The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. – Jonah 1:1-3
There are a lot of things to go “Wow!” about in the Book of Jonah in the Old Testament. The whole get-swallowed-by-a-big-fish-and-vomited-out-without-being-digested-first gets one started. Other “Wow!” parts are a bit more subtle.
This week I read something about the Nineveh Plains being in Iraq, north and east of the city of Mosul. What!?! I’d never really thought about where Nineveh was but always had this vague mental picture of “just over the hill”.
My curiousity was piqued. Just exactly where were these places in the book of Jonah. Turns out that Joppa was/is about thirty miles northwest of Jerusalem on the Mediterranean Sea. Nineveh was about, oh, SIX HUNDRED MILES away in the opposite direction! Walking at a good pace would have taken somewhere around 20+ days – DAYS – to get there. With no Holiday Inns along the way.
So God was not just asking Jonah to pop over to Nineveh for a Sunday sermon. Be right back on Monday for work at the office. Noooooo. This was an all-in command.
So let’s look then at Jonah’s plan: Head to Tarshish. So where was Tarshish?
Tarshish was TWENTY-TWO HUNDRED MILES to the west of Jerusalem! On the western edge of Spain. It was the western-most city in the known world.
Talk about an over-reaction.
I have an entirely different view of what was going on there. Illumination. Wow.
Just Sayin' 