Reflections on Jonah Part 2

In the previous post, I mentioned I was asked about the book of Jonah and my thoughts on the text as a whole. In response I said I think that the story of Jonah shows: 1.) The character of God, first seen in Exodus 33:19Open Link in New Window; 34:6-7; 2.) God’s promise to Abraham was to redeem all creation, not just Abraham’s posterity, and Abraham was to be the vessel through which this redemption comes; 3.) Israel had become blinded by her position as Yahweh’s elect people and ignored her function as the channel through which God’s promise to redeem creation, not just Israel, comes into the world; 4.) Only in Jesus the Messiah was/is/will God’s plan to redeem his creation through Israel to be carried out and accomplished. In the previous post I looked at point 1 and how Jonah highlights the character of God, as first seen in Exodus 32-34. In this post, I want to continue going through the points of my answer.

2.) God’s promise to Abraham was to redeem all creation, not just Abraham’s posterity, and Abraham was to be the vessel through which this redemption comes. Here I have to admit a heavy influence by N. T. Wright. But consider again Abram’s call in Genesis 12:1-3 (ESV),

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Let us get the flow of the narrative of Genesis to see what this call was to initiate. God creates the universe, heaven and earth and all that is in them. In Genesis 3, humanity was enticed to rebel against Yahweh by taking of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. As a result God put humanity into exile from his Garden of Eden and put a curse upon all of creation. Humanity degenerated so far into the hold of sin that God flooded his creation so that all but one family was wiped out from existence. Humanity continued in its sin by building a mound to heaven. But they refused to populate the entire earth so God took the one family that lived in one place on earth and confused their language and spread humanity throughout the planet.

As one can see when they see this call that it comes on the heels of the tower of Babel. God is going to take Abram and make him a great nation, a great family. In Abram God was going to send blessing to his creation. The promise of the seed that was given in the Garden of Eden (cf Genesis 3:15) and was passed to Abram. Abram was to be the beginning of God’s move to redeem and restore and save his creation from the curse he placed it under, to reconcile the scattered families back into one family, and to end the rebellion began in Genesis 3. The family that was to come from Abram was to be the channel through which that reconciliation was to occur; the land that Abram’s family was to live on was to begin to end the curse upon the land.

In Jonah, the author reminds us of this cosmic purpose of God that is to come through Abram’s family-nation, Israel. He does so by taking us back to a time when Israel and Judah were strong and Assyria was weak, though still a big boy in the neighborhood of the Ancient Near East. God sends Jonah to Assyria to command their repentance so that God may relent from the destruction of the city. God was going to destroy the entire city and everything in it, from the people to the animals. But it is God’s purpose to redeem all of creation and so Jonah was sent.

Jonah’s character illustrates a profound problem the existed in Israel in his day, and continued until Jesus and Paul’s day in the New Testament era. And that problem is that they believed that Israel was the people that God wanted to save, and that the land that was promised to Abraham was to be the land that was to be redeemed. They lost sight of God’s promise to Abraham was for all the families, not just Abraham’s family. Abraham’s family was to be the vehicle through which God would bless all families by ending the exile and the scattering.