The Book Of Jonah is more than a fish story.

I am sorry if I offended you when I wrote about Jonah and the big fish the other day. I have never said or written anything in an attempt to change anyone’s mind to believe as I do. All during my ministry I have spoken and written to try and get people to think for themselves. If it helps you to have a better relationship with God by believing that Jonah literally was swallowed by a big fish then I encourage you to do so.

It is significant to me that the fish in the Book of Jonah is only mentioned in three of the forty-seven verses of the book, which leads me to believe that the fish is a minor character in the story, and is not the central theme of the book.

I would also like to clear up that I know technically a whale is not a fish.

I happen to believe the book of Jonah is not really a book about a fish, but a book about priorities, obedience, and submitting ourselves to the will of God, even when God's plans conflict with our own personal plans.

God had a plan for Jonah's life. Jonah had other plans. Jonah had to learn that in the end it is God's will that has to be done rather than his own. The book of Jonah is a challenge to each of us to submit ourselves to the will of God. If we do not we will find ourselves in a struggle with God until we do.

I have said many times we can understand the Bible better if we know the history of the time period in which it was written and the Book of Jonah is no exception.  The issue that would have upset Jonah in the book and the issue that would have upset most of the original readers of the book was not that God had a plan for Jonah's life, but that God called Jonah to prophesy in Nineveh. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria. Jonah and the original readers hated Assyrians. They hated the Assyrians because the Assyrians had a history of killing them.

God was asking Jonah to go to Nineveh to preach to the people there, and call on them to repent and Jonah did not want to go there. If you were in Jonah’s sandals would you want to go?

Jonah was not God he was human and he thought like a human.  He hated the Assyrians and he feared the Assyrians, but he also did not want to do anything good for the Assyrians.  Jonah feared God may use him to do good for the people of Nineveh and Jonah certainly did not want to be an instrument of good for the people of Nineveh.

National hatred of an enemy’s race or religion is a terrible thing, but something we are all familiar with. Hitler hated the Jews, Muslim radicals hate the Christians, in Ireland the Catholics and Protestants hated one another, genocide in Africa and parts of Europe. The Book of Jonah confronts these prejudices.

It is quite possible the Book of Jonah was being read around the same time that Ezra and Nehemiah were active in trying to rebuild the ancient city of Jerusalem - a city that had been lying in ruins since the Babylonians had destroyed it 50 years earlier. It was a time of great nationalistic fervor. The Jews were returning to their homeland and they were rebuilding their ancient city and they were rebuilding their temple, and all of a sudden, for the first time in many years, it felt good to be a Jew again. Ezra and Nehemiah did a great deal to encourage the patriotic fervor of the returning Jews and to get them excited again about their city, about their religion and about their God. In the process of doing that the issue of racial purity became an important issue for a lot of people. Ezra and Nehemiah - became very upset over the issue of inter-marriage between Jews and non-Jews.

Ezra accused the men of mixing their 'holy seed' with the people of the lands and he encouraged large numbers of Jewish men to divorce their foreign wives and to send them away, along with the children of their mixed marriages. I'm not saying that the Book of Jonah was written specifically as a response to the nationalistic 'reforms' of Ezra. I am suggesting that some may have been bringing up the story of Jonah to demonstrate the God of Israel loved and respected foreigners too - even the people of Nineveh.

The Book of Jonah is a very appropriate book for our time It is a book that strikes at the heart of every sign of religious nationalism, it confronts religious arrogance in all its forms, it reminds us that the God of Israel, the God of the faithful and the God of the upright, is also the God of the Assyrian, of the unfaithful and of the not-so-upright too. It is time for Muslim, Christians and Jews to once again hear the message of the Book of Jonah.