​Welcome! Here are some final observations and questions about the book of Jonah.
 
This book is not finished. There is no conclusion. There are no directions. It strikes me that every person who hears this elaborate parable understands that we are like Jonah at the end, but there is no ending to the book. Are we to finish the book in our time? Peace making is hard work, and often not rewarded. Israeli premier Yitzak Rabin observed that we do not make peace with our friends, but make peace with our enemies, and after signing a peace agreement with Egypt, was assassinated  by a radical party of Jews. We find parallels in Christianity and Islam.
 
How is God involved? The one who created is the one who loves who and what he creates. Here are important recurring phrases from the three Abrahamic faiths:
 
Judaism-The God of Steadfast Love
Islam-Allah the merciful and Compassionate
Christianity-God so loved the World that he gave his only son
 
We are encouraged to see others as God sees them, as those created in the image of God. I suppose we would like God to be on our side and make our enemies God's enemies. God is apparently not interested in that.
 
The book ends with some gentle humor and pokes some fun at the Ninevites, and at us. God talks of the people of the city "who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals." Jonah has been grieving over a plant that gave shade to him, and Jonah valued it more than the great city. It's so easy to make things of little consequence very important, and not to see things through God's eyes.
 
The antidote to hatred and fear is love-God's love. There is no need to flee it.

​Welcome! We are working on some reflections on Jonah. I'm going to be sharing input from some classes this fall  in life-long learning at North Iowa Area Community. From the White Rage class:
 
Following the Civil War, Hatred of Yankees, followed by hatred of black slaves, commenced. From Chapter 1 of the book "White Rage: "As one South Carolinian explained in 1865, The Yankees had left him 'one inestimable privilege… and that was to hate 'em.' 'I get up at half past four in the morning' he said, ' and sit up to twelve midnight to hate 'em.'…The visceral contempt, however, extended far beyond the Yankees to encompass the formerly enslaved." The result was a reign of terror that lasted over 100 years. The results have shown up now in a new onslaught of racism in America.
 
From the course on Islam; a history of conflict between minority absolutists, and the mainstream moderates. That is very much like The book of Jonah disagreement between Ezra and Nehemiah and the command to love enemies from Jonah. Conservatives in the Roman Catholic Church are calling for the resignation of a moderate Pope. Disagreements within religious faiths are often seen as against enemies. But does Jonah do that? He instead insists that the people created in God's image whom he loves be considered. This understanding is common to all three faiths.
 
My reading of the book of Jonah Is that this scripture comes alive now, and is a profound challenge to hatred and division. What do you think? 
 

​Welcome! There are some for whom the Bible is  Black and White, but here is a disagreement about  people who have been enemies. The introduction in the Lutheran Study Bible sets the context as follows:
 
"The story is making a clear point about God's love extending even to Israel's enemies. This is not common among the books of the prophets. This message also contrasts with the attitude that fueled religious and social reforms found in such books as Ezra and Nehemiah. Those books describe life for Israel in the time following the exile in Babylon after 539 BCE, when God's people returned to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple. Ezra's religious reforms called for strict measures, such as Israelite men divorcing foreign wives. The religious community was especially concerned about being influenced by other religions, and this made them less open to those who did not live according to Jewish law and worship Israel's God. For this reason, many scholars think the story of Jonah was written sometime after the exile in Babylon ended, and long after Nineveh's reign of terror ended. Nineveh itself was defeated and destroyed in 612 BCE. Another hint about when this story may have been written relates to that date. Jonah 3:3 states that Nineveh was a great city, perhaps signaling that at the time the story was written, Nineveh had already been destroyed."
 
The preservation of enemy status forever has great religious perils. I am thinking about Christians and Jews, and that many Christians have indulged in long-term hatred over a period of over two centuries. The holocost, pograms, and discrimination have injured both Jews and Christians. I am remembering a conversation I had in Mason City with an old German man with a lifetime hatred of Jews. He thought that he was a Christian because of how he regarded Jews, and wanted nothing to do with a Church that no longer taught what he believed.
 
Jonah pays a great personal cost from his hatred. He avoids God  and endangers the sailors who are innocent: He almost dies: He wishes to die when the Ninevites repent, and He opposes a God who forgives: He cannot love, and is bitter. The implicit question for us who hear the story is; how are we like Jonah and what costs do we bear?

​Welcome! I have been offline due to some vacation and family events. I have been asking for comments and reactions because I will be teaching an introductory course on Wisdom literature in the Old Testament. The three short books we will be looking at are: Ruth, Jonah, and Esther, and then we will look at some passages from Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesisastes, and Song of Soloman. We have finished with Ruth, and we are now moving to Jonah. The introduction I am sharing today comes from the Lutheran Study Bible.
 
 
"Jonah is unique among the prophetic books of the Bible. While the others are mostly made up prophetic speeches, Jonah contains only one short prophetic speech. The rest of the book is about Jonah himself. Jonah openly disobeys God's command to go to Nineveh. He tries to run far away from God. God pursues in and causes a great fish to swallow him. Jonah calls out to God and recognizes God as his deliverer. After God has the fish and vomit Jonah out, he then goes to Nineveh as God first asked him to do. But when is prophetic message causes the people to repent, Jonah has becomes so angry that he wishes for death. Why? That's the plot twist that is key to understanding story and why it was written.
 
The Lord calls Jonah to speak a prophetic word of judgment to the powerful city of Nineveh, the capital of Assyria. Assyria had been a feared enemy of the people of Israel. In 722BCD, it defeated the northern kingdom of Israel and forced to many of its people to leave their homes. So when God called Jonah to deliver his message to the hated Syrians in Nineveh, Jonah wanted no part of it. He runs away, not because he is afraid to do what he is called to do, but because he knows what might really happen. He knew that "the Lord is a gracious God and merciful slow to anger, and ready to relent from punishing."  In other words, he knew that if he warned the Ninevites to repent, God was likely to forgive them." 
What I have been thinking about his week from Jonah is the effect of having an enemy, and the difficulty of moving on. I remember the Cold War from my childhood, when people saw Russia as our enemy, and then looked everywhere among our own people to find traitors. It was an awful time.  Nine Eleven brought a new enemy from insurgents in the Middle East, and we have had real difficulties with identifying who our enemies really are. This is really important for us so that we do not see our neighbors  as our enemies. But Jonah pushes us beyond identification to see our enemies as God sees them, and that is disquieting.
 
What I am requesting is that you read the book of Jonah this week. It is only four chapters long, and is located at the very end of The Old Testament. Only two short books, Micah and Nahum, follow it. We'll talk together more about Jonah  next week.