion, and mercy, in Hebrew – hesed. The word occurs at least 25o times in the Old Testament, and its sense pervades this story.
It’s not that who and how we are doesn’t matter to God; it does! Injustice, in any form, place and time, is a stench, an offence to God. We are called to turn back, ‘each one’ ‘from the violence that is in his or her hands’. How we treat each other and this world matters deeply, and, let’s face it, we’ve all fallen short. And still God cares.
Steadfast love is the fundamental characteristic of God, and Jonah, like most of God’s people, has great difficulty accepting it. Not in regard to himself and his tribe, he happily accepts that. It’s love extended to his enemies, to those despicable Ninevite’s, for example, that so incenses him. It’s why he ran from God in the first chapter, and why, as we’ll see, this story is not finished. But that’s for next week. For now, let’s just let this shocking truth sit there – that God loves and desires to show mercy even to our enemies, to those who in our view do not deserve it, have not earnt it, should not receive it. The steadfast love of God … it just is; always dawning – coming.
‘By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace’ (Luke 1:78-79). Amen.
References
Matthew Anstey (2009) ‘Becoming a Public Theologian: Jonah’s Journey to Nineveh’, St Mark’s Review, No. 207 (1).
Karl Barth (1963) Evangelical Theology: An Introduction, trans. Grover Foley, Collins, London.
Jeanette Mathews (202o) Prophets as Performers, Cascade Books, Eugene, OR.
Neil Millar (2009) ‘The necessity of personal and pastoral reflection’, in Tom Frame (ed) Called to Minister, Barton Books, Canberra.
[1] In the text of this reflection, I again draw heavily on Jeanette Mathew’s (2020) translation of Jonah.