Jonah

The book begins with the “word of the LORD” coming to Jonah. Assuming that the Jonah son of Amittai here is the same Jonah son of Amittai in 2 Kings 14:25, then this Jonah has heard the word of the Lord before. He is no child Samuel, hearing God speaking for the first time (1 Samuel 3:4–5). As a prophet, Jonah has some familiarity with God's words. He has at least once before heard God's words and served God obediently by speaking them to Israel. Furthermore, he would know from Israel's history, if not from personal experience that, comforting though God's words can be, they can also be weighty and arresting, and therefore not always welcome. Yet because they are God's words and because he is a prophet, Jonah is obliged to be obedient and to speak them as God directs.

It is perhaps worth pausing for reflection at this early point in the book of Jonah, as much of what people know and say of Jonah is due to his and God’s actions after verse one. Staying with verse 1, however, it is worth highlighting what is commendable about Jonah at this point of time in his interaction with God. Jonah is available to God. He does hear God. He knows that God is speaking. And he does understand what God is requesting. All those features of Jonah’s initial interaction with God are commendable. It is ever so easy to rush through verse 1, chasing the narrative and thus forgetting to pause and dwell on Jonah and the soundness and richness of this initial interaction with God. He was available to God, able to hear Him, able to know that He spoke. And, significantly, he was able to understand what God said. Jonah, at this point, illustrates faith in that “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” (Romans 10:17).

Yet remember, there are examples in Scripture where God speaks and people do not know that He is speaking. For example, Samuel hears the voice of God but thinks it is Eli who speaks (1 Samuel 3:4–5). God speaks to the Egyptian king via a dream, but the king needs Joseph to interpret to him what God is saying (Genesis 41). The resurrected Christ talks to two of his followers on the road to Emmaus, but they do not know until He breaks bread with them that the Son of God has been speaking to them (Luke 24:13–35). Yet here, Jonah hears, knows and understands that God speaks. And as we learn later in verse 2 of chapter 4, Jonah also has other confidences in God.

It is rare for most people to know with clarity and confidence the exact will of God in any particular situation. In that respect, Jonah is very different from most people in that he hears, knows and understands that God is speaking. That Jonah is enabled to hear, know and understand says much about the calibre of his relationship with God. How Jonah arrives at that confidence and facility in his relationship with God is not revealed by the text. How a person arrives at such a confidence is an entirely separate study of many other parts of scripture. Yet here in verse 1 of chapter 1 of the book of Jonah it is revealed that it is possible for a person to have such a confidence in recognising the instruction of God.

Another point to note about the opening verses of the book of Jonah is that we, as readers, are exposed to Jonah’s reaction to having heard God. Unfortunately, I would assert, this is not a common feature of the societies in which most of us might live. Our experience is more likely to be filled with people reacting to other people, their immediate environment, and their circumstances rather than primarily reacting to God. Hence, we are privileged to read and learn from a reaction to hearing God.

The story of Jonah mostly is known by the key aspects of his story. Many people link Jonah to his disobedience or his being swallowed by a sea creature. He is remembered as a noun in the dictionary: a Jonah. That is, a person regarded as bringing bad luck. Few people remember him at his beginning when there was no disobedience, when he was blessed in being enabled to hear God. We remember what happened to him, not what happened with him or in him or in spite of him.

Another reflection on the opening verses of the book of Jonah is to note that we, as readers, are given clarity over what God says. By contrast, in the book of Esther what God says is absent. The name of God is never mentioned in that book. Yet here in the book of Jonah we have the useful opportunity to hear (as Jonah heard) what God says. In addition, we subsequently have the opportunity to see what God does and learn why He does what He does. Furthermore, we have the opportunity to see reaction to what God says and does.

In the opening verses of Jonah, God instructs Jonah to go to Nineveh. However, Jonah does not — for reasons described shortly.

God's words are firstly to Jonah as His prophet and secondly to the city of Nineveh. For its time, Nineveh was a huge city with a long history. Back in Genesis we read of its founder Asshur (Genesis 10:11) and by Jonah's time the city had become a centre of the Assyrian empire. In Jonah 3:3 and Jonah 4:11 are other indicators of the city's size, the latter verse implying that the city had more than 120,000 young children (that is, those unable to distinguish between their right and left hands).

The current ruins of Nineveh stand not far from the modern city of Mosul (Al-Mawsil) in northern Iraq (see map 3) and are located midway from the borders of Syria and Iran. Nineveh was already an ancient and important royal city when Sennacherib (704–681 BC) designated it the imperial capital. Sennacherib enlarged the city from an area of approximately 150 hectares to an unprecedented 750 hectares by the time of its destruction in 612 BC (Stronach 1994).

Although located near the Tigris River, due to the size of its population, Nineveh was dependent on a sophisticated canal system built by Sennacherib. Over fifteen years he oversaw construction of canals that provided water to Nineveh and its surrounding areas for irrigated agriculture. Initially a thirteen kilometre canal, the Kisiri canal, was built behind Nineveh then the massive Northern and Khinis canal systems were constructed, the latter stretching almost one hundred kilometres, involving over fifty kilometres of excavated canals, and including at least one aqueduct requiring an estimated two million cut blocks (Wilkinson et al. 2005). Near Nineveh the main canal delivering water was up to twenty-two metres wide and two metres deep. At Nineveh, Sennacherib simulated the forests of the Amanus Mountains of Anatolia in a park just beyond the city wall, and he arrested the flow of the Khosr River to create a Babylonian marsh, complete with reeds and pigs (Jacobsen and Lloyd 1935). Like his predecessors, he filled Nineveh and the villages of its hinterland with the forcibly deported populations of conquered lands.

However, it was not the size, engineering or architectural splendour of Nineveh that brought response from God. It was the wickedness of its inhabitants. In the Old Testament, the word we translate as wicked is used in two senses. Firstly, it has a judicial meaning insofar as a person is judged wicked or righteous. Secondly, it has a behavioural meaning in that a person can do evil or be perverse or make mischief.