This post was first published in March, 2015. —ed.
The sea is no place to go for peace and quiet. Modern meteorology has documented the destructive power rogue waves, tropical cyclones, microbursts, and other weather
This post was first published in March, 2015. —ed.
The sea is no place to go for peace and quiet. Modern meteorology has documented the destructive power rogue waves, tropical cyclones, microbursts, and other weather phenomena that pose unique threats to ships at sea. But the storm described in the first chapter of Jonah was different. It was personal.
While the Gentile sailors frantically scurried about, bailing water and tossing any unnecessary cargo overboard, a seemingly oblivious Hebrew prophet was sound asleep in the hold of the ship. The boat may have been tossing and turning, but, incredibly, Jonah was not. It was only the ship’s captain waking him that brought Jonah to conscious awareness of the chaos and deadly danger of the storm.
Once awake, however, Jonah soon found himself in even greater danger. When the crew cast lots to find who was to blame for angering the gods, Jonah was singled out and his suspicions were confirmed—he was God’s target in the tempest. This storm, in fact, had been sent by the Lord both to chastise him for his flagrant disobedience and to halt him from running farther away. With bewildered and anxious faces, the pagan sailors looked to Jonah for an explanation.
Then they said to him, “Tell us, now! On whose account has this calamity struck us? What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?” He said to them, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land.” Then the men became extremely frightened and they said to him, “How could you do this?” For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them. (Jonah 1:8–10)
A short time earlier, perhaps only a few weeks or even days, the Lord had come to Jonah with a simple command, “Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me” (Jonah 1:2). The mandate was clear and direct: Preach a message of repentance or judgment to the Assyrians in their capital city of Nineveh.
For Jonah, however, submitting to that directive proved to be inordinately difficult. Instead of heading east toward Assyria, the reluctant prophet fled in the opposite direction. He boarded a ship bound for Tarshish—the westernmost port on the Mediterranean Sea, near modern-day Gibraltar in Spain. But he would soon learn in an astounding way that it is dangerous to try to outrun God (cf. Psalm 139:7–12).
Why Did He Run?
Jonah had his reasons for fleeing in the direction away from Nineveh. The Assyrian capital was situated along the Tigris River (in modern-day Iraq) and boasted a population of six hundred thousand—making it an exceptionally large metropolis for that time. The city was originally built by Nimrod, the great-grandson of Noah, who was likely in charge of the building of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 10:8–11, 11:1–9). It had become the capital city of a pagan enemy nation and represented everything evil that the Israelites hated.
Nineveh was as wicked as it was impressive. The Assyrians were a notoriously brutal and wicked people. Assyrian kings boasted of the horrific ways in which they massacred their enemies and mutilated their captives—from dismemberment to decapitation to burning prisoners alive to other indescribably gory forms of torture. They posed a clear and present danger to the national security of Israel. Only a few decades after Jonah’s mission, the Assyrians would conquer the northern tribes of Israel and take them into a captivity (in 722 B.C.) from which they would never return.
Jonah, who ministered in the northern kingdom of Israel during the reign of King Jeroboam II (ca. 793–758 B.C.), had prophesied that the borders of Israel would be restored through the military victories of their king (2 Kings 14:25). To sub