Kevil First Baptist Church

CHAPTER ONE.

V. 1-2
The mission: “Arise and go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.”

One of the things that makes Jonah different than the other prophets in the OT, is that God directed/commissioned/called Jonah to go to Nineveh, a Gentile nation. This assignment Jonah would not be preaching to people familiar with God and his law. He would be preaching to Gentiles-to non-jews. And not just any Gentile nation but he most powerful nation in the known world.

Nineveh, great cityThe phrase great city occurs three other times in Jonah; 3:2, 3:3 and 4:11. The term great designates nothing more than it’s size.

Geographic location: Modern day Northern Iraq, close to the Turkey and Syrian border.
OT-Nineveh was the capital city of Assyria. According to Genesis 10:11, the city was built by the mighty hunter Nimrod. Nineveh is about 550 miles from Joppa.

Nineveh was a bitter enemy of Israel, and Jonah would have liked to see its destruction.
Beginning in 733 BC Assyria took the Northern Kingdom’s land and carried the inhabitants into exile (2 Kings 15:29).
In 2 Kings 17:24-25, we find that the king of Assyria brought people from his country and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the people of Israel.
Later, beginning in 721 BC, they besieged Israel’s capital, Samaria, and it fell three years later (2 Kings 18:9-12). This event fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy that God would use Assyria as the “rod of His anger” (Isaiah 10:5-19); that is, the Assyrian Empire was implementing God’s judgment against the idolatrous Israelites.
V. 3
Jonah’s response: “But Jonah”
Jonah chooses to flee and go in the opposite direction.
He went to Joppa-on the west coast of Samaria. He “paid the fare” and boarded a ship heading to Tarshish. There was an urgency in God’s call for Jonah to go to Nineveh. Jonah matched the urgency by paying for a “ticket” and heading in the other direction.

Tarshish
Geographical location: A Phoenician city in Southern Spain just west of the Straight of Gibraltar. The Straight of Gibraltar connects the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean. Tarshish is north of Morocco coast/Africa.
Merchant ships from Tarshish travels to Tyre (North of Israels coast) delivering silver, iron, tim and lead. It was the westernmost place in the Mediterranean world. In Jonah’s world, it was the farthest place on the planet from Nineveh.
About 2500 miles from Joppa.

Flee the presence of the Lord, away from the presence of the Lord
Jonah is not just rebelling, but he is actively trying to give the Lord the slip. Jonah understands the only way possible to escape obedience to the Lord’s command would be to escape the Lord altogether.
The phrase “from the presence of the Lord” is a Hebrew idiom that indicates Jonah is in full rebellion against the Lord. Jonah is trying to do more than escape going to Nineveh…Jonah is trying to reject God himself and everything about God.

V. 4-6
4-The Lord hurled
The verb used here is used of hurling an object such as a spear.
Threatened to break apart-This was no ordinary storm. It was so rough that it was going to destroy then ship. It might be better expressed by translating “Now the ship was determined to break apart.”

5-This verse records the response of the ship’s crew.
This was an experienced group of sailors that had seen storms come up at sea before. They were an international polytheistic group. They worshipped a broad range of gods(little ‘g’). Their devotion included a multitude of protecting sprits, patron deities, lower echelon gods and goddesses and then higher ranking gods and goddesses.
This storm was so bad, that these experienced mariners began to call out to all their gods to try to appeal to any one or combination of them.
They also were in such a panic that they began to throw their cargo, their livelihood/income overboard to lighten the ships load in hopes of saving the ship.
6-We find the captain of the ship takes action.
He finds Jonah asleep in the “inner part of the ship”.

So the captain asks him, How can you sleep when the ship is being torn apart?

The captain did not know that Jonah was a Hebrew, or a prophet or that Jonah worship one God, Yahweh. He just knew that it wouldn’t hurt having someone else calling out to a god, because perhaps Jonah’s god was the one that would answer.

V. 7-12
7-Cast lots-the casting of lots was a widely used method in the ancient near east. The ancient practice of casting lots would be the same as throwing dice or flipping a coin we commonly use today.

The primary reason for casting lots was to render an impartial, unbiased decision on important matters. Once the lot was cast, no one could argue that the decision was the result of human intervention.

There are many instances of casting lots in the Bible, some include the selection of the scapegoat (Lv 16:8–10);, the allocation of the tribal inheritance in the Promised Land (Nm 26:55), the order of the priests and their duties, determining the guilt of Achan (Josh 7:14-18), selecting Saul as king(1 Sam 10:20-22) and the remaining 11 disciples cast lots to see who would replace Judas.

When the soldiers cast lots for Jesus’ robe what they were doing was really nothing unusual for them, it was actually common practice to determine who got to keep the crucified person’s personal belongings.

By this time, Jonah was awake and on deck with everyone else and the lot fell upon Jonah. He was the cause of the storm. The wind, the sailors/captain and the lots are all agents of God for his purpose.

8. The sailors asks Jonah five questions: 1) On whose account has this evil come upon us? Or who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? 2) What is your occupation?or who do you represent? 3) where do you come from? 4)what is your country? 5)what people are you?


9. This is the first time in the story that Jonah speaks but he responds to all their questions with only two answers. I am Hebrew and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land.

10. What is this you have done?
After Jonah confesses, they ask him another question…what have you done to us?

11. Then they ask him another question; What can we do to get this storm to stop? How can we appease your God?
12. Throw me overboard. Jonah instructs the crew to throw him overboard and then the storm will stop. He admits that he is the cause of the storm/God’s anger over his disobedience. He also recognizes that because of his disobedience many people will die.

13. They disregard Jonah’s instructions and keep on trying to row toward dry land…The literal translation is “the sea walked and raged.” They did not want to be responsible for killing a prophet of a powerful God. They did not want his blood on their hands.

v. 14-16
14. They finally stop calling on their false gods and cry out to the One true God. Oh Lord, please do not let us die for taking this man’s life”.
They know Jonah is not innocent in relationship to God, but in relationship to them he is innocent. He jeopardized their lives by boarding their ship, knowing he was trying to flee God.
God declared Jonah guilty in the casting of the lots. Jonah confirmed his guilt by his own admission of what he had done.
15. They throw Jonah overboard and immediately the sea stops. The ESV uses the word “hurled” same word used in verse 4.

16. Feared the Lord, offered a sacrifice. Made vows, to the Lord.
The sailors have three types of fear in this chapter: 1) v5-they fear dying in the storm and each relies on their own god. 2) v9 They hear that Jonah “fears” a God they don’t know, the God who sent the storm and they are exceedingly afraid and 3.)v.16 After the sea grows calm, they fear the Lord, but his “fear” is “reverence” as in Psa. 11:10, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”
A sacrifice was a public expression of dependency and worship and Vows were a public expression of the intent to continue faithful worship.

These sailors were saved because they called upon the name of the Lord and turned from their evil ways.

V. 17 is probably the most famous verse in the Book of Jonah.
Sadly it is also the one that cause many people to stumble and to refuse to believe Jonah as historical and Biblical truth. Believing the miracle that Jonah was swallowed by a fish, lived in it’s belly for three days and three nights is hard for many to understand because they try to think it through a scientific mind instead of believing by faith in the miraculous power of God, who created ALL things, including fish.

Lord appointed/ordained-The word is used four times in the book and always points to the Lord’s power to accomplish his will. Here it shows his sovereignty over the creatures of the sea. In 4:6 his power over plants, in 4:7 shows his power over crawling creatures and in 4:8 his power over the wind. The text only indicates that God summoned the fish to be at that place at the exact moment of need.

A great fish or whale or some special type of sea creature?
The great debate….Here’s what we know and we should always stick to what we know and never try to make the text imply anything else.

All we know for sure is that it was a “large fish”. The word translated “fish” is “dag” a general Hebrew word for any aquatic creature.

Many will argue that a whale is not a fish, it is a mammal.
In ancient times they weren’t classified that way, any aquatic creature was called a fish.
Trying to gather scientific evidence to confirm Scripture usually results in the traction of the miracle. It negates the miracle. It denies the supernatural power of God to do the impossible.
D. Stuart says “When we search for historical incidents when people and large animals were swallowed are recovered from sea creatures shows a posture of defensiveness that is unnecessary, counterproductive and violates the nature of the biblical account. A miracle is a divine act beyond human replication or explanation.”

Why a fish? The fish provided time for instruction from the Lord.
R.T Kendall says, “the belly of the fish is not a happy place to live, but it is a good place to learn.”
The great fish swallowing the rebellious and drowning prophet is a sign that God’s pursuing and extraordinary mercy. Even more, the fish represents God’s forgiveness of Jonah’s rebellion abasing his call to the Ninevites. The fish swallowing Jonah is a sin that God will not be dissuaded from his intention to present the opportunity repentance and forgiveness of Israel’s enemy. It demonstrates the astounding lengths that God will go thru to reconcile Jonah, and the people of Nineveh to himself by using Jonah.

Don’t get distracted but the great fish debate. If you do you will miss out on the entire focus of the book. The fish is not the story…it’s a small part of the story, but it’s not the focus.

There days and three nights
Jonah was one of only four writing prophets that Jesus mentioned by name during His earthly ministry (Isaiah, Daniel, and Zechariah were the others). But Jonah received more than a mere mention. Jesus actually identified Himself with the prophet’s three-day sojourn in the belly of the great fish, noting it as a foreshadowing of His own death, when Jesus would spend three days “in the heart of the earth,” before His resurrection (Matthew 12:39–41). Jesus’s identification with the prophet at the lowest point of Jonah’s life finds echoes in the book of Hebrews, where it teaches that Jesus “had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest” (Hebrews 2:17). The book of Jonah stands as an important link in the prophetic chain, giving readers a glimpse of Christ’s death and resurrection hundreds of years before they actually occurred.