Opinion : Pastor's Blog - A Biography of the Prophet Jonah

Everyone loves stories. And, everyone loves true stories even better- they help us relate to the story and give us confidence identifying with the main character because we know it’s true. One of the best true stories is told by the prophet Jonah, son of Amittai. The very best reason to understand the book of Jonah is that it’s Scripture, God’s breathed-out, self-revelation, and thus includes specific lessons He intended for our learning (see 2 Timothy 3:16. This claim is verified by Jesus himself when he quotes from the book of Jonah in Matthew 12:38-41). If you haven’t taken the time to fully meditate upon the truth Jonah presents in his book, you’ve missed many huge opportunities to sharpen your knowledge of God and his divine attributes. Throughout the entire story, God shows the reader His full-sovereignty, abundant mercy, and saving grace. But there are other reasons too. Jonah provides a stunning glimpse into the Old Testament, pagan religious traditions, Jewish manners and customs, to name a few. And unless you’ve had formal instruction in these areas or facilitated your knowledge through reading, at best, you’re left with a Sunday-School level perspective of this story. There are other, more pragmatic reasons for reading Jonah. What he wrote is rich, Old Testament narrative- story-telling at its best. The book of Jonah is string of successive events, beginning with God’s calling of the prophet Jonah, the announcing of Jehovah’s judgment against the city of Nineveh, and the resulting top-down repentance that began at the throne of the king all the way down to the lowly peasant. My hope is this: to develop in you a love and thirst for the Old Testament. The lives of the world’s greatest men- Adam, Noah, Moses, Abraham, David, Solomon, and others are told in story-form within the earlier pages of Scripture. We must begin by asking the question, “Is there value in understanding the background information of a certain biblical text?” Or, to pose the question differently: “Is it necessary to know the historical setting of Jonah?” Before I answer these questions, let me point out that some people dedicate their entire lives for the study of the smallest segments of the religious, cultural, political, economical, linguistical and theological aspects of history and antiquity. If the historical setting of a piece of literature were unimportant, their lives would have been lived in vain and their work ignored. Such has never been the base. But there are other, better reasons for understanding the historical setting. Let me give you several. Our study of the historical setting corrects our faulty assumptions (or presuppositions) about what the Bible says. We probably would be able to read a newspaper or watch today’s headlines in the evening news without first having to consult a book for understanding. But understanding those news stories did not happen without your learning the historical context. You have learned it all your life. You may have read some books of history, science and other cultural studies to quantify the present context, but mostly, you observed it. Since no one is able to personally observe ancient history, books, background studies and other such tools are necessary. The life you are living is vastly different from the life your parents and grandparents lived. Even their lives are vastly different from those of the 1700s and 1800s. And, how much has changed from even 500 AD or from the time of Christ? History shows that Nineveh was destroyed around 600 BC. Using the lenses of modern man to inspect what happened some 2,600 years ago will make certain elements of Jonah’s book unclear, if not totally misunderstood. Unless we realize the historical context is vastly different from our own, we are prone to make assumptions, incorrect assertions that come from our own life experiences, our own cultural and economic settings. There is finally the most important element- it is Scripture. God chose to reveal himself in certain time, certain places, and certain ways that are not self-evident to the modern reader and his modern way of thinking and reading. Most narratives unfold without telling the reader why this or that was so. It was assumed by the reader under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and would have been readily understood by those who knew Jonah or Nineveh, or Tarshish or Israel. But, the modern reader’s historical setting was very different than Jonah’s. We know that God has divine reasons for placing this story in its own setting long, long ago, and that He divinely inspired this story and preserved it for our reading. Since ALL Scripture, including the book of Jonah, is profitable for many things (2 Timothy 3:16-17), we know He desires us to learn the lessons He meant for us to learn by their inclusion in the narrative. To summarize, let me say it this way: the historical context is important, critically important. God purposefully gave His Word in specific contexts at certain times within certain circumstances that, when properly observed, give greater understanding to that study. Next time, we’ll examine the finer historical details of the book of Jonah. Zach Zajicek is the pastor at: First Baptist Church of Vinton “Finding Christ supreme in all things”