Jonah – Coward or Hero?

The cost of obedience to God’s call may be even greater than the cost of disobedience.  The question we might ask ourselves today is this: ‘Am I prepared to hear God’s Word and to act on it, whatever the consequences and whatever the cost?’

(Please start by reading Jonah 1 - the whole chapter)

Source: Heart of Mesa

When the Word of the Lord came to Jonah and what did he do?  He ran.  God had told him to go to Nineveh, some 500 miles north-east of his hometown, but instead he headed for Tarshish, a couple of thousand miles to the west.  What triggered such terror for this prophet of the Lord and why such flagrant disobedience?

The year is 760BC, and the Hebrew people are a divided nation – Judah to the south and Israel to the north.  Both kingdoms have suffered from idolatrous and power-hungry leaders, but northern Israel has been particularly afflicted, and their territory whittled away by surrounding enemy states. God has sent the prophets Elijah, Elisha, and later Amos and Hosea to remind them of the results of repeated apostasy and rebellion against God’s commands. But, to a despairing nation, Jonah brings a message of hope; 2 Kings 14:26-27 ‘For the Lord saw that the affliction of Israel was very bitter, for there was none left, bond or free, and there was none to help Israel. But the Lord had not said that he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven, so he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam the son of Joash’.

Jereboam II, though yet another godless despot, was able to take back lost territory, quadrupling the size of Israel and ushering in a time of unprecedented prosperity through trade.  All of which was foretold by Jonah the prophet. 2 Kings 14:25 ‘He restored the border of Israel from Lebo-hamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which he spoke by his servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was from Gath-hepher’. So, we don’t know why God chose Jereboam as deliverer, but we do know that Jonah had impeccable credentials as a prophet of the Lord, yet he still ran.

Source: Redbubble

Now imagine Jonah’s journey from Gath Hepher to Joppa. God could have blocked his way at any time, but our prophet made it to Joppa, had the money for the expensive fare, and found a ship going the way he wanted to go. What was going on in Jonah’s mind?  From the text we know that he was no coward; later telling the sailors to throw him into a storm-tossed sea, and later still telling God that he was not afraid to die. We can only imagine the reasons for the turmoil in this man’s mind as he walked the 60 miles to Joppa.  

As a prophet, Jonah had been given a glimpse of what was to come.  Within a generation the Assyrians (whose vast capital city was Nineveh) would cross the newly established borders of Israel. They would come with vast armies bent on conquest through new levels of barbarism, for whom cruelty was a beaurocratic policy for subjugating every populace in their path and annihilating every culture not their own.  Everything that Jonah knew and loved would be swept away. His future family, his people and his tribe Zebulun would be ravaged, brutalised and deported, the borders gone and the brief success of northern Israel as if it never happened. Isaiah 10:5-6 ‘Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger; the staff in their hands is my fury! Against a godless nation I send him, and against the people of my wrath I command him, to take spoil and seize plunder, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets’.

Jonah could do nothing to prevent God’s plans.  Worse still, he is being called by God himself to preserve the future tormenters and oppressors who will commit atrocities against all he cares for. He knows God as the God of mercy, he knows the Ninevites as the thugs they were, and he knows what is to come for his people, and he would rather be drowned than have to deliver that message. I imagine on that road to Joppa he’s asking a different question: ‘Why me?’ Here is a man who was prepared to do anything to save his people, even to die so they might be spared, and who points forward eight centuries to one who will.

The cost of obedience to God’s call may be even greater than the cost of disobedience.  The question we might ask ourselves today is this: ‘Am I prepared to hear God’s Word and to act on it, whatever the consequences and whatever the cost?’

Next week we ask the question: Jonah – Fact or Fiction?

Be Blessed.

Author: John Plumb

May God bless and enrich your life

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