Repentance and Joy (Jonah 4:5-11)
After Nineveh repents and receives mercy from God: Jonah runs out into the wilderness. He shelters himself under a plant (that he didn’t plant). He finally asks God for death in his despondency over the death of said plant. God for His part, communicates with Jonah. He asks Jonah the same question twice, as well as using nature to try to teach Jonah a lesson.
If any of this is sounding familiar, you aren’t wrong. Kevin J. Youngblood in his excellent commentary on Jonah points out that this is very similar to what happens to Elijah in 1 Kings 19. The same things happen there. Elijah runs into the wilderness and shelters under a tree. He is despondent of his life, and encounters God. God asks him the same thing twice and uses nature to show him truth.
In fact, the only substantive difference is in the motivation of our protagonist. Whereas Elijah is upset that he could not get Israel to repent, Jonah is mad that Nineveh did so. The very same mercy that Jonah has repeatedly received from God—for which he is thankful—is resented when it is given to people he thinks do not deserve it.
And the sad thing is that we see this same sort of religious myopia over and over again in Biblical and Christian history. It is no failure on the part of Jonah’s writer that the story ends without a resolution. We are supposed to ask ourselves how Jonah reacted to God in the end. We are supposed to ask ourselves how we react to God’s message as well.
And this is how the book of Jonah presents the overarching theme of the Bible, Old Testament as well as New. As people who recognize that all humanity is in rebellion and separated from God—and who enjoy the mercy and love of God that is wholly undeserved—we are to be agents of repentance in the world. We are supposed to rejoice whenever anyone discovers God’s mercy and grace. Whenever anyone turns from their rebellion and evil and embraces God’s gift of forgiveness. If we instead see ourselves as judges and people who mete out God’s message to those who are “worthy” we need to check our attitudes quickly. We have fallen into the same pattern of thought that Jonah had. It is the sort of thinking that characterized the Pharisees in Jesus’ day.
If any of this is sounding familiar, you aren’t wrong. Kevin J. Youngblood in his excellent commentary on Jonah points out that this is very similar to what happens to Elijah in 1 Kings 19. The same things happen there. Elijah runs into the wilderness and shelters under a tree. He is despondent of his life, and encounters God. God asks him the same thing twice and uses nature to show him truth.
In fact, the only substantive difference is in the motivation of our protagonist. Whereas Elijah is upset that he could not get Israel to repent, Jonah is mad that Nineveh did so. The very same mercy that Jonah has repeatedly received from God—for which he is thankful—is resented when it is given to people he thinks do not deserve it.
And the sad thing is that we see this same sort of religious myopia over and over again in Biblical and Christian history. It is no failure on the part of Jonah’s writer that the story ends without a resolution. We are supposed to ask ourselves how Jonah reacted to God in the end. We are supposed to ask ourselves how we react to God’s message as well.
And this is how the book of Jonah presents the overarching theme of the Bible, Old Testament as well as New. As people who recognize that all humanity is in rebellion and separated from God—and who enjoy the mercy and love of God that is wholly undeserved—we are to be agents of repentance in the world. We are supposed to rejoice whenever anyone discovers God’s mercy and grace. Whenever anyone turns from their rebellion and evil and embraces God’s gift of forgiveness. If we instead see ourselves as judges and people who mete out God’s message to those who are “worthy” we need to check our attitudes quickly. We have fallen into the same pattern of thought that Jonah had. It is the sort of thinking that characterized the Pharisees in Jesus’ day.
Comments
Post a Comment