The prophet Jonah.

I am not a very spiritual person. I believe in my God Lord Jesus Christ, pray to Him and talk (:)) to Him constantly. That's where my spirituality ends. I've been pushed into the church's youth league related activities lately. This has taken me to a lot of camps :) and I've met quite a few spiritual people and youngsters who know the Bible much better than me.

In one of the camps (SouthZone held in ECC during May 2006), the speakers (Rev. Dr. Sham P Thomas and Rev. Dr. Valsan Thambu) spoke about the prophet Jonah and I felt, here is one man in the Bible I can relate to as a person. :)

I'd like to make a record of what I took home from those two talks. So here goes.

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The specialty of the book of Jonah is that, it is not an account of the prophecies of Jonah. Instead it is his story.

Some of his characters that stand out are

• Disobedience: God asked him to go to Nineveh. He instead buys a ticket on a ship to Spain, which lies in the exactly opposite direction of Nineveh.
• Insensitive: A man who is running away from God, ends up on a ship in turbulent weather. Instead of praying to his God (or all possible gods), he sleeps. While the sailors are praying to their respective Gods.
• Stone-hearted: When Jonah asks the sailors to throw him into the sea, they think of reasons to not do such a thing to a fellow human. But, when God decides to not destroy Nineveh, Jonah is angry with God for going back on His decision to punish Nineveh.
• No confession: He prays and thanks God from inside the whale's belly, but he doesn't once say "I'm sorry for not obeying you.". Come to think of it, I don't know if he ever repented.
• Attitude: God gets him safely out of the storm and the whale. He finally agrees to go and warn Nineveh. But the message he gives them is "You'll perish in 40 days". Why is this going to happen? What do they have to do to prevent this from happening? He mentions nothing in this regard. Also, it'd require atleast a couple of days to traverse the city of Nineveh, but Jonah completes it in just 1 day.
• Anger: Jonah is furious because God forgave the people of Nineveh when they repented. The only explanation for this behavior of his is EGO. He prophesised their destruction which was rendered false.
• Suicidal: His one solution to all problems. Caught in the storm - Throw me overboard. God forgives Nineveh - he is upset and wants to die. God tries to teach him a lesson using a vine - he is angry enough to die when the vine withers.

A couple of positive characters in Jonah are

• Conviction: Jonah is swallowed by the whale. He prays to God from the whale's belly and thanks God for saving him, much before God shows any signs of delivering him.
• Knows his God: He knows that his God is a merciful God. The very reason why he refused to go to Nineveh when God first asks him to go, is because he knows that God will forgive them if they repent.

God's characters that are highlighted are

• Omnipotent: He controls the wind, sea, whale and plants.
• Forgiving: He forgave Jonah and Nineveh. He gave both of them a second chance.
• Answers prayers: He answered the prayers of the sailors, Jonah and the people of Nineveh.

Jonah can be compared to the elder son in the prodigal son.

• Elder son resents the party thrown by the father for his brother who returns. Similarly, Jonah is resentful of the fact that God forgave Nineveh.
• Story of Prodigal son does not tell us what the elder son did. Did he join the feast? Did he choose to stay out? Similarly, the book of Jonah leaves the story open. Did Jonah repent? Did he continue to run away from God?

Irony: The prophet who was sent out to preach repentance, refuses to repent.

Bottom Line: God forgave the people of Nineveh inspite of the prophet, not because him.