In today’s society people are constantly torn between the battle of listening to God or choosing to run away from following his rules by allowing themselves to be distracted by everyday life activities. In the story of Jonah, his mindset and actions throughout the story is a prime reflection of people within today’s society who are torn between God and their daily activities. Jonah’s personality and in the form that the story is told makes the story of Jonah intriguing. Jonah is extremely stubborn and unlike many of the prophets before him he is scared to take upon the responsibilities that come with becoming a prophet. The manner in which the story is told is intriguing because it is unlike any others that are found in the Bible. The story …show more content…
In relation to people in today’s society, people are faced with an array of problems in order to learn to appreciate God’s plans for them in the end. Although in the story of Jonah it is arguable if Jonah even appreciates God’s role for him in the end at all. However, God puts Jonah through all these hardships as he was trying to flee because God knew that’s what was going to make Jonah listen to him. After Jonah is swallowed by the Whale, Jonah finally prays to God and says, “But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Deliverance belongs to the Lord” (Jonah 2:9)! In this moment Jonah knew that he had to face his fear of being a prophet and had to listen to God’s orders from him as a prophet. God then told Jonah that he must go out into Nineveh, calling it a great city, and Jonah went out to Nineveh and said, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown! And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small put on sackcloth” (Jonah 3:4-5). In this instance in the story, the reader would believe that Jonah is all of a sudden a “changed man” because he listened to God and told the people of Nineveh what God wanted them to hear. The people of Nineveh too listened to God’s words and they wore their sackcloth’s and fasted. Similarly, in today’s society there are those people who are like the people of Nineveh and obey God’s orders, and then there are those who are like Jonah who encounter a difficult experience before finally accepting God’s obligations he has for
In Vonnegut’s novel, readers can notice that there are numerous religious references such as names and terms throughout it. In the opening of the novel it can already be seen. Vonnegut starts his novel off with the narrator introducing himself, “Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John.” (Vonnegut 1). From this opening line you can already see a biblical reference, that reference being “Jonah”. The name Jonah derives from the Hebrew bible, it’s known to be the name of a prophet who disobeyed God. Already early on in the novel it can be seen that a parallel between religion and the post-war world which the story take place in are intertwining. It can be assumed that by the author uses of the reference Jonah, a disobedient prophet of god, that the novel also revolves around the theme of deception among people in society. Deception implicated among person to another can lead to creating destruction in society. If one such as a writ...
Moses is characterized as a hard-working man who is very kind and intimate with nature. He is the last worker out in the fields on many days and he is extremely comfortable outside in nature. In Edward P. Jones’ excerpt from The Known World, the character of Moses is developed through the imagery that is used, the third person point of view, and the details that Jones chooses to use.
Jesus, Himself, uses Jonah as a sign of His death, “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” Upon being swallowed, Jonah died and, once he was spit up, he was reborn and willing to carry out God’s mission. While he may not have grown in his understanding of God’s love towards the Ninevites, it is undeniable that the experience did change him.
The role of the prophet changes with the society in which he lives. In modern society, a prophet is a visionary, telling people what they can become; in Biblical times, a prophet was the voice of God, telling his people what they had to become to fulfill their covenant with God. In William Golding's Lord of the Flies, the prophet is a peaceful lad, Simon. He alone saw that the jungle, which represented freedom and the lack of civilization, was not to be feared but to be understood; he alone knew that the mythical Beast of the island, feared by all the boys, was, in fact, their own inherent savagery. Through these truths Simon represents a Christ figure paralleling Christ's misunderstood message and Christ's death.
When I read the name of "Jonah," I was prompted to think of the character of the same name in the Bible who got swallowed by a whale in the Old Testament. While the character goes also by the name "John," I couldn't help but wonder if there was some similarity involved in this novel.
In chapter two Johnson deals with the fulfillment of the Torah and how Luke uses prophecy as a literature shape. Chapter three however is what really sets the reader up for the “meat” of the book. In chapter three he talks about the characteristics of a prophet. The first key characteristic for a prophet he says is being led by the spirit of God. In order to support this claim he gives many examples of prophets such as Moses, Ezekiel, and Elijah who all had the Holy Spirit to empower them as they did Gods work. The second element to a prophet is speaking Gods word to humans. Not only do prophets do the work of God but they will also speak for him. I find Johnsons main example Moses to be the most helpful when looking at this step of the prophet. This is because countless times God spoke to Moses and then Moses would tell the Israelites. This key characteristic goes well with the third characteristic that the prophet embodies God’s word. Countless times we see Moses doing this throughout the Old Testament. An example of this is in Exodus 20:1 when God tells Moses the ten commandments that he passes on to his people by carving them into stone. The fourth characteristic of the prophet is working to make humanity into God’s vision for it. Moses again shows this characteristic by appointing elders to help watch over the Israelites in Exodus 18. The final distinguishing trait for
Near the beginning of Moby Dick, Father Mapple reminds Pequod sailors of the biblical prophet Jonah and his unique encounter with a whale. The whale, known as a Leviathan in the Bible, swallows Jonah because Jonah refuses to obey God's command to preach to a wicked group of people. Father Mapple in his sermon says, "If we obey God, we must disobey ourselves; and it is in this disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God consists" (47). Once Jonah admits his sinfulness and follows his maker, the whale frees Jonah. Father Mapple says that obeying God can be difficult and might not seem logical to the person listening.
He shows his true character in a conversation with Sayid when sayid and the clarinet were being held captive. He says to Sayid “I know it's not right, … What choice do I have? ...this time we live in, you know how it forces a person to do things.”(pg.292). He shows a whole other aspect of The Prophet and how you don't necessarily need to even believe his teachings to be forced to action be them. Even though he knows that his actions are wrong and the things he does sicken him, he has no choice but to follow along and keep doing them. The Prophet has attracted a group of followers and they have adopted his beliefs and so are able to justify anything no matter how cruel. This means that even for people who don't want to do the things The Prophet asks they have no choice, able to justify any action his followers could judge that said person had become a traitor and for “the good of the people” had to be killed. The way that other people have chosen to cope with the new world has forced the boy to adopt the same way of life. Even if he doesn't believe in what he is doing his actions are still the same as someone who does so in a way he is still the same as all The Prophet s other followers. He has been coerced into this life rather than choosing it, but his
A good story is one that isn't demanding, that proceeds from A to B, and above all doesn't remind us of the bad times, the cardboard patches we used to wear in our shoes, the failed farms, the way people you love just up and die. It tells us instead that hard work and perseverance can overcome all obstacles; it tells lie after lie, and the happy ending is the happiest lie of all. (85)
...all the people Ezekiel was strange but God did not believed, In God’s eyes, Ezekiel was truthful, forgiving, obedient, and had endurance. He was dependable, patience, faithful, and tolerant. Ezekiel was truthful in all that he spoke because all of his words were from God. Ezekiel was forgiving and tolerant of God when God decided to take Ezekiel’s wife away to make a point. Ezekiel was very obedient as he obeyed God’s every single command including not mourning when his wife died. God gave Ezekiel lots of endurance because he prophetized for over twenty-two years. With his endurance, showed he was always dependable and faithful. All God needed to do was tell Ezekiel what to say or do, and Ezekiel would complete the task without complaint. Ezekiel was very patient even though God did not allow him to speak for seven and a half years and he complied with that.
Specifically, it taught about how His mercy could not be restricted by a person’s preconceptions. Jonah was a prophet of God but was ruled by his unrelenting hatred towards sinners. Despite his loathing, God was more than capable of using him in the salvation of the corrupted. When Jonah was commanded by the Lord to preach to the Ninevites, he resisted. Nineveh was a pagan society and epitomized “everything evil that the Israelites hated” (MacArthur, Jonah 112), Seeing that his enemies would be forgiven if he delivered the message, Jonah fled from his duty. However, he would not be able to elude from the will of God and, after some precarious situations in the sea, would reluctantly prophesied to the Ninevites and inspired their faith in the Lord. This came to show that while “Jonah was filled with resentment … [and his] wrath was aroused, … the Lord [could still extend His] grace” (MacArthur, Jonah
On an opposite note, Jonah was a man whom God called upon to become a prophet. Jonah refused because he didn't desire a life of servitude. Knowing that he had committed an ultimate sin, Jonah fled to the ocean, risking hundreds of crew members' lives, believing that God would not be able to follow. In the sea, Jonah was swallowed by God in the form of a whale In the whale's belly, he repented and prayed for forgiveness. He was spit up by the whale upon dry land and all was forgiven.
...e Biblical story weighs heavily on Joseph’s divine dream interpreting ability and the story it provides, focusing on the theme of God caring for His people and fulfilling his divine plan. The Qur’an appreciates this but sees it as a means to the end of the spread of faith to non-believers. The Christian and Jewish version of Joseph’s trials serves a greater literary purpose than the Qur’an’s version, advancing belief by showing God’s abilities and the way they may be manifested in others in order to fulfill his divine plan. However, the Qur’an expands upon the Biblical version by including additional plot points and explicitly portraying Joseph’s goals and how they align with Islamic theology. The accounts differ in functionality, but both are crucial to the holistic understanding of the story of Joseph and some of the fundamental differences between the religions.
In Judaism, God is seen as having a contractual relationship with the Jewish people where they must obey his holy laws in return for their status of the chosen people. God rewards or punishes Jewish people based on whether they obey or disobey his will. In parts of the Old Testament, however, God does show mercy or forgiveness, and in later interpretations God’s laws such as the Ten Commandments are followed not only out of loyalty to God but also because of their high moral character.
We often read stories in the Bible without taking the historical context into consideration. As a result, we become unaware of the story’s historical validity. In some cases, stories are used to share a moral concept, or used as a tool to teach a lesson. The Book of Jonah is an example that will be used to determine if this particular story describes an accurate recount of history, or if it teaches the readers a lesson. In the Book of Jonah, Jonah (the prophet) is instructed to go to a pagan city (Nineveh) to preach to the Ninevites, hoping that they will repent for their sins. However, he challenges God and travels to Tarshish instead. Jonah receives consequences for his actions and Nineveh is eventually forgiven by God. Although the story of Jonah appears to entail a historically accurate event on the surface, it is, however, used to teach a lesson that God is the ultimate decider of who is worthy of forgiveness. Analyzing the historical context, explicating the verses of the book, and interpreting the book as a whole will allow a clearer understanding of the true purpose of the Book of Jonah, which is to convey a satirical story with a very important lesson.