Jonah: From Galilee to Nineveh [2024]

Read the transcript below, or watch a video of the teaching by Joseph Shulam.

Shalom. This teaching continues our series of the prophets. Starting with the minor prophets, we now got to the book of Jonah.

Jonah, the son of Amittai, came from the Galilee, about a kilometer, maybe a mile from a very famous village for Christians, the village of Cana of Galilee, where Mary, the mother of Jesus, took Jesus to a wedding that happened on the third day. And for those that don't know, the third day is Tuesday. And Jews like to get married on Tuesday. Why do they like to get married on Tuesday? 'Cause Tuesday is the only day during the story of creation in Genesis chapter one, that has twice a blessing. Every day has once. And the Lord saw and said, "It's very good." In the day of Tuesday, the third day, he said, twice, "It's very good." That's why Jews want to get married on Tuesday.

So, on Tuesday they went to the wedding, and there at Cana, Jesus turned the water into wine. For some people, he turned wine into water or into grape juice. But for us in Israel, he turned the water into wine. So, that happened very close to the village of Cana.

A small village, and Jonah, the son of Amittai, comes from that village. And the book of Jonah starts in a different way than most of the prophets'. The Book of Jonah starts with the word, "Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai saying, 'Arise, go to Nineveh.'"

This "now," is ignored oftentimes by commentators, but it's very important. Something happened, something occurred internationally, not only in Israel that God went to this guy, Jonah, and said to him, "Get up and go to the city of Nineveh." It's like going to somebody that's from Podunk and telling him, "Go to New York." Or to LA, or to Paris, or to London.

Nineveh was one of the great cities, capital of an empire, of Assyria. It was, you know, not a small city. I mean, small city in terms of today, even in terms of Jerusalem, but its built-up area was in seven miles square. Yeah, it's a small neighborhood today in most cities in the west. In those days it was one of the biggest cities, situated on the banks of the Euphrates River.

A rich city that belonged to an empire. So, when the Lord told Jonah, "Get up and go to Nineveh, to the great city of Nineveh and cry out against its wickedness. The wickedness of Nineveh came before me, I have noticed it."

So like Abraham, packed up his bag, his wife, his nephew, and the souls which he made in Haran. Jonah too arose not to go to Nineveh, to run away the other direction. Nineveh is in the north northeast of the land of Israel, on the banks of the Euphrates in Iraq, in the top of the fertile crescent. So, what does Jonah do?

He goes to Joppa, not to Tiberius, not to cross the Sea of Galilee, not to Damascus and from there to Nineveh, he takes a boat from Joppa going west. He doesn't wanna go to Nineveh. He arose to flee to Tarshish, exactly where is Tarshish? Nobody knows, the opinion of some scholars that it is in the Iberian peninsula, Spain, Portugal, as far from Mesopotamia as possible in the normal circle of ancient history.

He gets on a boat to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, wants to get away from God. And on the way to Tarshish, the Mediterranean sea has storms. Now you say to yourself, why would God choose somebody to send on a mission, a prophetic mission, an important prophetic mission to an important position, place, Nineveh, the great city?

If God knows the heart of a person, he knows that he doesn't wanna go. Why didn't he choose somebody who wants to go? No, he chose the one that he thought was the best for the mission, the most important for the mission. And he sends him to Nineveh.

Well, God is in control, not only of people and nations, but is in control of the weather. He's in control of the ocean. He's in control of the elements and even of the fish in the sea. But Jonah is not the only one who didn't want to be a prophet, who didn't want to be a messenger of wrath. The most famous one of all great prophets, maybe the greatest of all, Moses.

He didn't want the job. He argued with God over over three chapters. He argued with God saying, "Listen, I don't want this job. (Joseph imitating stuttering noises) I'm not, not a very good communicator." And he said it several times and God said, "Don't worry, I made your mouth." And again, he said, so this idea of being a prophet in the Bible is not the most popular mission, job, task, calling that people wanted to be.

Today, if you run around Central-/ South America in the Christian evangelical circles, every, almost every pastor is either a prophet or a bishop or a archbishop or apostle. In the Bible, not all the people that were great and did great things, they didn't become rich from it. They didn't have private planes. They did what they had to do, which was not the most pleasant task and not the most easy task, and not the most rewarding task that existed in the ancient Israel.

That was the most difficult one. So, people ran away. Elijah had to run away. He wanted to die. He didn't want like his mission, even after he succeeded in the mission and fire came on Mount Carmel and devoured the altar and the sacrifice on it and the water that was in the ditch around it.

After the great success, after it rained, Elijah went to the Sinai Desert, wanted to die, starved himself to death. So, Jonah also wants to get away from this mission that God has put on him. But Jonah is also an example of how God not only chooses the right men, but how God organizes his mission.

So, Jonah was going westward. Nineveh was eastward and he was going on a ship. He was going on a ship and there was a storm and the ship was in danger of sinking. And the sailors got orders from the captain to throw away all the cargo, extra cargo, whatever they were trying to ship, to take from the land of Israel from Joppa to wherever they were going, to Tarshish.

They had to throw away their cargo to make the ship lighter. And finally that didn't help 'cause God was in control of the storm. God was in control of the waves. And God knew that Jonah has to go to Nineveh. Samson, the judge also didn't wanna be a judge, but God, by chain of events, had him succeed in his mission in spite of himself, but only after a lot of suffering.

In Jonah's case, also, Jonah is on the ship, the captain of the ship and the sailors want to know, why is this storm so difficult, so harsh, so big? And why doesn't it stop? And they use like divination, and they have like drawing of lots and guess what!

God is in charge and in control also of the lots of the dice that they threw to discover who is the blame for this storm. And of course it comes on Jonah. It comes on Jonah. God points Jonah out to the ship. And Jonah volunteers, essentially, he volunteers to jump into the sea. He doesn't object it. He's willing to jump into the sea in the middle of a storm of the ship, almost with sure death.

Like Elijah wanted to die when he was in Mount Sinai and said, "I have no reason to live," after the big success, after his great endeavors, he said, "I want to die." So, he jumped into the sea. What was the objection of Jonah? The text doesn't say, but it implies it, Nineveh was the capital of the enemies of Israel.

Nineveh was in that period, the capital of an empire that fought against Israel and captured Israel and destroyed cities in Israel. So, from the human interest of Jonah, he didn't want Nineveh saved, he wanted them destroyed. But he didn't know or forgot or didn't pay attention to the fact that the God of Israel is the God of the whole world.

The Chinese are God's children. The Africans are God's children. The Eskimos are God's children. The black and white and yellow and red are all God's children. They're all our brothers. And God loves the world. One of my texts from the gospel of John 3:16.

"For God so loved the world...." it doesn't say God so loved the Jews. It says,

"God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

And the God of the Bible from the very beginning, is the God of the whole world, of all of creation, of all the galaxy.

Not only this ball that we call earth, but all the galaxy. He created, the heavens and the earth, the sun, the moon and the stars, the galaxy. And that's why he also cared about Nineveh. Does he care about the Palestinians today? He does. Does he care about the Russians today? He does. Does he care about the Ukrainians today? He does, because he's the father of all mankind.

Now, the time of this prophecy of Jonah is in the eighth century BC. It was in the reign of Jeroboam II, king of Northern Israel. In the south, Uzziah or Azariah was king, eighth century, in the middle of the eighth century. But in Assyria, there were great kings also during that same time, great conquerors, great rulers.

And like I said, Nineveh was like New York. It was like Paris. It was like one of the great cities. I have a picture that I want to show you of how Nineveh looked during that period. Here comes this country boy from a small village, a tiny little village in the Galilee, Jonah. And he is sent to the big city to do what? To condemn it. To get the people to repent, to tell them how bad they are, how sinful they are, how far they are from God's will.

He has zero hope that they will listen to him. Zero hope. So, he runs to the Mediterranean Sea going west. He is thrown into the ocean. What happens? In Ninve those days, the great emperor, Esarhaddon, the son of Sennacherib the Great was king. And he was fighting with the north and east and south and west, having victories.

So, Noah got on a boat to save humanity with the animals. Now, Jonah jumped off the boat, got thrown off the boat to save the ship. And what Jonah didn't know, that he can't get away even in the ocean, even in the sea, even from the deep, 'cause God has secret submarines, big fish. It doesn't say whale.

It says a big fish swallows Jonah, for a big fish in the middle of the Mediterranean to swallow Jonah and to bring him to the shores of land that is close to Mesopotamia, it has to go probably from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea, from the Black Sea to the eastern shores of the Black Sea. The closest place that he could go to bring Jonah close to the land in the Mediterranean.

Oh, it would have to go around the Horn of Africa, there was no Sues Canal. So, you'd have to go around the Horn of Africa, go through Bab-el-Mandeb out to the Persian Gulf and then swim up the river Euphrates to bring Jonah there. It's a fantastic story. It's so fantastic that I, being a doubting Thomas, there was periods that I doubted that that was possible.

It looked to me like a Walt Disney invention. But that's what the text says. And I believe the text. So Jonah, in the belly of the fish, three days and three nights, that fish had a turbo. If he was in the Mediterranean, that fish had a turbo, you know, nuclear engine that drove it so fast. But probably, if he went through the Black Sea, it's more possible that he landed him on the eastern shores of the Black Sea.

Jonah gets to Nineveh, and even though he didn't really want to, he delivered the message. Nineveh will fall, Nineveh will be destroyed. Your empire is going to collapse. Why? Because of your sin. Jeremiah said similar things to the kings of Israel. He got slapped, he got put in prison, he got thrown in a well, he got beaten up. It wasn't a popular message to go to kings and rulers and tell them, "Listen, you're sinners, you're evil and you're going to pay for it and your city's gonna pay for it."

But then he lands and he does the job. And he is surprised. He tells the people, "You're sinners, you need to repent." They say, "Wow, yeah, you are right. Let's repent. Let's change, let's return. Let's abandon our idolatry, our immorality, and straighten up our ways." Jonah is surprised. He goes up on a hill above the city and is waiting for God to zap that city and destroy it.

But it doesn't happen, 'cause they repent and he's now depressed. Like Elijah was after the success of Mount Carmel. He's depressed and God plants a shrub, a plant that grows very fast. The Hebrew word is Kikayon, the English word is a plant. And the plant grows overnight and provides him with shade.

Ah, that's the Iraq desert. Even though it's next to the Euphrates, very hot. And Jonah is very happy that a plant that he didn't plant, grew overnight providing him with shades and coolness. And the sun rises, east wind comes, the sun beats the plant, and the plant goes, whoop! Dries...

So, what happens? Jonah now is angry with God, that God gave him the plant and God took away the plant by the wind, by the heat, by the dust, by the desert wind. And God turns to Jonah with these words. "It is right for me to be angry even to death."

Jonah says, "I'm so depressed that these gentiles, Nineveh idol worshipers have repented and the city, their city is gonna be saved. I wanted their city destroyed. And I'm so angry that I had a plant that will give me shade and that plant is gone. It is right for me to be angry and I want to die."

That's what Jonah said. But the Lord said, "You have pity on the plant which you have not labored nor made to grow, which came up in the night and perished in the night, in one night. That's why you are angry, because you succeeded to bring the Gentiles to repentance? You succeeded to do your mission successfully. And now because the plant that you didn't plant grew to give you shade and then died overnight, you're angry? You have no right to be angry."

What the message is, sharp, is that God is the God of the universe, God of all the nations, God of even of the enemies of Israel that he uses sometime to teach us a lesson. Yes, God is in control and he can use anybody, even a young man from a small village, a farmer boy and turn him into a prophet.

And he can use that simple farm boy to bring a great city like Nineveh to repentance. And the lesson, the final lesson of the book of Jonah is, yes, don't worry about your environment. Worry about the fact that you have a mission. You have a calling, you have a purpose to bring the world to repentance, to bring change, to draw men to God, and away from idolatry because that depends on the health and the survival and the wealth and the happiness of mankind.