S6E7: Reading narrative in prophetic books part 2

In this episode, Francie Cornes continues her conversation with Tony Watkins and Peter Williams about the book of Jonah. Jonah is an unusual prophetic book because it is mostly narrative and has a very small amount of text where Jonah is actually proclaiming God’s word. In this second episode, Tony and Peter share insights into the theological themes we can see in chapters 2—4. In the first episode they looked at chapter 1 which you can catch up with here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1161728/episodes/17330544 

Find out more about the host and guests here: 
Tony Watkins: https://tyndalehouse.com/about/staff/...

Peter Williams: https://tyndalehouse.com/about/staff/...

Francie Cornes: https://tyndalehouse.com/about/staff/...

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to the Tyndale House podcast.

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I'm Francie Cornes, I'm the Communications Officer here

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at Tyndale House, and I'm joined again by Peter Williams, who's

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the Principal of Tyndale House,

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and Tony Watkins, who's the Fellow for Public Engagement at Tyndale House.

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And we're continuing our series on the Prophets,

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how do we read them?

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And in our last episode, we were looking at the book of Jonah.

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And we're going to continue looking at Jonah today.

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In the previous episode, we talked a bit about the background of Jonah, who

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Jonah was, where you can read about him in 2 Kings.

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So go and have a listen to that episode to find out a bit more about that.

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And we also dug into chapter one, so we're going to look at the remaining

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three chapters in this episode.

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Something we touched on last time was that Jonah is a bit different

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to the other prophetic books, because it's mostly narrative.

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Rather than a prophet just kind of speaking

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in previous episodes, Tony you were

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explaining the four theological themes that the prophets often draw upon.

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And that was creation.

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Exodus and covenant.

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Mount Zion.

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F: So God's dwelling place and wisdom also comes up a bit T: And King in the

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T: Mount Zion thing the anointed King is also part of that. F: Oh God’s anointed King part of that

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T: Yes F: Okay.

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Does Jonah still draw on those four

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theological themes, if it's a bit different to the other ones?

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Can we still see those?

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Yeah, it's very different from the others.

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And we just get this one prophetic message from him at one level,

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40 more days and the city will be overturned.

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But I think those themes

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are all still here, some of them are really obvious.

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Chapter one we talked a lot about last time said the God's creation power

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there that is used against Jonah.

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That's huge.

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We'll see that again when we talk about chapter four.

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There's a lot of Exodus covenant connections

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as you go right the way through.

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Not many of them are particularly,

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there's no explicit kind of references back

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to some extent.

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Though there are some very explicit verbal connections between his prayer in

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chapter two and the song that Moses sings

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after the Exodus in, Exodus chapter 15.

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So there are some in, in Hebrew.

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There are some interesting connections between those.

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But there are some Exodus kind of themes going, going along.

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Again, we'll pick those up as we as we go through.

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Chapter two

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is where the the Mount Zion thing becomes quite explicit

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because there Jonah very explicitly

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refers to the temple as,

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it's, he kind of in verse four of chapter two,

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he orientate his whole future in, in relation to the temple

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in in some sense: I will look once more towards your holy temple.

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He he's kind of framing everything that's going to happen

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from there in relation to, to God's dwelling place.

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And I think that's a really interesting turn in in Jonah.

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And then he talks about his prayer coming to you to your holy temple

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in verse seven of chapter two.

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So that that becomes explicit there.

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There's nothing about Zion's kingship.  Though

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there is one scholar who says that,

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the the guord that grows in chapter

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four is is symbolic of the kingship.

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Right.

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Which is an interesting idea.

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F: When you say the gourd, do you mean the plant? T: the plant, oh yes

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I'm sorry. Yeah. The plant that grows up over him.

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It may be I'm not entirely persuaded by that.

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It's certainly not explicit.

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It's not obvious to me as a as a reader.

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And then there are wisdom,

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just as with so many of the prophetic books,

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we've said this before, it kind of lurks in the background.

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It's just in the air.

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But there are some wisdom kinds of themes here.

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So wisdom often draws on God's creative power.

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And there's a lot in wisdom about reflecting on what God does

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and the way that God does things, explaining God's actions,

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theodicy, if you like.

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And there's an aspect of that within Jonah as well.

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The teaching aspect of wisdom.

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Jonah's narrative is a is a teaching narrative, it’s designed to teach us

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something.

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Jonah's experience is designed to teach us something.

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It's not just a story. It is is actual experience.

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So so there are

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some some connections there, but they’re kind of, as so often

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the wisdom one is, is, is a bit background.

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T: You have to dig a bit deeper for that. F: Okay, yep.

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And you mentioned there that Jonah's prayer

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has, it echoes something that Moses says.

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Yeah.

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F: Which bits particularly? T: So, when the,

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after the Exodus, when the, the Pharaoh's army

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has been overwhelmed by the sea and, and,

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well, let's have a look in Exodus chapter 15.

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Without spending too much time on it. But,

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so he threw Pharaoh's chariots and his army into the sea.

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The elite of his officers were drowned in the Red sea.

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This is Exodus 15:4, then verse

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5, the floods covered them, they sank to the depths like a stone.

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Those kinds of things.

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So Jonah is is sinking to the depths into the heart of the sea.

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Jonah 2:3

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Your current overcame me all your breakers and billows swept over me.

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So that idea of of being overwhelmed by the sea and sinking down.

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There are some.

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Yeah.

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In Hebrew, there are some some more explicit links, but it's it's,

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yeah, there are echoes.

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There are echoes there. Yeah.

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The way I see the big themes coming out, I suppose, is with the,

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the presence of God, which you have obviously in Mount

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Zion, in the Bible is the place where, he has his king

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and obviously Sinai is where he displays his law.

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But the whole thing going on

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in, in Jonah chapter one is he's trying to escape the presence of God.

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And then we have this poem in, in chapter two,

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so full of quotations from the Psalms and so on.

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But we're explicitly going to that verse that Tony cited in chapter

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2 verse 4.

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Then I said, I'm

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driven away from your side, yet I shall look again upon your holy temple.

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And then he says again in verse seven, when my life was fainting away,

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I remembered the Lord.

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My prayer came to you into your holy temple.

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And so the temple is the place of God

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it’s so explicit here as the as the focus.

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And that's so interesting given chapter one.

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Yeah.

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Oh, incredibly.

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Yeah. It's a fascinating shift.

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I mean, some people rightly, I think, question

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whether Jonah's really repenting here or whether it . . .

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what’s actually going on

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Because when we when we see his behaviour in chapter four, he's so angry

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at God's mercy and well did he repent or didn't he repent?

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But the yeah, I mean, there certainly is a very significant reversal

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between chapter one and chapter two.

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So those are some of the themes that we see in chapter two.

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What about chapter three?

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Do we see any more of the theological themes coming up there?

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One of the things we said last time was, this isn't a theological theme,

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but how how chapter three is,

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in so many ways is is a repetition and, and a reversal of chapter one.

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So it, it starts in exactly the same kind of way.

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The words of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.

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So there's a there's a slight variation.

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Get up going to the great city of Nineveh and so on.

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So there's yeah, there's a very strong parallels between the two.

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In addition to the parallel about the words the Lord coming to Jonah,

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you got in chapter one and three, you've also got the response,

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by those you don't expect to be pious.

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So we see in chapter one where these sailors end up so much more prayerful

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and so much more caring about innocent life than Jonah.

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And then in chapter three, we have the Ninevites,

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who are meant to be the most wicked out there.

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And they are putting on sackcloth and not just the, the humans, also

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the animals.

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The animals are meant to be without food so they can call out to God.

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And, and so there's just this extreme repentance and it's so quick.

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It happens on day one.

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And so the contrast between that and this reluctant prophet is absolutely huge.

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And so this is what, what what's happening that in many ways

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things are, are topsy turvy.

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This is not the way you expect them.

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You expect Jonah from God's people.

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He should be the righteous one, the Ninevites, as the sailors in chapter one,

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they should be the bad people. And it's not at all like that.

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And so that's that's just so interesting

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in terms of what's going on.

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And then think about that

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in relation to where Jonah comes in in the history of Israel.

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It's a he's

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he's a little while after Elijah and Elisha.

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And, you know, we're so well into this sequence of,

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particularly in the northern Kingdom, terrible kings who do awful things and,

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and the prophets speak and they challenge and nothing ever changes.

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You know, Elijah and Elisha have done all of this stuff.

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Did did they see repentance from from their king?

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or the people?

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And yet here it's it's everybody from animals

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right up to the to the king of Nineveh.

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Probably not the king of Assyria.

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It's a

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slightly interesting thing, but,

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a a local king.

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But from from bottom to top in this, in this city, they're all repenting.

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It's not what happens at home.

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And that's partly why Jonah's so mad, I think.

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Okay, and then what about chapter four?

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So have we got any more of those theological themes coming up there?

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Yeah, creation comes back up in a significant way, obviously.

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So Jonah leaves the city, finds finds a place east of it.

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Oh, there's an Exodus theme going on there, isn't there? So.

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So he's

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probably in Jonah's mind,

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Nineveh is the enemy.

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So it's in the same category in his head, presumably as Egypt.

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We've we've had some connections to Egypt already with, with chapter two.

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And so he's he's leaving

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and he's, he's heading heading east

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into the kind of the wilderness,

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and, he's he's hoping for further judgment,

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on on the Ninevites or not for further judgment,

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he's hoping for some judgment on Nineveh, and and it's not going to come,

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and he finds himself in a sort

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of a wilderness place and, and and in rebellion against God.

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He's kind of echoing what's happened before in the Exodus, but there,

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yeah, some, some very obvious creation things come in here.

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God appoints a plant.

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He makes this plant grow.

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God appoints a worm to come and eat the plant.

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God appoints an east wind,

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to, to to scorch his head.

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So he. So he wants to die.

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So that.

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Yeah, that's in the in there as well.

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And then there's another Exodus connection with all of that as well, because when,

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the manna is given in Exodus 16,

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there are some of the words that are used there about what happens to the manna,

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are words they used here as well. So

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Right, okay.

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The, the, the the quail is, is is blown in, in the

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in that chapter by, by the wind by this, this strong wind.

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East wind.

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The the

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the manna is, evaporates with the heat of the, of the,

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the sun, the the hot sun is described

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in a similar way.

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And the the word that is used for the withering

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that this worm causes to happen to the plant

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is very similar to the

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to the word for the rotting of the manna when when people try and keep it.

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So there's just, somebody who's

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a Hebrew reader who's familiar with with that manna chapter,

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will be hearing all sorts of interesting echoes

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there. Not necessarily the same words, but words that are very similar in sound.

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And it's almost an overload because you you have all of those references,

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and then you also have some really very explicit ones.

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So one of the things that's going on in

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chapter four is he's very annoyed with God because he is merciful.

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And he says in and I think this is one of the most significant verses in the whole,

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book really is when

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he says in verse two, that's why I made haste, haste to flee to Tarshish.

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For I knew that you are a gracious God, merciful, slow to anger,

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and abounding in steadfast love and resenting from disaster.

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Now therefore, oh Lord, please take my life

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from me, for it's better for me to die than to live.

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Now in those couple of verses, Jonah four, verses two and three,

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you have not only the reference to Exodus 34, where it's the Lord reveals his name.

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And, this is Exodus 34:6, the Lord passed before Moses proclaimed

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the Lord, the Lord, a merciful God, gracious, slow to anger,

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abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast

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love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin,

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but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon

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the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation.

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And that's the way God reveals himself.

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And that,

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overwhelming compassion,

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alongside the justice and the judgment.

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And that's the central thought, really going through this book as a whole.

00:13:35:18 - 00:13:39:23
God's compassionate on Nineveh and, compassionate on Jonah.

00:13:39:23 - 00:13:41:09
And Jonah's not at all.

00:13:41:09 - 00:13:44:09
And then when he comes and says, now,

00:13:46:04 - 00:13:48:00
take my life from me, it's better for me to die than live.

00:13:48:00 - 00:13:51:00
Well, you can't read that without thinking about Elijah.

00:13:51:03 - 00:13:53:11
Now, Elijah had,

00:13:53:11 - 00:13:56:16
in, 1 Kings 19 is praying that.

00:13:56:16 - 00:14:01:17
But that's just after he's had his great victory over the prophets of Baal.

00:14:01:17 - 00:14:04:20
So in one sense, it's a it's a wonderful sort of parallel.

00:14:05:06 - 00:14:09:11
And Elijah then prays this most wonderfully unanswered prayer in the Bible.

00:14:09:11 - 00:14:10:10
He prays that he might die.

00:14:10:10 - 00:14:13:10
He never gets to die, gets taken up in a chariot into heaven.

00:14:13:16 - 00:14:17:09
And Jonah is like, a reversal of that

00:14:17:09 - 00:14:20:16
because he's praying that he might die, but he's already had his resurrection.

00:14:20:22 - 00:14:24:20
He's already, you know, come out of the belly of the whale and so on.

00:14:24:20 - 00:14:29:22
So I think it's it's fascinating the way, these things are picked up.

00:14:29:22 - 00:14:30:20
Then, of course,

00:14:30:20 - 00:14:34:11
you go through all the things that that God appoints, as Tony's mentioned.

00:14:35:04 - 00:14:36:22
And, and so it really is,

00:14:37:22 - 00:14:40:19
a tiny book, I mean it’s just two pages,

00:14:40:19 - 00:14:43:14
on on my, English Bible here

00:14:43:14 - 00:14:48:20
and so brief to read and absolutely packed with references to other parts

00:14:48:20 - 00:14:52:07
of the Old Testament that you need to know in order to appreciate what's going on.

00:14:52:19 - 00:14:57:05
And when he's saying that he'd like to die, is that he wants to die

00:14:57:06 - 00:15:01:13
because he doesn't like what God's done, or that he’s...?

00:15:01:13 - 00:15:04:17
Yeah I mean when he quotes Exodus 34,

00:15:05:10 - 00:15:06:20
of course, he doesn't quote the whole thing.

00:15:06:20 - 00:15:10:23
He he he's, Jonah is so resentful of God's mercy

00:15:11:24 - 00:15:14:24
that he actually doesn't even mention the fact that God

00:15:15:23 - 00:15:18:05
says he will not leave the guilty unpunished.

00:15:18:05 - 00:15:21:03
He's just, ‘I knew you were a merciful God!’

00:15:21:03 - 00:15:24:07
And and actually, of course, just before that, in,

00:15:25:11 - 00:15:28:20
the passage in Exodus 34 at the end of chapter 33,

00:15:30:14 - 00:15:32:05
the Lord says to him, I will

00:15:32:05 - 00:15:35:05
I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.

00:15:35:24 - 00:15:38:23
And and so so Jonah knows that

00:15:38:23 - 00:15:42:16
he he can't even contain God's compassion for it, for God's own people.

00:15:42:19 - 00:15:44:07
It goes beyond that.

00:15:44:07 - 00:15:47:20
He knows that Israel was always to be a light to the to the nations.

00:15:48:04 - 00:15:51:22
And here is this hapless prophet, really, who can't help himself

00:15:51:22 - 00:15:54:18
but to to to bring God's word to the nations.

00:15:54:18 - 00:15:56:01
He's seen the sailors converted

00:15:56:01 - 00:15:59:12
because, you know, despite doing nothing apart from being disobedient.

00:16:00:02 - 00:16:02:12
Now he's seen the whole city converted,

00:16:02:12 - 00:16:06:08
despite only saying you're all going to be overturned in 40 more days.

00:16:06:08 - 00:16:09:00
This, he doesn't say you can repent.

00:16:09:00 - 00:16:13:24
And so he's he despite himself, he's bringing this, this light.

00:16:15:12 - 00:16:16:05
And he's he's

00:16:16:05 - 00:16:19:08
resentful of God's compassionate, gracious nature.

00:16:19:08 - 00:16:22:08
I just knew you were going to do this.

00:16:22:08 - 00:16:25:17
How could you be so forgiving and compassionate and,

00:16:28:11 - 00:16:29:02
Yeah.

00:16:29:02 - 00:16:33:22
So it's the he's he's got such, he's got a right view of God,

00:16:34:00 - 00:16:36:24
but he's twisted it, at the same time,

00:16:36:24 - 00:16:41:11
he understands so much about who God is and God's gracious heart.

00:16:41:19 - 00:16:44:18
But he thinks that ought to be confined to

00:16:44:18 - 00:16:47:14
to God's people.

00:16:47:14 - 00:16:49:08
And I think

00:16:49:08 - 00:16:52:03
one of the the other echoes

00:16:52:03 - 00:16:55:00
from Exodus or, from the Exodus covenant

00:16:55:00 - 00:16:58:00
kind of set of ideas,

00:16:58:15 - 00:17:01:15
in Deuteronomy,

00:17:02:18 - 00:17:05:18
it's Moses’s second big song in,

00:17:06:09 - 00:17:09:08
the one he sings towards the end of the time,

00:17:09:08 - 00:17:11:23
Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32.

00:17:11:23 - 00:17:14:20
One of the things that Moses says there is

00:17:14:20 - 00:17:18:02
that when the people of God become unfaithful,

00:17:19:07 - 00:17:23:20
God will, so Deuteronomy  32:21

00:17:23:20 - 00:17:26:19
They provoked my jealousy with what is not a god.

00:17:26:19 - 00:17:28:19
They've enraged me with their worthless idols.

00:17:28:19 - 00:17:31:19
So that's what's been going on back home in Israel.

00:17:32:02 - 00:17:34:11
And then God says through Moses,

00:17:34:11 - 00:17:37:09
So I will provoke their jealousy with what is not a people.

00:17:37:09 - 00:17:41:01
I will enrage them with a foolish nation and I

00:17:41:01 - 00:17:45:09
it seems likely to me that what's,

00:17:45:18 - 00:17:51:08
Jonah is, knows that as he brings God's message of compassion and

00:17:51:14 - 00:17:56:22
and mercy to a nation that is a rising nation,

00:17:56:22 - 00:17:59:22
he knows they're going to be the enemy of his people,

00:18:00:08 - 00:18:03:17
that actually this is God provoking his own people

00:18:03:17 - 00:18:08:02
to to jealousy, in a sense, to encourage them to come back to him.

00:18:08:24 - 00:18:10:14
And Jonah wants no part of that.

00:18:10:14 - 00:18:12:08
He he just,

00:18:12:08 - 00:18:14:01
he would rather they die.

00:18:16:02 - 00:18:17:13
It's very interesting the way the book ends,

00:18:17:13 - 00:18:21:17
because the book ends with giving God the last word.

00:18:21:24 - 00:18:25:19
As it had begun with the word of the Lord coming to Jonah

00:18:25:19 - 00:18:30:24
And and what's so fascinating about the opening of Jonah is how,

00:18:31:17 - 00:18:34:20
in the Hebrew, the word of God is the second word already.

00:18:35:03 - 00:18:38:18
And there's nothing that happens before the Word of God comes to Jonah.

00:18:38:23 - 00:18:40:10
It's just very, very instant.

00:18:40:10 - 00:18:43:10
Likewise, the last two verses of the book,

00:18:43:24 - 00:18:46:16
are the Lord said, you pity the plant.

00:18:46:16 - 00:18:51:00
He's speaking to Jonah and looking at how Jonah takes pity

00:18:51:00 - 00:18:54:00
on this plant that's been sheltering him from the sun and the wind,

00:18:54:03 - 00:18:57:03
for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow,

00:18:57:11 - 00:19:00:11
which came into being in a night and perished in the night.

00:19:00:13 - 00:19:03:17
Should I not pity Nineveh, that great city in which

00:19:03:17 - 00:19:05:08
there are more than 120,000 persons

00:19:05:08 - 00:19:09:12
who do not know the right hand from their left, and also much

00:19:10:11 - 00:19:11:18
cattle.

00:19:11:18 - 00:19:13:20
Bang! That's the end of the book.

00:19:13:20 - 00:19:17:07
And I just love the fact that, you know, your eyes are even taken off the humans

00:19:17:07 - 00:19:19:17
and you're thinking left thinking about the cattle,

00:19:19:17 - 00:19:22:20
and God has mercy on the cattle.

00:19:23:04 - 00:19:26:19
And so you're given a sense of just how wide

00:19:27:06 - 00:19:30:01
God's mercy is.

00:19:30:01 - 00:19:32:02
And that's the lesson he needs to learn.

00:19:32:02 - 00:19:35:16
You are left absolutely with the thought of God

00:19:35:16 - 00:19:38:15
being merciful to cattle.

00:19:38:15 - 00:19:42:12
As well as, you know, the beings created in his own image.

00:19:42:12 - 00:19:43:01
Yeah. And. Yeah.

00:19:43:01 - 00:19:46:08
And so it's a very, you know, strong way of ending.

00:19:47:01 - 00:19:49:23
We talked in previous episodes about,

00:19:49:23 - 00:19:52:04
four dimensions of shalom, the flourishing

00:19:52:04 - 00:19:55:08
relationships with God, with other people, with the world around us and ourselves.

00:19:55:10 - 00:19:58:15
And you see all of those dimensions here because you see that flourishing,

00:19:59:09 - 00:20:01:16
you know, God wants a flourishing relationship

00:20:01:16 - 00:20:04:16
even with the animals or even with the the world around us,

00:20:05:11 - 00:20:06:09
right at the end of the book.

00:20:06:09 - 00:20:08:18
It's not it's not insignificant for God.

00:20:09:17 - 00:20:10:14
It is part of it.

00:20:10:14 - 00:20:12:05
So he wants the flourishing relationship

00:20:12:05 - 00:20:14:15
between himself and these people in Nineveh.

00:20:14:15 - 00:20:17:22
And even . . . I was going to say even more, not even more,

00:20:18:00 - 00:20:21:24
but but equally, God wants a flourishing relationship with the people of Israel.

00:20:22:00 - 00:20:25:05
Jonah's people back home and this book is for them,

00:20:26:04 - 00:20:28:19
and for future generations of God's people.

00:20:28:19 - 00:20:32:05
So, so there's that vertical relationship needs to be flourishing.

00:20:33:14 - 00:20:36:14
He it there's there's a,

00:20:37:08 - 00:20:39:21
there's a flourishing or there should be a flourishing

00:20:39:21 - 00:20:42:21
of relationships on a, on a horizontal level.

00:20:43:14 - 00:20:49:04
These people in Nineveh, these are God's or Jonah's enemies, God's enemies,

00:20:49:09 - 00:20:53:05
Israel's enemies who repent and therefore now should be Jonah's friends.

00:20:53:05 - 00:20:55:03
He should be in a kind of a Paradise there.

00:20:55:03 - 00:20:59:13
He should be able to say, okay, I can I can settle down in it.

00:20:59:13 - 00:21:04:10
I don't need to go home because I'm I'm among I'm among my brothers

00:21:04:10 - 00:21:08:21
and sisters in a sense, although they're not ethnically so

00:21:09:22 - 00:21:11:23
so that's there as well.

00:21:11:23 - 00:21:15:03
The flourishing relationship with with the natural world as well.

00:21:15:03 - 00:21:18:15
And of course, you know, Jonah likes it when he's got a plant over his head.

00:21:18:15 - 00:21:21:15
He doesn't like it when when that's not flourishing, when it withers.

00:21:22:03 - 00:21:26:10
But Jonah himself is so out of sorts with himself right the way through.

00:21:26:10 - 00:21:29:09
He does not have a flourishing relationship with himself. He's not.

00:21:29:09 - 00:21:30:18
He's not at peace with himself.

00:21:30:18 - 00:21:36:21
He's still angry and and uncomprehending about the purposes of God, even,

00:21:36:21 - 00:21:39:01
right, right at the end.

00:21:39:01 - 00:21:41:07
And, the kind of, we’ve worked

00:21:41:07 - 00:21:44:07
through the three things when we've been looking through a book,

00:21:44:19 - 00:21:47:20
which was the background, text, and then hearing the text,

00:21:47:23 - 00:21:49:19
you mentioned a little bit about how the people of Israel

00:21:49:19 - 00:21:51:09
would have responded to this.

00:21:51:09 - 00:21:53:21
How how should they have responded?

00:21:53:21 - 00:21:57:03
What what what would the original hearers have made of this?

00:21:57:21 - 00:22:00:01
It's the same question for them at the end.

00:22:00:01 - 00:22:03:07
Because they, you would imagine that

00:22:04:04 - 00:22:07:08
the people of Israel would feel about Nineveh the same kind of way

00:22:07:08 - 00:22:10:23
that Jonah does, though Jonah has, I think, as a prophet,

00:22:11:20 - 00:22:16:02
has more insights into the future of Nineveh in relation to his own people.

00:22:16:14 - 00:22:21:06
So he would have more of a sense of these are God's instrument for future judgment.

00:22:21:20 - 00:22:25:17
T: We’re not told that F: And he knows that from other prophets or...?

00:22:25:17 - 00:22:30:09
So I think because as Jeremiah says, the prophet stands in the counsel of the Lord,

00:22:30:13 - 00:22:33:24
he hears the deliberations of the divine counsel.

00:22:33:24 - 00:22:35:01
And, and

00:22:36:18 - 00:22:38:08
and sometimes the prophets can say,

00:22:38:08 - 00:22:42:24
like Amos says, in response to God showing him what he's going to do,

00:22:42:24 - 00:22:45:24
Amos can say, no, no, no, no, no, don't do that

00:22:45:24 - 00:22:49:09
because your people are too weak and and actually the Lord relents.

00:22:49:09 - 00:22:50:18
No, okay, I won't do that.

00:22:50:18 - 00:22:52:08
That's fascinating.

00:22:52:08 - 00:22:55:05
The relationship between prophets and and the Lord.

00:22:55:05 - 00:22:57:16
So, so I think because as a

00:22:57:16 - 00:23:01:05
as a prophet, he, he stands in the counsel of the Lord or has done.

00:23:01:14 - 00:23:04:08
And that's perhaps behind his running away

00:23:04:08 - 00:23:07:08
from the face of the Lord.

00:23:07:13 - 00:23:10:08
So I think he must have that, that additional insight

00:23:10:08 - 00:23:13:11
the text doesn't tell us, but I think it's a, for me, it's

00:23:13:11 - 00:23:16:20
a reasonable assumption to think that he he has a clue what's going on.

00:23:18:11 - 00:23:21:09
But certainly the, the rest of the nation would,

00:23:21:09 - 00:23:25:22
would not have looked positively towards Nineveh and Assyria.

00:23:27:06 - 00:23:31:08
And so the question for them is, is the same, do you,

00:23:31:14 - 00:23:35:00
do you not care, you know, should I not care about these people?

00:23:35:00 - 00:23:36:16
And therefore, should you not?

00:23:36:16 - 00:23:39:06
Israel was always to have been a missionary nation,

00:23:39:06 - 00:23:42:09
bringing a light to the Gentiles, showing other nations what it means to live

00:23:42:09 - 00:23:45:24
in relationship with the Lord so that other nations would would say,

00:23:46:08 - 00:23:49:02
we want to be in relationship with, with the Lord too.

00:23:49:02 - 00:23:52:02
And so it's the same kind of,

00:23:53:10 - 00:23:55:00
challenge in some ways.

00:23:55:00 - 00:23:57:16
And then I think you can make a very good case for saying that

00:23:57:16 - 00:24:02:03
Jonah's experience at the beginning of the book is,

00:24:04:02 - 00:24:07:16
is, a kind of a parable.

00:24:08:13 - 00:24:11:21
An enacted parable in some sense of what's going to happen to Israel.

00:24:12:17 - 00:24:16:00
Because Israel keeps turning their back on the Lord.

00:24:16:00 - 00:24:19:00
They keep trying to run away from the Lord, although they

00:24:19:11 - 00:24:22:04
they're not physically getting on ships and sailing away, they’re

00:24:22:04 - 00:24:26:00
they're always trying to turn their backs on the Lord and, and worship other gods.

00:24:26:17 - 00:24:29:19
They, they're in a sense, they're cast off into the,

00:24:29:19 - 00:24:32:19
the chaos of the of the nations.

00:24:33:07 - 00:24:35:19
And they're swallowed up by,

00:24:35:19 - 00:24:38:09
by a huge monster by Babylon.

00:24:38:09 - 00:24:43:09
Eventually they so you get the the death of the people of,

00:24:43:14 - 00:24:45:17
well, now Judah, the northern kingdom of Israel has,

00:24:45:17 - 00:24:48:22
has been destroyed by the Assyrians, by, by the point

00:24:48:22 - 00:24:50:04
the Babylonian Empire comes.

00:24:50:04 - 00:24:52:14
But the Babylon swallows them up completely.

00:24:52:14 - 00:24:56:23
And and and God's people, Israel, Judah, are as good as dead.

00:24:56:23 - 00:24:58:05
And then they have this resurrection.

00:24:58:05 - 00:25:00:18
They come back to the land again.

00:25:00:18 - 00:25:02:03
They're given new life.

00:25:02:03 - 00:25:06:06
And so Jonah's, escape, death and resurrection prefigures

00:25:06:06 - 00:25:11:09
that of, of Israel and prefigures how the Lord Jesus

00:25:11:09 - 00:25:15:15
does that perfectly, how he takes on the perfect role of Israel.

00:25:15:15 - 00:25:19:00
He does everything that Israel failed to do

00:25:19:14 - 00:25:23:04
and goes through that death and resurrection to to be the one who is,

00:25:24:16 - 00:25:25:09
swallowed up

00:25:25:09 - 00:25:28:09
by the monster for the sake of the rest of us.

00:25:28:11 - 00:25:31:00
And then but of course, rises again.

00:25:31:00 - 00:25:31:22
Yeah.

00:25:31:22 - 00:25:36:03
And in terms of us hearing the text today, would you say it's a similar

00:25:36:03 - 00:25:39:03
sort of question, but maybe not the Israel

00:25:39:21 - 00:25:42:15
Gentile question, but,

00:25:42:15 - 00:25:42:21
yeah.

00:25:42:21 - 00:25:45:21
Should should we, does it apply to us in terms of

00:25:45:23 - 00:25:48:07
I don’t know, people we think who are too evil

00:25:48:07 - 00:25:50:13
to become a Christian or that sort of thing?

00:25:50:13 - 00:25:52:08
I think it must do.

00:25:52:08 - 00:25:53:20
Yeah. Yeah.

00:25:53:20 - 00:25:56:20
I mean, I think the irony is never without a purpose.

00:25:57:04 - 00:26:01:23
And so all, all of this is, is there as a deep challenge,

00:26:02:00 - 00:26:03:09
so whether it is that we're trying

00:26:03:09 - 00:26:07:10
to get away from the presence of God is a sort of direct application there

00:26:07:20 - 00:26:12:23
that you can't. There's the challenge about how often those who are outside of

00:26:12:23 - 00:26:18:11
God's people are more pious in different respects, than those who are inside.

00:26:18:11 - 00:26:20:02
And that's from chapter one and chapter

00:26:21:03 - 00:26:21:24
three.

00:26:21:24 - 00:26:27:02
There is the lack of emotional engagement that you have on Jonah's part

00:26:27:02 - 00:26:30:21
with the whole question of God having compassion.

00:26:30:21 - 00:26:33:21
And it will be very easy for people who are,

00:26:35:12 - 00:26:38:02
seeing themselves as the people of God to see, you know,

00:26:38:02 - 00:26:43:02
just wish judgment on people and and not to see God's heart of compassion.

00:26:43:02 - 00:26:47:00
So I think, that's all there, the picture

00:26:47:00 - 00:26:51:01
of Jonah being so selfishly taken up with his needs

00:26:51:01 - 00:26:55:19
and they’re real needs about, you know, being overheated in the sun and so on.

00:26:55:23 - 00:27:00:12
But just absorbed with that while there's a much bigger need outside.

00:27:00:12 - 00:27:03:18
Again, these are all things which are directly

00:27:03:18 - 00:27:06:18
applicable, to,

00:27:07:02 - 00:27:09:10
the, in a sense, the dynamics

00:27:09:10 - 00:27:13:08
of a Christian, devotional reading and that that's all

00:27:13:08 - 00:27:15:09
absolutely right. The whole book, of course,

00:27:16:19 - 00:27:18:18
points to, to Christ.

00:27:18:18 - 00:27:21:11
So I think that's all there.

00:27:21:11 - 00:27:24:18
At the same time, it's it's always right to be asking ourselves

00:27:24:18 - 00:27:28:09
what what would these things mean in their first setting?

00:27:28:09 - 00:27:29:23
What do they mean to all of these audiences?

00:27:29:23 - 00:27:32:22
So just so we have a really disciplined run through,

00:27:32:22 - 00:27:35:10
from that to what we can make of it today.

00:27:35:10 - 00:27:39:16
And I think it's a book which is just incredibly,

00:27:40:11 - 00:27:42:22
relevant to every single one of us.

00:27:42:22 - 00:27:43:12
Yeah.

00:27:43:12 - 00:27:46:22
And just on the, with the first hearers,

00:27:46:22 - 00:27:48:18
so how how would they have first heard it?

00:27:48:18 - 00:27:49:22
Would it have been

00:27:49:22 - 00:27:51:09
somebody would have written it down, or is it

00:27:51:09 - 00:27:54:06
Jonah coming back and telling them what happened,

00:27:54:06 - 00:27:56:07
or is that too big a question to ask?

00:27:56:07 - 00:27:58:12
I don't think it's written by Jonah.

00:27:58:12 - 00:28:01:02
It's about Jonah. And Jonah doesn't come up,

00:28:02:05 - 00:28:02:19
that well.

00:28:02:19 - 00:28:05:09
So I think, you know, someone,

00:28:05:09 - 00:28:08:17
a prophet in the schools of the prophets talked about in the, in the Old Testament,

00:28:09:07 - 00:28:12:08
writes down this narrative of the one we might call

00:28:12:15 - 00:28:14:15
he's a prophet, but also a bit of an anti prophet.

00:28:14:15 - 00:28:15:23
Yeah. At times.

00:28:15:23 - 00:28:21:05
And then I think, it's, it's a challenging, book if you have this,

00:28:21:21 - 00:28:24:15
written any time,

00:28:24:15 - 00:28:27:18
when Nineveh is still in power, there's absolutely direct,

00:28:28:09 - 00:28:32:22
application to the fact that you wouldn't want Nineveh to succeed.

00:28:33:07 - 00:28:36:07
And at later stages, it also works,

00:28:36:15 - 00:28:39:24
with other enemies and Babylonians and so on.

00:28:40:03 - 00:28:42:01
So I think,

00:28:42:01 - 00:28:45:24
yes, it's a very, powerful narrative,

00:28:47:09 - 00:28:49:06
book,

00:28:49:06 - 00:28:53:01
that works all the way through its entire history,

00:28:53:01 - 00:28:57:05
from, from the time that that it's, written right the way through.

00:28:57:05 - 00:29:01:23
It's it's powerful even before Assyria and,

00:29:03:10 - 00:29:05:02
where Nineveh is, even

00:29:05:02 - 00:29:09:03
before they become, you know, huge later on in Jonah's century.

00:29:09:03 - 00:29:12:13
So as soon as that story comes back, whether from Jonah

00:29:12:18 - 00:29:15:18
or from somebody else, it's powerful then.

00:29:15:18 - 00:29:21:03
But as soon as that's happened, and especially once they, after 722 BC,

00:29:21:04 - 00:29:24:14
once Assyria has destroyed that northern kingdom, the,

00:29:25:12 - 00:29:28:12
there's a, there's a then a huge degree,

00:29:29:09 - 00:29:32:09
of pathos that comes into this that,

00:29:32:15 - 00:29:37:03
that, that Jonah was bringing that message even knowing

00:29:37:03 - 00:29:41:05
what was you know what we now know they did become our enemy.

00:29:41:05 - 00:29:43:20
And yet God's grace was even to them.

00:29:43:20 - 00:29:45:02
So I think we can

00:29:45:02 - 00:29:48:09
we can talk a good game about God's grace and God's compassion and God's mercy.

00:29:49:01 - 00:29:52:08
And and like Jonah, actually, we can be we can be cold

00:29:52:08 - 00:29:55:19
and apathetic and hardhearted or even resentful of the whole thing.

00:29:56:04 - 00:29:57:08
And that's it.

00:29:57:08 - 00:30:00:09
And and so the book ultimately keeps taking us back to God.

00:30:00:09 - 00:30:01:17
God is bigger than we are.

00:30:01:17 - 00:30:04:02
God is, you know, we're not going to get around God.

00:30:04:02 - 00:30:08:04
God's God's going to achieve his purposes one way or another with us, without us,

00:30:09:12 - 00:30:11:07
willingly or unwillingly,

00:30:11:07 - 00:30:14:08
God will get done what he wants to do.

00:30:15:03 - 00:30:18:09
And that's a that what he's doing is, is grace and mercy.

00:30:19:07 - 00:30:21:18
I mean, that’s a great place to finish.

00:30:21:18 - 00:30:25:02
So, yeah, that's our penultimate episode on the prophets.

00:30:25:02 - 00:30:27:20
We've got one more episode coming out in two weeks.

00:30:27:20 - 00:30:30:13
And then there’ll be a bit of a break before our next series.

00:30:30:13 - 00:30:32:22
So yeah, please do rate review, subscribe.

00:30:32:22 - 00:30:34:21
Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

00:30:34:21 - 00:30:36:09
And yeah, please join us next time.