ISRAEL’S JEALOUSY OF JEHOVAH
Jonah 4
HAVING illustrated the truth, that the Gentiles
are capable of repentance unto life, the Book now describes the
effect of their escape upon Jonah, and closes by revealing God’s
full heart upon the matter.
Jonah is very angry that Nineveh has been spared. Is this (as some
say) because his own word has not been fulfilled? In Israel there
was an accepted rule that a prophet should be judged by the issue of
his predictions: "If thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the
word which Jehovah hath not spoken?-when a prophet speaketh in the
name of Jehovah, if the thing follow not nor come to pass, that is
the thing which Jehovah hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken
presumptuously, thou shalt have no reverence for him." {Deu
18:21-22} Was it this that stung Jonah? Did he ask for death because
men would say of him that when he predicted Nineveh’s overthrow he
was false and had not God’s word? Of such fears there is no trace in
the story. Jonah never doubts that his word came from Jehovah, nor
dreads that other men will doubt. There is absolutely no hint of
anxiety as to his professional reputation. But, on the contrary,
Jonah says that from the first he had the foreboding, grounded upon
his knowledge of God’s character, that Nineveh would be spared, and
that it was from this issue he shrank and fled to go to Tarshish. In
short he could not, either then or now, master his conviction that
the heathen should be destroyed. His grief, though foolish, is not
selfish. He is angry, not at the baffling of his word, but at God’s
forbearance with the foes and tyrants of Israel.
Now, as in all else, so in this, Jonah is the type of his people. If
we can judge from their literature after the Exile, they were not
troubled by the non-fulfillment of prophecy, except as one item of
what was the problem of their faith-the continued prosperity of the
Gentiles. And this was not, what it appears to be in some Psalms,
only an intellectual problem or an offence to their sense of
justice. Nor could they meet it always, as some of their prophets
did, with a supreme intellectual scorn of the heathen, and in the
proud confidence that they themselves were the favorites of God. For
the knowledge that God was infinitely gracious haunted their pride;
and from the very heart of their faith arose a jealous fear that He
would show His grace to others than themselves. To us it may be
difficult to understand this temper. We have not been trained to
believe ourselves an elect people; nor have we suffered at the hands
of the heathen. Yet, at least, we have contemporaries and
fellow-Christians among whom we may find still alive many of the
feelings against which the Book of Jonah was written. Take the
Oriental Churches of today. Centuries of oppression have created in
them an awful hatred of the infidel, beneath whose power they are
hardly suffered to live. The barest justice calls for the overthrow
of their oppressors. That these share a common humanity with
themselves is a sense they have nearly lost. For centuries they have
had no spiritual intercourse with them; to try to convert a
Mohammedan has been for twelve hundred years a capital crime. It is
not wonderful that Eastern Christians should have long lost power to
believe in the conversion of infidels, and to feel that anything is
due but their destruction. The present writer once asked a cultured
and devout layman of the Greek Church, Why then did God create so
many Mohammedans? The answer came hot and fast: To fill up Hell!
Analogous to this were the feelings of the Jews towards the peoples
who had conquered and oppressed them. But the jealousy already
alluded to aggravated these feelings to a rigor no Christian can
ever share. What right had God to extend to their oppressors His
love for a people who alone had witnessed and suffered for Him, to
whom He had bound Himself by so many exclusive promises, whom He had
called His Bride, His Darling, His Only One? And yet the more Israel
dwelt upon that love the more they were afraid of it. God had been
so gracious and so long-suffering to themselves that they could not
trust Him not to show these mercies to others. In which case, what
was the use of their uniqueness and privilege? What worth was their
living any more? Israel might as well perish.
It is this subtle story of Israel’s jealousy of Jehovah, and
Jehovah’s gentle treatment of it, which we follow in the last
chapter of the book. The chapter starts from Jonah’s confession of
fear of the results of God’s lovingkindness and from his persuasion
that, as this spread of the heathen, the life of His servant spent
in opposition to the heathen was a worthless life; and the chapter
closes with God’s own vindication of His Love to His jealous
prophet.
"It was a great grief to Jonah, and he was angered; and he prayed to
Jehovah and said: Ah now, Jehovah, while I was still upon mine own
ground, at the time that I prepared to flee to Tarshish, was not
this my word, that I knew Thee to be a God gracious and tender,
long-suffering and plenteous in love, relenting of evil? And now,
Jehovah, take, I pray Thee, my life from me, for me death is better
than life."
In this impatience of life as well as in some subsequent traits, the
story of Jonah reflects that of Elijah. But the difference between
the two prophets was this, that while Elijah was very jealous for
Jehovah, Jonah was very jealous of Him. Jonah could not bear to see
the love promised to Israel alone, and cherished by her, bestowed
equally upon her heathen oppressors. And he behaved after the manner
of jealousy and of the heart that thinks itself insulted. He
withdrew, and sulked in solitude, and would take no responsibility
nor further interest in his work. Such men are best treated by a
caustic gentleness, a little humor, a little rallying, a leaving to
nature, and a taking unawares in their own confessed prejudices. All
these-I dare to think even the humor-are present in God’s treatment
of Jonah. This is very natural and very beautiful. Twice the Divine
Voice speaks with a soft sarcasm: "Art thou very angry?" Then
Jonah’s affections, turned from man to God, are allowed their course
with a bit of nature, the fresh and green companion of his solitude;
and then when all his pity for this has been roused by its
destruction, that very pity is employed to awaken his sympathy with
God’s compassion for the great city, and he is shown how he has
denied to God the same natural affection which he confesses to be so
strong in himself But why try further to expound so clear and
obvious an argument?
"But Jehovah said, Art thou so very angry?" Jonah would not
answer-how lifelike is his silence at this point!-"but went out from
the city and sat down before it, and made him there a booth and
dwelt beneath it in the shade, till he should see what happened in
the city. And Jehovah God prepared a gourd, and it grew up above
Jonah to be a shadow over his head And Jonah rejoiced in the gourd
with a great joy. But as dawn came up the next day God prepared a
worm, and this wounded the gourd, that it perished. And it came to
pass, when the sun rose, that God prepared a dry east-wind, and the
sun smote on Jonah’s head, so that he was faint, and begged for
himself that he might die, saying, Better my dying than my living!
And God said unto Jonah, Art thou so very angry about the gourd? And
he said, I am very angry-even unto death! And Jehovah said: Thou
carest for a gourd for which thou hast not travailed, nor hast thou
brought it up, a thing that came in a night and in a night has
perished. And shall I not care for Nineveh, the Great City, in which
there are more than twelve times ten thousand human beings who know
not their right hand from their left, besides much cattle?"
God had vindicated His love to the jealousy of those who thought
that it was theirs alone. And we are left with this grand vague
vision of the immeasurable city, with its multitude of innocent
children and cattle, and God’s compassion brooding over all.
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