Today, Clint Loveall and Michael Gewecke explore the fascinating story of Jonah’s disobedience and the sailors’ encounter with the power of God. Throughout the discussion, they touch on important themes, including Jonah’s refusal to follow God’s call, the sailors’ conversion and prayers to the Lord, and the concept of salvation.
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00:00:00:16 – 00:00:23:28
Clint Loveall
Hey, everybody. Thanks for being with us. As we get into the text of a new book starting Jonah today. I did some background work yesterday. I wouldn’t say that you need to watch that before this video, but if you’re curious, we tried to give us some good basic information about this book. It’s it’s an odd book. And what I mean by that is there are a lot of questions, a lot of things we don’t know in this book.
00:00:23:33 – 00:00:49:55
Clint Loveall
This book has been pretty resistant to efforts to kind of figure out the details, which I think makes it an interesting book and gives it a pretty wide range of applicable. And so we’re going to get into the text tonight or today, just the first couple verses here to try and get a flavor for this. So I’ll read it.
00:00:49:55 – 00:01:15:15
Clint Loveall
And then surprisingly, there’s a lot to unpack for only probably three verses here. Now, the word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amity, saying Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it, for their wickedness has come up before me. But Jonah set out to flee to Tarshis from the presence of the Lord.
00:01:15:19 – 00:01:38:33
Clint Loveall
He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid his fare and went on board to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord. We will try not to get bogged down in this, but in nearly every verse, certainly every couple verses in the Book of Jonah, there’s translation stuff.
00:01:38:38 – 00:02:20:31
Clint Loveall
There are a ton of words in this book that aren’t used in other places or that are used in very unusual ways. And we will do our best to highlight when language gives you a better sense maybe, of what it’s saying. In fact. And the reason I start there is because we begin this in English. The translation we’re using now, the word of the Lord came to Jonah, but actually that opens with a Hebrew word that is most often translated, and it came to pass, which gives the flavor of a story to this.
00:02:20:36 – 00:02:42:07
Clint Loveall
And there aren’t a lot of other books. There are no other prophetic books that start that way. There are some books like Judges and Ruth and Esther that start with that phrase. And so we mentioned yesterday that scholars argue whether this is a storytelling kind of book or whether this is a history book of a prophet, a prophetic book.
00:02:42:12 – 00:03:05:33
Clint Loveall
But it it certainly is presenting a tale. And it came to pass that the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amitai, which we talked a little bit about who Jonah might have been yesterday. Jonah is often thought of as a prophet, though that word is not used in this book. There are some other smaller prophetic books.
00:03:05:33 – 00:03:42:45
Clint Loveall
What we call the minor prophets, not because they’re less important, but because they’re shorter that also don’t use the word prophets. So that’s not particularly unusual. What is unusual is that the word that Jonah receives is go to Nineveh. And just a little background to make sure that we understand what that means. Nineveh is in Jonah’s day or in the Israelites day, the capital city of Assyria and the reason that is significant is because Assyria is the primary enemy or the primary threat to Israel.
00:03:42:45 – 00:04:08:47
Clint Loveall
In fact, when Israel falls, when Israel is conquered, the northern kingdom that we call Israel, it happens at the hands of the Assyrians. And so, Michael, I did a little reading this morning and found out I don’t know if I knew this or if I did, I had forgotten. That makes Jonah one of only two prophets. Elijah being the other one that were sent to a foreign land.
00:04:08:47 – 00:04:47:04
Clint Loveall
Prophets typically were focused what happened in Israel. And so this this is unusual. If you were reading it, you wouldn’t think it strange. But it is a very odd that we have this man that we think of as a prophet. And to our knowledge, he has no message for Israel and he’s sent to not only a foreign country but the heart of the enemy, the capital city of that, the primary threat to Israel, that right away we should notice that that right away, again, you could read it without knowing it.
00:04:47:18 – 00:04:50:26
Clint Loveall
But that sets this off as a very different kind of book.
00:04:50:31 – 00:05:14:00
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, the tone that that offers is absolutely essential. There’s there’s no way around that. We need to recognize that at the outset of this book, very similar in some ways to the way that we get the tone set very early in the Book of Job, you get an introduction to the text, and then the way that it will proceed is very importantly connected to the beginning here.
00:05:14:00 – 00:05:37:44
Michael Gewecke
The beginning makes it clear to any original reader that what is happening is a a reversal of what one would expect. And if you’re an Israelite, a reversal of what one would desire at the base level, what Jonah, if he is a prophet, would like to be called to do, is to go to Nineveh and proclaim judgment against it.
00:05:37:44 – 00:06:07:18
Michael Gewecke
One of the enemies of Israel, that that would be the desired kind of outcome, but instead, what we’re going to have here is God calling Jonah to go speak a word so that they might have an opportunity to repent. Now, I should be actually clear about that. The text actually has not yet said what the intention is. All we have here is the Lord saying that the wicked this has spoken for itself, that God has seen the wickedness of that city.
00:06:07:22 – 00:06:43:40
Michael Gewecke
We’re going to see in not so long that Jonah is going to fill in some gaps on that claim. He’s going to knowing the character of God, he’s going to then make some choices about what the best way forward is in that. And so when Jonah takes the action that he does, we actually, as a reader, if we understand the hatred for this rival of Israel, if we understand the the far although far already decided kind of hatred that exists between these peoples, we aren’t going to be surprised by the fact that Jonah runs.
00:06:43:51 – 00:07:11:51
Michael Gewecke
If anything, we’re going to be surprised by who Jonah is running from, because is Jonah running from the people in Nineveh, or is Jonah running from this call that God has given to him? And I think that’s what sets this book off. It begins with Jonah being told a very simple thing and responding to that simple thing in a way that’s going to lead us to the basically the crisis that’s going to happen throughout this story, you.
00:07:11:51 – 00:07:42:31
Clint Loveall
Would think that this would be Jonah’s dream job, right? God says go preach against it for their wickedness has come up and the word preach here is is proclaim or even cry out against it. So you would think that an Israelite prophet would be all would be all in on the idea, I’m going to go preach destruction or I’m going to go preach against this Assyrian city, this capital of my enemy.
00:07:42:36 – 00:08:11:49
Clint Loveall
Except that Jonah may have caught on to this one interesting word. God says, Go at once to Nineveh. That great city and great is a very often used word in the book of Jonah. But it may have struck Jonah strange that God would refer to the capital of Nineveh as great. And this is a word that doesn’t just mean big, it has a kind of value to it.
00:08:11:54 – 00:08:47:29
Clint Loveall
A great city go to that great city. And Jonah may have been thinking, why would he call it a great city? And so with no explanation, Jonah sets out. So there’s some language stuff happening here. We’ll try to fill it in. So what God literally says to Jonah is all rise and go up against go up to Nineveh and then it says that Jonah arose, but he set out for Tarshish.
00:08:47:31 – 00:09:31:39
Clint Loveall
Now, if you’re not up on your ancient maps, Tarshish, you won’t be surprised, you know, is the opposite way. It’s the other direction. It’s in the in the ancient world. Think of it as as far as you could get. It’s it it is nowhere near. And that is intentional. So he goes instead of arising and going up to Nevada, he arises and he found a ship going down to Tarshish where he pays is fair, gets on board, and then it says the word for went on board and the ship literally says he went down into the ship.
00:09:31:44 – 00:10:03:38
Clint Loveall
So right away we have this we have this disconnect. God is calling him to rise up and go and go up. And instead Jonah arises and goes down Nineveh Tarshish. And so the idea here is Jonah is intentionally going the opposite way. He is turning his back to the location. We we don’t yet know why. And there’s some speculation we can talk about later.
00:10:03:43 – 00:10:25:16
Clint Loveall
But this third verse gives us a very interesting conclusion that he went with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord. And and the way I think we should interpret that, Michael, is not that he thinks he can hide from God, but away from the call he went the opposite of what God wanted him to do.
00:10:25:21 – 00:10:46:52
Clint Loveall
God says, Go over there, and he says, No, I decide to go over there instead. And I think it’s amazing how much ground, how much sort of spiritual ground we cover in three verses, right? God gives a prophet, a man we think of as a prophet, a very clear instruction, you know, how many times do we think if God would only tell me what to do?
00:10:46:57 – 00:11:12:54
Clint Loveall
Well, Jonah gets that clear as day. Yeah, Go do this. And Jonah says, Not a chance. I’m going over there instead. And I think at some level, that’s what makes this book kind of intriguing, kind of familiar and kind of so interesting is is the the dichotomy that the author draws us into in just really three verses.
00:11:12:59 – 00:11:34:31
Michael Gewecke
So the question that you might want to lay over a text like this is what’s the proper way to describe Jonah’s action here? At the end of verse three, he wants to go away from the presence of the Lord. One way that you could look at that would be to say that he’s a hesitant or reluctant prophet. He’s not called a prophet.
00:11:34:31 – 00:12:04:04
Michael Gewecke
But if we’re going to say that he’s someone who is simply resisting what God wants him to do, that may be one way to speak about this action. But I think we can also talk about this as a more active form of rebellion against God. If you read the text and you see this idea that he is called to go to the great city and then you see built into the language of the texts itself, the idea that he continues to go down stage by stage.
00:12:04:04 – 00:12:28:43
Michael Gewecke
And by the way, if you know that the story that is to come, you know that he’s going to go deeper and deeper and deeper. So as Jonah now is actively going down, as he’s descending away from the call that God has given him to do, there’s a sense in which we can even understand Jonah’s action here as a one of rooted in a kind of faith in God and God’s character.
00:12:28:48 – 00:12:53:44
Michael Gewecke
We can see that Jonah is acting opposite to faith. He’s not being faithless. He’s being face. He’s having faith. And the opposite direction is actively resisting what he’s been called to do by God. And I think that’s part of yesterday. You describe Jonah as being a hard man. This is the earliest sight that we have of that happens within the first three verses.
00:12:53:49 – 00:13:17:25
Michael Gewecke
He doesn’t question whether he heard God right. He doesn’t question if God’s will is going to be good or not. He’s simply here’s what God says. And he actively decides. Now, he’s not only going to not go to the Northeast towards Assyria, he’s going to go as far west to the edge of the known world as he can possibly go.
00:13:17:25 – 00:13:35:21
Michael Gewecke
And it all happens. That thought literally only takes him three versus two to happen. And I think that the introduction of Jonah is in that sense a very honest one. There’s not a whole lot of time to build up rapport with him. There’s not a whole lot of time to talk about his family or what matters to him.
00:13:35:25 – 00:13:54:39
Michael Gewecke
You have a person who very simply, here’s what God wants him to do. He hears it rightly, but when he considers it, he does not want to do that. He he feels that that’s going to possibly end in a way that’s not going to be it’s going to be better for the invites than he would like it to be, potentially.
00:13:54:52 – 00:14:01:19
Michael Gewecke
And so he actively resists God’s call in his life. And that’s the set up to the story.
00:14:01:24 – 00:14:29:24
Clint Loveall
I don’t want to I don’t want to try and argue that this is what the book of Jonah is about. But I think a helpful framework is to imagine that part of what we listen in on and part of what is described for us is a battle of wills between Jonah and God. God asks a thing, and for reasons not yet declared to us, Jonah doesn’t want to do the thing.
00:14:29:29 – 00:14:53:49
Clint Loveall
And so Jonah runs on trying to escape the presence of the Lord, trying to escape the Lord’s reach. And and this this theme of of sort of a battle of wills between God and Jonah is going to continue. In fact, I think there’s a way in which it’s woven all the way through this book. And we we’ll talk about it many times.
00:14:53:54 – 00:15:23:33
Clint Loveall
But I, I think, you know, the two primary characters we’re going to meet sailors who are going to meet kind of some invites. We’re going to meet a great fish, you know, But the central characters and the central drama of this story we’ve already encountered in the first three books, God, go, Jonah. No. And and this is this is the battle that is set out for us now.
00:15:23:38 – 00:15:48:04
Clint Loveall
And and again, I think that’s a I think that’s a human battle. I think that feels familiar to us, not in the sense of, you know, go to Nineveh, but in the sense of love your enemies, in the sense of deal with your sin. I think we live with this idea that if God would just make his will clear to us, we would then want to do it.
00:15:48:09 – 00:16:12:39
Clint Loveall
And so I think Jonah is a nice reminder that, yeah, it is very likely that some of the things God calls us to, in fact calls us to clearly may be in fact the exact opposite of the things we were hoping to hear. And Jonah knows God well enough that he he doesn’t want to he doesn’t want to do this.
00:16:12:39 – 00:16:42:59
Clint Loveall
Now, some will argue that he’s afraid of the invites. I, I don’t read that in the texts when it says you tried to get away from the presence of the Lord. I think the reason Jonah doesn’t want to go to Nineveh is made clear later. And I don’t think it’s I don’t think it’s fear in fact, I think it’s very hard to read fear into it when you by the time you’ve encountered the things in the story that happened before you get there, he simply doesn’t want to be obedient.
00:16:42:59 – 00:16:52:54
Clint Loveall
And that stubborn willfulness is something that most of us, if we’re honest, are going to have to admit we know a little something about.
00:16:52:58 – 00:17:11:38
Michael Gewecke
So there’s that saying Put your money where your mouth is, right? That idea of put your money where you’re serious and what I find interesting about this story is verse three When Jonah puts his money where his mouth is, he pays the fare to go to the opposite side of the world. That that’s not a price too much free.
00:17:11:38 – 00:17:31:35
Michael Gewecke
And whatever that cost, the writer doesn’t need us to know. But I think it’s striking. He’s not stowing away on the boat. He’s not trying to get down, goes south to Egypt. If he can get there by some cheaper way, now he’s going to pay to get on the boat, to get as far away from that call as possible.
00:17:31:35 – 00:18:00:00
Michael Gewecke
And many of us can relate to that. I think you made that point that if you’ve ever been a person who has been pushed away by God’s call in your life, your faith has always been there and you’ve just found yourself like a magnet, kind of repulsed or pushed away, then you know that feeling that can come when we have this sense that that God is calling me to do a thing or God has called me into this new way of being.
00:18:00:12 – 00:18:25:06
Michael Gewecke
And there’s a human selfishness, there’s a human pride fulness, there’s a human calcification of our souls that resists that work, that resists God’s call. And if you’ve experienced that, you might have a kind of empathetic compassion for Jonah, who literally is going to take money out of his bank account and whatever he had planned to use it for, he’s now going to use it to get as far away from God as possible.
00:18:25:06 – 00:18:42:21
Michael Gewecke
And, you know, that’s kind of the irony. In fact, daresay humor as the story goes on, because no matter how much you spend and no matter how much effort you exert in getting away from God, it’s not going to go well for you. And we’re going to see that play out as the story goes.
00:18:42:21 – 00:19:18:16
Clint Loveall
Yeah, it’s a fascinating detail. It was one I also highlighted and I don’t understand Hebrew poetry well enough to know if this is what that means. But I think it is fascinating, as you pointed out, Michael, that it it literally costs Jonah something to flee from God. He he has to fund that himself. He now it’s going to cost him more than that in the next parts of the story, but that there’s a price to be paid for running away.
00:19:18:16 – 00:19:40:48
Clint Loveall
And generally, when the Bible gives you mundane details, I think often they’re not mundane at all. When when the author decides to tell us that he paid for a ticket, I think he is likely trying to tell us something in addition to that as well. So, yeah, very interesting little detail thrown in there.
00:19:40:53 – 00:19:56:15
Michael Gewecke
Or friends, we’re glad that you’ve kicked off this journey with us. Three verses may not seem like a lot, but there’s a lot embedded in it. And certainly if you found this interesting, there are so many reversals to come in the book of Jonah. We hope that you will join us for the whole study. The easiest way to do that is to subscribe.
00:19:56:15 – 00:20:06:36
Michael Gewecke
If you’re watching on YouTube or to join us for the audio podcast, you find links for that in the description. Share this video at the outset. The journey helps other people find it, and we look forward to seeing you as we continue on tomorrow.
00:20:06:37 – 00:20:07:21
Clint Loveall
Thanks to everybody.