The word from the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, 2"Get up, visit Nineveh, that wonderful city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you." 3So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, in accordance with the word from the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly huge city, a 3 days' walk across. 4Jonah started to go in to the city, going a day's walk. And he cried out, "Forty days a lot more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!"
5And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a quickly, and everybody, fantastic and compact, place on sackcloth. 6When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 7Then he had a proclamation created in Nineveh: "By the decree with the king and his nobles: No human becoming or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything at all. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. 8Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is certainly in their hands. 9Who knows? God may well relent and transform his thoughts; he may turn from his fierce anger, to ensure that we don't perish." 10When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil approaches, God changed his thoughts concerning the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.
When I decided that this week I'd preach on the book of Jonah I promptly began to think of fish stories that I could introduce my reflection with, as well as the only one I could assume of is one particular I worry I've currently talked about.
It issues a guy going fishing at his favourite spot by the river, but when he gets there he realises that he's forgotten his bait,how to increase height, but he notices a beautiful fat hunting tree frog sunning himself on a lily pad, so he decides to stalk the frog and capture it and use it for bait. And he's just about to grab the frog when he realises that there is a brown snake alongside him who also has his eyes on the frog, and just before he can do anything else, the snake has leapt forward and swallowed the frog entire!
Not considering what he was undertaking, but angry as hell in the snake, the guy leaps forward and grabs the snake about the throat and yanks the frog out of its mouth and drops the frog in his bait box. It really is then that it genuinely strikes him that he has an angry, snapping venomous snake in his hand that he cannot merely pat on the head and let go.
Thinking quickly, he grabs his hip-flask with his absolutely free hand (that is filled with whiskey), opens it, and pours a goodly quantity into the open mouth from the snake. The snake goes limp and the fisherman places it on the ground and walks away to acquire on with his day's fishing.
About twenty minutes later he feels a tapping at his shoe. He appears down and sees it really is the snake, with two more frogs!
It's not truly a brilliant joke, but what was much less brilliant seriously was my knee-jerk reaction towards the mention of Jonah - thinking that I necessary to come up using a fish story. I hear the word 'Jonah' I consider 'fish', which genuinely only reflects my historic failure to actually grasp what the book is about!
For the fish in the book of Jonah is only talked about in 3 on the forty-seven verses from the book, which is in itself a strong indication on the truth that the fish is a minor character within the drama, and hardly the central theme on the book!
I'm not going to beat myself up about this, as Jonah's under-water antics are indeed the only component with the prophet's profession which are generally remembered in our culture.
I nevertheless recall getting introduced to the story in the prophet as a kid by suggests of a image book that had an image of Jonah and his fishy friend on the front cover - a book that I seem to don't forget was entitled, "Jonah along with the Excellent Huge Fish!"
Moreover, the association of Jonah with his scaly buddy has so penetrated Western history that the pair lengthy ago became a part of a distinctively maritime lingua-franca! I've read, at the very least, that the term utilized by sailors with the under-water grave, "Davey Jones' Locker" does in truth go back for the book of Jonah!
Apparently there never was any well-known underwater character named 'Davey Jones' (the lead singer with the Monkeys included). The name is rather a bastardisation of the Western Indian words, 'Duffy Jonah' (meaning 'prophet Jonah'), which means that 'Davey Jones' Locker' is the truth is a different reference to the fish!
Even so, as I say, the Book of Jonah will not be really a book about fish (nor about whales for that matter [for people that feel a must point out that if Jonah had been swallowed by a whale, a whale isn't actually a fish, technically speaking]).
Let's just clear the deck (so to speak) of fish and whales - neither of that are truly substantial themes within the book of Jonah. But if the maritime adventure of Jonah just isn't the crucial theme of your book, what's it all about? That is definitely the query!
Personally, I stopped seeing Jonah as a fish story once I gave my life to Christ as a teenager and joined a youth group, for it was there that I learned that the book of Jonah was not actually a book about fish but was rather a book about priorities and about obedience, and concerning the importance of submitting ourselves towards the will of God, even when God's plans for our lives conflict with our own individual agendas.
God had a plan for Jonah's life. Jonah had other plans. Jonah had to discover that within the end it's God's will that has to become performed as an alternative to your personal. The book of Jonah, when observed from this perspective, can be a challenge to every single of us to submit ourselves towards the will of God, lest we come across ourselves thrown off a boat, drowning in the water, swallowed by an incredible fish, and spat out within the direction that submission towards the will of God would have initially taken us anyway.
We may refer to this interpretation of your Book of Jonah as the pious interpretation, and there is clearly loads of worth in this 'Thy might be done' application of this book, but in my view now, as an adult now, the pious interpretation of Jonah is as far removed from the central message of the book as is the maritime adventure theme!
In truth, I assume it truly is incredibly tricky for us Sydney-siders on the 21st Century to grasp the central message of your Book of Jonah for one particular really basic purpose: we just don't harbor any real hatred towards the Assyrians!
The Book of Jonah was written a extended time ago inside a culture far removed from our personal, along with the concern that upsets Jonah within the book as well as the situation that would have upset the majority of the original readers in the book was not merely that God had a program for Jonah's life (in some a common kind of way) but that God referred to as Jonah to prophesy in Nineveh, which was the capital of Assyria, and both Jonah along with the Book of Jonah's original readers hated Assyrians!
And the Jews did not just hate the Assyrians since they looked various either. They hated the Assyrians since the Assyrians had a history of killing them!
Assyria was once the world's most fearsome superpower! From the middle in the tenth century B.C. proper by means of to the end of your seventh, the Neo-Assyrian Empire dominated the Middle East, and, through the 8th century reign of Tiglath-Pileaser III most specifically, their empire was vast - covering all of what's modern-day Iraq and Syria, and covering enormous chunks of what is today Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, and, obviously, it covered all of Israel and Palestine!
And it was an Empire built on violence! That in itself is in no way exceptional, not surprisingly, as indeed all of the world's empires have already been built on violence, and but the stories in the savagery from the Assyrian armies do seem specifically horrible.
Nineveh's military machine was renowned for becoming sadistic. If enemies resisted surrender in the course of the siege of their city, once defeated, the complete population will be horribly mutilated and slaughtered. Their homes and towns could be torn down and burned, and the flayed skins of their corpses prominently displayed on stakes as a warning to others who may well have been considering resistance.
After their battles, public amusement will be supplied for the folks of Nineveh via a victory procession wherein enemy survivors had been led down the city streets by leashes attached to rings inserted via their lips,Top fat burning foods, using the vanquished nobles wearing the decapitated heads of their princes hanging around their necks. And all of this enjoyable was accompanied by music from bands of minstrels playing merry tunes! Oh, the people today of Nineveh knew how to delight in themselves!
And they enjoyed themselves like this for a lot more than 300 years! It ought to have seemed as if the arrogant might of Nineveh would in no way fade and that their power-hungry god, Assur, was unbeatable. The Assyrian war-machine enjoyed a lot of bloody victories over their enemies in these 300 plus years among the 934 and 609 B.C., but none was remembered within the Bible a lot more clearly and much more bitterly than the sacking of Samaria and the destruction of Northern Israel in 721.
The Jews didn't hate the Assyrians because they looked funny or ate strange foods or just did not make an work to mix in using the locals. They hated the Assyrians for far more apparent (and certainly far a lot more valid) causes.
They hated them since the Assyrians had destroyed much more than half of their country. They hated them because of the numerous variety of their kinsfolk who had been slaughtered, imprisoned, enslaved and/or humiliated by the Assyrians. And they hated the Assyrians for the reason that in 721 B.C. it seemed that their god, Assur, had been victorious over the God of Israel.
That day in 721 B.C. would forever be remembered by the people today of Israel, not just as a day of mourning, but as each day of national humiliation. Their individuals had been butchered, half their country destroyed, and their temples desecrated.
It was all accomplished by the Ninevites, and so Jonah hated the Ninevites as the readers of Jonah hated the Ninevites. And now God asks Jonah to go to Ninevah to preach towards the people there, and call on them to repent! And Jonah did not need to go there. Why would he? The only Jews that went to Ninevah were dragged there in chains!
And yet it really is not merely mainly because he hates their city and might well worry for his life in such a spot, but most of all for the reason that he feared that if he went to Ninevah, God could possibly use him to perform some thing great for the men and women of Ninevah, and in as substantially as Jonah could have feared that the people today of Nineveh could do him some evil, his far greater worry was that he (Jonah) could be for the men and women of Nineveh the instrument of some very good!
National hatred of an enemy race is often a terrible point, but anything we're all familiar with.
I remember getting told of a Jewish man plus a Chinese man who, amongst other individuals, are sitting at a bar, slowly drinking away the night. There were plenty of other folks perched amongst these two in the bar however the Jewish guy kept looking over at the Chinese guy using a surly expression on his face and was mumbling curses at him that got increasingly louder with each and every beer he consumed!
Eventually the Jewish guy gets up and walks over towards the Chinese guy and pours his beer over the poor guy's head! The Chinese guy says, "What's that for?" The Jewish guy says, "That's for Pearl Harbour! My uncle was killed at Pearl Harbour!" The Chinese guy says, "I'm Chinese. That was the Japanese, you fool!" The Jewish guy says, "Chinese, Japanese... what's the distinction?" and he returns to his stool.
Two minutes later the Chinese guy walks over to the Jewish guy and pours the contents of his beer over the Jewish guy's head. "What's that for?" asks the Jewish guy. The Chinese guy says, "That's for the Titanic! My grandfather died on the Titanic!" The Jewish guy says, "What's that got to perform with me?" The Chinese guy says, "Steinberg, Goldberg, iceberg... what is the difference?"
Humour could be an useful way of confronting racial prejudice. So can stories for instance we find in the Book of Jonah.
The Book of Jonah is usually a book that is written with a objective, and it's objective isn't to encourage us to submit ourselves for the will of God (as significant as that's) any extra than it really is to chronicle an ancient yarn concerning 'the one that got away!' It really is purpose is in truth summed up pretty succinctly inside the final verse on the book of Jonah (chapter 4, verse 11) which I'll read to you, but not just yet!
Before I do read it, I want to raise the question with you, really briefly, as to who may possibly have already been the original audience that the Book of Jonah was addressed to?
For the book is set inside the 8th century B.C., but most Biblical scholars assume that the book wasn't actually written till a great deal later - most most likely within the post-exilic period, late inside the 6th century.
If so, it is rather achievable that it was published at around the same time that Ezra and Nehemiah had been active in trying to rebuild the ancient city of Jerusalem - a city that had been lying in ruins due to the fact the Babylonians had destroyed it 50 years earlier.
And in case you are familiar together with the history of that time you are going to know that it was a time of great nationalistic fervour.
The Jews had been returning to their homeland and they had been rebuilding their ancient city and they were rebuilding their temple, and all of a sudden, for the very first time inside a wonderful numerous years, it felt superior to be a Jew once again!
And leaders like Ezra and Nehemiah did a terrific deal to encourage the patriotic fervour with the returning Jews and to acquire them excited once again about their city, about their religion and about their God.
And inside the procedure of undertaking that the concern of racial purity became a sticking point to get a lot of people today, and indeed both these leaders - Ezra and Nehemiah - became pretty upset more than the issue of inter-marriage among Jews and non-Jews.
Ezra indeed accused the men of mixing their 'holy seed' with all the people today with the lands (Ezra 9:two) and he encouraged massive numbers of Jewish males to divorce their foreign wives and to send them away, together with the children of their mixed marriages!
And I'm not saying that the Book of Jonah was written particularly as a response for the nationalistic 'reforms' of Ezra (even though lots of scholars have recommended precisely that) but I'm suggesting that at around the identical time all that was happening, a little bit tract was surely circulating that told a story of how God had known as certainly one of His prophets to minister in the land from the Assyrians, since the God of Israel loved and respected foreigners as well - even the people today of Nineveh!
In Jonah four:11 - the final verse from the Book of Jonah - God says to Jonah "And must I not spare Nineveh, that fantastic city, wherein are additional than a hundred and twenty thousand persons that can't discern their correct hand from their left, as well as considerably cattle?"
Jonah is really a outstanding book. Indeed, possibly the only issue more remarkable than the book itself could be the reality that our Jewish fathers and mothers, when it came time to put with each other the collection of books that have develop into known as our 'Old Testament' recognised that this book - the Book of Jonah - deserved to be included too, as among the inspired works of God!
It can be a book that strikes at the heart of just about every manifestation of religious nationalism, as indeed it's a book that confronts religious arrogance in all its forms, for it a book that reminds us that the God of Israel, the God with the faithful as well as the God of the upright, can also be the God in the Assyrian, from the unfaithful and from the not-so-upright too!
And that is why the Book of Jonah can be a book our world requirements to hear proper now.
As our political leaders and media beaver away at dehumanising Arabs and Iranians and Muslim persons in general, to prepare us for further bloodshed.
When becoming Christian has somehow once once again turn out to be related with being white!
And when refugees of all sorts are becoming treated with suspicion and contempt due to their strange foreign habits and strange foreign gods.
It's time to when once more hear the message of the Book of Jonah.
"And really should I not spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are additional than six score thousand persons that can't discern their correct hand from their left, as well as much cattle?" (Jonah 4:11)
