Jonah and Nineveh
We tell our children the story about Jonah and the Whale, but often, the story ends there, with Jonah deciding to trust God and be obedient. To me, it is the rest of the story that is more interesting.
First, I have pious acquaintances who will pronounce “God never changes his mind” and yet . . . here, and in many other places, God relents against a prior judgement. He listens, and he has compassion.
Second, what is this toddler-like behavior when God does not destroy Nineveh? Jonah was rescued from the belly of the great fish/whale, and yet he pouts and is angry when God delivers Nineveh from a fiery destruction? He is downcast when the bush withers?
Third, At the very end, God asks should he not be concerned, when there are so many people, 120,000, who don’t know their right from their left AND MANY ANIMALS. I love it that God is also concerned about the condition of the animals, and shudder to think of the price people will have to pay in the after life who treat an animal with cruelty.
From today’s Lectionary readings:
Jonah 3:1-10,4:1-11
3 The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, 2 ‘Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.’ 3 So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. 4 Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, ‘Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!’ 5 And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.
6 When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 7 Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: ‘By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. 8 Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. 9 Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.’
10 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.
4But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the Lord and said, ‘O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. 3 And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.’ 4 And the Lord said, ‘Is it right for you to be angry?’ 5 Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city.
6 The Lord God appointed a bush,* and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. 7 But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, ‘It is better for me to die than to live.’
9 But God said to Jonah, ‘Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?’ And he said, ‘Yes, angry enough to die.’ 10 Then the Lord said, ‘You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labour and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. 11 And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?’
October 18, 2012 Posted by intlxpatr | Charity, Cross Cultural, Interconnected, Lectionary Readings, Living Conditions, Spiritual, Values, Work Related Issues | Leave a comment
-
Recent Posts
Blog Stats
- 2,813,079 hits
Pages
Meta
Recent Comments
jmc on Seven Years In A French V… intlxpatr on Seven Years In A French V… Joanne M Callahan on Seven Years In A French V… intlxpatr on Seven Years In A French V… Mary on Seven Years In A French V… Wikipedia Donate Button
Amazina
Early Voting in Florida
Archives
- March 2021
- February 2021
- January 2021
- December 2020
- November 2020
- October 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- December 2019
- October 2019
- September 2019
- August 2019
- July 2019
- June 2019
- April 2019
- March 2019
- November 2018
- October 2018
- September 2018
- August 2018
- July 2018
- June 2018
- May 2018
- April 2018
- February 2018
- January 2018
- December 2017
- October 2017
- September 2017
- August 2017
- July 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- March 2017
- February 2017
- January 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- October 2016
- September 2016
- August 2016
- July 2016
- June 2016
- May 2016
- April 2016
- March 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- December 2015
- November 2015
- October 2015
- September 2015
- August 2015
- July 2015
- June 2015
- May 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- December 2014
- November 2014
- October 2014
- September 2014
- August 2014
- July 2014
- June 2014
- May 2014
- April 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
Catagories
- Advent
- Adventure
- Afghanistan
- Africa
- Aging
- Air France
- Alaska
- Arts & Handicrafts
- Beauty
- Biography
- Birds
- Blogging
- Blogroll
- Books
- Botswana
- Building
- Bureaucracy
- Character
- Charity
- Chocolate
- Christmas
- Circle of Life and Death
- Civility
- Cold Drinks
- color
- Communication
- Community
- Cooking
- Counter-terrorism
- Crime
- Cross Cultural
- Cultural
- Customer Service
- Detective/Mystery
- Dharfur
- Diet / Weight Loss
- Doha
- Easter
- Eating Out
- Education
- Eid
- Entertainment
- Entrepreneur
- Environment
- EPIC Book Club
- Events
- Exercise
- ExPat Life
- Experiment
- Faith
- Family Issues
- Fiction
- Financial Issues
- Fitness / FitBit
- Florida
- Food
- France
- fraud
- Free Speech
- Friends & Friendship
- Fund Raising
- Gardens
- Generational
- Geography / Maps
- Germany
- GoogleEarth
- Gulf Coast Citizen Diplomacy Council
- Halloween
- Health Issues
- Heritage
- History
- Holiday
- Home Improvements
- Hot drinks
- Hotels
- Humor
- Hurricanes
- Hygiene
- India
- Interconnected
- iPhone
- Iran
- Ireland
- Italy
- Joke
- Jordan
- Just Bad English
- Kenya
- KLM
- Kuwait
- Language
- Law and Order
- Leadership
- Lectionary Readings
- Lent
- Lies
- Living Conditions
- Local Lore
- Locard Exchange Principal
- Lumix
- Mardi Gras
- Marketing
- Marriage
- Mating Behavior
- Middle East
- Money Management
- Morocco
- Movie
- Moving
- Music
- New Orleans
- News
- Nigeria
- NonFiction
- Oman
- Pakistan
- Parenting
- Paris
- Pensacola
- Pet Peeves
- Pets
- Photos
- Poetry/Literature
- Political Issues
- Privacy
- Public Art
- Qatar
- Qatteri Cat
- Quality of Life Issues
- Ramadan
- Random Musings
- Rants
- Recipes
- Relationships
- Renovations
- Restaurant
- Road Trips
- Safety
- Satire
- Saudi Arabia
- Scams
- Seattle
- Shopping
- Social Issues
- South Africa
- South Sudan
- Spiritual
- Statistics
- Stranger in a Strange Land
- Sudan
- sunrise series
- Sunsets
- Survival
- Tag
- Tanzania
- Technical Issue
- Thanksgiving
- Tibet
- Tools
- Transparency
- Travel
- Tunisia
- Turkey
- Uncategorized
- Values
- Venice
- Weather
- Wildlife
- Women's Issues
- WordPress
- Words
- Work Related Issues
- YMCA
- Zakat
- Zambia
- Zanzibar
- Zimbabwe
Blogroll
- A.Word.A.Day
- Global Incident Map
- Global Voices Online � Kuwait
- Google Earth
- Google Earth Blog
- John Lockerbie Gulf design
- Kuwait Paper Dump
- National Public Radio
- Ogle Earth
- Operation Hope – Kuwait
- Robin Pope Safaris Zambia
- the Journey: Kisses From Katie
- The Lectionary
- Weather Underground
- Wind Map
- WordPress.com
- WordPress.org