Examining The Scripture CXXXIV: You're Going Down

Jonah by ~eikonik

In Jonah 1 the word of the Lord comes to Jonah to go to the city of Nineveh and preach against their wickedness which had “come up” before the Lord. What is Jonah’s first reaction? Jonah runs away or moves away from God. If taken in relation to the same plane (earth) that God is referring to when speaking of the Nineveh, Jonah is essentially moving “down” away from God as opposed to “up” to Him from the earth spiritually. Ironically wordage in verse 3 “Jonah ran away from the Lord” in Hebrew is actually “Jonah was rising to run away from” which implies that Jonah may already be in a sunken of depressive spiritual state right from the very onset of the Book of Jonah.

Things go from bad to worse like a sinking ship. The faster and farther Jonah moves from God the quicker he sinks in failure to do what is right in the eyes of God. By running to Tarshish (near modern day Spain) he is actually running in the opposite direction to Nineveh or Assyria directly disobeying the Lord. Sinking… God sends a storm, a great wind on the sea, so violent that the boats threatened to break apart. So where is Jonah? Below deck, sleeping and perhaps hiding. Sinking lower…He is now out of his hometown below decks in an inconspicuous situation and keeping a low profile, exactly where he is not suppose to be. He has not called on God, prayed or anything that would warrant us taking notice to his relationship with God or his piety. Even his fellow passengers try to get him to pray to help. They resort to the casting of lots and it falls on Jonah. The proverbial cat is out of the bag. They inquire who he is and what he is doing on the boat. He answers, "I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land." Sinking… They are terrified and further ask, “What have you done?” in a rhetorical fashion for they already knew why he was running. The condition of the sea was worsening.


At this point Jonah’s life spiritually had taken on so much water that if something didn’t change he and the people around him would’ve been destroyed in the process. Deeper and deeper Jonah sinks. Jonah then says they should pick him up and throw me into the sea because he knows this is his fault. Instead, the men did their best to row back to land. But they could not, for the sea grew even wilder than before. Finally after 14 verses we hear some sort of supplication to the Lord when the other boat passengers plead for their lives by asking God not to hold them accountable for killing Jonah as they throw him overboard. Just when you think it cannot get any worse, Jonah is swallowed by the whale. Jonah is sunk, literally into the deep, figuratively unto death as a shadow of Jesus Christ’s decent into Sheol (the grave) and is Resurrection three days later. Never once does Jonah turn to God, he only turns away. With each step he takes away from God he sinks further and further down into sin.

There is a secondary parallel that needs to be noted. It is a parallel of humbling or becoming humbled also. Jonah is slowly brought to his knees until he realizes that he will need to be a servant of God or a servant to servants and do God’s will. We will see a similar thing unfold in the life of Christ (although Christ knew it, it isn’t revealed to Him). It will later be outlined in Paul’s Kenosis in Philippians 2:5-11. Christ allows Himself to be humbled to the point of being humiliated and nailed to the Cross. What we will also see in Christ story after His death is also similar to Jonah in that: Because of this type of humbling and willingness to submit to God’s Will regardless of how bad things get, God will inevitably lift or lift (in Jonah’s case)/exalt (in Jesus’ case) them both… and it is ALL to God’s own glory. Christ’s will be lifted in His Resurrection and exalted. His name is lifted above all other names. In Jonah’s case he turns towards God in the belly of the whale and later in the story is vomited out on the beach to fulfill his duty.