Q. Why did Jonah flee to Tarshish instead of obeying the Lord and preaching to the Ninevites?
A. Among the many questions that surround the famous biblical story about a bad-tempered prophet, a violent storm at sea, a submarine-like fish, and a sweeping revival in the Assyrian capital of Nineveh, none is more important than the question you raise. And the answer might surprise us; it is not what many people think. Moreover, if we fail to get this right, we will miss the relevance of the Jonah story to our own attitudes and actions.
It is reasonable to assume that Jonah fled to Tarshish instead of going to Nineveh as the LORD had directed him because he and his fellow-countrymen, the Israelites, hated and were afraid of the wicked and violent Assyrians. Even if that assumption were true (fear and hatred are why people flee, right?), that is not the answer we find in the Jonah story itself.
Our first clue comes in Jonah 1:3, where twice we are told that Jonah fled in an attempt to escape “from the presence of the LORD.” Having been commanded by YHWH to go and preach to Nineveh (vv. 1-2), Jonah boarded a boat heading the opposite direction, hoping thereby to run away from God. Whatever vendetta he might have had against the Ninevites, every indication here and in the unfolding story suggests that his bigger problem was with God.
The deeper question, then, centers on what Jonah has against YHWH. Why is he not like all the other prophets who likewise faced dangerous and formidable tasks, but who promptly obeyed when the LORD commissioned them?
Toward the end of the story Jonah finally gets around to justifying himself and his actions, with a reason that is as stunning as his behavior. There, in an “I told you so” speech to God, he explains exactly what prompted his initial disobedience: Jonah knows YHWH to be “a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster,” and this is precisely “why I made haste to flee to Tarshish” (Jon 4:2). In other words, Jonah knows that God is good even to those who don’t deserve it. He’s okay when God is that way toward him and his own people (cf. 2 Kgs 14:23-27), but he can’t stand the idea of God being that way toward anyone else.
It is true that Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian Empire, was wicked and violent; but it is noteworthy that neither the narrator of the story nor Jonah himself actually expresses any disfavor toward the city or its inhabitants. On the contrary, Nineveh, despite its wickedness, is regarded as “the great city” (1:2; 3:2; 4:11), even a “great city to God” (3:3, lit.), presumably because God cares about all the needy people and helpless animals who live there (4:10-11).
Whatever issues Jonah might have had with Nineveh or its people, his real contention is with God. He is pleased when the LORD favors him and his people with undeserved mercy, but peeved when He does so with others. Presumably he regards himself as worth saving from drowning (we hear no complaint or protest from his lips at the end of chapter 2!), but the same does not apply to the great city of Nineveh. Jonah is out of sync and out of sorts with God’s mercy and mission. It was not simply the case that he might have disliked Nineveh; rather, to a shocking extent, he could not stand God being God!
The longer we ponder the Jonah story, the more we see ourselves as in a mirror. This prophet would, if he could, accept the abounding love of YHWH toward himself and his people, but prevent it from abounding so generously toward others of whom he does not approve. Clearly YHWH’s inclination is to save His enemies rather than destroy them; Jonah, on the other hand, would rather see Nineveh destroyed than saved—this despite his earlier climactic shout that “Salvation belongs to YHWH!” (2:9).
What makes Jonah’s attitude so egregious—and ours as well when we play his part––is both the fact that it asks YHWH not to live up to His Name (cf. Exod 34:5-7), and it runs precisely counter to Israel’s calling and ours to be the agents of God’s blessing in the world. Where Jonah got it wrong is not in his expectation that Nineveh deserved divine judgment (it did), but in his indictment of God for lavishing His mercy, grace, and love without consulting Jonah on who should be the recipients of these blessings.
To ponder: If God considered Nineveh a “great city” worth saving, I wonder how God might feel about cities like Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang, Tehran, or even New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Las Vegas. Perhaps these too are great cities to God simply because many lost and needy people live there, whose judgment (or that of their leaders) might be deserved, but on whom God chooses to shower His mercy and salvation instead.
This question was answered by Dr. Vern Steiner, president of the Emmaus Institute for Biblical Studies. For more information, visit www.emmausinstitute.net.
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