“Not every prophet,” I tell my students today, “accepts his call. At least not right away.”

Some hesitate, feeling unworthy to be the mouthpiece of the Almighty. Others – well, at least one other – say no outright and storm away. In this post, we’ll explore the story of a prophet who says a flat no to God – on two occasions.

I’m talking about Jonah, the defiant prophet with a marvelous destiny. Jonah, the divided soul whose firm “No’s” to God indirectly reveal God’s ability to draw forth beautiful music from blemished human instruments.

Jonah is one of the 12 minor prophets. His book is a four chapter mini-novella that Jesus himself knew and referred to and that rewards readers at every level. I tell my class if their bucket list includes the goal of reading an entire book of the Bible, they should start with Jonah. It’s short, relatable, interesting and they can probably finish it in 25 minutes.

So let’s turn to this story. I get things started in my class with a question:

“If it happened, one day, that God called you to be a prophet and, after thinking about it, you decided, ‘Nah, I’m not interested,’ how do you suppose God would respond? Would he shrug his shoulders and say: ‘Oh well, I’ll look for someone else?’

Or do you think he would be persistent and persuasive?”

Uniformly, the kids reply: “Persistent and persuasive.”

“Interesting answer,” I respond. “Let’s dive into the text and see what happens.”

We read the opening line: “The word of God came to Jonah.”

I stop right there: “There is a profound understatement here,” I tell the kids. “It sounds so simple, so straightforward. But is it?”

What do you suppose it would be like if God were to make his voice heard in your soul? Jonah doesn’t tell us, nor does Jeremiah when he uses the same phrase; but we can infer. Surely, it would not be a voice that one could mistake. It would waken the ears, still the heart, stir the psyche, summon the will. It would be distinctive and powerful. It would inspire awe; it would command a response. It would be somewhat unsettling.

Such was true for Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel.

But to such a word, when it comes to him, Jonah says no. A firm no.

Now we should perhaps give Jonah a bit of a break. For what God tells Jonah, on this day, is to go to the city of Nineveh and communicate to them God’s message. Nineveh . . . Nineveh. . .what is the significance of this city whose name my kids struggle to pronounce?

Nineveh, Capital City of Assyria

Nineveh was the capital city of Assyria – the very nation that just vanquished Israel, from 732-722 BC in a series of devastating military defeats, then deported swaths of her citizens northeast into the Assyrian empire. This exile of Israelites from the Promised Land was an excruciating physical and spiritual suffering for Israel. It made their day-to-day life bitterly difficult and called into question their spiritual identity. Why would God allow such a thing? Had He abandoned them?

In any event, Assyria was now Israel’s mortal enemy. To be sent to preach to them was either some kind of cruel joke or else part of a mysterious providential design – a way to live out the adage: “Love your enemies.” Either way, God is sending Jonah straight into the heart of the enemy and Jonah wants nothing to do with it.

He is so opposed to the idea that he hurries down to the nearest seaport, along the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea, and boards a ship for Tarshish. In case your ancient geography is rusty, Tarshish is on the western edge of Spain – that’s clear across the Mediterranean from Israel. In those days, it would have been the opposite edge of the known world. Leaving Israel and heading there was an emphatic “No” to God’s call.

So Jonah pays his fare, boards his ship and glides westward, at the speed of sails, towards Tarshish.

At this point, I pause, look out at my class and say:

“God’s move. What do you think he’s going to do?”

“Go after ‘im,” comes one reply.

“Close,” I say. “Try this: he serves up, on the high seas, a mighty storm and dashes it against Jonah’s ship. The boat is on the verge of sinking. The sailors manning it are terrified. Pretty persuasive by God, huh?”

Their eyes light up with surprise.

The sailors have never seen a storm like this. They think they are as good as sunk. They go to rally all the passengers. They find Jonah asleep. Asleep in the belly of the ship! They rouse him. Tell him the situation. Learn from him that he is an Israelite fleeing the call of the God of Israel. They’re shocked at what Jonah has done. They know enough about this God to know he is not one to be trifled with. They’re scared.

Jonah, for his part, can read the events. He knows God to be the author of creation; creator of sea and land, and all that is in them. He knows the Psalms and the book of Genesis and the book of Job; he knows that the sea, her tides and her waves move according to the order of the Almighty. He understands that this storm may well have come from God’s hand. And that, thus, he is likely to be its cause. He is man enough to accept his fate.

In an act of responsibility, Jonah tells the crew: ‘It’s my fault. I have brought this storm upon our ship. Cast me into the sea and the storm will abate for you.’

The crew hesitates but, after deliberation, concludes they have no other choice but to accept Jonah’s proposal. They cast him overboard, the storm swiftly subsides, and an awe falls upon the ship. They send up urgent but awkward prayers to placate and thank this mighty deity who commands wind and sea and storm.

Meanwhile the ship moves on and Jonah is there, bobbing in the water, adrift among the waves. The distance between him and the ship is growing and he is beginning to lose his battle to stay afloat. He is probably also weighed down by regret at his folly in opposing the word of God. In time, he starts to sink.

But God has another card to play. He who sent the storm of destruction now sends a cocoon of transformation in the form a whale that surfaces, swallows Jonah, and returns to the deep from which it had been summoned.

Thus ends the story of Jonah – or so one might think.

Job, Dead at Sea?

Yet wait – for now, quite unexpectedly, another dimension of our tale comes into view. The dimension of the soul. The whale descends into the ocean depths and the soul of Jonah emerges onto the stage of our story. Here, for 3 days and 3 nights, in the sea’s deep darkness, Jonah’s soul cries out to God. Cries out from Hades, the text says: the abode of the dead.

Regardless of how children’s Bible stories portray this scene, Jonah is dead in the belly of the whale. For there are no time shares in Hades. Hades, in the Bible, is the place of the dead. Here are a couple of quick proofs:

Job, at one point, says succinctly:

“As a cloud dissolves and vanishes, so whoever goes down to Hades shall not come up” (Job 7:9).

Or the psalmist:

“For in death no one remembers you. In Hades who can give you praise?” (Ps. 6:6).

If the Bible says Jonah cries out from the womb of Hades, that means he’s crying out from the place of the dead. In further illustration of this fact, the text now presents a series of similar images to echo the idea that Jonah has died at sea.

“The flood enveloped me. . . all your breakers and billows passed over me. . . the waters surged up to my neck, the deep enveloped me . . . I went down to the roots of the mountains; to the land whose bars closed behind me forever.” (Jon. 2:4-7)

To a land, beneath the mountains, whose bars closed behind me forever. These are not the descriptions of a happy traveler ensconced in the belly of a whale. If Jonah survived the drowning, he surely did not survive being swallowed for three days by a whale. Two more points below will bring final confirmation to this view.

Saga at Sea, Part III

But first, our story turns yet again in Chapter 2, verse 7. This verse which began with news of Jonah’s demise, concludes with a surprising piece of good news:

“You brought my life up from the pit, O LORD, my God . . . My prayer came to you in your holy temple.” (Jon 1:7-8)

This is evidently a word of resurrection, and it is followed by others. First: the whale vomits Jonah upon dry land. Then the word of God comes to him a second time, addressing his soul as follows:

“Rise. Set out for the great city of Nineveh and announce to it the message that I will tell you” (Jon 3:2).

The word for ‘rise’ here, in the original Hebrew, is kum. It’s the same verb quoted in Mark 5:41, when Jesus raises Jairus’ daughter.

“Taking the child by the hand, He said to her, “Talitha, Kum!” (which translated means, “Little girl, I say to you, rise!“) (Mk. 5:41).

After this word from Jesus, from the dead, the little girl rose. That parenthetical translation above is straight from Mark. In a rare move, he gives us Jesus’ original Hebrew in his text – “Talitha Kum!” – and then he translates it.

Given the textual evidence we have seen of descent into death and passage from death to life, it’s impossible to hear this word, ‘Kum’ to Jonah and not hear something of the mystery of the resurrection; not hear a very prophecy of the resurrection. A resurrection after three days in the tomb.

That resurrection at the hand of God was possible was already established through the ministry of Elijah and Elisha. In 1 Kings 17:17-24, for example, Elijah raises a widow’s son and in 2 Kings 4:18-37, Elisha raises the Shunammite’s son. Then, in the New Testament, there are the accounts of Jairus’ daughter, the son of the widow of Nain, and Lazarus. The fact that God could raise Jonah thus sits squarely in this tradition.

But raise him to do what? Rise. Go to Nineveh, God says, the city of your enemy, the city of those who have brought harm upon your people and speak unto them the word I tell you.

Jonah’s Message to Nineveh

This time Jonah obeys. He crosses the length of the city, preaching the words God has given him to preach. The city is so large that it takes him 3 days to do it – his second 3 day journey. He tells the people that their actions are antithetical to the ways of God and are heading them towards destruction. He then exits the city and positions himself in earshot of what he expects, more or less, to be thunderbolts raining down from heaven.

Only they do not come. Instead, the Ninevites listen to Jonah and they change. Surely many had caught wind of his marvelous experience at sea, which gave weight to his authority as a mouthpiece of the mighty God of Israel. In any event, the people heed his message. Everyone, from king to pauper, repents and fasts and calls upon God’s mercy. And God hears their cry. He holds back his judgement.

What does Jonah make of this? Now that a vast and great city has heeded his preaching, has responded, has turned to God and been spared – how does Jonah respond?

He is angry! This prophet who rejected God’s initial call now rejects God’s mercy. He wanted God’s judgment upon Nineveh, not his mercy. It’s an astonishing second act of this most defiant of prophets. Yet, the final chapter shows God patiently bringing his stubborn prophet back in line with divine thinking. Teaches him to see that “it is mercy I desire,“ (Hos 6:6) not judgment.

The marvel for us to consider in this story can be summed up in a question. Jesus and the Gospel writers are often at pains to show how His life and teaching fulfill the prophecies of the Old Testament. Yet there is only prophecy of Christ’s death and resurrection cited in the Gospels. What prophecy is that?

It’s the prophecy of the defiant prophet.

It’s the sign of Jonah: his three days and three nights, dead in the belly of a whale, buried in a tomb in the depths of the sea, brought back to the shore, then raised by the power of God to preach truth and mercy to an enemy nation that does not know God.

Jesus puts it this way:

“Just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights. . . and there is something greater than Jonah here.” (Mt. 12:40-41)

If Jonah was merely passing time in the whale, in a kind of submarine transport, this word of Jesus would lack power; the parallelism between Jonah alive in the whale and Jesus dead in the tomb would be weak. But if Jonah was dead in the whale for three days, then rose to preach the word of God to the nations, the parallel would be profound. It would be this: we see a prophet, so human in his rejection of God’s word, made luminous; made a carrier of divine light through his enactment of the mystery of three days in the tomb then his resurrection.

 

Summing Up

In then end, Jonah stands, pretty much despite himself, as a figure of Christ. A foreshadowing of Christ’s dying and rising –the only prophecy of His death and resurrection given by Jesus in the Gospel accounts.

Jonah is a sign though he initially rejected both God’s initial summons and then His mercy toward Nineveh. In this, Jonah is one of us. He is like the elder brother of the prodigal son. He needs the father to come out after him and draw him toward kindness, to persuade him to open his heart to the ways of mercy. To invite him into the wall-less, boundary-less mystery of the communion of the Trinity.

Think of it – I say to the kids in my closing remarks – if God made of Jonah so powerful a prophet; a prophet who twice said no to God; if God made him the only prophet of the death and resurrection cited by Jesus, what could God do with us if we learn to always say yes?