NOTES for Jon 4:1-11

Often man turns out more vengeful than God. That’s what is described in the book of Jonah. He has already forgotten that he himself was not at all an ideal servant of God, that God had to take him to the place of the sermon not without scandal, moreover in a somehow extraordinary way. And here is now, when he all the same accomplished God's order, it remained to him only one desire: that the task entrusted to him turned out … a failure.

How else could one evaluate the situation, when in the city after Jonah's sermon there wouldn’t have been even one convert, such that it would only remain to destroy Nineveh, to erase it from the surface of the earth altogether with all its inhabitants, having shown a complete lack of readiness in correction? Fortunately, everything occurred not at all like that, Nineveh repented and was converted, besides according to the narrative of Jonah's Book, were converted most of its inhabitants. A resounding success! The city is saved! But it delights not at all Jonas. But why? What prevents the prophet from being delighted with God for a well executed order? Probably, these preconceived opinions and prejudices, which were peculiar to his fellow countrymen.

Jonah's book was written, approximately, in the middle or at the beginning of VIII s before J.C., when Nineveh was considered the worse place in the world and the center of the world evil: indeed, it was the capital of the Assyrian empire, which everybody, including the Jews hated. Such city, from the point of view of Jonah, could deserve only one thing: destruction. And he does not want to go there particularly for that: Jonah knows that, if a prophet appears in a city, this city receives the chance, even small, to salvation. Jonah does not want Nineveh to be saved, even if it turned to God, he wants that it perish, because in his opinion, it deserves nothing else.

Jonah is a Jew, an inhabitant of Judea; he has, as several of his fellow countrymen, personal accounts with the Assyria. Even if the inhabitants of Nineveh repented, Jonah is not ready to see in them brothers, even if they now turned to his God. He does not need such brothers; he does not want that such admirers appear to his God. He says it directly to God: I know Your mercy and was afraid from the beginning that You will be merciful to those, with whom I would not want to share Your mercy. But God is not a man. Unlike Jonah, He is ready to accept anyone who repented and turned to Him. Even an inhabitant of Nineveh.

Jonah's book is probably one of the most remarkable parable about the prophet of all times and all peoples. The prophet, who does not want to go where he is sent by God; who tries to run away and who God delivers with scandal to the place, where he has to witness; the prophet obtaining, in spite of his own expectations, an enormous success (is it a joke, to convert Nineveh; it was almost equivalent to the conversion of this Babylon, which is mentioned in the book of Revelation) and is very upset of his success. After such a thing, it won’t appear to anybody the thought than prophets, as people, are fundamentally better than the others. But all the same: of what Jonah is so upset?

Indeed, the city was converted, its inhabitants repented of all sins, and God forgave them and prevented from perdition those who, it seemed, were condemned. Did not the prophet reach the goal then, hasn’t he fulfill God's orders? And if he accomplished, then why the sadness, why Jonas is so upset and saddened? Obviously, just in particular the fact that his sermon has been so successful. He hoped completely, as we see, on another success, he would be satisfied to be made a harbinger and herald of the wrath of God, which falls on the head of the sinners.

He had probably seen already mentally how this anger falls on the head of the inhabitants of Nineveh. And suddenly all come to nothing! The people repented, thunders and lightning on the heads of the wicked are canceled. The prophet forgets in a way how himself, hardly would have become an apostate, whom only the efforts of God allowed him to become who he became – witness against the sins of a whole city. But it is not of course here only the desire to look at the punishment of the wicked.

Here there is completely a natural desire, profoundly and sincerely religious, but the fallen man sees punished not only the sin, but also the sinner. Only the breath of God, the breath of the Kingdom can make such that man continues to hate sin (equally his and the stranger’s), loving more again his sinful neighbor quite as he loves himself sinner. For Jonah it is still to come: God will make him feel, what is life without love, by the example of the desert burned by the sun, where there is no shred of shade. Well then, Jonah will understand everything. And will not be any more upset because the sinners did not die, but repented, converted and remained alive.

God looks at a person, even one wounded by original sin, in a completely different way than a person looks at his own sin. In fact, the word "own" in this case can hardly be understood literally: each of us usually looks at our own sins, if not indulgently, then at least with understanding. This is, of course, by no means always a matter of indulging our own sins, but even when we hate in ourselves some concrete thing that hinders us, in a normal case we still do not go so far as self-hatred.

To hate the sinner who is nearby, together with his sin, is, alas, a completely ordinary thing for us. It has become a bad habit of fallen humanity, one that must be overcome with some effort. And if we are entirely clear that we do not want punishment for our own sinfulness, then with regard to those around us our position is usually far less definite.

Simply put, for ourselves we usually want mercy from God, while for everyone else we want justice without any leniency. And the prophet, as we can see, was by no means an exception to the rule: for the inhabitants of Nineveh he wanted precisely justice, which in this particular case meant just punishment, without any leniency.

Quite unexpectedly for Jonah, God shows mercy precisely to the repentant townspeople. Perhaps the prophet thought that God could have such relationships only with His own people, that only His own people could be forgiven much by Him, again and again averting what should have fallen on their head because of the sins they had committed, including those Assyrian armies that more than once threatened Jerusalem.

In any case, it could hardly have occurred to Jonah to compare God's attitude toward the Jewish people with His attitude toward the Assyrian Empire, its capital, and its inhabitants. After all, that empire was associated for the prophet, as for all his contemporaries, with everything worst in the world at that time, and Nineveh was in his eyes the center of world evil.

For God, as we can see, there is neither an empire nor a center of world evil. For Him there is only a city whose inhabitants repented of their sins and turned to the God about whom Jonah had spoken to them. Perhaps they understood little, but what can one expect from people who, in God's own words, "do not know their right hand from their left"? And God forgives them. After all, they are only people who need to be saved, in any country and in any age.

The lesson given by God to His prophet was simple and obvious: the tree which grew in a unexpected way and which also dried in a unexpected way caused a storm of emotions to Jonas. The fate of Nineveh worried much less the prophet. A paradox? Certainly. But why did it become possible? Is it because Jonah does not love God and does not want to serve Him? No: he is ready to do what God will tell him. But only not when it concerns Nineveh: he as several of his fellow countrymen had accounts with Nineveh, this city and the country, of which it was its capital, was at enmity with Judea and brought to it a lot of sorrow. Jonah does not love Nineveh, and even more: he hates it.

This hatred prevents him from achieving the mission given by God. Jonah indeed, tries to run far away from the city where God sends him, not because he is afraid of dying: his behavior during the storm is an obvious proof of that. He does not want to go to Nineveh because he knows: the city, in which God sends the prophet, is not yet condemned, it has chance to salvation. Jonas does not want Nineveh to be saved. He would not even want (at least, at the bottom of the soul) that Ninevites turn to God, that they repent and live: because then, it will be necessary for him if not to accept them as brothers, at least, to stop seeing in them implacable enemies deserving nothing else than death.

One can think so, if his enemies obviously are at the same time also the enemies of God. Then everything is simple and clear, and the relation of the prophet to such enemies had to be and was completely unambiguous. And what if they repent and turn to God? What if God leaves them after such a call to live on earth? Jonah does not want it, it is incomprehensible for him, why God takes so much care of those who have never accepted Him and have never lived according to His law.

The tree which grew fast and so fast dried explained everything to him. It turns out that it is easy to neglect those who have no importance for you. But here is, if somebody or even something begins to play in your own life a completely concrete and more enough an important role, to part from it turns out to be not at all easy. And God with the example of the tree, which is much less important for Him than man, explains to Jonah how much each person on earth is important for Him, even if it is ninevites. By addressing His prophet, God says to him: and for you every person must be important, and you have to do everything so that he turns and lives. Only like that you can be My servant.