How we really learn from God (Jonah 4)
Jonah 4:3-11
When I came to faith at the end of a summer church retreat, I finally admitted that I did not have a relationship with God but desired it. However, could I make that commitment to follow Him wholeheartedly? Being a conscientious person, I started thinking through scenarios that might happen if I decided to answer His call. What if the Lord required me to give up this or that? As I saw it, I wanted to be honest in counting the cost of discipleship. But as I was going through this exercise, I became increasingly uncertain. I was willing enough but how could I promise any of this to God? Would I be able to keep it? As I cried out to Him in despair, suddenly it occurred to me that only the Lord can enable faithfulness. In that moment, I caught a glimpse of God’s expansive grace that accepts, loves, forgives, and transforms and I felt I arrived home. I knew, of course, long before then that we are saved by grace and not by works, but somehow I did not really know it until God confronted me in that concrete situation.
God confronts
Likewise, Jonah knew and confessed the theological truth about God’s mercy but failed to understand it, nevertheless. God did not give him a long theological lesson to clear up the finer points but confronted him with a real-life situation. Jonah’s die-away airs are almost comic, a parody of Elijah’s (1 Kings 19:4; Jonah 4:3), if only he could hear himself. Nevertheless, God takes him seriously and challenges him, ‘Is it good/right for you to be angry?’ (Jonah 4:4).[1] There is no verbal answer but God clearly feels that the issue is not settled.
An object lesson
What follows is an object lesson of a plant that withers (Jonah 4:6-7), which encapsulates Jonah’s story. God graciously gave new life to Jonah by saving him through the big fish, even though he was disobedient. Now he again receives the Lord’s kindness even though he still resists God. He is actually given more grace than Nineveh who were at least explicitly repentant. However, if he persists and refuses God’s compassion to others, then he cannot expect compassion either. God will remove the plant (the covering of grace) that shaded him from the destructive rays of the sun. For Israelite readers, Jonah here foreshadows their fate, too. God extended grace to His people despite their sin (note that very fact in the historic Jonah’s time; 2 Kings 14:25-27), but when there was no response and repentance, they were eventually destroyed (2 Kings 17:12-18).
God’s compassion and Jonah’s
Jonah is also masterfully drawn into the story of the plant to incriminate himself. In fact, the wording that the plant was to ‘deliver him from his discomfort’ may also be translated ‘to save him from his wickedness’ (v.6),[2] so that the events become God’s means to try and save Jonah from his folly. When Jonah receives a taste of his own medicine (God’s ‘grace’ in the form of shade is withdrawn), he is outraged and says so (Jonah 4:9). Once again, the Lord gently confronts him, almost like the father who pleads with his elder son in the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:28-32). Although it seems odd for God to set His ‘pity’ for a city parallel with Jonah’s for the plant (Jonah 4:10-11), the question really highlights the difference between them. The two are different not only in scope (a single plant as opposed to a whole city teeming with people and animals) but in quality. Jonah’s pity is selfish and is really self-pity for what the destruction of the plant means for his well-being, while God is concerned for His creation for their sake, not for any benefit that He might derive from them. The open-ended nature of how the book ends leaves us, readers, with the challenge. What does God’s grace mean to us? Do we want it for our own selfish ends to be comfortable? Do we care as much for others as we do for our own well-being? May His generous grace that we receive transform us into people of generous grace.
[1] It is a little difficult to piece together the sequence of events. The initial conversation (Jonah 4:1-4) assumes that Jonah already knows about God relenting concerning the city. If so, then presumably he had already waited until the deadline for judgment passed. In that case, going out and waiting to see what will happen (Jonah 4:5) seems odd. One solution is to see v.5 as a flashback. Jonah went out of the city after his preaching and waited (v.5). When God did not bring judgment, he got very angry and had the theological discussion with Him (vv.1-4) followed by God teaching him about compassion through the plant. While this way of structuring the narrative is strange to us, it is not uncommon in Hebrew storytelling. The purpose of starting with the theological issue is to put this in the forefront. If we are meant to read the verses in sequence, then Jonah’s decision to camp outside the city (v.5) may be an expression of his stubbornness. Perhaps he is still hoping that God will change His mind and recognise how bad the Ninevites are, or he expects their repentance to be short-lived.
[2] The Hebrew word raʿa means ‘bad’ and has a wide range of associations depending on context from moral evil and wickedness to disaster or distress.
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