It is easy to be thankful for God’s love and patience with us, but how do we feel when God extends that same long-suffering compassion to our enemies? As Jonah thought about God’s grace to the people of Nineveh, he became angry. The Lord’s response to their repentance, which was completely consistent with His character, “seemed very wrong” to Jonah (v. 1). Jonah became so angry, in fact, that he declared “it is better for me to die than to live” (v. 4).

The Lord had heard Nineveh’s repentance and “did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened” (Jonah 3:10). This made Jonah angry—“this seemed very wrong, and he became angry” (v. 1). The prophet clearly knew that God was “a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity” (v. 2). In fact, Jonah was quoting the Lord’s own words back to Him, words first spoken to Moses in Exodus 34:6–8, just after the Lord relented from destroying the Israelites. You read that right! God spoke these same words to Moses after the golden calf incident (Exodus 32), when the people of Israel cast an idol to worship, while Moses was receiving the Law atop Mount Sinai.

Think about that. Jonah knew that God showed compassion to Israel after they committed gross idolatry and “indulge[d] in revelry” (Ex. 32:2–5). Jonah didn’t want to go to Nineveh because he didn’t want God to show that same compassion to the Ninevites. Put another way, Jonah was pleased to accept God’s mercy for himself and his own people, but he loathed the thought of God also showing kindness to people outside of Jonah’s group. Jonah’s theology only went skin deep.

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Uncertainty was a hallmark of ancient Near Eastern religion. The worshipers of false gods never really knew how to please—and appease—the gods they worshiped. If a worshiper of such gods could figure out 1) which god they had angered, 2) how they had angered him or her, 3) and what would make that god happy, even then they still couldn’t be sure that they would be forgiven. What a terrible way to live. The true God, however, is different, and “when God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened” (v. 10).

The New Testament book of Hebrews drives home God’s approachability and willingness to forgive sinners. Not only is He compassionate toward repentant sinners—just like we see in the book of Jonah—but God has also given people “a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God” (Heb. 4:14). This high priest can “empathize with our weakness” because He “has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin” (v. 15). And rather than causing us to shrink back from approaching God, Jesus our high priest enables us to “approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (v. 16).

Neither the sailors in Jonah 1 nor the king of Nineveh in chapter 3 knew if God would forgive them because a God who would forgive and who had made Himself known was foreign to their worldview. Our God is utterly and entirely different, and He welcomes us to His “throne of grace” and invites us into intimate relationship with Him. What a gift that we don’t have to wonder whether or not the Father will forgive us!

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When you think about kings or national leaders throughout history, you probably think of strength and power. After all, that’s how they came to be leaders. So it might be hard to imagine any world leader “cover[ing] himself with sackcloth” and sitting “down in the dust” (v. 6)—both markers of repentance. Yet that’s exactly what the king of Nineveh did in Jonah 3.

What’s more, the king went beyond personal repentance and called on all his people to “give up their evil ways and their violence” in the hopes that “God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish” (vv. 8–9).

Jonah’s short sermon had cut to the heart of the king of Nineveh! And the king didn’t just command all the people to turn from their wickedness; the king commanded that even “the animals be covered with sackcloth” (v. 8)! The situation was deadly serious, but the author of Jonah gave us a bit of comedic relief with this picture of animals across Nineveh covered in sackcloth.

All of this, and the king is not even sure God would relent. You can hear the desperation in his voice when he states, “Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish” (v. 9). Though the king doesn’t know that God will relent, the readers have an inkling that He will be based on how He responded to the sailors in chapter 1 (see 1:6–16). In addition, Jonah certainly knows that the Lord will show compassion. Despite the king’s lack of knowledge of God’s compassionate ways, he and his nation have repented and thrown themselves upon God’s mercy. Just like the sailors in chapter 1, here in chapter 3 pagans demonstrate trust in God more clearly than the prophet Jonah.

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My pastor when I was growing up often said that “delayed obedience is disobedience.” He was trying to get across to us that we should obey the Lord immediately, right when He tells us to do something. That’s true, of course, but I think Jonah shows us in today’s passage that God’s grace and mercy are such that He often multiplies opportunities for His people to obey.

After Jonah’s ordeal on the ship and in the fish’s belly, the reluctant prophet is vomited onto dry ground (Jonah 2:10). Once again “the word of the LORD came to Jonah” (3:1). The Lord’s word is much the same as it was before: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you” (v. 2). This time, instead of tucking his tail and heading in the opposite direction, “Jonah obeyed the word of the LORD and went to Nineveh” (v. 3). There Jonah proclaimed the message, just five words in Hebrew, that “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown” (v. 4). If you know the history of Israel and how they treated the prophets in the Old Testament— with obstinate and repeated refusal to repent—the next verse is wholly unexpected: “the Ninevites believed God” (v. 5). What’s more, the Ninevites accompanied their repentance with outward expressions of their inward change. They fasted— “all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth” (v. 5).

We’ll read in chapter 4 that this is exactly what Jonah expected would happen, and their repentance made him exceedingly angry. But today let’s reflect on the unlikeliness of the Ninevites’ repentance. They were a pagan people steeped in idolatry, and yet the Lord pierced their hearts with Jonah’s five-word sermon, and they all turned to Him. Indeed, “salvation comes from the LORD” (2:9).

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In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin called human nature “a perpetual factory of idols.” We are always looking for something or someone to worship, and it is all too rare that we acknowledge what Jonah says at the end of his prayer from inside the fish: “Salvation comes from the LORD” (v. 9).

But before Jonah comes to this bold declaration, he recounts that “when my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, LORD” (v. 7). In contrast to praying to the Lord, Jonah declared that “those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them” (v. 8). Not many of us would consider ourselves the same sort of idolaters as the pagan sailors who repented and turned to the Lord in Jonah 1. After all, we might not bow down in worship to physical idols. But as John Calvin reminds us, we are constantly producing one idol after another. Perhaps that idol is wealth or work, alcohol or food—anything that we look to in order to fulfill us, to satisfy us, to save us.

Jonah, in his darkest hour, reminds us that “salvation comes from the LORD” (v. 9). The word in Hebrew for salvation is yeshua. We see this name for Jesus in Matthew chapter 1 when an angel of the Lord appears to Joseph to assuage his fears about Mary. The angel says, “She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21). This name, Jesus, is the English translation of the Greek translation of the Hebrew word Jonah uses: Yeshua. Not only is Jonah’s salvation from the Lord, salvation for all of us is from the Lord, because Jesus lived a sinless life and died a substitutionary death on a Roman cross for our sins. What a gift!

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I don’t know about you, but when life is going well, my prayer life often slips because there’s no tragedy or difficult circumstance forcing me to rely on my Father. On the other hand, prayer has always been the easiest when times are the hardest because that’s when I realize just how acutely I need the Lord. Jonah found himself in the hardest of hard times—he was trapped in the belly of a fish. Certainly, it was time to pray!

Verses 4–6 record the first part of Jonah’s prayer. Here he models how to cry out to the Lord at our darkest moments—even if our own decisions caused the calamity. The most encouraging part of this prayer is Jonah’s opening, where he declares that the Lord heard his cries: “In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry” (v. 2). What a joy that God heard Jonah’s cry and responded to him. And what joy that God hears our cries even “from deep in the realm of the dead” (v. 2)! In this sudden reversal, Jonah must have been relieved that he could not hide from God!

In verse 3 Jonah acknowledges God’s power and sovereignty—it was God who “hurled [Jonah] into the depths.” And in verse 4 Jonah expresses his trust that he would be rescued from the fish’s belly: “I will look again toward your holy temple.” Despite the gravity of Jonah’s situation, and even though he alone caused it, he knew the Lord would deliver him. In verse 6 he declares that “you, LORD my God, brought my life up from the pit.”

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A lot of people struggle with this part of Jonah’s story. How could a man live in the belly of a “huge fish” (v. 17) for “three days and three nights” (2:1)? Preposterous! But when I hear that, I shrug my shoulders and say, “Jesus is God in the flesh, and He lived a sinless life, died for my sins, and was raised to life on the third day!” Now that is preposterous! The God-man dying for the likes of you and me? The perfect Son of God willingly giving His life so we might once again draw near to the Lord? That’s wild—and it’s absolutely true!

In 1:17–2:1 we read that Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights, and there he prayed to the Lord. We’ll read his actual prayer over the next few days, but first let’s focus on an exchange Jesus had with the Pharisees (read Matthew 12:38–42). The Pharisees demanded to see a miraculous sign from Jesus, something that would definitively prove that He was who He said He was—the Messiah and Son of God (v. 38). Jesus responded that the only sign they would get was “the sign of the prophet Jonah” (v. 39). Jesus continued, “As Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (v. 40). Then Jesus told the Pharisees that the Ninevites would condemn the Pharisees because “they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now something greater than Jonah is here” (v. 41). Jesus, of course, was talking about Himself! Jesus is greater than the reluctant Jonah, and if the Ninevites believed Jonah, then surely the Pharisees (and we today!) should believe Jesus’ message of repentance and trust in God.

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“We did everything we could.” That’s the last thing you want to hear from a doctor because it means that they weren’t able to save the person’s life, despite how hard they tried. I’ve heard the phrase most often from television doctors, but it’s catastrophic when you hear it in real life.

In Jonah 1:13–16 the sailors on the ship found themselves in a situation where they had done “their best to row back to land” (v. 13). But nothing they did was getting them to safety. Instead, “the sea grew even wilder than before” (v. 13). Readers might expect the sailors to care little for Jonah’s life. After all, he was responsible for their deadly dangerous situation, and they were pagan sailors. Their concern for Jonah provides a stark contrast with his lack of concern for their lives when he boarded the ship. Put another way, these pagan sailors showed more love toward Jonah than the prophet Jonah showed toward them, even though Jonah is the one who claimed to “worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land” (v. 9).

Desperate for the lives, the sailors did what Jonah recommended and “threw him overboard” (v. 15), but not before they cried out to Jonah’s God, pled for mercy, and recognized His sovereignty: “You, LORD, have done as you pleased” (v. 14). Miraculously, “the raging sea grew calm” (v. 15). Having heard the truth about God from the reluctant prophet and having witnessed His power over the sea, “the men greatly feared the Lord” (v. 16). Here we see another contrast: Jonah confessed to fearing God in verse 9 (“worship” in the NIV translates the Hebrew word “fear”), but the sailors’ actions show that they truly fear the Lord.

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