# 26 – The Prophet’s Lamenting
Jonah 4:1-4 – “But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he became angry. 2 So he prayed to the LORD, and said, “Ah, LORD, was not this what I said when I was still in my country? Therefore I fled previously to Tarshish; for I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm. 3 Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live!” 4 Then the LORD said, “Is it right for you to be angry?”
1 “But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he became angry….”
Jonah preached, and the King and the people repented. When they repented, God relented from sending on them the punishment He had planned. When God relented, Jonah lamented. The first reaction by Jonah to God relenting was that of exceeding displeasure and anger. Those are perhaps two of the least expected emotions from a man of God in response to God relenting on pouring out his wrath on people.
Jonah’s attitude to the people of Nineveh is in total contrast to that of Abraham and Moses. Abraham pleaded for the people of Sodom and Moses pleaded for the people of Israel when God planned to destroy them. While Abraham and Moses seemed to have the people of Sodom and the people of Israel in mind, Jonah seemed to have just one person in mind – himself.
The questions that beg to be answered by us, The Church are:
• How concerned are we about the world around us?
• Are we concerned for them enough to do all we can to see them saved or are we comfortably and complacently lost in our own little worlds, where we, like Jonah, are at the centre of everything and no one else matters?
• What would our reaction be if we saw the Lord reveal Himself to the world around in such a way that millions started pouring into The Church?
• Would we rejoice with them or would we lament on account of their repentance?
2 So he prayed to the LORD, and said, “Ah, LORD, was not this what I said when I was still in my country?
No sooner Jonah feels exceeding displeasure and anger, he speaks – much like most of us today. We either, think and speak or we feel and speak. Sometimes the gap between thinking, feeling, and speaking is so small, that one wonders whether there was any thinking involved at all. Jonah begins to pray. While, on the surface, that sounds like a nice thing to do when one is upset or angry, what matters really, is the kind of prayer we pray at that time. Jonah prays, “Ah, Lord, was not this what I said when I was still in my country?”
It looks like Jonah had had this conversation with God when God spoke to him the first time, even before he rebelliously left for Tarshish to try to flee from God’s presence. Here he reminds God of that conversation, (as if God would have forgotten it). What Jonah seems to be saying, in essence, is, “Lord, I told you so, I knew you would do this.”
Before we get all judgmental about Jonah, let’s pause for a moment and ask ourselves what we might have done had each of us been in Jonah’s shoes. Imagine we’ve spent three full days warning the people that God’s wrath would fall on them in 40 days and then God changes His mind. What thoughts would have raced through our minds? How would we have felt and what might we have done? I would have felt embarrassed and ashamed of myself because God did not send the punishment I had so vehemently warned the people was coming. I would have felt like a false prophet and a liar. I might even have fear a reaction from the king and the people after nothing happened to them when the 40 days had elapsed. I’m sure I’m not the only one who would have thought and felt that way.
2b “Therefore I fled previously to Tarshish; for I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm.
Despite Jonah repenting of his rebellion from within the belly of the fish, he then begins to justify his initial rebellion, thus paving the way for another one to follow. When we justify past sins, we set the stage for a repetition of them, in the near future. Jonah says that it’s because he knew God would change his mind that he decided on a pre-emptive escapade in the first place.
But there seems to be more that Jonah knew apart from just what God would do – he seemed to also know God personally enough to predict His reaction, in case the people of Nineveh repented of their evil ways, in response to his preaching. He knew that God was “slow to anger and abundant in loving kindness, One who relents from doing harm.” Jonah seemed to have had such an intimate relationship with God that, He knew God’s nature. He mentions five different things about the nature of God that each of us must never forget, and should in fact strive towards reflecting in our own lives as well.
The first thing he says that he knew about God is that He is gracious. Grace was not revealed only in the New Testament – it was revealed right from the beginning in the Garden of Eden itself, and all through the Old Testament – but when Jesus came, He came full of grace and truth. (John 1:14). Jonah knew that God gave people good things that they didn’t deserve and could never earn, which is really the definition of grace – ‘unmerited favour.’ Jonah had just experienced first-hand the grace of God in his life in the belly of the fish and in it’s vomiting him onto dry land.
He also knew that God is merciful – that God did not give man the punishment he deserved. Cathleen Falsani said it this way, “Justice is getting what you deserve, mercy is not getting what you deserve and grace is getting what you absolutely don't deserve - benign goodwill, unprovoked compassion, the un-earnable gift” Jonah had also just experienced God’s mercy first-hand God’s mercy in the sea.
Further, he knew that God is slow to anger. If the Lord were not slow to anger, I guess none of us would be alive today – we should be so thankful that the Lord is slow to anger. Not only had Jonah just experienced both the grace of God and the mercy of God in the belly of the fish, and in the sea, but he also experienced the fact that God was slow to anger because had He not been slow to anger, Jonah would not have been having this questionable and questioning conversation with God.
He also knew that God is abundant in loving kindness. Not only is loving-kindness a quality of God but He is abundant in His loving kindness. This means that the kindness that God shows us stems from His love for us, and it’s not in small quantities that God pours out his loving kindness on us, but rather in abundance. This is another attribute of God that Jonah had just recently discovered when he was thrown into the Mediterranean Sea. Imagine a fish swallowing a man whole, him not getting digested for three days, him remaining alive and eventually being vomited alive – not in the sea, but on to dry land – how abundant is that loving-kindness of God?
The fifth thing that Jonah knew was that God relents from doing harm. Here again, another attribute of God that must be very fresh in Jonah’s mind given the fact that God relented from bringing harm to Jonah despite his rebellion against God’s first call to him to go and preach to the people of Nineveh.
Jonah, knowing the God he worshipped seemed to have anticipated God’s reaction to the possible repenting of the people of Nineveh and that’s exactly what he saw happen and it made him exceedingly distressed and angry.
We, as The Church, need to always bear in mind these five attributes of God that Jonah mentions in his prayer to God. Not only have most of us experienced (and continue to experience) those attributes of God in our own lives on a daily basis, but that’s also what the world around us needs to experience very badly in these tough, turbulent, and tumultuous times. Let’s go beyond merely remembering these attributes of God, and let’s make a conscious effort to reflect these qualities in our lives as His children, so the world may see these qualities in our lives and get attracted to the source of these qualities – God, through Jesus Christ.
3 Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live!”
After revealing all he knew about God, Jonah now puts forth his request to God – the second death-wish. The first death-wish by Jonah was when he asked the sailors to pick him up and throw him into the sea so that the sea would become calm for them (Jonah 1:12). He asks the Lord to take his life from him. It’s interesting that Jonah does not decide to take his own life, but instead asks the Lord to take his life from him. He seems to realise that he has no right to take his own life, since he’s not the giver of life and so he instead asks the giver of life to be the taker of his life as well.
He then goes on to give a reason for the request – “It is better for me to die than to live.” Jonah seems to have come to a place in his life where he thinks or feels (or both), that he has fulfilled his life’s purpose and there’s nothing more for him to do, but die. In that statement is also an element of comparison between the choice to live or die, and for the second time, it seems that Jonah prefers death to life.
I’m sure some of us have been through times in our lives when we preferred death to life and praise God He intervened and helped us realise that the opposite was true, and life is always better than death. Choosing death over life is an act of defeat. Death by choice does not solve problems – not for us, and not for our loved ones either. May that never be even a thought that crosses any of our minds – no matter what we go through in life.
4 “Then the LORD said, “Is it right for you to be angry?”
No sooner Jonah prays the Lord answers. What a wonderful experience it is when God answers our prayers immediately, and still better when God answers our questions immediately. Though it’s not always the case that God answers us immediately, (and might take time to respond, perhaps because we are not yet ready for his response), in Jonah’s case, the Lord seems to have answered immediately. And the way the Lord responds to Jonah’s question is – with a question.
It’s interesting that Jesus too, very often responded to questions with questions For example in Mark 11:27-33, we read the amazing response of Jesus to the chief priests, scribes, and elders who came to Him with a question – read the conversation below.
27 Then they came again to Jerusalem. And as He was walking in the temple, the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders came to Him. 28 And they said to Him, “By what authority are You doing these things? And who gave You this authority to do these things?” 29 But Jesus answered and said to them, “I also will ask you one question; then answer Me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things: 30 The baptism of John—was it from heaven or from men? Answer Me.” 31 And they reasoned among themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ He will say, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ 32 But if we say, ‘From men’ ”—they feared the people, for all counted John to have been a prophet indeed. 33 So they answered and said to Jesus, “We do not know.” And Jesus answered and said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.”
God asks Jonah a very pertinent question – “Is it right for you to be angry?” That’s a very loaded question. It seems that the three days of preaching by Jonah was sufficient for him to forget the three days he spent in the belly of the big fish – not that he literally forgot the incident, but he was no longer living in the realisation of it. He seems to have forgotten the grace, mercy, slowness of God’s anger, the abundance of God’s loving-kindness, and God’s relenting from bringing harm to him, and now he was wishing the worst on the people of Nineveh. God seems to be reminding him of God’s goodness in his life through that question. God seems to be saying to Jonah, “Is it right, just or fair for you to be angry with me for dealing with the people of Nineveh the way I dealt with you?”
That’s a good question for us The Church of today too. After having received the grace, mercy, slowness of God’s anger, the abundance of his loving-kindness, and God’s relenting from bringing harm to us, are we wishing that God would do the opposite to those who are yet to come to know Him? Or after we’ve received so much from God, have we reached a place of careless complacency where we don’t care anymore about the lives and eternity of those around us? We can’t afford to take that stance, because that’s not right on our part. That would be like the four men with leprosy in 2 Kings 7:3-20, where the Lord had been gracious to them in providing them with food, clothes, gold, and silver, and then they became so obsessed with it all, that they forgot the people of the entire city, who were dying of starvation. Then the four men came to this realisation and said these powerful words – words that apply to us, The Church of today, “We are not doing right. This day is a day of good news, and we remain silent. If we wait until morning light, some punishment will come upon us. Now, therefore, come, let us go and tell the king’s household.” (2 Kings 7:9).
Let’s do all we can to take the Gospel of Jesus to the world around us – we are not guaranteed tomorrow, so let’s do all we can today.
May the Lord bless you and have a great day or night.
