Jonah 2:7-10

00:00:00:12 – 00:00:20:31
Clint Loveall
Hey everybody, hope your Wednesday is good. Thanks for joining us. As we continue through Jonah, we we’re, find ourselves about halfway through the second chapter. I, I would I mean, certainly you could do this in any order you want, but if you didn’t join us yesterday, it might be worth pausing and jumping back there. Or at least when we get done here.

00:00:20:31 – 00:00:52:36
Clint Loveall
Go back to that story, because this second chapter really is amazing. It’s it’s essentially a psalm. It’s a prayer of Jonah. It’s characterized as a prayer of Jonah, and it’s written as a psalm or a poem. We got through the first part yesterday through verse six. And now, Jonah again, kind of voicing his experience of sinking, of, of going down into the depths, after and this is still from the belly of the whale or the great fish.

00:00:52:40 – 00:01:17:30
Clint Loveall
So let me just read through the rest of it, and we’ll come back for discussion. As my life was ebbing away, I remembered the Lord and my prayer came to you into your holy temple. Those who worship vain idols forsake their true loyalty. But I, with the voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you what I have vowed I will pay.

00:01:17:34 – 00:01:45:24
Clint Loveall
Deliverance belongs to the Lord once we stop there, Michael. So, a completion of Jonah’s thoughts from yesterday. Again, a personal experience of struggle, a reaching out. Yesterday we made the case that the maybe the best framework to understand this is near death. That Jonah is sinking into the depths. He’s going to the place called shell, which is the place of the dead.

00:01:45:28 – 00:02:20:43
Clint Loveall
And and that experience of of being alone, being overwhelmed, being swallowed up, literally in in the case of the book. And I remembered the Lord and Michael, this is an important word. remember in English, as we use it tends to mean I called to mind. And it certainly does have that sense in the Hebrew as well. But as I understand it in the Hebrew, that’s a that’s a deeper word, remember, is not just to call to mind, it’s to re-experience.

00:02:20:43 – 00:02:44:51
Clint Loveall
It’s it’s to recommit. There’s a, there’s a, an ethical component to remembering over and over and over again. In the Old Testament, Israel is called to remember the Lord. Remember, remember, remember the commandments, remember this, remember that. And it has more to do than just know them. It has to do with keeping them. And so Jonah here is making a claim.

00:02:44:51 – 00:02:55:30
Clint Loveall
I turned to the Lord. I, I came back to the Lord, which is an ironic thing for him to say, given the front part of this story.

00:02:55:35 – 00:03:34:44
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, it is, and there is real interpretive work that needs to be engaged with on this point, Clint, because as a reader, how we read this certainly has a way of informing what we think about Jonah, about who we believe Jonah is and what Jonah’s motivations are. As the story continues, if you’ve been with us for the front part of this study, I think Clinton, I’ve been relatively clear that we both would argue that Jonah is in a very stubborn contest with God, that he understands what God has called him to do, that that’s not the issue at play, but rather the question is, is Jonah willing to do what God has called him to

00:03:34:44 – 00:03:53:22
Michael Gewecke
do? And so so we come to a text like this. How we read it really matters. The motivations that we see going throughout this Psalm will have something to inform what we think about what’s going to happen in chapter three, when Jonah does arrive at the place that he has been resisting going that you see in front of you.

00:03:53:27 – 00:04:24:34
Michael Gewecke
It’s striking in verse seven, this moment where a Jonah says, I remember the law, that a moment that we, the reader, would think, okay, so this is a moment of recall, a moment of conversion, a moment of turning back. and we would even, I think, as the reader, hope or desire a moment of repentance or turning. But when we look closely and the Psalm continues in verse seven, there at the end my prayer came to you, where into your holy temple.

00:04:24:34 – 00:04:46:24
Michael Gewecke
Where’s the holy temple? Well, it’s certainly not Nineveh. It’s in the Holy Land. It’s in Jerusalem. It’s in the place where Jonah would have loved to have stayed the whole time. And I think it’s striking that even in the location here, God calls Nineveh. Go northeast or go east to the people of Nineveh, and instead he goes west.

00:04:46:24 – 00:05:09:48
Michael Gewecke
And when Jonah now is stuck in the depths of shale, when he’s overcome by darkness and by death, and he raises his voice in prayer, he remembers God, the God who’s preserved his life. He talks not of the call that God has given him forward, but rather the place that Jonah left and I think that that is an incredible detail, which is an important aspect of coloring.

00:05:09:54 – 00:05:33:07
Michael Gewecke
How we understand what’s happening to Jonah in this story. Is this a repentance psalm, or is this rather a kind of lament psalm of what God has called Jonah to do? And that may seem like I’m being nitpicky, but I think it matters as the story continues, because we’re going to see that there are other details regarding Jonah’s character that that seem relevant when connected to these words.

00:05:33:07 – 00:06:10:39
Clint Loveall
Yeah, there’s a kind of there’s a kind of positive spin here that the story so far maybe doesn’t completely justify. You know, those who worship vain idols. It’s an odd thing for Jonah to say in the midst of running away from God. And now having been thrown into the sea, swallowed by the the whale, the great fish that that he would turn his thoughts to those who are unworthy and and almost lift himself up, I I with the voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you well, Jonah hasn’t shown that to be true.

00:06:10:46 – 00:06:34:17
Clint Loveall
Yeah, Jonah hasn’t done that. And that is, I think, the question that hangs over this, this part of the the psalm, what is it that Jonah is willing to give, you know, and he says, what I have vowed I will pay. Well, we we don’t know what that means. What is that, Jonah? Is it it is. You’ve not shown obedience, right?

00:06:34:17 – 00:07:05:49
Clint Loveall
You’ve not responded to a clear word from the Lord. You’ve run away. You’ve allowed yourself to be thrown into the sea, evidently preferring death over obedience. And so for Jonah now, to kind of trumpet his own faithfulness, it is, he’s a turning point. It’s certainly at least a potential turning point, that I think maybe, you know, we don’t yet know what to do with.

00:07:05:49 – 00:07:41:51
Clint Loveall
But and then, though I want to say, in Jonah’s credit, at the end, he says this phrase, deliverance belongs to the Lord. And these are fascinating words. This this Psalm is so interesting, and we will do our best to remember to do this for you, because when you get to the end of Jonah, if you can bring some of those themes back and filter them through this prayer, it becomes a very interesting, deliverance belongs to the Lord right now.

00:07:41:56 – 00:08:14:12
Clint Loveall
That’s a celebration for Jonah, because that deliverance has landed upon him. he’s not going to celebrate that in another chapter or so. fact, just the opposite. So, this is a it’s an intimate look. It’s an intimate moment for Jonah. It’s Jonah and God in in this hard, difficult moment as Jonah reaches out and praises God for remembering him, even as Jonah remembers, God.

00:08:14:16 – 00:08:19:36
Clint Loveall
And yet there are asterisks, I think, all over this passage.

00:08:19:40 – 00:08:44:52
Michael Gewecke
So one thing that may be tempting to us when we’re modern readers of this story is to ask questions about what happened to Jonah. What’s Jonah’s story? Was it, whale? Was it a fish? We get fixated on the details of this story. What I think we need to be very careful to do is to pause at a reading like this and to ask the question, What is Jonah?

00:08:44:52 – 00:09:11:11
Michael Gewecke
The book serving to teach us? What are the questions that come to us, the reader, in this? And this is, by definition, a more meditative question. It’s a more devotional question. But I Clint, I think that we have to know this here, that when the topic of deliverance comes up, deliverance belongs to the Lord. On first glance, that is a wonderful and beautiful testament of faith.

00:09:11:11 – 00:09:53:36
Michael Gewecke
The idea that the Lord God, the God of Israel, is a delivering God. That’s great news. Thanks be to God. What’s interesting though, if you pause and you reflect upon that, and you ask deliverance from what? And deliverance to what and deliverance for whom? Because when you begin to really interrogate this and you begin to ask yourself, when God calls Jonah to go to Nineveh, there’s no talk of what’s going to be required of Jonah in that place, that there’s not a long discourse about discourse, about what exactly is going to be taught or what God’s going to do.

00:09:53:36 – 00:10:18:58
Michael Gewecke
It’s a very simple, terse kind of command. Go to Nineveh. they have their sin has been noted. And now that Jonah has been thrown into the sea, he’s gone to the furthest edge of human experience he’s experienced, even the place of the dead. He’s experienced that deadness that is the end of the human limit at that place, he proclaims deliverance.

00:10:19:03 – 00:10:45:07
Michael Gewecke
But is that just deliverance for himself, or does that deliverance expand beyond Jonah to the people of Israel, or does it extend even beyond the people of Israel to the people of Nineveh? How far does God’s deliverance go? And one might think that Jonah, being this reluctant prophet, though the book doesn’t call him a prophet, this person called to go and follow God’s will.

00:10:45:18 – 00:11:06:19
Michael Gewecke
One would think that he would have an expansive vision of that deliverance. God’s delivering me from the sea and allowing me to go do the work that God has called me to do. But if you know human nature, and if you know yourself, then you might know how easy it is to become wrapped up in our own lives, in our own circles, our own matters of concern and care.

00:11:06:19 – 00:11:35:19
Michael Gewecke
Here, I think a simple reading of this text might be easiest or might be most accurate. When Jonah is talking about God’s deliverance, he might just mean God saved me full stop that he doesn’t have in mind the deliverance that God desires for people far outside of his circle. And I’m going to make that statement now, trusting that if you’ll join us for the rest of the study, you’re going to see some of the evidence that might lead to that interpretation.

00:11:35:24 – 00:11:55:05
Michael Gewecke
It strikes us as odd. And this is my summary in this section, that Jonah could say something as beautiful as deliverance belongs to the Lord, and that might be rooted in a kind of stubborn selfishness. And I submit to you, bear with us, and let’s see how that bears out. As the reading goes on.

00:11:55:10 – 00:12:24:46
Clint Loveall
Well, what’s interesting I think about that, Michael, is what we don’t see in this passage. Right? I’m sinking. You’ve cast me down, I went down, you brought me life, I remembered you, my prayer came to you. Those who worship idols. But I will with the voice of thanksgiving. Of who? What’s suspiciously absent in this prayer is repentance. Yeah, there is no.

00:12:24:51 – 00:12:58:45
Clint Loveall
I’m sorry. I did the wrong thing. You’ve shown me a better way. it it is noticeable in its absence. And whether or not Jonah is repentant, we can take up again as we go through the rest of the book. But it is curious that of all the things that are wonderfully spoken in the prayer, a sense of personal accountability and guilt is not expressed by Jonah, which I think is foreshadowing.

00:12:58:46 – 00:13:24:09
Clint Loveall
I think that’s not unintentional. there is. I want to share this. I’m just going to read it to make sure I get it. There is a you may know, there’s a sermon in Moby Dick, preached by Father m’appelle. And on this instance, on this text, he says this, if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves.

00:13:24:13 – 00:13:53:36
Clint Loveall
And it is in this disobeying ourselves. We’re in the hardness of obeying God consists. And, you know, that’s wonderfully said. It’s it’s poetic, it’s well written. But this idea that the question still hanging over the story of Jonah is, who will Jonah obey? Will he obey God? Will he obey himself? And and you would think after a miraculous delivery, you know, the answer.

00:13:53:42 – 00:14:21:56
Clint Loveall
But of course, Jonah wouldn’t be Jonah if it was that simple. I want to just finish here with this last verse, verse ten. Then the Lord spoke to the fish, and it spewed Jonah out on the dry land, sort of leftover from middle school fellowship. The word spewed there was probably, well translated, vomited. So the fish vomited Jonah out on dry ground.

00:14:22:01 – 00:14:55:06
Clint Loveall
but notice that the fish obeys. So far, again, sailors have converted. The fish obeys the the only question mark we’ve encountered so far in this book and and at every turn is Jonah. So a very interesting chapter, a fascinating twist in the story, this this poetic interlude in the middle of a narrative. really well done. we told you yesterday, there are some arguments over whether this is original or might have been inserted.

00:14:55:06 – 00:15:18:52
Clint Loveall
I, I don’t know what to make of those arguments and don’t really, I don’t find them that compelling. It’s in there and it’s beautiful and it provides such a moment of depth in the overall story without affecting the narrative, which is hard to do by inserting a psalm into a story. But this this author does it exceptionally well.

00:15:18:52 – 00:15:39:09
Michael Gewecke
I think one thing to quickly note here, Clint is up to this point, we have been pointing out the places where Jonah has been going down, down, down and down right. It shouldn’t be lost on us. The first moment in the story where Jonah goes up, by definition, is a moment that he did not have agency. Jonah didn’t choose.

00:15:39:09 – 00:16:03:03
Michael Gewecke
God chose to have the fish spew him. And God is the one who begins that process. That first moment of deliverance from this fish becomes the first moment in which Jonah, we might ask, on his own volition or not, the story is not going to tell us that. That’s very carefully left out, is now suddenly been put in position to do what God had originally said.

00:16:03:03 – 00:16:07:05
Michael Gewecke
I think that that’s a beautiful detail and not worth missing.

00:16:07:10 – 00:16:24:27
Clint Loveall
Yeah. No, this this is all very well written. a lot of depth here. Thank you for joining us in it. Hope you can continue with us. we are now about halfway through, but there’s still a great deal left to happen in this short book, so I hope you can join us for it.

00:16:24:30 – 00:16:41:49
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, we mentioned in one of the introductions there’s four parts here. We’re now through two of them, so there’s still two to go and there’s just as much twist and turn and question and Jonah character issues actually that are going to come. So don’t miss any of those. Subscribe for more content like this. We’d love to have you liked it.

00:16:41:49 – 00:16:46:39
Michael Gewecke
If this video has been helpful. And we of course would love to see you tomorrow. Thanks everyone!