Jonah #3: back to square one

Jonah is reborn! He’s experienced a miracle firsthand! He’s been baptised! He’s a new man! Or is he? How will he respond to this new revelation from God?

Let’s get cracking! I’ll need your help for this one - can you all read the words in bold? Seems appropriate that we share the words of the Lord together given we’re all made in God’s image!

1 And the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time, saying,

2 "Get up, go to Nineveh the great city, and call out to it the call that I speak to you."

3 And Jonah got up and went to Nineveh according to the word of the LORD. And Nineveh was a great city of God's, a three days' walk across.

Does this sound familiar? It should! Because it’s incredibly similar to how chapter one started.

I used to love playing spot the difference games when I was a kid. So let’s play spot the difference now!

call out against it v call out to it

First hint that Jonah’s message to Nineveh isn’t going to be all about destruction.

Chapter one - legs it. Chapter three - on with it! God calls and on he goes. Miracle!

Now. In the first sermon I promised I’d point out some things about the narrative art of the book of Jonah. I’ve talked a fair bit about hyperlinks and repetition, but so far I’ve not talked about symmetry. So here we go, briefly.

There are many, many layers of symmetry. There’s the big picture symmetry - chapters 3 and 4 are thematic carbon copies of the first two chapters

But then there are many many examples of symmetry within verses. There have been a ton of them so far in the first two chapters - but here’s a quick peak at the symmetry in the first three verses we’ve just read.

Cool huh?

As an aside, have you noticed the hyperlink in verse three to a passage earlier in Jonah?

Three days journey - reminder of three days in the fish? For Jonah to walk into the city of horrors must have felt like being swallowed up by Doug again.

[Great city of God’s if needed - scholars debate - could just refer to the size of the city, or important to God, or even the multitude of gods the people of Nineveh worshipped)

OK. Onto the next verse. Jonah, are you ready?

4 And Jonah began to come into the city, one day's walk, and he called out and said, "Forty days more, and Nineveh is overthrown."

More storytelling fun here! Let’s start with the obvious hyperlink. What is it?

Forty days! Represents a time of trial or testing - think of the story of Noah, or Moses up the mountain - even Jesus in the wilderness!

But for me the more astonishing thing is what is missing from this verse. There are a few things actually - can anyone spot it?

No mention of God! World’s shortest sermon - only five words in Hebrew - powerful, but doesn’t point anywhere in the direction of God

We don’t hear what God actually tells Jonah to say! This is unusual. Common in the bible for the content of a prophetic message to be repeated - also what you find in Homer and in ancient Near Eastern epics.

Hold on to that - because from the outset we don’t actually know if Jonah delivered the message God gave him! We’ll come back to this in a bit.

Let’s keep going with the story.

5 And the people of Nineveh trusted God (that’s interesting eh, maybe Jonah said more than we were told?), and they called a fast and donned sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least.

6 And the word reached the king of Nineveh, and he rose from his throne and took off his mantle and covered himself in sackcloth and sat upon ashes.

7 And he had it proclaimed and he said in Nineveh: "By the authority of the king and his great men, man and beast, cattle and sheep, shall taste nothing. They shall not graze and they shall not drink water.

8 And man and beast shall cover themselves with sackcloth, and they shall call out to God with all their might, and every man of them shall turn back from his evil way and from the outrage to which they hold fast.

9 Who knows? Perhaps God will turn back and relent and turn back from His blazing wrath, and we shall not perish."

Thanks, unknown king. Did anyone else notice how similar the king sounded to the captain on the ship a few weeks ago? And I don’t mean just the fact that it was Paul again - but the way the king responds, like the captain, not knowing Yahweh the Lord, is cool, calm and collected. He’s improvising without a script and without knowledge of Yahweh and doing a pretty phenomenal job. But the difference here is that the captain could see the storm all around him, with his ship considering breaking apart - but all the King has to work on is a threat of a storm coming. But that doesn’t stop him from stepping into action for the sake of both himself and his people.

OK. Picture the scene (and I suspect some of us have seen or heard something similar in real life!) Someone walks into Wellington, stands at the the corner of Willis Street and Lambton Quay and bellows “Forty days more and Wellington is overthrown!” How do you think people would respond?

So, what’s the difference here then? Nineveh is a deeply corrupt and sinful city, yet Jonah’s message (well, the Lord’s message, really) spread like wildfire - suddenly everyone seems to have heard and believed it!

Everyone fasted and put on sackcloth - from the greatest to the least. Even the king!

Wearing sackcloth is an outward and visible way of showing repentance.

The fast the king calls for is extreme:

no food - that’s pretty normal!

but no water either. That’s next level.

It’s not just for people -

it’s for the animals as well.

And this is also where the comedy kicks in. Because in verse 7 we read:

“They shall not graze and they shall not drink water.” Just the animals, right? That’s not what seems to be implied!

But wait….

Man shall cover himself with sackcloth. OK, makes sense.

But the beasts too?!

And they shall call out to God with all their might? Again, the Hebrew suggests this is not just the humans - but the animals too!

The king is really not messing around. Every living creature is to take part in this act of repentance - fasting, wearing sackcloth, and crying out to God in the hope that God will turn from his blazing anger. Actually, a better translation is ‘burning anger’. Fun fact - the word for anger is also the word for nostrils - so you could also translate it ‘the burning of his nostrils’ - imagine someone snorting in fury!

10 And God saw their acts, that they had turned back from their evil way, and God relented from the evil that He said to do to them, and he did not do it.

Well, golly. Do you remember at the start of this series how I wished I could have a four month series on Jonah? This one verse would take at least two weeks. It’s so problematic, yet full of hope and mercy all at the same time. I’ll see if I can cover the basics in five minutes, instead of two whole sermons! Strap in.

Suddenly, we’re no longer in the middle of the dramas of Nineveh, and instead get a God’s eye view of the situation. God sees how they’ve changed their hearts, and reacts with mercy.

And this is THE question. Was this God’s plan all along, or did God change his mind?

Can you think of any times when God changed his mind in the bible?

Golden calf - one of the few places we hear of God relenting, or changing his mind. Definite hyperlink back to this story!

Exodus 32:11–14 “But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God and said, “O Lord, why does your anger burn against your people, whom you have brought out from the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘For evil he led them out to kill them in the mountains and to destroy them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your burning anger, and relent of this evil against your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel your servants, to whom you swore by yourself and told them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken about I will give to your descendants, and they will inherit it forever.’ ” Then the Lord relented over the evil that he had said he would do to his people.”

The interesting thing with the golden calf story is that we see Moses reminding God of his own character and steadfastness. I can’t help but wonder if God actually needed reminding of his own character…. or if it was a teachable moment for both Moses and his people. [similar moment in Jeremiah]

This story in Jonah is the complete opposite - Moses took the role of mediator - appealing to God to turn from his just anger and not to evil to the people. The irony here is that, unlike Moses, Jonah has not taken up the role of prophetic mediator - but the Ninevites repent all the same!

Now, I believe in the unfailing consistency of God’s character. Time and time again we see the nature of God, which he himself describes a few chapters after the golden calf story:

Exodus 34:6–7 “The Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” Yes, there is also the promise that the guilty will not go unpunished - but mercy and grace come first.

Let’s jump back to the Ninevites and look for some clues in the text to see if we can work out what’s going on. And I’ll be honest, there’s not much there until you REALLY start digging.

The first clue comes back in verse 3, where we read that Nineveh was a great city of God's. It’s a big city, but the text implies that it’s also a city that is important to God. Remember back in the first sermon where I said Jonah was being called to help restore the borders of Eden? Nineveh is an important part of that. But I also believe that the PEOPLE of Nineveh were important to God - even though they were undeniably sinful, they were still God’s children. With God, mercy and grace always come first - the fire and brimstone is a last resort.

But the big clue that smacks you around the head when you discover it is one that you’ll miss if you only read the bible in translation. I can’t read biblical Hebrew, but thankfully I’ve got access to some pretty remarkable bible study software, as well as the many wise commentators and theologians who do and can share their wisdom.

Part of the issue we face as we decipher this is that we’re never actually told what God told Jonah to tell the Ninevites. It’s a deliberately glaring omission.

But the message Jonah delivered was: "Forty days more, and Nineveh is overthrown."

The interesting word here is hafak. And it does mean overthrown - it’s used that way to describe Sodom and Gomorrah being overthrown.

But of the 94 times hafak appears in scripture, it’s only used in the context of overthrowing a city 12 times. The vast majority of the times it’s used to describe something changing. It’s different to the greek word Metanoia, but there are similarities. Most translations use the word ‘repent’ for metanoia (like in our gospel reading which we’ll hear later - repent and believe the gospel. But metanoia also carries a connotation of changing your mind, or the direction you’re travelling in. Anyway, I digress.

Here are just three examples of how hafak is used in different ways:

In Exodus 7 we hear God telling Moses to “take in your hand the staff that was (hafak) turned into a snake”

In Deuteronomy 23:5 we read that “the Lord... refused to listen to Balaam and (hafak) changed the curse to a blessing, for the LORD your God loves you.”

And in Psalm 30 David writes: “You have (hafak) turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy.”

Jonah pronounced that Nineveh would be hafak (overthrown). But that didn’t happen. We don’t know how or when the Ninevites realised this - but I can only imagine that their mourning was hafak (turned) into dancing as they took off their sackcloth.

So - is this what the Lord had in mind? Did Jonah hear what he wanted to hear? Or did Jonah deliberately change the message?

There’s little doubt that the Ninevites wouldn’t have respond in the way they had if Jonah hadn’t preached the destruction of the city - and that the King found hope in the possibility of God relenting - but I’m convinced there is more to it than that.

Jack Sasson writes:

We begin to wonder whether God’s great deeds at sea, below waters, and within Nineveh are but mere exhibits for a prophet’s education. All these modifications will be necessary because, to the last, the narrator needs to keep Jonah oblivious of the little games that Hebrew words can play.

And, because I can’t resist it, a quote from Philip Cary:

“We can almost hear the gracious and merciful God chuckling and saying to himself ‘OK Jonah, have it your way. You want to say Nineveh will be overturned! Well then, I will make sure Nineveh is overturned for you! I will surely turn them upside down, convert them and turn them into something altogether new.”

But the key takeaway for me is the character of God - merciful and gracious, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. But it’s also a huge challenge for us - because that is how we are called to live and to love - not just the people we find it easy to, but to everyone. We love because God loved us first - and God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Love your neighbour as yourself. And this will twist you and turn you as you pray for events around the world - events in our city - and events in your own families. God’s love is for everyone, as should ours be - not just for the people it’s most comfortable to love.

To close - here’s a poem from a collection called You! Jonah! by Thomas John Carlisle.

LIMITATION God changed His mind because they had changed their hearts. He repented because they repented. That is the way we word it sometimes. But always He is limited only by His limitless love.

God is limited only by His limitless love.

Amen.