Ending With A Question

And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?” Jonah 4:11

With these words, a question posed by God, the story of Jonah closes. The response that Jonah has clearly given through is own actions, is, “No, you should not be concerned about them and neither am I!” But God, fortunately for Jonah, is exactly as Jonah has feared. He is merciful.

He prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. Jonah 4:2

I say that God’s mercy, which enrages Jonah, is fortunate for him because he himself is guilty of rebellion against God, obstinance, refusal to do as God commands, and defiance. If God were not merciful, Jonah himself would be severely punished. But he is not. He too is shown mercy, just like the people of Nineveh. Ironically, Jonah hates the mercy which he needs as much as those he considers wicked and unworthy of God’s concern.

The real Nineveh, the citadel and fortress of wickedness, was not the Assyrian city to which Jonah was sent to preach, but the prophet’s own heart. The book of Jonah is not about the repentance of the capital and leading city of an evil empire, but God’s attempt to penetrate a far greater bastion of darkness, the self-righteous and condemnatory attitude of Jonah himself. 

Perhaps by ending with a question and not an answer, we are left to ponder our own willingness for God to be outrageously merciful. We must wonder, if we perceive the sinfulness and wickedness of others to be irredeemable, are not our hearts the real empire of ungodliness?