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• Introduction, v. 1
Jonah has been UTTERLY unwilling to go to Nineveh
to call for repentance from the utterly awful people there because he is not at
all keen that they should receive grace and mercy rather than judgement and
punishment.
He has therefore FLED the Lord’s commission,
shown remarkable godlessness as a prophet whilst the sailors on the ship he
boarded to take flight have shown remarkable godliness for a bunch of pagan
sailors.
Jonah has now himself received the sort of legal
punishment he wanted for the Ninevites whilst the pagan sailors have received
the sort of gracious mercy that Jonah didn’t want to see extended to the
Ninevites.
And whilst the sailors suddenly find themselves
bobbing on a calm sea, Jonah now finds himself desperate at the very gates of
death … imprisoned inside a fish and sinking as far down as anyone could go, to
the roots of the mountains underwater.
But what you’ve got in Jonah 2 is a psalm of
praise (vv. 3b-10) inside a narrative framework which tells you the story of
the events that led to that psalm.
As a piece of literature, this book is once more
proving to be an astonishingly well-told story.
So … Jonah’s journey from where God’s commission
came to him in the Holy Land DOWN to Joppa, then DOWN to the ship, then DOWN
into the hold, then DOWN into the sea … it all represents Jonah’s journey from
the realm of life and order into what the Semitic mind saw as the realms of
disorder and death.
And then, of course, Jonah passed into the
chaotic sea monster this great fish which carried him down and down in the Sea
… the realm of deepest chaos and death to the very roots of the mountains where
the gates to Sheol were reckoned in ancient Near Eastern thought to be located
…
But unlike the ship … which Jonah paid for and
trusted in … it is the FISH that becomes God’s appointed means to bring Jonah
(contrary to appearances) back from the deepest chaos and the jaws of certified
(three day long) death to the land of the living and into the second chance
that arises at the start of chapter 3 when the Word of the Lord came again to
the prophet Jonah saying … ‘go to Nineveh, that great city’ - in precisely the
same terms Jonah heard at first.
There are so many thematic links and connections,
contrasts and ironies in this account that you really need to pause your
progress through the narrative or you will COMPLETELY miss them!
So, it is utterly relevant that the central psalm
section in chapter 2 is poetry and the rest is prose (vv. 1c-3a and v. 11) … as
the poetic section pauses the fairly racy narrative to give the reader the
chance to process the story and reflect on what is going on in the story-line
and have a first go at working out what this all means.
In fact, if you dropped out the psalm section,
the prose text would read pretty well without it - straight through minus the
reflective stuff in the poetic section … but then you wouldn’t have had the
benefit of reflecting on the story and considering its meaning.
That prayer/ psalm of Jonah’s winds up with a
climactic statement that goes directly to the heart of the point the Divine and
human authors are making: 2:10c
“Deliverance belongs to YHWH”
It is a confession at this point which becomes
DEEPLY ironic when in 4:1-4 Jonah
AGAIN tries to restrict YHWH’s grace, mercy and deliverance.
Jonah KNOWS the truth alright … but there’s a big
‘BUT’ there, too!
In fact, what the narrative first sets out to
show us is Jonah getting ‘judged’ in the sea with the fish in a way that
DIRECTLY leads to his unmerited deliverance but the question remains very much
in the balance as to what effect this actually has on the man’s life and
attitude
• Jonah’s deliverance, vv. 1-2
It is really ironic that what so clearly looks
like the means of Jonah’s judgement - this great fish - turns out to be the
means of Jonah’s deliverance.
It certainly doesn’t seem to be what Jonah would
think of as his means of deliverance!
““From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the Lord his
God. He said: ‘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.”
Jonah
2:1-2
https://www.bible.com/113/jon.2.1-2.nivuk
That word ‘I’ there … we’re going to hear a lot
of that.
The eight verses of Jonah’s prayer in direct
speech here contain twenty-seven first person references to himself and fifteen
first or second person references to the LORD.
It’s just an early indication that something is
definitely up with this prayer … and that this indicates something is still
wrong in the prophet Jonah’s heart, before God.
Let’s look at it now, as the text makes the
transition into the poetic section, and in doing so invites us to CONSIDER what
is going on here behind the story-line …
• Jonah prayed in his distress, v. 2 a
“He
said: ‘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.”
Jonah
2:2
https://www.bible.com/113/jon.2.2.nivuk
By the testimony of Jonah’s own mouth Jonah NOW
begins to pray.
Equally by that same testimony, he only does so
when he is DESPERATE.
The pagan sailors prayed to Jonah’s God while
Jonah was fast asleep hiding from God in the hold of the ship, and those men
made offerings and vows to Him LONG before Jonah, God’s prophet, actually did.
But once in the desperate straits of being in the
fish’s belly, Jonah prays.
All previous references to prayer in the book (by
the sailors) have used other terms (like ‘crying out to God’) but now for the
first time the technical word for prayer gets used … we’ve moved from the realm of the words used
to describe the sailors’ hearty seeking after God in non-technical terms into
the realm of the faulty but correctly described prayers of the prophet.
In fact, the next time this correct word for
prayer gets used is in 4:2 where Jonah does this in COMPLAINT against Gods
mercy being shown to the people of Nineveh!
He knows all the right words … but has none of the
right heart, this prophet Jonah!
The summary introduction to Jonah’s psalm here
reveals this point clearly.
It has all the ‘right’ elements in it for a psalm
of thanksgiving (like Pss. 18:6, 22:24, 81:7 and so on) because it goes:
1. I was in trouble
2. I called to the LORD for help
3. He rescued me
4. I will give Him thanks
Those elements summarised here in the
introduction then get repeated and fleshed out in the psalm that follows, but …
do you see … NO mention by the prophet of his guilty act which gave rise to
this nor any word of remorse over that guilty act let alone repentance.
Just correct liturgical, Temple language and
structures.
This is not the expression of a heart that longs
for God, his presence and His fellowship but of a mind that is well-versed in
liturgical correctness.
From being like Jonah, good Lord DELIVER us!
• God answered, v. 2b
Jonah sounds like a guy well-versed in the
religion and liturgy of his people but whose actual belief system is far from
the sort of heart for God that the Lord longed for in His covenant people.
“Jonah
prayed to the Lord his God from the stomach of the fish and said, “I called out
to the Lord from my distress, and
he
answered me;
from
the belly of Sheol I cried out for help,
and
you heard my prayer.”
Jonah
2:1-2
https://www.bible.com/107/jon.2.1-2.net
It’s almost as if in this first part of the
poetic ‘think about this’ section, we are being invited to think … why on earth
DID God listen to that cry for help and hear his correctly phrased technical
prayer?!
That’s fascinating because in v. 1 we’re told the
LORD sent a huge fish (masculine) and Jonah was in the STOMACH of that fish
three days and nights, but the next mention of the fish from whose belly Jonah
PRAYED is now in the feminine which leads some to translate ‘stomach’ for the
first masculine mention of the fish and ‘womb’ for the second feminine mention
of that same fish … the first being a place of digestion and disolution (which
is how the ancients thought of death) but the second being a place from which
deliverance and new birth emanate.
Contrary to Jonah’s and everyone else’s
expectations, that fish was an agent of life and not death as v. 3 confesses.
The situation works out contrary to all
expectation.
What makes the difference?
Jonah has now cried out for mercy from God!
And when Jonah gets vomited up eventually onto
dry land, the first thing God calls for from Jonah is a change of heart
expressed in practical repentance … go to Nineveh!
But first, we’re being poetically helped to
reflect upon all that’s ocurred so far …
• The depth of Jonah’s descent, vv. 3-6a
The prayer ‘proper’ begins here in v. 3 with the
verb ‘and he said’, marking the change from narrative to direct speech.
v. 3’s “From Sheol’s belly I screamed for help, you heeded my voice” sounds very like Psalm
18:6’s choice of words … and Psalm 120:1’s choice of words too.
Jonah is very well acquainted with his own
spiritual heritage … he seems very well able to quote the psalms but seems
sadly unable to grasp their implications.
Jonah exaggerates his description of the
condition from which he cried out to God, making it sound almost as if he was
dead already, but God - YHWH - heard Jonah’s cry even from where he was and
reached down to rescue His prophet from the jaws of the netherworld.
At least the drastic circumstances have served to
rescue Jonah from complacency, as the choice of the word ‘screamed’ seems to
show!
From v.
3 Jonah begins to recount his salvation experience … not from the point
of deliverance but with a prayer-exploration of the place from which God drew
Jonah back.
Revealing now he realises that it wasn’t the
sailors but God Who put him in the water:
“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.”
Jonah
2:3
https://www.bible.com/113/jon.2.3.nivuk
Words like ‘the deep’, ‘the heart of the seas’,
‘the river’ … these words all have associations with the netherworld in Hebrew
thought.
It helps to know that from a Semitic point of
view the world is surrounded by water … a cosmic sea kept at bay by a solid
dome that YHWH has placed around the earth in order to make it habitable.
This cosmic sea is split (in their world view)
into two bodies of water, the waters above and the waters below … mentioned in
Genesis 1:6, for example.
The waters below were a boundary separating the
realm of life from the realm of death … which is why sinking in the sea served
as a common image for near-death experiences.
Youngblood
comments: “YHWH’s purpose in sending Jonah into the
heart of the sea, to the threshold of Sheol, as to revive his appreciation for
mercy and to convince him that the Divine calling is preferable to divine
judgement (i.e., death).”
And God achieved this by giving Jonah a taste of
strict justice!
It was such a hard experience, Jonah DESPAIRED
that he would not see God’s Temple again … and that TROUBLED him.
In fact, the severity of Jonah’s separation from
God is what all the images in this section of the poem are of enclosure and
shutting up:
·
Waters enclosed
·
Deep enveloped
·
Reeds wrapped around my head.
Jonah had wanted death rather than his calling.
So YHWH gave him a near-death experience.
But on descending - as Jonah was sure - to the
very brink of the place of the dead, Jonah QUICKLY changed his mind and sought
God’s mercy.
Jonah went right down in the sea, he says, to the
base of the mountains …
This statement refers to the ancient Semitic idea
that there are two subterranean mountains that support the earth … Scripture
refers to them as ‘the pillars of the earth’ in 1 Samuel 2:8, Psalm 75:4 etc.
Most relevant to Job’s prayer is that they
thought these flanked the doorway to the grave.
It is the place as far as possible away from
YHWH’s presence up on Zion’s hill in the Temple, way down there, as they
thought you can get.
Jonah had completed his ‘anti-pilgrimage’ … he
set out on it when he fled from God to go to Joppa and find that ship headed
for Tarshish and it’s as if God said to him ‘you want that? Here you go, you
HAVE some of that!’
We need to be careful, because things like that can
really happen, and sometimes that’s how the Lord brings His wayward people
back.
Why are we being shown the depths to which Jonah
went to?
Because it is being exposed to the depths of the
level of Jonah’s descent, that highlights for us the extent of God’s rescue …
as v. 6b shows us.
• The extent of God’s rescue, v. 6b
“I
went down to the very bottoms of the mountains;
the
gates of the netherworld barred me in forever;
but
you brought me up from the Pit,
O
Lord, my God.”
Jonah
2:6
https://www.bible.com/107/jon.2.6.net
That last bit there - “but you brought me up from
the Pit,
O Lord, my God” - is an absolutely abrupt change
of direction.
We haven’t yet been told what happens in v. 10 …
so this shocking news come straight out of the blue … what, wait, God RESCUED
Him after THAT, out of THERE?!
Like generation after generation of wayward
people, Jonah first felt God’s saving grip on his hopeless life in ‘the pit’.
In Hebrew the word ‘Pit’ derives from a verb
meaning ‘to ruin’, ‘to destroy’, ‘to annihilate’.
It is one of God’s signature mercies to redeem a
sinner’s life from ‘the Pit’ “but you
brought me up from the Pit,
O
Lord, my God.”
… so Psalm 103 has:
“Praise
the Lord, my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name.”
Psalms
103:1
https://www.bible.com/113/psa.103.1.nivuk
WHY?
It goes on:
“who
forgives all your sins
and
heals all your diseases,
who
redeems your life from the pit
and
crowns you with love and compassion,”
Psalms
103:3-4
https://www.bible.com/113/psa.103.3-4.nivuk
Who is Jonah’s rescuer?
He says ‘YHWH my God’ … and he does that in terms
that evoke God’s covenant formula:
Leviticus
26:12
“I
will walk among you and be your God,
and
you will be my people.”
https://www.bible.com/113/lev.26.12.nivuk
In the wake of his deliverance, Jonah
ENTHUSIASTICALLY reaffirms YHWH as his God.
But we are running ahead here …
• The crucial turning point, v. 7
Here comes the crucial turning point in v. 7
‘When
my life was ebbing away,
I
remembered you, Lord, and
my
prayer rose to you,
to
your holy temple.”
Jonah
2:7
https://www.bible.com/113/jon.2.7.nivuk
It sounds great, doesn’t it … but then we dwell
on the music and the beauty of the poetry and we reflect and ‘chew the cud’
there in that glorious verse about the turning point in Jonah’s experience and
…
And we begin to realise that not everything is
quite as it ought to be.
Jonah’s emphasis is misplaced.
It is NOT that Jonah remembered God, but that God
remembered him.
In the context of the prayer of the faithful, it
is that YHWH remembered the faithful … not the other way around.
When you just stop and chew it over, that is a
GLARING issue!
• Jonah’s presumptive relief, vv. 8-9
I hope to come back to these verses for Drive-In
next week, but given all we’ve noticed until now … just look at where Jonah goes
next:
“‘Those
who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them. But I, with
shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make
good. I will say, “Salvation comes from the Lord.” ’”
Jonah
2:8-9
https://www.bible.com/113/jon.2.8-9.nivuk
At one level that sounds very good … but then you
realise loud waters run shallow.
• Conclusion
Here’s the thing … and this conclusion is really very simple because we’ve been getting the point as we’ve been going along through the text.
To the casual observer what’s been happening with
Jonah looks all very positive.
He has a GREAT appearance of a pious person
turning back faithfully to God.
All the language and the verbal patterns and and
stylistic elements are spot on.
But there’s not even regret or remorse … far less
repentance … for his sin.
This guy has got all the outward trappings of
quite sophisticated religion.
He says he’s keen on the Temple and the liturgy.
But his heart is not broken-hearted before God
for his sin.
And you know what?
It’s no WONDER this guy is so graceless towards
the Ninevites, because his heart is really untouched by God’s grace.
We are going to see just how thoroughly unchanged
he is, but for the moment please let’s get hold of this.
This man, not just this man but this PROPHET, had
all the trappings of a person of faith.
He knew the NAME of a God Who is gracious … more
gracious than Jonah will tolerate!
But at heart he’s a stranger to God.
Sorrow for sin, regret for God’s suffering at
Jonah’s sin and REPENTANCE are utterly alien to Jonah’s life.
It is a VERY dangerous position to be in.
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