Lesson 2 - Jonah 3:10-4:11 - GOD RELENTED; BUT JONAH WAS ANGRY
INTRODUCTION: Last week, in Jonah 3:1-10, following his repentance in the belly of the great fish, we saw the prophet Jonah journey to the infamous city of Nineveh and proclaim the message God had given him to the idolatrous Assyrians over a three-day interval. The essence of God's eight-word message to them was that Nineveh would be "overthrown" (i.e., destroyed) in 40 days. What happened in response to it, and what Jonah obviously didn't expect, was what many Bible scholars regard as one of the greatest revivals in recorded history. The text simply records "Then the people of Nineveh believed in God" (Jonah 3:5). The repentance of the Ninevites permeated every level of their society, from the king and his ministers all the down to the way down to the poorest people. And in an act of pure grace, God relented; He spared them from judgment. It showed God's unmerited love for even the worst kind of sinners.
Today, in Jonah 3:10-4:1-11, our last lesson in this book, we need to keep in mind the central irony of the book: That Jonah, who has been given a second chance, did not want God to give the Ninevites a second chance. As Israel's most feared enemy, He wanted God to totally wipe them off the face of the earth. We'll begin today's lesson where we left off last week in Chapter 3, verse 10.
Read Jonah 3:10 - GOD RELENTED
10 When God saw their deeds, that they turned from their wicked way, then God relented concerning the calamity which He had declared He would bring upon them. And He did not do it.
v. 10: The word used here for "relented" (Heb. nacham (naw-kham')] can variously mean to repent or to consol, or to change your mind. In any case, both the scope and the genuineness of the Ninevite's repentance for their actions moved God sufficiently for Him to withhold the judgment He would have sent if they had ignored Him and persisted in their wicked and violent ways. As one commentator noted, "The king repented, so God relented." Repentance in the general sense is essentially a change in one's thinking that leads to a corresponding change in ones' behavior.
Comment: We shouldn't be surprised at this outcome. God never would have insisted that Jonah go to Nineveh if He had not wanted to spare the Ninevites the destruction He was considering. This story has been front-loaded with grace since the first verse. We also need to see that Jonah did not present God (Heb. Elohim) and the Ninevites did not fear Him as YHWH (i.e., I AM), the covenant-keeping God of Israel but as the universal supreme being of all creation. Likewise, God did not deal with the Ninevites as He dealt with His covenant people Israel but as He deals with all people in general. The main truth we learned from this lesson is that God will be merciful to anyone who submits to His natural divine law.
Read Jonah 4:1-4 - IT GREATLY DISPLEASED JONAH AND HE BECAME ANGRY
1 But it greatly displeased Jonah and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the LORD and said, "Please LORD, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity. 3 Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life." 4 The LORD said, "Do you have good reason to be angry?"
NOTE: Up to this point, it's easy for us to assume that God's deliverance of the Ninevites from
Imminent doom was the climax of this book; however, that isn't the case: as we will see in this chapter, the most important lesson of the book is how God deals with His chosen People (which includes modern Christians) and specifically, how He uses them as to accomplish His sovereign will, even selfish, temperamental, and downright foolish ones like Jonah.
v. 1: "But it greatly displeased Jonah and he became angry." - The contrast in Jonah's reaction to God's mercy towards him in Chapter 2 and this verse is striking. In that chapter, Jonah had expressed great joy after God sent the great fish to save him from certain death. Then here, Jonah is very unhappy to see the same kind of mercy applied to the Ninevites; in fact, he's furious about it. He hated the Ninevites and wanted to see them destroyed. This shows that in spite of Jonah's initial repentance in the belly of the fish and his resulting return to Nineveh, his heart was still not right with God. The main point here is that a person can do the will of God while doing it without the right attitude, and that will be the focus of the remainder of the Book.
v. 2a: "He prayed to the LORD and said, "Please LORD, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country?" - To his credit, Jonah very honestly told God why he was angry. This shows us that even in anger and in rebellion, the prophet respected God's' person, and felt a deep and intimate personal relationship with Him.
v. 2b: "Therefore in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish," - Aha! This reveals Jonah's true motive for fleeing to Tarshish: He feared that the Ninevites might repent, and God would be merciful to the ancient enemy of God's people.
v. 2c: "for I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity." - "Gracious" (i.e., unmerited favor) expresses God's attitude toward people who are outside of any covenant relationship with Him (i.e., Gentiles, like me and you). Here, the prophet is, in effect, criticizing God for His good qualities. To put it another way, Jonah simply wished God were not so good.
v. 3: "Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life." - The prophet Elijah voiced the very same request when he was fleeing from Jezebel (1 Kings 19:4). While both prophets were very discouraged at the time, Elijah had wanted to see a complete national revival, whereas, Jonah, in his context, wants to see complete national destruction.
v. 4: "The LORD said, 'Do you have good reason to be angry?'" - A rhetorical question. The obvious answer is "no." The irony here is that when God was angry with the Ninevites, Jonah was happy.
Read Jonah 5:5-8 - JONAH LEFT THE CITY
5 Then Jonah left the city and sat down east of it. There he made a shelter for himself and sat under it in the shade, until he could see what would happen in the city. 6 So the LORD God designated a plant, and it grew up over Jonah to be a shade over his head, to relieve him of his discomfort. And Jonah was overjoyed about the plant. 7 But God designated a worm when dawn came the next day, and it attacked the plant and it withered. 8 And when the sun came up God designated a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah's head so that he became faint, and he begged with all his soul to die, saying, "Death is better to me than life!"
v. 5: "Then Jonah left the city and sat down east of it. There he made a shelter for himself and sat under it in the shade, until he could see what would happen in the city. - The question raised here is why did Jonah stick around and camp out in sight of the city? Commentators suggest that he thought God might still wreak destruction on the city; that the Ninevites might suddenly revert back to their sinful and violent habits.
v. 6a: "So the LORD God designated a plant, and it grew up over Jonah to be a shade over his head, to relieve him of his discomfort." - The climate of this region can be atrociously hot, 100+-deg days which are often accompanied by super-heated winds (known as siroccos).
v. 6b: "And Jonah was overjoyed about the plant." - This is only the second time we've seen Jonah express happiness in this Book. It shows that he's self-centered and concerned amore about his personal comfort than the wretched, sinful condition of other people like the Ninevites.
v. 7: "But God designated a worm when dawn came the next day, and it attacked the plant and it withered." - First, we should see that God is manipulating Jonah's personal circumstances to teach him something. He uses large things like the great fish and small things like the "worm" here. We might also note that this is only place where any type of destruction takes place in the book
v. 8a: "And when the sun came up God designated a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah's head so that he became faint," - This is the dreaded sirocco wind common to that part of the world, hot dry, and dusty, often reaching speeds of 60-mph. It blew Jonah's plant to smithereens.
v. 8b: "and he begged with all his soul to die, saying, "Death is better to me than life!" - Like the straw that broke the camel's back, this occurrence brought Jonah as low as he could go. Earlier (v. 3), Jonah had wished to die because as God's prophet, he wasn't happy with God's decision (to spare the Ninevites from judgment), but now he longs for death simply because he's physically distressed. It's evident that Jonah felt more concern over the fate of a shady plant than that of a city full of human beings.
Read Jonah 4:9-11 - DO YOU HAVE GOOD REASON TO BE ANGRY?
9 Then God said to Jonah, "Do you have good reason to be angry about the plant?" And he said, "I have good reason to be angry, even to death." 10 Then the LORD said, "You had compassion on the plant for which you did not work and which you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and perished overnight. 11 Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?"
v. 9a: "Then God said to Jonah, "Do you have good reason to be angry about the plant?" - In response to Jonah second desire to die, God asks the prophet a question very similar to His first question v. 4.
v. 9b: "And he said, "I have good reason to be angry, even to death." - Jonah replies here with a strong answer: He believes that his anger was righteous; he apparently thought that God wasn't treating him with the same consideration He showed for most people, especially people (like him) who had been appointed to be one of His chosen prophets.
v. 10: "Then the LORD said, "You had compassion on the plant for which you did not work and which you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and perished overnight." - God's two questions back to Jonah in vv. 4 and 9 are unmistakably the key to this Book's central message: specifically, are the souls of fellow human beings not worth as much as an insigificant plant? The point God is making is this: Like Jonah in this lesson, God's people (that's us, folks, the church) today are often more concerned about the material blessings God so freely gives than the future of the people in the lost world all around us. Think about it. In Jonah's instance, God dealt with him as an ordinary person, exposing him to both the pleasure and the misery that everyone faces in life in order to show him that his personal theology made him no more kindhearted than the Ninevites he hated.
Comment: In this verse, we should notice that God begins by reminding Jonah that the source of his anger and subsequent death wish was the death of a plant God had provided to shade him. God likewise reminds Jonah that he had neither created the plant, nor nurtured its growth. Finally, He reminds Jonah that he had done nothing at all to earn the shade from he'd had received from the plant in the first place-that it had been given to him as a free gift of God as proof of God's mercy towards him. Throughout this story, Jonah has clearly shown that he doesn't care about anything except himself. He never really cared about the plant; he'd only cared about the shade it had given him in terms of his personal comfort.
v. 11a: "Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons" - Now, God drops the boom on Jonah (and us): Another rhetorical question, the answer to which is: "yes," I, the Almighty Creator have compassion for these 120,000 wayward Ninevites. These people are part of the created world that "God so loved," as reported in John 3:16. And God asks me, you and every other believing Christian the same question: Do we honestly care about the estimated 5.5 billion lost souls in this world, even those who profess to hate us?
v. 11b: "who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?" - The figure of speech God uses here describes mental infancy-babies don't know their left from their right. Though responsible for their deeds and subject to divine judgment, the Ninevites lacked special revelation regarding the moral will of God. Morally and ethically speaking, they were like unschooled children. The central issue here is grace and divine mercy: Just as Jonah did nothing to deserve the shade of the plant, the Ninevites did nothing to deserve a deliverance from judgment based upon a repentance they truly didn't understand.
APPLICATION-Running Against God
1. Believers in God (includes Jonah and us) have no right to be angry about God's plans. God will not force us to like His plans but His plans are sovereign, and He expects us to obey them. We learned today that Jonah's real reason for fleeing to Tarshish was the fear that the Ninevites would repent, and God would spare them from judgment. When God gave him a second chance, he did as God commanded him but carried it out with the wrong attitude.
2. Like Jonah in today's lesson, many of God's people (i.e., the church) today are more concerned about the material blessings God gives them than the condition of the lost people in our world. The Ninevites in today's lesson are much the same as people in the world today "God so loved that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:16). Are we better than Jonah? Do we honestly care about the estimated 5.5 billion lost souls in this world, even those who profess to hate us?
