Day #166: Jonah 2:1-10

This week's blog is written by Pauline Lo Alker

Background

Jonah was running away from God. Instead of going to Nineveh as God had commanded, he went the opposite direction and boarded a ship for Tarshish. God hurled a fierce storm at sea threatening the lives of everyone on board. The pagan sailors discovered that Jonah's disobedience of God was the cause of this calamity, they reluctantly threw Jonah overboard in order to save themselves. As Jonah was sinking to the bottom of the sea, the Lord sent a great fish and swallowed Jonah whole. Jonah remained in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights.

The Power of Three

Jonah could no more run from the presence of God than he could run from his own shadow. God was present in the boat and in the sea; He was also present in the belly of the fish. God had taken away everything Jonah had, and now he was left in a dark, somewhat slimy and smelly place where there was nothing left but God. Jonah had finally come to the end of his escape route. For three days and three nights, he was trapped!

This reminds me of what Jesus said when some of the scribes and Pharisees asked Him to give them a sign that He is the Christ. Jesus said to them, "An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." (Matthew 12:38-40 ESV) Jesus likened the time between His own death and resurrection to Jonah's time in the fish.

This is one of the reasons we said at the beginning of this week concerning Jonah's story. While the story line is so simple that children can follow it easily, the story carries a host of symbolic expressions, Biblical references and applicable lessons for our lives.

I ask myself, "What would I do if I were Jonah, sitting there inside the fish?" I probably would have been very grateful at the beginning for God's mercy that I did not perish. But would I still be grateful on Day 2? As I said yesterday, being inside the fish is not exactly what I would call a 'picnic.' To be perfectly honest, by the end of Day 2, I would most likely have started a one-person pity party and let out a stream of wrenching complaints.

To Jonah's credit, he prayed instead.

Jonah's Prayer

"From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the Lord his God." (2:1 NIV).

Chapter 2 is Jonah's psalm of thanksgiving for God's deliverance from death in the sea. Let us breakdown the verses in his prayer and group them under several headings:

Laments (expressions of grief, regrets or self-pity)

• "Cast me into the deep... the flood surrounds me .... ..waves pass over me" (2:3)
• "The waters closed in over me to take my life .... Weeds wrapped about my head" (2:5)
• "I went down .... bars closed upon me." (2:6)

Thanksgiving

• "I cried out to the Lord out of my distress, and He answered me." (2:1)
• "and You heard my voice." (2:2)
• "I remembered the Lord and my prayer came to You, into Your holy temple." (2:7)

Worship

• "yet I shall again look upon Your temple." (2:4)
• "But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to You; what I have vowed I will pay." (2:9)

Warning

• "Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love." (2:8)

Praise

• "Salvation belongs to the Lord!" (2:9) This verse is the theme and highlight of Jonah's prayer!

Saved with a Caveat

The language of Jonah's prayer indicates that he was very familiar with the Psalms. He understood God's character and His merciful history. He knew the Lord had been patient with the Israelites and with him personally.

Jonah crafted an eloquent prayer of thanksgiving to God for His mercy. He thanked God for sending the fish to save him; but did he pray for God to save the pagan sailors? No! He never even wondered what happened to them. In verse 2:8, he said those who worship idols would lose hope of God's love. Was that a veiled 'curse' toward those sailors?

Jonah was rather small-hearted. He considered those 'others' who were not Israelites his inferior and therefore did not deserve the same mercy from God.

Although Jonah had turned back to God, God was still displeased with the selfishness and hostility in Jonah's heart. Nevertheless, God granted Jonah a second chance. "And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land." (2:10)

What a sight and sound it must have been! Imagine this: At God's command, the great fish let out an ear-splitting guttural roar, in one big breath spitted out this huge "vomit" with Jonah slumped in the middle, up through the air and landed on shore in a powerful, thunderous thud!

I must say, it was an undignified, somewhat disgusting way to be saved. But saved, at least.

So What? (What will I do with what I have read today?)

Like Jonah, we often have the appropriate and righteous words to say, and may even have the right actions to match our words. Yet our hearts can be hard, unwilling to extend God's love, grace and mercy to others, particularly to those who are different from us and to those whom we dislike.

Only God can expand our small, weak hearts. He has given us His grace through the death and resurrection of His son, our Lord Jesus. Because of Christ's Spirit working in us, our capacity to love others -- even our enemies -- can increase. In fact, God promises this to all those who love and believe Him: "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh." (Ezekiel 36:26 NIV)

So, dear brothers and sisters, let's always be watchful over the condition of our hearts, lest we find ourselves also in a'the belly of the fish." Worse yet, let us not end up being "vomited" dismissively to dry land.

We will witness more of Jonah's hard-heartedness in the coming days this week. Stay tuned ....