Nineveh Analysis

Jonah to bring a prophetic message to Nineveh, appointed the plant to grow up amazingly quickly, and then appointed a worm to kill the plant, and caused a brutally hot wind to blow.

Cynics often scoff at the book of Jonah, and even Christian scholars wrestle with the unbelievable events recorded in the book. But the point of the book isn’t to say this stuff happens all the time, it’s meant to be unbelievably miraculous because God is revealing something unbelievably massive about Himself and the payload for that revelation is in these final verses. God confronts Jonah – and us – with a final question.

Once again God asks him the question, do you do well to be angry for the plant? Jonah says, yeah, I do well to be angry – angry enough to die.

That is true. And God will and must judge the wicked. He sees their wickedness, but He also sees their deep ignorance. They are blind and foolish. It’s the same heart displayed in Jesus when he said from the cross, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” There is real sin and it must be judged, but there is real stupidity too, and God has compassion on their ignorance. They are precious souls that God had everything to do with – He created them. And their souls aren’t just here and gone again in a day, but eternal in nature. This question reveals that God’s heart is filled with compassion for the wicked and pagan nations just as His heart is filled with compassion for His chosen people. He really is a gracious God, merciful and slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love – and not just to Israel, but to pagan, wicked cities. Not just to Christians, but to hardened, non-Christians.

Jonah’s religion had hardened into a smug, self-righteous judmentalism instead of a compassionate and merciful outreach to those who are far from God. God’s question asks Jonah to compare his heart to God’s. His question asks us to compare our hearts to God’s too. It’s an open question that leaves us to write our own ending: will we view forgiveness the way God does, or will we limit our compassion to people and things that we are close to and judgment for the people we don’t relate to or agree

He does care about cows. And dogs. And cats. And animals. They are not made in His image like man. Their lives aren’t sacred as human life is, but they aren’t worthless in His sight either. David writes in Psalm 36:6, Man and beast you save, O Lord. In the book of Job one of the ways God reveals His power and sovereign care over this world is by describing His care over animals – lions and ravens and goats and calves and donkeys and oxen and ostriches and horses and eagles. Jesus taught us that our heavenly Father feeds the sparrow and sees when one falls from a tree. He used a parable of a lost sheep and asked which of them, having a hundred sheep, if he were to lose one, wouldn’t go looking for that one lost sheep? God cares about animals. But God’s heart is not uncaring toward animals. Proverbs 12:10