Christchurch Parish News, March 2017
In this penultimate reflection on the story of Jonah, I explore what lies at the heart of Jonah’s anger towards God.
‘The LORD God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, ‘It is better for me to die than to live.’ Jonah 4.6-8 (NRSV)
Jonah is sitting under a makeshift tent to the east of Nineveh, waiting to see what would become of the city now that all the Ninevites had repented and God had ‘changed his mind about the calamity that he he had said he would bring upon them’ (Jonah 3:10).
In spite of Jonah being angry towards God for extending his mercy and grace to Israel’s enemy, God nevertheless doesn’t neglect Jonah. Rather than leave him to swelter under the hot sun, he appoints a bush and makes it come up over Jonah ‘to give him shade over his head, to save from his discomfort’.
This is the second time in the story that God has attended to Jonah in his hour of need. The first time was when he appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah up and thereby prevented him from drowning in the middle of the Mediterranean sea. That this is the second time is underscored in the story by the way the narrator uses the exact same word twice. Admittedly, we may not readily notice this because in the translation of the Bible that we use in church, when God comes to Jonah’s aid the first time round, the word is translated as ‘provided’; whereas the second time round (in chapter four), it is translated as ‘appointed’. But it is one and the same word in the original Hebrew. Such repetition helps to reinforce the theological claim the narrator is making, namely that it is God who is, has been and always will be the agent of Jonah’s wellbeing.
The trap to avoid when reading this is not to individualise our interpretation and make this story just about the relationship between God and one individual human being. As I’ve noted before, in the story of Jonah, the eponymous prophet is a cipher for Israel, the people of God. So when we read that the LORD appoints a great whale to save Jonah, it’s a way of saying in story form, that it is God who saves Israel. Likewise when we read that ‘the LORD God appointed a bush and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from this discomfort’, we should realise that what the narrator is really talking about is how time and time again, the LORD saves his people. As the psalmist says, ‘his steadfast love endures for ever’ (Ps 136).
But the LORD’s steadfast love for Israel is not the focus of this story. Instead it is God’s unlimited mercy and grace towards all nations, not just Israel. That includes Israel’s enemies. Just as Jonah is the cipher for Israel, Nineveh is the cipher for Israel’s enemies. As you’ll recall, this is what made
Jonah very angry and led him to try to do everything he could to thwart God’s will to save the Ninevites from destruction.
At heart, the problem is that Jonah doesn’t want God to be God. Instead he wants God to be a god that does what Jonah wants him to do, who acts according not to God’s own good desires but according to Jonah’s own wishes. In other words, it is the topsy-turvy swapping of roles that rears its head time and time over in our lives, both individually and corporately. It is the disastrous reversal of Creator and creation, where creation attempts to usurp the position that rightly belongs only to the Creator and make the Creator do creation’s bidding.
As such Jonah is very happy when God does something that benefits Jonah. But woe and betide God do something that goes against what Jonah is in his infinite wisdom — not! — has decreed must not happen. So in these final verses of the story of Jonah, God gently reminds Jonah (and thereby the narrator reminds the Israelites and in our own time, us) that God is God, sovereignly free in his infinite wisdom and mercy and Jonah is, well, none of those things.
To do this, when dawn comes, God appoints (and yes, there’s that same word again) a worm to attack the bush so that it withers. God is sovereign over all creation, from the seas to the great fishes to the vegetation to the tiniest little worm. God appoints, and it happens.
And God is not done appointing yet! When the sun rose, God prepared/appointed (yes, it’s the same word again – the narrator’s going to make sure we get the point) an east wind, and ‘the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die.’ Oh dear, here we go again. This is one of Jonah’s favourite phrases when he’s feeling full of self-pity. On seeing that God was going to relent from destroying Nineveh, he announced, ‘it is better for me to die than to live.’ Now, without the benefit of the shade that the LORD God had provided with the bush, sitting all exposed to the elements, once again Jonah moans, ‘It is better for me to die than to live.’
One minute, when God’s doing what Jonah would have him do, he’s happy. The next, when God does something that contradicts Jonah’s expectations of what his god should do, he’s ready to roll over and give up on life. All told, he’s a bit of a spiritual diva.
At this stage of the story, the satire is heavy and we’re meant to laugh at Jonah. But we laugh, if we laugh at all, somewhat awkwardly. This is because we know deep down that we are so often just like Jonah, too. We delight in God when all goes well and we feel that God is blessing us. Believing in God when it’s all going well is easy. But when things don’t go the way we expect or would like, and this can apply both at an individual level as well as at a national level, it can be at the very least confusing and at the worse, deeply distressing. But what then of our trust in God?
As always, the questions that are of the utmost importance include: who is this God of Israel? What is His character really like? And how do we respond? Next month I will be addressing these questions as the story of Jonah draws to its close.