Jonah #4: a tantrum of biblical proportions
Notes
Transcript
We’re in for a wild ride today! Have you been enjoying all of the little hyperlinks we’ve been finding over the way so far? I have! Today is going to be an absolute cacophony of hyperlinks, as just about the entire Hebrew bible explodes all over these 11 verses. But there are going to be lots of little threads tied together that we’ve been unpicking over the past few weeks. Don’t look so worried - it’s going to be fun. For me, at least. I promise I won’t go down TOO many wormholes.
So, we left last week with our God’s eye view of the situation - and how he had seen the Ninevites change of heart - and employed that sneaky little changeable work Hafak - instead of Nineveh being overthrown, he has instead changed it’s direction.
But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.
And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” And the Lord said, “Is it right for you to be angry?”
Wow - Jonah’s true motives are finally being revealed. We were able to make a pretty good assumption at the start of chapter one as to why he legged it to Tarshish instead of following God’s call to Nineveh - but now Jonah finally owns up to it. Or does he? Because either Jonah said more than what was recorded back in chapter one - or he’s now trying to cover his tracks. But at any rate, he’s furious because God has opted to show mercy.
He’s angry. He’s got the heat anger that we talked about last week - and do you remember what the Hebrew word for anger also means? Nostrils. Fun fact…. when we read that the Lord is slow to anger, it’s literally saying that the Lord is long of nostrils. It takes a long time for the anger to get to the end of the Lord’s nostrils.
OK. Dredging back in your memories - do you remember back in chapter one when the ship’s crew interrogated Jonah to work out who he was? Jonah responded
Jonah 1:9 (ESV)
“I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”
He describes his identity as nationality first - God second. Easy to miss when you’re reading through the sweeping drama at sea - but here it is in stark daylight. Jonah’s desire to see Israel’s hated archenemies destroyed trumps any possibility of rejoicing at God demonstrating his grace, mercy, and steadfast love first hand.
Jonah is so angry that he uses God’s own self-description as a slur, and would choose death over serving a God like that. Wow.
I’m being really restrained here, and I’ve neatly sidestepped about half a dozen hyperlinks here - but we just don’t have time to cover them. But, before I jump on to the next truly wild and bewildering section, here’s another poem by Thomas John Carlisle, entitled ‘Tantrum’
TANTRUM
The generosity of God
displeased Jonah exceedingly
and he slashed with angry prayer
at the graciousness of the Almighty.
“I told You so,” he screamed.
“I knew what You would do,
You dirty Forgiver.
You bless Your enemies
and show kindness to those
who despitefully use You.
I would rather die
than live in a world
with a God like You.
And don’t try to forgive me either.”
The booth
The booth
Jonah 4:5 (NRSV)
Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city.
Phew. Well, we left off last week hearing that God changed the city, instead of overthrowing it - but we were left wondering how or when the Ninevites learned of their salvation. Well, here we have a clue. Because it’s only now that Jonah leaves the city. He appears to have been silent after delivering his devastating five word sermon. But now he’s seen God’s mercy to others firsthand, and went out of the city, to set up a private little viewing spot, to watch hopefully for God to come round to his way of thinking and smite the city.
It’s time to dive in to what I think is the most crazy cool hyperlink in all of Jonah.
First of all though - do you remember back in the first sermon how I made the link between Jonah fleeing to Tarshish and him creating his own Eden?
The crazy hyperlink comes in verse 5. Does anyone want to take a punt as to what it might be?
Booth! Some translations have tent, or shelter - but the Hebrew word is sukkot. All the same thing. But what’s it hyperlinking to? The festival of booths! Or sukkot. The feast of sukkot is a seven day sabbath as an annual reminder of the exodus from Egypt. Here’s how it’s described in Leviticus: (Lev 23:40-42)
“And you will take for yourself…. from the fruit of the tree, a majestic one, branches of palm leaves, and a bough of a tree of leaf and poplars by a river, and you will rejoice before Yahweh your God for seven days…. in sukkot you will sit for seven days.”
Do you see it? The feast is a reminder of the gifts of Eden during the exodus. So many links back to Eden - fruit of the tree, the tree of life next to the river of life, creation is completed within seven days, God placed humanity in the garden….
But it gets better - in Deuteronomy you are told to invite “the immigrant and the orphan and the widow…. so that you will be joyful together” - and in Zechariah the feast of Sukkot is for “all the nations”.
So the shelter that Jonah is building is a direct link to the exodus - an Eden gift tent, for all people, and all the nations.
But, remind me, why did Jonah build the booth for himself?
He’s creating his own Eden, one for him to enjoy in isolation, hoping for the destruction of his enemies, of other nations.
OK, extremely quick recap of the Jonah story so far.
God calls Jonah to go to Nineveh, instead legs it to Tarshish to create his own Eden.
God sends a huge storm, Jonah gets thrown overboard, sailors come to know the LORD.
God has mercy on the sailors, and on Jonah through the big fish.
God calls Jonah again, this time he goes - but preaches a slightly twisted sermon.
God has mercy on the Ninevites.
God has not managed to really get Jonah’s attention so far - not in his first call, in the storm, in the whale, or even with the Ninevites.
In fact, Jonah absolutely spews out in anger at God, and builds his own twisted Eden tent.
How does God react?
The qiqayon
The qiqayon
Jonah 4:6 (NRSV)
The Lord God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush.
Jonah already had shelter from the booth he made, but God gave him a plant. We’re given two reasons why God provided a plant for Jonah - what are they?
to give shade over his head
to save him from his discomfort
Reading the NRSV translation might give you the impression they’re the same thing - God providing protection from the discomfort from the blazing sun. However a better translation would be (this is Robert Alter’s translation):
it rose up over Jonah to be a shade over his head to save him from his evil plight.
And what was Jonah’s evil plight in the tent?
To see if Nineveh would be destroyed like he hoped.
So how is this plant meant to save Jonah from this? I’m glad you asked. I’m going to turn to Jack Sasson to help me answer this. He writes:
This plant, marvellously rising above his head, is a sign of a new equilibrium between the two… from Jonah’s perspective the story can now end on a happy note: Nineveh and its fate are no longer central to Jonah; his difference with God is now resolved… Jonah has turned the issue into a personal, if not physical problem; now that he has come out from his deep funk
And how did this make Jonah feel? Very happy - which is a pretty tame translation - probably better as ‘very delighted’ or ‘rejoiced greatly’. This is the first time we’ve seen Jonah happy - but note that he’s happy about something that only benefits HIM.
Jonah has created his own false-Eden shelter to provide protection for himself - God provided a glimpse of the real thing. Now, we actually don’t know what kind of plant it is - the word used is qiqayon, and this is the only time it appears in scripture. There are all manner of attempts to identify the species, but the truth is, it doesn’t really matter. But let me show you something really cool about the word qiqayon.
Akkadian: kukkānītu - a garden plant
Because when you break down the word qiqayon into syllables, you find something quite neat.
Vomiting, he vomited Jonah.
Surely, surely, this is a direct and deliberate link back to Jonah being vomited out of the whale - another act of salvation.
Gross, but fascinating.
Let’s keep moving, so I can get that slide off the screen….
Jonah is happy. Yay! But from God’s perspective, this misguided prophet still needs an education on divine mercy.
But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered.
Jonah 4:8 (NRSV)
When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint.
We’re not actually told what happened to the booth that Jonah made, but it’s a pretty safe assumption that’s why God sent the east wind, and it got blown away.
I’m going to sidestep the hyperlinks we’ve got here about worms, withered bush, and wind (feel free to dig into these in your own time, but they’ll take you to Exodus, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Genesis, Jeremiah, and 1 Kings - I did say at the start that just about the entire Hebrew bible explodes in this chapter!). But there is a crucial hyperlink to explore here briefly, which lands one of the key themes of Jonah.
And that is the sun beating down on the head of Jonah. This phrase only appears twice elsewhere in the Hebrew bible - Isaiah 49:10 and Psalm 121:6. Both are relevant, but I’ll use Psalm 121 here.
Psalm 121:5–7 (NRSV)
The Lord is your keeper;
the Lord is your shade at your right hand. (no Jonah, not the booth you made)
The sun shall not strike you by day, (the sun is beating on you now Jonah!)
nor the moon by night.
The Lord will keep you from all evil; (God tried to do that for you Jonah!)
he will keep your life.
This closing chapter gives us a lived parable of how this works out. It points us away from turning to our own self-made worlds - our own Edens - and towards the strength and salvation that only the Lord can provide. This is such an important concept that we’re going to be digging into it in a variety of ways over the coming weeks.
But for now, back to Jonah. His beloved vomit plant and his sukot tent are gone. And he’s fuming.
Jonah 4:8–9 (NRSV)
He was faint and asked that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.”
But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.”
OK, we’re fully back into tantrum territory here! I’m going to neatly sidestep over another hyperlink - the repetition of die three times here is a big hint that it’s worth exploring…. it’s about self-sacrificing prophets, but over the past few weeks we’ve covered enough ground to see Jonah is an upside-down parable of a prophet.
God however, gets the last word.
Jonah 4:10–11 (NRSV)
Then the Lord said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than twelve ten thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”
The end.
We don’t know how Jonah reacted to this question. Did he continue his tantrum, or did he finally see God’s way of thinking and loving?
It’s such a strange ending, and there are as many theories about what it means as there are theologians. So what is the book of Jonah all about? This is my ten cents worth - and I suspect if you ask me in six months time I’ll have another answer - but that’s the beauty of scripture.
When you read Jonah as a parable - and particularly through the lens of all the Eden imagery - you’re left with the symphony of God’s heart - merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. But like we see in the feast of sukkot, we’re told here that this is for everyone. And it’s not just sinful Nineveh’s redemption that points to this. Did you notice when I read the verse on screen that I said the number a bit weirdly? I said twelve ten thousand, because that’s how the Hebrew text says it - even though there’s a perfectly normal way of saying it as a hundred and twenty thousand, and this is not it - in facts it’s the only time in scripture it’s worded this way.
The text is pointing you directly to the twelve tribes of Israel. Except these twelve ten thousand don’t know their right hand from their left. In other words, they’ve not received the knowledge of the Torah, or were given the gift of the promised land. Yet they are still loved as God’s image bearing creatures. God is limited only by his limitless love.
And this is the message of the book of Jonah as I see it - God’s love is for everyone, God’s mercy is for everyone (yes, Jonah, even those like you [and us] who rebel against him, and for all the nations, even those who don’t know him - even the false-Eden enabling sailors and evil Ninevites). God is steadfast, his character does not change. And throughout, as it weaves scripture from all of the bible together, we get another glimpse of God’s plan of drawing all things and all people together under the authority of Christ. As Paul writes in his letter to the Ephesians:
Ephesians 1:9–10 (NLT)
God has now revealed to us his mysterious will regarding Christ—which is to fulfill his own good plan. And this is the plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything in heaven and on earth.
Our ways are so often not God’s ways, no matter how hard we try to make God fit into the box we have created for him. The invitation and the challenge for each and every one of us, every single day, is to turn our eyes upon Jesus - to turn from the Edens we attempt to create for ourselves, to follow in his ways, and continue to strive to model our lives after him - the way we think, the way we act, but most importantly the way we love. This is so important, and part of God’s plan to draw all things back together - and we’ll be exploring this in a variety of ways over the coming weeks.
Thomas John Carlisle
COMING AROUND
And Jonah stalked
to his shaded seat
and waited for God
to come around
to his way of thinking.
And God is still waiting
for a host of Jonahs
in their comfortable houses
to come around
to His way of loving.