Besides the book of Jonah, the only other mention of him in the Old Testament is found in 2 Kings 14:25. “Jeroboam II recovered the lost territories of Israel between Hamath and the Dead Sea, just as the Lord God of Israel had predicted through Jonah (son of Amittai) the prophet from Gathhepher.” We assume that Jonah lived sometime during the reign of Jeroboam II (approx.: 790-750 BCE).
Chapter 1 begins with God’s message to Jonah to go to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, and preach judgment to them. “But Jonah was afraid to go and ran away from the Lord.” (Verse 3). Jonah must have had a strange view of God. Not only did he go to Joppa and buy a ticket for a boat ride, but when he boarded the boat, he “climbed down into the dark hold of the ship to hide there from the Lord”. Maybe he thought, ‘God is the God of Israel so if I leave Israel, He can’t see me’.
As they went sailing off into the Mediterranean Sea, God caused a great storm to appear. Everyone on the ship was afraid they would die because the storm was so strong. It was not unusual for ships to sink during storms, but the captain remembered Jonah was in the hold. Going down there he realized Jonah was sound asleep. The captain woke Jonah up and demanded he get on deck and pray to his God for mercy. Finally the sailors decided to “draw straws” to find out who caused the problem, and Jonah pulled the short one. Question after question was shouted at Jonah, and finally Jonah admitted his fault.
Something like this happens to a lot of Christians. God calls them to do something, but their response may not be as swift as Jonah’s. I met a man several years ago who found the love of his life in college, married her, and their plan was to become missionaries. During their seminary training, the wife decided she didn’t want to go, and she divorced her husband. The man never went to the mission field either as far as I know.
I know another man who was in Walmart one day when he noticed a family of four shopping. He was really attracted to this family for some unknown reason, and he saw them a couple of times more before going to the checkout line where he saw the woman and her daughter about 2 or 3 places ahead of him. All of a sudden, the woman realized she could not afford what had been tabulated, and she began asking the cashier to take some of the items off the list; these were items of necessity not frivolous things.
At that time, the Lord said to the man watching this, “Go and pay this woman’s bill, the whole thing.” The man became scared because God had never asked him to do something like that before, and he didn’t want to make a spectacle of himself, so he froze.
The woman left the store with about half of what she needed. The man felt guilty for not doing what God told him to do. He wondered for years if that woman had prayed earlier that day about her needs and God told her someone would take care of it. I was that 2nd man. I have no way of knowing if my failure to follow God’s instruction had a negative effect on that family’s faith, but that question has never left my mind.
There may be other Christians who somehow have failed to obey God’s voice and felt the regret. God will forgive us for our failures, but we will remember and live with our lack of response maybe for the rest of our lives. May we learn to heed God’s voice when He speaks to us. I often wonder what my life would have been like if I had listened to God’s voice when He spoke to me.
What happened to Jonah because he refused to listen to and obey God’s voice? He was thrown overboard and swallowed by a great fish!