Jonah 4.2-Jonah Reveals His Motivation For Disobeying The Lord's Command To Go To Nineveh And Announce Judgment Against It
Wenstrom Bible Ministries
Pastor-Teacher Bill Wenstrom
Tuesday November 30, 2010
Jonah: Jonah 4:2-Jonah Reveals His Motivation For Disobeying The Lord’s Command To Go To Nineveh And Announce Judgment Against It
Lesson # 50
Please turn in your Bibles to Jonah 4:1.
This evening, we will note Jonah 4:2, which for the first time reveals Jonah’s motivation for disobeying the Lord’s command to go to Nineveh and announce judgment against its inhabitants.
Jonah 4:1, “But it greatly displeased Jonah and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the Lord and said, ‘Please Lord, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity. 3 Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life.’ 4 The Lord said, ‘Do you have good reason to be angry?’ 5 Then Jonah went out from the city and sat east of it. There he made a shelter for himself and sat under it in the shade until he could see what would happen in the city. 6 So the Lord God appointed a plant and it grew up over Jonah to be a shade over his head to deliver him from his discomfort. And Jonah was extremely happy about the plant. 7 But God appointed a worm when dawn came the next day and it attacked the plant and it withered. 8 When the sun came up God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah’s head so that he became faint and begged with all his soul to die, saying, ‘Death is better to me than life.’ 9 Then God said to Jonah, ‘Do you have good reason to be angry about the plant?’ And he said, ‘I have good reason to be angry, even to death.’ 10 Then the Lord said, ‘You had compassion on the plant for which you did not work and which you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and perished overnight. 11 Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?’” (NASU)
Let’s look at verse 2.
Jonah 4:2, “He prayed to the Lord and said, ‘Please Lord, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity.” (NASU)
“He prayed to the Lord and said” presents an action taken by Jonah that was the result of his considering it unjust of the Lord to not destroy Nineveh.
This statement indicates that Jonah’s prayer in which he voices his complaint to the Lord for sparing the lives of the Ninevites was the direct consequence of considering the Lord’s decision to relent as unjust.
This result clause is followed by an epexegetical clause that identifies the specific content of Jonah’s prayer.
“Please Lord, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country?” is a rhetorical question that serves as an indictment against God’s decision to spare the Ninevites and can be rendered as an emphatic declaration in the translation.
It indicates that prior to receiving orders from the Lord to go to Nineveh and announce judgment against its inhabitants, Jonah had the conviction that the Lord would spare the lives of the Ninevites when they believed in Him and repented of their evil way of living.
“Therefore” is composed of the preposition ʿǎl (עַל) (al) and the adverb kēn (כֵּן) (kane), which together establish a causal link between two clauses.
They introduce the clause “in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish” and link this clause with the clause “for I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity.”
Thus, Jonah is saying that he fled to Tarshish to prevent the Lord from sparing the lives of the Ninevites “because” he knew that the Lord was gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abundant in mercy and one who relents concerning judgment.
“In order to forestall” is composed of the first person singular piel active perfect form of the verb qā∙ḏǎm (קָדַם) (kaw-dam), which is used in a temporal sense and means “to do something previously.”
What Jonah did previously is identified for the reader by the verb bā∙rǎḥ, which means “flee, run away, escape, i.e. make linear movement away from something.”
Here in Jonah 4:2 as was the case in Jonah 1:3 and 10, the verb refers to Jonah “fleeing” to Tarshish to avoid going to the great city of Nineveh and announcing judgment against its inhabitants.
“Tarshish” was located in southern Spain, approximately 2,500 miles west of Joppa.
Jonah 4:2, “He prayed to the Lord and said, ‘Please Lord, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity.” (NASU)
“For I knew that” is composed of the conjunction kî (כִּי) (kee), “for” and the first person singular qal active perfect form of the verb yā∙ḏǎʿ (יָדַע) (yaw-dah), “I knew” and the conjunction kî (כִּי) (kee), “that.”
The conjunction kî is a marker of causation introducing an object clause that presents the reason why Jonah fled to Tarshish previously.
The verb yā∙ḏǎʿ means “to known by faith,” thus “to hold a conviction” regarding God’s character.
A “conviction” is a “strong persuasion or belief” (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition).
Here the verb yā∙ḏǎʿ refers to the conviction that Jonah possessing regarding the character of Yahweh.
“Gracious and compassionate” is composed of the masculine singular form of the adjective ḥǎn∙nûn (חַנּוּן) (khan-noon), “gracious” and the conjunction wa (וָ) (wa), “and” and the masculine singular form of the adjective rǎ∙ḥûm (רַחוּם) (rakh-oom), “compassionate.”
The adjective ḥǎn∙nûn means “gracious” and speaks of God’s grace policy and describes God as imparting unmerited blessings to sinners based upon the merits of the object of the sinner’s faith.
Grace is all that God is free to do in imparting unmerited blessings to those who trust in Jesus Christ as Savior based upon the merits of Christ and His death on the Cross.
It is God treating us in a manner that we don’t deserve and excludes any human works in order to acquire eternal salvation or blessing from God.
Grace means that God saved us and blessed us despite ourselves and not according to anything that we do but rather saved us and blessed us because of the merits of Christ and His work on the Cross.
It excludes any human merit in salvation and blessing (Eph. 2:8-9; Titus 3:5) and gives the Creator all the credit and the creature none.
The adjective rǎ∙ḥûm is used of God and means “merciful” in the sense that He is compassionate towards sinners and pardons them by withholding judgment when they believe in Son Jesus Christ.
The adjective ḥǎn∙nûn, “gracious” and the adjective rǎ∙ḥûm, “compassionate” both appear in Exodus 34:6-7.
“Slow to anger” is composed of the masculine singular construct form of the noun ʾā∙rēḵ (אָרֵךְ) (aw-rake), “slow to” and the masculine dual singular form of the noun ʾǎp̄ (אַף) (af), “anger.”
These two words describe God as giving the sinner every chance to avoid facing His righteous indignation and speaks of the fact that He delays in exercising it so that the sinner can turned to Him in faith.
God’s righteous indignation is His attitude toward any thought, word, or action of His moral rational creatures, whether mankind and angels, that is opposed to His holiness and manifests itself in actions that judge and punish the guilty.
God’s righteous indignation is the legitimate anger towards evil and sin since both are contrary to His holiness or perfect character and nature.
In fact, God’s righteous indignation expresses His holiness.
“Abundant in lovingkindness” is composed of the masculine singular construct form of the noun rǎḇ (רַב) (rab), “abundant in” and the masculine singular form of the noun ḥě∙sěḏ (חֶסֶד) (kheh-sed), “lovingkindness.”
The noun ḥě∙sěḏ means “unconditional love” describing God as loyal or faithful to His covenants with men and characterizes how God acts towards His covenant people Israel.
The noun rǎḇ means “transcendent,” which means “to go beyond ordinary limits of; overpass; exceed.”
These two words describe God as loyal or faithful to His covenants with men and characterize how God acts towards His covenant people Israel and that this love goes beyond ordinary limits of human love.
They describe God’s unconditional love as transcending the standards of human love so that God’s love is incomparable.
“One who relents concerning calamity” describes God as one who graciously does not act upon His decision to judge or condemn whether an individual, a group of individuals, or a nation in order that they might turn to Him in faith.
In this verse, Jonah’s motivation for disobeying the Lord’s command to go to Nineveh and announce judgment against its inhabitants is finally revealed.
Up to this point in the narrative, the narrator has withheld revealing Jonah’s motivation for disobeying the Lord’s command to go to Nineveh and announce judgment against its inhabitants for rhetorical effect.
He keeps the reader in suspense and to ultimately shock the reader.
Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh in order to prevent God from exercising His character towards the Ninevites, which the prophet knew would result in sparing the lives of the Ninevites, whom he hated.