Jonah 1:1-6--Jonah Flees the Presence of the LORD

Jonah 1:1-6
English Standard Version

Jonah Flees the Presence of the LORD
1 Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” 3 But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD.

4 But the LORD hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up. 5 Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried out to his god. And they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep. 6 So the captain came and said to him, “What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your god! Perhaps the god will give a thought to us, that we may not perish.”

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Jonah's story is an interesting one to me as we'll see later because Jonah seems more than willing to to be a messenger of God to those who are like him, but he does not want to go and deliver God's news of judgment to those whom he perceives as his enemies worthy of hellfire and eternal damnation because he is afraid that God might show them the same kind of grace and mercy that He has shown to Jonah and Jonah's people--salvation for me, but not for thee.  This will become more obvious later as Jonah and God will have some conversations, and the book ends in a most unsatisfying way, but it tells us much about the heart of God.  He wanted to save some of the most evil people (the closet word I can come up with today would be "terrorists."

The LORD calls Jonah to go to Nineveh, the capital city of the Assyrian empire.  He is to call out against it (proclaim judgment against it) because the LORD has seen evil and it is time for judgment to come upon them.  Jonah hears the LORD's call, but instead of heading east into the Assyrian empire, he gets on a ship to sail as far west as he can go, towards Tarshish (modern day Spain).  Why?  He was trying to get away from the presence of the LORD (he should have listened to the Psalms of David that tell us there is nowhere we can go to hide from the LORD).

The LORD stirs up a storm that threatens to break up the ship.  The pagan sailors start calling out to their idols to save them (none of them can), and they threw as much of the cargo and tackle overboard as they could to lighten the load.  While there is chaos on the deck of the ship, Jonah goes down below deck to sleep (which the captain can't believe).  I don't think this was Jonah believing God was going to take care of him, but more of Jonah giving in to the fact that he thought he was going to die (and he probably thought all the pagan idolaters deserved to die too and he was more than okay doing nothing to try to save them or himself).  The captain finally came to him to wake him up to ask him why he was not calling out to his god like all the other men on the boat were doing.  The captain then says, "Perhaps your god can save us."  There it is--the whole point of the book.  Perhaps the pagans see more clearly that the LORD is the only one that can save them, and perhaps they see that even more clearly than the one known as the prophet of the LORD.  We'll pick up here next time when Jonah has to admit all this is because of him, and he really doesn't feel much like talking to the LORD right now as he's trying to run away from Him, and Jonah would rather die, being thrown into the sea as a sacrifice, than to be obedient to the LORD's command.  The LORD has other plans for Jonah, which we will talk about next time.