seekeroftruth
Well-Known Member
Jonah 1:1 The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”
3 But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.
4 Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. 5 All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship.
But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. 6 The captain went to him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us so that we will not perish.”
7 Then the sailors said to each other, “Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity.” They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. 8 So they asked him, “Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? What kind of work do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?”
9 He answered, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”
10 This terrified them and they asked, “What have you done?” (They knew he was running away from the Lord, because he had already told them so.)
11 The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, “What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?”
12 “Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” he replied, “and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.”
13 Instead, the men did their best to row back to land. But they could not, for the sea grew even wilder than before. 14 Then they cried out to the Lord, “Please, Lord, do not let us die for taking this man’s life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man, for you, Lord, have done as you pleased.” 15 Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. 16 At this the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows to him.
17 Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
It seems everyone knows about Jonah and the whale... or huge fish. I remember the kids doing the Jonah story as a play in children's summer school. This commentary is from the easy English site.The book does not say who wrote it. It is unlikely that Jonah was the author. This is because the story is not very favourable towards Jonah. No writer in the Bible tells such a bad story about himself.
Jonah was a prophet in the land of Israel about 800-750 BC. During this time, an important event happened to Israel. Israel shared its northern border with Syria. When the army of Syria defeated the army of Israel in war, it took some of Israel’s land. Then the army of the country of Assyria defeated Syria in war, which made Syria weak. Then Jeroboam (king of Israel 793-753 BC) was able to get his land back. Jonah had said that God would cause this to happen (2 Kings 14:25).
However, when the people of Israel won battles against their enemies, they became proud of their power. The people forgot the special relationship that Israel had with God. They thought that God might be angry with other nations, but not angry with Israel. Israel was God’s special people!
It was at this time that the Lord sent Jonah to the city of Nineveh. (Nineveh was the capital of the land of Assyria, a powerful and cruel enemy of other countries.) God wanted Jonah to warn the people of Nineveh. He was going to punish them soon, because of their evil lives. But God cared even for the Assyrian people in Nineveh. This means that God cares for everybody. Jonah expected God to punish the bad people of Nineveh, not to be kind to them. God shows Jonah that his thoughts are wrong. The people of Israel should care for everyone and everything that God has made.
This book is a story about God and Jonah. God made and loves the world and everyone in it. Jonah knew that God made the world. But he could not understand how God could love even foreign nations who did bad things.
The book begins with God telling Jonah to go to the ‘great city’ of Nineveh. We know from the last verse of the book that a very large number of people were living in Nineveh. God cared about those people. He wanted Jonah to warn them to change their lives. God wants his loving rule to be for the whole world, and not only for Israel. But Israel did not like the idea that God might be good to other nations too. Israel preferred to fight wars against other nations! The idea that God rules over all nations was not new. The very first book of the Bible shows this, in the story of *Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:1-24).
(Many years later, the people of Nineveh had forgotten God’s warning. They went back to doing ‘‘evil things’’. The book of Nahum tells the story of how God then destroyed Nineveh, in 612 BC. Nobody ever built the city again.)
Jonah, however, refused to obey God. He knew that the people of Nineveh were bad. And their city was 500 miles (800 kilometres) away! So, Jonah decided to go in the opposite direction, aiming for Tarshish (probably a place in Spain, famous for its ships). Jonah intended to run away from God. Then he would not have to do the job that God had given him.
But God had other plans. He was ready to change the weather to bring about his purpose. So God decided to send a great storm upon the ship. The storm came. Jonah went on sleeping. But when the captain found him, he woke him up. This was a very bad time to be asleep! The captain knew that everyone had a god. He told Jonah to pray to his god for help, as everybody else was doing. Then perhaps they would have a better chance of safety.
The sailors first needed to ask Jonah some difficult questions. Above all, they had to find out where he came from. They wanted to know which god he served. (People believed that every god belonged to a particular place or people.) Jonah’s God must be punishing him by sending the storm.
Jonah told them that his God was the ‘God of heaven’. That was an ancient title (Genesis 24:3). The sailors worshipped idols. But even they knew that this title meant the ‘chief god’. Jonah also told them that his God had made both the land and the sea. The sailors were very much afraid.
Jonah now began to feel sorry for the trouble that he had caused the sailors. He must take all the blame for their situation. Jonah knew that there was only one answer. He himself must die. The sailors must throw him into the wild sea.
The sailors tried so hard to reach the shore. The Hebrew language uses the word ‘to dig’ (with oars) to describe this. Sails were no use in this storm. The sailors were unwilling to throw Jonah into the sea to save themselves. They were unwilling because
- they did not want to kill an innocent man
- they still thought that they could save themselves.
But Jonah had told them that his God had authority over land and sea. So, when the storm became even worse, they decided to pray to the Lord as the God of the sea. They did not want God to blame them for causing the death of an innocent man.
God had not finished with Jonah. When Jonah refused to obey God, he tried to run away. But God prepared a great storm to stop him. Then, when Jonah was sorry, God prepared a great fish to swallow him. God was preparing other things for Jonah. God is always in control.
Then they threw Jonah into the sea. At once the storm stopped. The sea grew calm.
Jonah had refused to obey God. And what happened to Jonah? He went down and down. First, down to the port of Joppa. Then, down into the ship. Then, down into the sea. Then, down to the deepest part of the sea.
This commentary is from bibletrack.org.At some point before the fall of Israel in 721 B.C. to the Assyrians found in II Kings 17 , Jonah was directed by God to go to the Assyrian capital, Ninevah and preach to them. We know from II Kings 14:23-29 that Jonah prophesied during the reign of Jeroboam II (793-753 B.C.) in Israel. Jonah's name appears in II Kings 14:25, "He restored the coast of Israel from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the plain, according to the word of the LORD God of Israel, which he spake by the hand of his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, which was of Gathhepher."
God told Jonah to go preach to the people in the capital city of the Assyrian Empire, Ninevah. They were the contemporary bully empire of the world; their power/influence in the region was growing daily. These are the people who later would overcome the Northern Kingdom (Israel). Ninevah was way east; Jonah, instead, heads way west. He goes to the seacoast town in Israel, Joppa, boards a ship, and heads west across the Mediterranean to Tarshish - no Ninevah for this prophet!
Ninevah was over 600 miles away from Israel to the northeast, and those wicked people were a threat to Israel. While it is difficult for the captain of the ship to identify the exact problem when the storm arises and threatens the safety of the ship, he is distressed by the fact that everyone is frantically praying to their respective deities for deliverance except Jonah; he's sound asleep. To the captain, that's just not normal conduct; it's conduct that deserves some extra investigation. Get the picture: The crew is throwing cargo into the water while calling out to their gods; Jonah is sleeping; that really isn't normal...is it?
I know for a fact that a lot of people use this book of the Bible to say the whole Bible must be a pack of lies. I mean a big fish swallowed a human.... come on..... but I can see it. The big fish is not the big deal in this chapter, though. The big deal in this chapter is the peril Jonah was putting others in by being a shifty coward.... that's right... I'm calling Jonah a big coward.
I can see why he ran. Ninevah was the capital city of Assyria. When the Assyrian army put siege to Israel... they raped, castrated, murdered, or enslaved those people. That's not just rude.... it's cruel and mean. I think it would incredibly terrifying to consider going to preach in such a mean place. He was afraid. He didn't really trust God.... He figured he was in peril.... but if he trusted God.... He would have known that God would protect him no matter where he was.
Jonah didn't trust God...... He thought those people would hurt him..... He thought God would allow them to hurt him..... but he put himself in danger..... by running away from his mission. I'm proud of him for telling the sailors they should throw him in...... if they didn't... the ship would have sunk and Jonah would have still wound up in the fish.... God had to turn him around. I'm glad Jonah gave up so the sailors weren't victims.
