Today’s verses are in the middle of the story. At the beginning, God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh to call for repentance. But Jonah doesn’t want to do this. Nineveh is full of unbelievers and wickedness and Jonah wants to see it punished, so he gets on a boat to flee to Tarshish. The Lord pursues him, however, sending a great storm. The pagan crew reluctantly throws him overboard and converts when the storm immediately abates.
Jonah, however, is swallowed by a whale (“great fish” if you want to get literal) and stays in its belly three days and three nights (Jesus’ “sign of Jonah” in Matthew 12:38-41). He prays in repentance, and is coughed up on dry land.
But the Lord is not finished with Jonah. He again sends him to Nineveh, and so we have today’s first reading.
"Nineveh was an enormously large city.” It’s going to take Jonah three days (again) to cross it. He no sooner gets started than the whole city, including the king, is in sack cloth. God relents, and Jonah is angry. He still wants Nineveh punished. He leaves the city and prays to God to take his life, which God refuses to do. Instead his give Jonah a gourd plant that shades him for a day but then kills off the plant, which angers Jonah. God tells Jonah to quit being so self-centered, that the people (to say nothing of the animals) of Nineveh are much more important than the plant. Interestingly, the story ends without telling us if Jonah repents.
So some things to think about: How self-centered am I? In my judgments, in what I do with God’s gifts, in what I have failed to do? Am I angry at God? Am I at the center of that anger? What can I say to unbelievers? How can I spread the Word? Do I feel that God is asking too much of me? Do I feel that God is too merciful?
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