Week 30 Jonah
Jonah isn’t just mentioned in the book of Jonah. Kings says that king Jeroboam II had gained territory: just as the Lord… had promised through Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath-hepher. That would have been a good news prophecy for Jonah. One he liked giving. But things were different in the book of Jonah.
There the Lord told Jonah to go the city of Nineveh and tell them to repent or they would be destroyed. Jonah was one of the few OT prophets who decided not to do what the Lord had told him.
Recently I’ve been reading about Assyria. The writer said that: Assyrian rulers energetically promoted their reputation for using appalling savagery…as a tool of governance and a weapon of psychological warfare. So chances are Jonah was afraid of these destructive ogres. Chances are he hated them. If the Lord destroyed Nineveh? No problem. But Jonah had this irritating sense about the Lord – suspected that if Nineveh did repent then the Lord Would Forgive Them!
In the end Jonah did preach to Nineveh. The Assyrian capital did repent and they were not destroyed. Dang! Jonah hated every second of it.
Note: quotes from 2 Kings 14:25 NLT & Paul Kriwaczek Babylon (St. Martin’s: NY, 2010) 224-25. Added note: I guess the repentance didn’t last. Within about thirty years an Assyrian army blew Israel to bits. But back on that day when the city repented it was counted to their credit.