Jonah 3:1-5,10 NLT
Then the LORD spoke to Jonah a second time: [2] "Get up and go to the great city of Nineveh, and deliver the message I have given you." [3] This time Jonah obeyed the LORD's command and went to Nineveh, a city so large that it took three days to see it all. [4] On the day Jonah entered the city, he shouted to the crowds: "Forty days from now Nineveh will be destroyed!" [5] The people of Nineveh believed God's message, and from the greatest to the least, they declared a fast and put on burlap to show their sorrow. [10] When God saw what they had done and how they had put a stop to their evil ways, he changed his mind and did not carry out the destruction he had threatened.
Jonah was very familiar with what the Assyrians had done to his people.
The attrocities are almost unthinkable: skinning people alive, chopping off arms, legs, noses, heads and parading these around Nineveh.
Bearing that in mind, it's quite understandable that Jonah wanted to runaway from God's task for him.
Not only did Jonah hate these people, but he must have feared for his own life too!
What if he was skinned alive or impaled on a stake when he got to Nineveh?
Anyway after being swallowed by that great fish and spending time in its belly, Jonah was more scared to disobey the Lord than he was of the Ninevites!
He was given the task of declaring the looming destruction of the city by the Lord.
An amazing miracle happened, the people believed and repented enmasse.
Jonah told God: "I knew it! I knew You'd forgive them, I knew that You were merciful, slow to anger and full of love."
Jonah wanted those butchers obliterated - they had been so unspeakably cruel to his people - he wanted to see God wipe them out.
But the Lord stayed his judgement out of compassion for a repentant people.
However, fast forward some 160 or so years and the city was in fact destroyed - in 612BC.
Evidently their repentance was only temporary.
The book of Nahum relates the destruction of Nineveh which Jonah never lived to see.
Is it hard to see "wicked" people repent? There's a lesson to learn from good old angry Jonah.
He knew the Lord's loving and forgiving nature and was angry about it.
Could the same be said of me?
Would I be upset to see a member of Hamas repent of his atrocities?
Selah
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