Week 31 Jonah
Standing on one of the top rungs of the stories-in-the-prophets ladder is Jonah. It’s one of the best (I like Jeremiah a lot too).
The Lord told Jonah to travel east to Nineveh and so Jonah headed west – directionally-speaking Jonah couldn’t have made his preferences more clear. And so the Lord chastised him.
It’s hard to fathom a corrective event that could have been more terrifying and claustrophobic and suffocating and desperate than being partially-digested by a fish. When he escaped his near-death ordeal Jonah headed east.
One of the unique things about Jonah’s story is that it highlights the international range of the Lord’s interests. The Lord might be specially focused on Israel, but not in an exclusionary way.
I saw this a couple of days ago in Amos. Amos is a prophet to Israel but he spends the first chapter-and-a-bit talking about other states. So did Isaiah. And Jeremiah. And Ezekiel. And Daniel. And Joel. And Obadiah.
The Lord is pretty definitely interested in Israel. But that isn’t the same as saying he’s not interested in anyone else.
Notes: prophecies to foreign states are in Isaiah 13-23, Jeremiah 2-6, Ezekiel 25-32, Daniel 7-12, Joel 3, Obadiah 1. Like other prophets Jonah predicted disaster for the Assyrian capital of Nineveh. But the thing that makes Jonah’s story a surprise is that the people in Nineveh actually took him seriously. They actually believed and repented.