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?
"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?
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