Jonah was a prophet in the 8th Century BC – well known enough to have access to King Jeroboam II, the king of Israel (see 2 Kings 14:24).

By Jonah’s time, the glory days of David and Solomon were long over. The kingdom had been split in two and Jonah was ministering among the larger, more apostate Northern Kingdom.

Jonah gets a shock and is told to preach to Israel’s bitter enemies: the cruel Assyrians. As the great power of the day, they were already oppressing Israel and extracting regular tribute. And they had a reputation of incredible cruelty to those they conquered.

Something Fishy
If you have ever been to Sunday School, you’ll know that Jonah runs. He gets caught in a supernatural storm, offering to sacrifice himself to stop the pagan sailors getting caught in his dispute with God. And then God sends the most unusual rescue vehicle – a great fish (no whale is ever mentioned!).

Despite all his faults and failures, Jonah ends up preaching to an imposing enemy capital, declaring God’s words to them – and he sees them respond. He’s honoured for this with a whole book of the Bible. A book that gives us a great insight into the inner turmoil and difficulty of following God. Jonah’s legacy is such that Jesus sees fit to reference him and then declare that “one greater than Jonah” is among them. What did Jesus mean?

Jesus is referring more to the stubbornness of the people in front of him than the character of Jonah. Jesus is effectively saying that Nineveh repented in response to Jonah’s preaching but the people in front of him are not.

And this is the crux of the Jonah story.

If we learn anything from Jonah, it’s that God is a compassionate God who cares deeply for people and that he expects his followers to do the same. Jonah was hard-hearted and rebellious and God pursued him until he had won his heart round. The people of Nineveh were rebellious and wicked and God sent Jonah to pursue them. When their hearts changed towards him, then God quickly released his mercy over them. In a turn of irony, its Jonah that ends the book off with a hard heart towards God, not the Ninevites. And what is God doing at the end of narrative? He’s doing what he does throughout the book – pursuing people with hard hearts to try and win them round.

Perhaps if Jonah had ‘guarded’ his heart and protected it from bitterness and other toxic poison, the Book of Jonah would have been written very differently. But then maybe it wouldn’t have been in the Bible.

We are grateful today that God show us his deep love for mankind through the book. And why shouldn’t he? It’s his very nature.

“The LORD is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love.” – Psalm 145:8

If you want to dive deeper with the book of Jonah, I’ve written a 30-Day devotional. In one month, at ten mins a day, you’ll read through the entire book. As well as an explanation of each verse, there is a suggested application and a guided prayer. Get it now from Amazon and develop a deep love for this moving book.

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The post What’s the Book of Jonah all about? appeared first on Andrew Butterworth.