JONAH 3

                                                                  Structure of Jonah 3

1. "According to the word of the LORD" (3:3)

2. "Nineveh shall be overthrown" (3:4)

3. The People's Response (3:5) fasting and sackcloth of people

4. The King's Response (3:6) sackcloth and ashes

3'. The Royal Decree (3:7-8) fasting and sackcloth of people

2'. Possibility of Nineveh surviving (3:9)

1'. According to the mercy of the LORD (3:10)

Jonah 3:1-2

3:1-2 Note the small change in God's command compared to 1:2. Jonah is now to call to Nineveh. This is even harder for Jonah to stomach.

3:2 Literally “great to God.” It may mean it is great only because God favored it, or even in God's eyes it was great, or see the last verses of book.

Jonah 3:3-5

3:3a Literally “went down.” This is the same wording for Jonah going down into the ship, water and fish. There is a continuing movement away from God, away from the presence (or face) of God, i.e. in the temple.

Again, Jonah goes “down.” but this time at the LORD's command. Here is a comment on Jonah's “repentance” and “obedience” from Phillip Cary's commentary on Jonah: “At least for a little while we are seeing a new Jonah, the way we expect when one is converted to God and reborn. But we should also know – and unless we are complete fools, we Christian readers should know this from our own experience – that the reborn self still contains much of the old Adam who was to be drowned in baptism. The story of sin and redemption does not end with rebirth.”

“According to the word of the LORD” echoes 2 Kings 14:25 reference to Jonah's prophecy to Jereboam of the restoration of land “according to the word of the LORD.”

3:3b Nineveh is spoken of in the past tense, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it wasn't large when the story was written.

A three-days walk has been labeled as unrealistically long. Excavations show the city to be 3 miles long with an 8-mile circumference. However, (1) it may mean the circumference of the city, (2) it may include neighboring suburbs, or (3) it may be an idiom meaning a long distance. The main point is that the three days echoes three days in the fish, the three-day journey to Hades, and Christ's three days in the grave.

3:4 Elijah also walked one day into the wilderness and asked to die (as will Jonah). “40” was a time of testing: forty years in the wilderness, 40 days of water on the face of the earth during the flood, Moses on the mountain with God, Ezekiel bearing the iniquity of Israel for 40 days, and Jesus tested in the wilderness for 40 days. Perhaps 40 days is Jonah's time of testing as well as Nineveh's.

“There is room to wonder whether, in the very content of the message, Jonah was trying to pull a fast one on the LORD – and whether what actually happened was that the LORD pulled a fast on on Jonah.” – Phillip Cary.

The message appears to be purposely vague. The passive voice is used so as not to reveal who is going to do the overturning. Jonah appears not to want the people of Nineveh to even know God's name so that they can pray to Him and be saved.

3:5 Miraculously, they repent. Note that it says they believed God, not YAHWEH. This story seems unrealistic so it has been proposed that (a) the sailors had told them the story of what had happened on the ship, (b) Jonah was actually observed leaving the belly of the fish, (c) the gastric juices of the fish altered Jonah's skin to give him an eerie aura, (d) they were impressed by the gutsiness of the prophet, (e) they really did not repent but were trying to fool God (rabbinical explanation), (f) they obeyed God as they would any other of their many gods (Jewish), or (g) only saints inhabited the town (Luther). Note that the verb “overturn” in verse 4 means either a turning from good to bad or vice versa. In fact, Jonah thinks he is prophesying destruction for Nineveh when he is really predicting their repentance and salvation. God has the last laugh.

Jonah 3:6-9

3:6 “King of Nineveh” was not his title, as known from Assyrian documents. This has been explained as (a) loose nomenclature used elsewhere in Bible and outside or (b) a purposeful tip-off that this is meant to be read as a fictional story, not history. This is an unusual revolution in that it started with the rank and file and only then spread to the king. Usually this type of mind change never reaches the leaders. I learned that lesson from the example of the so-called Quality Revolution begun at my work.

3:7-8 Why were animals included? Phillip Cary: “The original readers of the book of Jonah would remember that a number of the plagues that the LORD sent against Egypt struck both humans and livestock, and above all the final plague, which struck 'all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both human and livestock.' A deep inspiration prompts the king to include the livestock in Nineveh's acts of repentance, because they are included in Nineveh's prosperity. That inspiration is more explicit in the law of Moses, which declares all Israel's firstborn, both humans and livestock, are consecrated as holy to the LORD.” Andrew Dearman (Hosea, p. 91) says, “Just as a family unit in Semitic society is understood collectively as people and their possessions, so also a people or nation is understood collectively as the relevant human population, plus its divinely granted possessions.” For better or worse, creation is affected by the way people act.

Cary: “The sight is comic, no question, but such comedy is only to be expected from a king trying to figure out how to appease the wrath of God without any help from the Law and the Prophets. He's improvising without a script...Dressing up the livestock in sackcloth is acknowledgment that they too will not be spared, because they belong to a city that is an abomination before God, devoted to total destruction. The king is right abut the magnitude of the wrath to come, right to be terrified and rattled right to be so unhinged by the seriousness of what he is facing that the effect is comic.”

3:8b Perhaps two types of evil, one of basic attitude and the other of practical action. Some suggest “evil that clings to the hands” or literally that the Ninevites had hoarded goods with their hands stolen from others.

3:9 This is an echo of the sea captain's words earlier.

Jonah 3:10

3:10 Discuss “evil” and “repent” in terms of God. P. 122 quotes. To take two extreme views: Is God immutable and impassible and never moved at all by man's actions (classical view) or a God that is actually learning and evolving as time goes on (process theology)? Or is the truth somewhere in between?

At this point, Jonah has seemingly repented of his earlier actions and is now obeying God, at least outwardly.