The Reluctant Prophet - Part 3

Carla Lindsey discovers that being swallowed by a fish is not the only surprise in Jonah chapter two.

C S Lewis said, ‘God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. [Pain] is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.’

While I’m not sure that God sends pain into our lives solely for the purpose of getting our attention, it does seem to me that often when we are dealing with difficult things in our lives, God gets far more of our attention than he gets when things are fine.

It’s interesting how when life is turning to custard, we can suddenly get a new perspective. Suddenly, we realise, we need God.

For Jonah things were moving downhill, quite literally, at a terrifying rate when he made this realisation. He’d been called by God to preach to his enemies in the Assyrian capital Nineveh. But instead, Jonah had jumped on a boat and headed in the opposite direction.

In the previous issue, we noted how the writer describes Jonah’s journey as a descent. Israelites always travelled up to worship God as his temple was on a mountain. So by describing Jonah’s journey as a descent, the writer is letting us know that Jonah is moving away from God, both literally and spiritually. The first of the surprising plot twists comes when Jonah heads in the opposite direction to Nineveh.

The twist in the tale

Now we approach the second twist. It happens just after Jonah has been thrown off the boat into the sea. This point might well have been the end of the story. The disobedient prophet drowns.

But the story doesn’t end here. Instead of sinking to his grave on the ocean floor, we read that ‘the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three
nights’ (1:17).

Who would have seen that coming! As we discussed in the first article in this series, the fish itself is not the point. The important thing about the fish, which may have been a whale (as animals weren’t classified back then in the same way we classify fish and mammals today), but whatever it was … God provided it.

The verse could also read that God had ‘appointed’ the fish, or ‘prepared’ the fish, so we get the message. It was God who sent the fish. The fish acts as a symbol of God’s grace to Jonah. Jonah had made his choice to turn away from God, but by sending the fish, we see that God was not finished with Jonah yet.

I don’t think it is any coincidence that the ancient symbol for Nineveh is a fish within a large house or tomb. I also don’t think that there is any co-incidence that according to Sumerian myth, three days and three nights was the length of time it took to get to the underworld.

So here Jonah was. Instead of drowning, he was stuck in the belly of a fish. What did he do while he was there? Jonah chapter two tells us that he prayed … as you would!

This stands in complete contrast to chapter one, where Jonah does not pray, even when he is asked to. Now he chooses to pray.

We also note that chapter one is in prose. It is an action packed story. Chapter two, however, is in poetry. In chapter two, the pace slows down and has a reflective tone. Chapter one is narrated, but in chapter two, Jonah speaks personally. We hear his first person point of view.

Born again

‘From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the Lord his God’ (2:1). This could also be translated as from the ‘belly’ or ‘womb’ of the fish, Jonah prayed. The NIV simply translates it as ‘inside’ the fish, which gives us Jonah’s location—but the idea of being in the ‘womb’ of the fish could have symbolic meaning. Jonah should have been dead, but this fish was going to give him a second chance at life. From within this fish, he would be reborn.

Supporting this idea is the interesting fact that in the hebrew, Jonah 1:17 and 2:10 refer to the fish as male, but in 2:1 the fish is female. What was going on here? A confused fish? A scribal error perhaps? Or was the writer wanting to emphasis the new life Jonah was being given? Verse two hints at this when it uses the word ‘distress,’ which is a word used elsewhere in theOld Testament in association with childbirth. The idea of the fish carrying and delivering Jonah to new life seems to fit.

So from the inside of the fish Jonah expressed his prayerful reflections in a psalm. The psalm follows the typical format of a psalm of thanksgiving—with an introduction (2:2), description of the plight (2:3–6a), description of the rescue (2:6b–7) and finishing with a vow or commitment (2:8–10).

One of the big questions about the book of Jonah is, did Jonah compose the psalm? Was the belly of a fish really a conducive place for song writing? Or, was Jonah quoting something he already knew? Perhaps—but we don’t know of this psalm’s existence outside of the book of Jonah. Was Jonah creating a mish-mash from other psalms he knew? After all, this psalm has similarities with many from the book of Psalms, (see Psalm 3, 5, 16, 18, 31, 42, 50, 65, 88 and 120).

But maybe the psalm came later. Maybe once Jonah had returned home and done some serious thinking, then he composed these words. We don’t know. But whichever it was, the placement of the psalm here gives a significant pause in the narration of the story to provide the theology behind the book. It tells us about how Jonah understood God, and his relationship with God.

Jonah’s prayer

Jonah’s prayer began like this, ‘In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry’ (2:2).

Verse two functions as the introductory verse which summarises Jonah’s cry for help. Jonah was as good as dead. He wouldn’t call out to God in chapter one, but now face to face with death, he is desperate. Notice how the opening two lines of Jonah’s prayer run in parallel. They both say the same thing, but in a different way. They firstly say that Jonah was in a bad place, secondly, that he called out to God and finally, that God heard him.
Then Jonah’s plight is described:
 You hurled me into the depths,
into the very heart of the seas,
and the currents swirled about me;
all your waves and breakers
swept over me.
 I said, ‘I have been banished
 from your sight;
yet I will look again
toward your holy temple.’
The engulfing waters threatened me,
the deep surrounded me;
seaweed was wrapped around my head.
To the roots of the mountains I sank down;
the earth beneath barred me in forever (2:2–6a).

Here Jonah’s descent continues. First he is hurled into the sea, and is on the surface as the currents swirl around him. But then the waves move over him. The waters begin to engulf him, until the deep surrounds him.

Entangled in seaweed we find him sinking down. As this physical journey unfolded, Jonah spiritualised it. He had wanted to run from God’s presence and now he fears he has got what he wanted. He fears that he will never look again to God’s temple, the place where God’s presence was. He fears that he is banished from God’s sight permanently.

But he was wrong. Just when he thought it was all over …
But you, Lord my God,
brought my life up from the pit.
’When my life was ebbing away,
I remembered you, Lord,
and my prayer rose to you,
to your holy temple’ (2:6b–7).

‘The pit’ was the lowest possible point. In the Old Testament it refers to the grave or the realm of the dead. So here we see that when things were at their bleakest, God intervened and turned things around. From verse six on things no longer descend or move away from God. The downward trend begins to be reversed. Things begin to move upwards, towards God, beginning with Jonah’s prayer which ‘rose’ up.

God heard Jonah’s prayer and rescued him, and as a result Jonah declared: 
‘with shouts of grateful praise,
I will sacrifice to you.
What I have vowed I will make good.
I will say, “Salvation comes from the Lord” ’ (2:9).

Because of his dramatic rescue Jonah declared his whole-hearted loyalty to God, the source of his salvation.

Up, up and away

We see clearly in this chapter that Jonah believed that God controlled everything. It was God who rescued him. The waves were under God’s control. It was even God who threw him over board. (Actually it was the sailors, but Jonah understood that God was directing their actions). Jonah believed that God sent the fish to swallow him and that it was God who, at the end of chapter two ‘commanded the fish,’ which ‘vomited Jonah up onto the dry land’ (2:10 NASB)—note the upward journey continued.

But where would this journey go next? Would Jonah continue towards God? Would the reluctant prophet eventually get to Nineveh? Or was he just glad to be rescued from a nasty death? He hadn’t said he was sorry for his disobedience. He had experienced God’s mercy, but whether he would show mercy to others would remain to be seen.

Jonah’s story should have ended when he was thrown overboard, but there was a twist.

Three days, three nights

Perhaps the most famous twist in any story, is the story of Jesus resurrection. Jesus said that ‘as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth’ (Matthew 12:40).

Jesus was in the realm of death. He was in the pit, but like the belly of the fish for Jonah, the realm of death for Jesus was also a place of new life. It was a place of surprises. It was a place of hope that the story wasn’t over yet and that new beginnings were, and still are possible.

Jesus’ story, along with Jonah’s, are powerful reminders that when we are at our lowest, God can breathe new life into us, that wherever we go God is there, and that God gives second chances.

 

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by Carla Lindsey (c) 'War Cry' magazine, 11 June 2016, pp20-21
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