The Saving Of Jonah

    If the book of Jonah was about the saving of Nineveh, it would have ended after chapter 3. Chapter 3 tells of the greatest gospel meeting ever held, when the greatest city in the world  was brought to repentance from “the highest to the lowest. Jonah, however, doesn’t end with chapter 3, because as chapter 4 shows, the book of Jonah is really about is the saving of Jonah.

Most translations of 4:6 give the impression that God provided Jonah with shade to ease his discomfort from the hot desert sun. I think this is the wrong idea. Of the major translations, only the American Standard Version, I think, gets it right when it indicates that God put a shade over Jonah “to deliver him from his evil case.” (When I checked to see how Strong defines ra`, the Heb. word translated grief in the KJV, and misery or discomfort in others, the first three definitions, in order, are: evil, wickedness, wicked.) And what was Jonah’s evil? It was a proud, nationalistic, arrogant, elitist attitude shared by many in Israel It was an attitude that looked down its nose at the nations around, even when Israel descended into sins as bad or worse than those found in the nations around.

Jim Draper tells of a Sunday in Houston when he was scheduled to speak at a church in the city. Up early, he was the first one into the hotel restaurant that morning. Shortly after he was seated, in came a bum in ragged, dirty clothing, with stooped shoulders, hair yellowed by age and neglect, and reddened eyes set in a bony face. All he asked for was a glass of water, which he drank thirstily, and then he was gone. Draper’s thought was that this was some mother’s son, perhaps somebody’s daddy, who had reached the point where no one would care if tomorrow morning he didn’t rise to beg another glass of water. He writes: “Suddenly, a sermon emerged in my mind. I had planned to preach on another topic, but now I would speak about the love of God that includes a man like that. I was glorying in the love of God because I was assuming that it is hard for God to love such a man. I did this because I unconsciously presumed it was easy for God to love a man like me: adequately clothed, acceptable to my society, loved by family and friends—why wouldn’t I be more lovable than he? To be sure, I am a sinner but not a social outcast. . But then . . . I remembered that my kind of sin—pride, prejudice, envy, and greed—were the sins that crucified Jesus. The cross doesn’t mean that God loves even a man like that. The cross means that God loves even a man like me. Jonah was surprised and angry that God could love men like the Ninevites. The greater revelation of the book, however, is that God could love a man like Jonah.

Kenny Chumbley