God Behind the Scenes

INTRODUCTION

For the past four months we’ve been talking about the biblical doctrine of eschatology because it’s naturally been on the minds of lots of people in light of the events that have been occurring over the past few years:

Global pandemic

Social and political unrest

War in Europe…with increasing risk of tactical nuclear weapons

The world is becoming increasingly unstable. These global issues I just listed have then led to other global issues:

Supply shortages

Monetary inflation

High gas prices

Risk of recession

We could then add to all of this the perennial issues we’ve seen growing and intensifying over the past quarter century—the culture’s embrace of the LGBTQI+ movement, the rise of progressive ideology. All of this makes total sense why eschatology is on the minds of biblically-literate, thinking Christians.

In other words, the pressure is ramping up on people, and if it’s being noticed by people inside the church, then you can be sure that it is having an impact on people outside the church.

The Book of Jonah

It’s that dynamic that takes us to the book of Jonah. Jonah is a book that is very well-known—perhaps too well known. It’s counted among the most familiar of children’s Bible stories—the prophet who ran away from God and was swallowed by a big fish.

But Jonah is anything but a children’s story. It’s a deep, complex, and thought-provoking narrative about a man who was supposed to represent God, speak for God, and share God’s heart for the nations, but instead did the opposite.

Really, the book of Jonah tells the real-life story of a man—Jonah, the son of Amattai, who refused to bring God’s warning of judgment to the city of Nineveh until he was compelled to do so by divine force.

Yet even after he relented and did what the Lord commanded him to do, he remained willfully obstinate. He had been the recipient of divine grace and mercy, and he was happy to enjoy God’s compassion on him. But in the end, he was unwilling to rejoice when God showed compassion on Nineveh.

And in a larger sense, Jonah the man is really an individual who represents the entire nation he represented. Like Jonah, Israel had experienced God’s compassion throughout her history. And they rejoiced when God showed them compassion and favor and grace. But they harbored an attitude of nationalistic isolationism—Israel, like Jonah, didn’t want to see any other nation benefit from God’s grace.

That’s the overarching message of the book of Jonah—it was written to correct Israel’s faulty thinking. One man’s real-life experience became a lesson for the entire nation who was guilty of the same sentiments towards the nations as Jonah had.

This Message

Now, there’s a lot we could unpack there, and it would be good for us to do that at some point in the future. But this message isn’t really focused on the message of Jonah. Instead, I want to try to answer a question that the text sort of brings up but doesn’t develop or address.

We read in Jonah 3 that after his initial disobedience and experience with the great fish, Jonah finally does travel to Nineveh and issues a proclamation from the Lord: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” (3:4).

What we read next is really fascinating. It saws in verse 5, “And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.”

Then in verse 6, we see the official response from the king of Nineveh: “He arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.” Then in verse 7, the king makes an official decree to the entire city calling for a total fast for every person and every animal. He then calls the city to engage in formal mourning rites and earnest prayers with the hope that God just might have compassion on them.

The chapter concludes with this statement: “When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he said he would do to them, and he did not do it” (Jon. 3:10).

Now perhaps up to this point you’ve read about Nineveh’s acceptance and accepted with the same level of matter-of-factness as the text present it. There’s no attempt on the author’s part to give any more data or any further rational for Nineveh’s repentance other than the simple fact that it happened. The book, after all, isn’t really about their repentance—that’s just a circumstance around Jonah’s disobedience and the lesson the writer wants to give his readers.

The Big Question

But there still is an underlying queston that remains—how is it that a city as notorious for its evil as Nineveh was respond the way it did and suddenly repent after hearing the warnings of some foreign prophet from Israel?

That’s the question I want to answer here—why did Nineveh repent? And is there any lesson for us that we can learn about it?

Historical Background

The city of Nineveh is an incredibly ancient place. Its roots go back 7,000 years according to the most recent archaeological evidence. The first time Nineveh is mentioned in the Bible is in Genesis 10:11–12 as one of several cities build by Nimrod as he traveled from the land of Shinar in Babylonia.

By the time Jonah near the end of the 8th century B.C., Nineveh was one of several major cities that made up the mighty and ferocious Assyrian empire. Eventually it would become the capital of Assyria in the days of Sennacherib.

Now, Jonah lived during the reign of Jeroboam II, who was the king of the northern kingdom of Israel from 793–758 B.C. We read about that in 2 Kings 14:23–25. By this time in history, Nineveh’s reputation and renown was wide-spread. In fact, three times in the book of Jonah, the city is called “the great city,” which is a description only used of two other cities in the Old Testament, Gibeon (Josh. 10:2) and Jerusalem (Jer. 22:8).

Nineveh was an important city in the ancient world. And according to Jonah 3:3, it was “an exceedingly great city,” which literally in the Hebrew reads, “a great city before God,” which speaks of its importance as well as its size. It’s described as “a journey of three days,” which could either refer to the size of the city when you include all of the surrounding villages and suburbs, or it could refer to the amount of time it took for someone to travel to the city, do business, and then return home.

Either way, this city was large and it was important. In 4:11, God speaks of the city as containing a population of “120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left hand and also much cattle,” which could refer to the entire population of the city as those who have not been exposed to the law, or it could be understood to referring to the children of the city, in which case the total population could push upwards to 600,000 people.

Transition

Now, if we’re going to understand what led such a large and significant city as Nineveh to respond the way they did to Jonah, we need to understand some of the things going on in the background behind the events that we read about in the Jonah narrative.

As it turns out, right around the time of the prophet Jonah entered into a period of decline and diminished strength. We could even draw a very similar comparison to the economic and social decline we’re experiencing in our country right now.

For northern Israel, this decline was good news. It meant the pressure was off, and it allowed Jeroboam II to enjoy a relatively long reign and expand the national borders out with little to no pushback.

But for Assyria in general and Nineveh in particular, things were not looking good. There were actually several things that happened over the years leading up to Jonah’s arrival in the city that all accumulated to bring Nineveh to just the right spiritual posture to hear and respond when Jonah entered the city and proclaimed his fateful message from God.

1. Famine

The first thing that happened was the onset of famine in the land of Assyria. According to Assyrian historical records, at least one famine if not several hit that region beginning in 765 B.C. and extending to 759 B.C. That’s seven years of famine. Those dates, by the way, overlap with the reign of Jeroboam II and with Jonah’s ministry.

Now, we don’t really know what it’s like to live in true famine conditions, and I doubt there are very many people alive today who lived through the desperation and bread lines of the 1920s in the midst of the Great Depression.

When you go to the grocery store, we’re see mostly stocked shelves. Sure, prices have risen on a lot of items, but there’s no way we could compare our situation today with the kind of fear and desperation that comes during a time of real famine. But there’s one aisle in the grocery store that’s bare right now—the aisle with baby formula. Now, that may not affect most of us, but if you’re a mom and you need formula to feed your baby, this is a real and present concern for you and your family.

And because we live in a largely secularized society—a modernist society—most people would explain something like famine, or in our case a baby formula shortage, in purely economic and environmental terms. It’s just a product of supply shortage and poor regulatory policies.

But in Jonah’s time, in a highly religious setting like that of Nineveh, famine was considered to be a sign of divine displeasure. That’s not how most people interpret the world these days, but it was embedded into the Ancient Near Eastern worldview. Undoubtedly, a seven-year famine would get people thinking about what was wrong with the nation and with the king and his people that the gods would bring this circumstance upon them.

2. Earthquake

By itself, a famine in Assyria may or may not have elicited a kind of national response of dread and disaster, but that wasn’t the only thing going on in Nineveh. Sometime during this period of time, a massive earthquake shook the land. The book of Amos orients the prophecies of that book around that earthquake which occurred during the reign of Uzziah in the south and, of all times, Jeroboam II in the north.

This must have been an earthquake of considerable magnitude. It was memorable enough in the minds of Israel that over almost 300 years later, the prophet Zechariah referenced that earthquake as the only natural phenomena comparable to what it will be like when Messiah’s feet land on the Mount of Olives and splits the mountain in two (Zech. 14:4–5). In fact, some scholars believe that when Isaiah had his vision of the Lord seated on the throne in Isaiah 6, when he says the foundations of the threshold of the temple shook, he was referring to the earthquake that happened.

All that to say, earthquakes were significant events in the Ancient Near East, as they are today. How many of us remember the earthquake that hit just a few years ago on November 30th, 2018? There may be even a few of you here that remember back to the famous ’64 earthquake.

Well, once again, just like famine, we might be quick to explain away earthquakes in terms of geological activity—tectonic plates sliding against one another and causing ripples in the earth’s crust.

But in the Ancient Near East, they viewed these things in distinctly spiritual and religious terms. They would have seen this earthquake as the result of divine wrath.

In one Assyrian text, it says, “When the god of Adod is angry, the earth trembles.” Another text reads, “When you, O god, march, heaven and earth quake.”

What’s interesting is that these Assyrian texts go on to prescribe the specific kind of response to take so that, in the words of the text, “the gods will cause it to pass away.”

In the OT as well, earthquakes are seen as portents of divine judgment. Haggai 2:5 and 7 talk about the Lord causing an earthquake that will shake all the nations and overthrow thrones and kingdoms. Jesus, when he was giving his sermon about the things to come in the future before the coming of the messianic kingdom, talks about nation rising against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, “and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places” (Matt 24:7).

So this interpretation of natural phenomena like an earthquake is baked into the religious worldview of these people, including the people of Nineveh.

3. Total Solar Eclipse

But perhaps the most significant event that took place in the few years leading up to the time when Jonah would have preached is message—more than famine or an earthquake—was that there was a complete eclipse of the sun that happened.

Now, how do we know that? Well, for a couple of reasons. For one, Ancient Near Eastern peoples had been making astronomical observations going back to at least 1,000 B.C., but probably even further back than that. Both the old Babylonians as well as the Assyrians were keen observers of the sky and they recorded their observations and linked them with events that happened in their empires.

Solar eclipses, though, were especially significant. Solar eclipses are rare events. You may go a lifetime without seeing a solar eclipse occur, so when something as rare and mystifying as the sun being blotted out of the sky seemingly inexplicably in the middle of the day and the eerie darkness and hush that comes over the land and the animals, you can imagine that this kind of event was not only recorded in the historical records, but it was also infused with religious significance.

The Assyrians viewed a solar eclipse as a special warning for the entire nation, and in particular for the royal family. It meant that something bad was going to happen, that the nation was going to suffer disaster, or the king was going to be overthrown.

Now, as it turns out, the Assyrians recorded in one of their historical records the occurrence of a total eclipse of the sun that occurred during the 10th year of the reign of Assur-Dan III, the very king that was reigning in Assyria at the same time as Jeroboam II reigned in northern Israel and when Jonah would have been ministering as a prophet.

And what’s amazing is that because of our understanding of astronomy today, we can actually calculate the exact day on which this solar eclipse occurred—June 15th, 763 B.C. That’s right during the reign of Jeroboam II and the time of Jonah. It’s actually the earliest fixed date we have for Assyrian history.

So we know that solar eclipses carried special significance to Ancient Near Eastern peoples and that they saw them as warnings of imminent disaster and national overthrow. And we know that an eclipse occurred during the time of Jonah’s prophetic ministry and in close proximity to a famine and an earthquake.

But what is more interesting is what these Assyrian omen texts predicted about these what these eclipses meant. Statements include things like, “The king will be deposed and killed and a worthless fellow seize the throne.” Another reads, “The king will die, rain from heaven will flood the land, there will be famine.” Another says, “A deity will strike the king and fire will consume the land.”

When you put all of these pieces together, it paints a pretty clear picture of the spiritual awakening that was probably happening in Nineveh. One Old Testament scholar wrote this about the kind of national response called for in Assyrian omen texts during a solar eclipse:

“A total eclipse is to be a time of solemn fasting when the king hands over the throne to a substitute king until the danger passes. . . . All prognostications in the Assyrian texts telling of solar eclipses specify their effect on the king, animals and the land, as does Jonah (3:7-8), which also specifies that the king stepped down from the throne and laid aside his royal robes” (Wiseman, 47).

4. Rebellions

And then, to cap it all off, after all that—the famines, the earthquake, and the solar eclipse—we can tack on one last thing to this: rebellions and uprisings began to break out in various cities across the Assyrian empire. These were probably a direct result of attitude of the people because of all these other things. So the empire developed political and social instability which just added fuel to the fire.

Application

So after we consider everything that was happening in the nation leading up to when Jonah arrived in Nineveh and what the people would understand it to mean, it begins to bring some new clarity when we read the text.

We read in the narrative account, “Jonah arose and went to Nineveh…and called out, ‘Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown!’” (3:2, 4). We read that “the people of Nineveh believed God” and “called for a fast and put on sackcloth” (3:5). We read that the king of Nineveh arose from this throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes” (3:6). We read that he issued a royal proclamation that said, ‘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 of his hands. Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish” (3:7–9).

When we read all that in light of what was going behind the narrative, it becomes perfect clear that this was not a knee-jerk reaction. They didn’t just ‘out-of-the-blue’ decide to listen to a foreign prophet that came wandering into town.

They had been prepared for this. Their hearts had been primed and groomed in the months and years leading up to this moment. They were hearing the final culmination of work that had been going on behind the scenes in the people of Nineveh so that when the message finally came, it fell on ears that were desperate for a message from God. They knewthat something was wrong—wrong with them, wrong with their king, wrong with their people.

And how did they know? God had been working. Working in the background. Working through providence. Working through natural processes. Working even within the very worldview they had so that they would be spiritually sensitive to the message of the prophet.

There’s an exhortation to all of us in this. You have no idea what God has been doing in the background, preparing a person to hear his Word. You don’t know what kind to spade work might have been going on in someone’s life, where God is preparing a heart to be fertile ground for the seed of the gospel.

How many times have you wanted to share your faith with someone, but you stopped short because you were just too afraid that if you said the wrong thing, or weren’t able to answer a question well enough, you’d turn them away. How many times have you felt like a person’s salvation really is riding all on your shoulders?

You see, we kind of have the opposite problem that Jonah had. Jonah wasn’t afraid to share the message. He wasn’t afraid that maybe the Ninevites wouldn’t believe. In fact, I think he probably had a fare amount of confidence that they would believe. But he didn’t want that. Because he knew that if they did believe and repent of their evil, God would show them mercy, and he didn’t want God to show them mercy.

We on the other hand—we want people to believe. But I think we have a tendency to convince ourselves that its on us to make it happen.

Listen, you have no idea what might be going on in the background of a person’s life. That young mom that you talk to at the playground…you have no idea whether she’s scared about where she’s going to get formula to feed her baby because she can’t produce enough milk on her own.

That neighbor across the street…you have no idea that for the last two years they’ve been terrified of getting sick. That guy you talk to at the gym every once in a while…you have no idea that his small business is tanking because of the economy and he’s going to have to close it down.

But you don’t have to know these things. You just have to be ready and available to share the message when you see an opportunity. And what this means is that the pressure is off.