Old Testament Study -

Jonah

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Just for this week, we are skipping ahead before beginning the book of Joshua to read about

Jonah

& the Ninevites, since the Rogation of the Ninevites, a 3-day fast period in the Church, is happening next week from Monday to Wednesday. For context, this is taking place about 700 years after where we left off with Deuteronomy, and the Israelites have been established as a country for about that same time, with LOTS of ups and downs!

  • Discussion Questions
  • Jonah 1

Who is Jonah?

He is a prophet from the Israelites. When we see something in the OT like “Now the word of the Lord came to so and so, in this caseJonah…” or “and the Lord spoke to so and so” or someone says “thus says the Lord”, it indicates they are a prophet, because the words of the Lord are coming to them. When we see a phrase like that, it also tells us “look, this person is a holy person of the Lord, but they do not speak from their own authority; they are inspired by God and His Spirit to say and do”.

Also know that a prophet is not someone that simply tells the future; a prophet can perform miracles by the strength of God, he often rebukes and scolds people because they are not following God’s law, and is also a teacher of God’s law.

What did God order Jonah to do, and why?

God ordered Jonah to “cry out” against Nineveh, meaning to deliver an urgent message against it, which was that it will be destroyed.

It was to be destroyed because of its wickedness, which had come up to God. This is a similar type of phrasing we heard when we read about Sodom & Gomorrah, which tells us that Nineveh was a city filled with evil.

Now history suggests, and the C.F. confirm, that this time around it was not necessarily sexual immorality that is what constituted the majority of the wickedness, but rather:

Violence and injustice, moral corruption and lawlessness, pride and cruelty, idolatry (worshipping pagan gods), and oppression of others

Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian empire, and as

V.2

says, “ a great city”, meaning large and powerful. These events took place around 782 and 753 B.C., at a time when the Assyrian Empire was a global superpower and very brutal and cruel in warfare, as well as internally corrupt in terms of politics. This is not the most powerful time period of the empire, but they were still strong. Additionally, they were very prideful, and fervent in their pagan worship.

So the cries that came up to God were from the cries of the oppressed, like we saw with the aforementioned Sod. & Gom. and the Israelites when they were slaves in Egypt.

Why did Jonah refuse to go, and how far did he try to flee?

Jonah refused to go for a couple reasons:

First, as Jonah will admit in the new chapters, he feared that his prophecy against Nineveh would be false, because he knew deep down that if the Assyrians repented, that God would not destroy them. So zealous for prophecy and perhaps a little prideful, he wanted to avoid that.

Second, which is the main reason and ties into the first, is that Jonah was a Jew, and very zealous for his own country, Israel. The Assyrian Empire was the biggest threat to Israel, both militarily and also because they were a pagan nation and very hostile to God. Knowing how powerful they were, and that they were getting stronger, he did not want to deliver the message to the Assyrians so that their capital city would be destroyed, with the thought that the rest of the empire would go with it, thus sparing Israel from a possible invasion.

Regarding how far he fled, see the map below.

Why did the sailors throw out cargo?

They threw out cargo because a lighter ship is easier to control in a storm.

These men were likely maritime (sea) traders, and probably Phoenicians based on the route, but either way, they had a lot of heavy cargo, so throwing it out

should

have made it easier to steer and brought it under control, especially if they were Phoenicians, who were masters at sea.

Why did throwing out the cargo not lighten the ship?

Because the only cargo whose weight mattered was still in the ship, and that was Jonah. He was the cargo, and his "burden" was his sin, which was disobedience to God.

That’s why when we sin, we feel burdened, heavy, and slow, like a ship with lots of cargo. That’s the weight of our sin beating down on us, and it all stems from disobedience to God.

That’s why throwing him out calmed the storm.

Why did God allow the casting of lots to point out Jonah?

God wanted to spare the pagan sailors in His mercy, and so as we have seen, He condescends to the weakness of humans in the fulfilment of His will. The human weakness here is that pagan men were compelled by a storm to seek by the source of their danger via casting lots.

What lesson did God teach Jonah via the sailors? Consider that they ignored Jonah at first when he said to throw him overboard to save themselves?

God’s divine economy, or plan, taught Jonah an additional lesson besides the obvious one, which is that you can’t flee from God.

God taught Jonah to be a lover of mankind. How?

These sailors, when they discovered who was responsible for the deadly storm, did not rush to throw him overboard, but instead tried to save him and row to shore, even though they were blameless and Jonah had all the fault. But Jonah, who had nothing personally done against him by the Ninevites, was hell-bent on convicting them and annihilating them. When God commanded him to go and, through preaching, summon them back to salvation, he disobeyed. But the sailors, who were not accountable to anyone, did all things and exerted themselves so that Jonah, who was guilty, should escape punishment.

So through this God teaches Jonah to expel his want for God’s judgement to strike down others, and thousands of years later, we ought to learn the same. As one C.F. puts it (roughly), “when you pray for God to judge others, know that He will judge you too. So instead pray for Him to have mercy on others, so that He will have mercy on you too”.

What swallowed Jonah?

A great fish! It does not say explicitly a whale; that’s just what has caught on. Biology says you cannot survive inside a large fish’s belly, like a whale’s, for 3 days,

but God is above biology.

Did God take away Jonah’s free will?

God corrects someone’s will, He does not abolish it

, and we will see why.

First, we establish that Jonah chose to flee, exercising his free-will. So now that he freely chose this, where can we see that he also freely chose to stop fleeing?

  • Going back to

V.9

, Jonah says “I am a Hebrew/servant; and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land”, so he confesses his fear for the Lord God, reminding us that this man is a prophet. To be a prophet, you already have to have a base level of acceptance of God’s will, and it means Jonah is not ignorant of who God is.

Then Jonah recognizes his own disobedience by telling the men that the storm is because of him and that they should throw him overboard.

What then confirms that Jonah has turned away from his original disobedience, or repented, is what happens in chapter 2, where Jonah prays from the belly of the fish, and we will read that now.

  • Jonah 2

CONTINUATION OF LAST QUESTION

So Jonah chooses to pray this prayer of repentance and regret to God, and acknowledges that God hears him, and that God will save him, and that leads us right into chapter 3, where Jonah again freely chooses to turn back from his disobedience and fulfill God’s will to go and preach in Nineveh.

So again, God corrected Jonah’s will by the happenings in the boat, and at no point did he harm Jonah nor force him to go to Nineveh. He reminded Jonah that no one can hide or escape from God, as we read in the

  • Psalm 139:8, (138:8),
  • and in

Jeremiah 23:24.

He also taught Jonah to be God-like and love all mankind via the example of the sailors.

So again, it’s important to stress that God does not interfere in our free-will, but He tries to correct it for our own sakes. It might be difficult for us at times to discern His will, either because our own plans or thoughts are clouding our judgement so much, or because we have fears/worries, or simply because we genuinely might have multiple paths that are good and are struggling to discern the best, but God will never force us, and that’s because He loves and leaves to our own choices. If we were to be forced by God, as we have discussed, then love could not truly exist between us and God, because love requires the free-will of both parties.

What does the Lord speaking to the fish to vomit Jonah show?

That God is the creator of all, and even irrational beings like animals are subject to His command. Nature is subject to God; that’s why Christ is able to command the sea to be calm in the Gospel.

  • Jonah 3

What is Jonah’s message to Nineveh?

That in 40 days (3 days in Orthodox Bible), Nineveh will be overthrown. Notice that he does not say that if they repent, they will be saved. But by God giving a 40-day period, it shows he is giving time for something, in this case repentance, and the Ninevites pick up on that fact.

How did the Ninevites react to Jonah’s proclamation?

They declared a fast in which no mand OR animal was to eat or drink (not drink for some time), everyone was to turn away from their evil and violence, wear sackcloth and put ashes on their head, and cry out to God.

Sackcloth fabric made of goat or camel hair, which made it coarse and uncomfortable, and is comparable to the material rice bags come in, and ashes were associated with the dead, both of which are used in mourning.

So even the mighty King did this, getting off his throne and putting off his comfy robe for the irksome sackcloth.

  • ON THE EFFICACY OF FASTING

So what do we learn from the Ninevites fast?

Fasting is a powerful AND necessary tool in repentance, and the way the Ninevites fasted is true fasting.

A powerful and evil city, filled with pagans who thought highly of themselves and lived lawless lives, who had no previous experience of God’s mercy, turned away His righteous wrath by fasting.

  • Their fasting was of a
  • broken spirit
  • Psalm 51:19 (50:19)
  • , a
  • humble will
  • James 4:6
  • , and of body-inflicting fasting,

Psalm 35:13 (34:13)

The King humbled himself by stepping off his throne and putting off his soft garment. So when we fast, we have to step off the throne of our pride and take off the soft garment of our worldly desires to humble ourselves and wear the uncomfortable sackcloth of abstaining from certain foods.

The Ninevites cried out mightily to God, so when we fast we have to be in frequent prayer to God, attending the Church services that are literally petitions and prayers to God.

The Ninevites said, “Who can tell if God will turn and relent…?”, so we too have to constantly recognize that God does not owe us forgiveness, but that we are in constant need of His mercies no matter how hard we fast.

Repentance is what pleases God and appeals to His compassion and pity, overruling His righteous judgement. When He sent Jonah to preach to the Ninevites, it’s as if God was saying “To prevent me from enacting my impending judgment, let my word go in advance and prevent my acting.” We have seen this several times now, like with Abraham pleading for Lot in Sod. & Gom., with Moses interceding for the Israelites a couple times, and now with Nineveh.

V. 10

explicitly states this, and reminds us that repentance is not just prayer, as “God saw their works” and turned away from His wrath. When we’re sorry for something, we have to show it, and fasting is showing that you’re sorry! You starve the body from food, it’s most basic desire as flesh. This is why fasting can and should also include abstaining from other desires, like from entertainment or social media, because it’s another form of denying your body’s desires, so that you can redirect them towards spiritual desire and time spent in prayer/Scripture/good deeds.

If our forefathers even made their animals fast, then we are obligated to at least fast the 3-day period that is coming the next week, and to come to the evening prayers to beseech God to have mercy on ourselves, on Christians, on our nation, and on the whole world. Fasting is powerful enough to, along with prayer, drive out demons, as Christ Himself taught us,

Mark 9:28-29.

  • Jonah 4

What does Jonah reveal in the first 3 verses?

That he suspected all along that God was aiming to show mercy on Nineveh. However, because Jonah went outside the city in

  • V.5

, it shows that he was unsure if God would still destroy them.

What does God mean when He says people who can’t discern their “right hand and their left”?

Those are babies and little children. Their parents made them fast too btw, even nursing babies as the Church teaches!

What was the point behind the plant/gourd?

As the text states; it was another way God was teaching Jonah to be compassionate towards mankind. Why should God not feel pity over Nineveh, full of babies and small children, if Jonah felt bad over the plant that withered?

  • This Week's Study
  • —Follow up on our
  • reading & study of the book

of

Jonah by listening to Fr. Genard's podcast episode on the Rogation of the Ninevites!