Let’s Jump to the End
“Should I not also have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 people, who do not know the difference between their right hand and their left, as well as many animals?” Jonah 4:11 NASB
The great city – Uriel Simon makes an amazing point in his introduction of the JPS commentary on the book of Jonah. “Ninevah merits its Creator’s protection not because of its citizens’ remorse, but because it is a great metropolis, teeming with children who have never sinned, and many beasts as well.”[1] Simon’s remark may cause us to rethink God’s mercy, just as Jonah’s view of justice must be re-evaluated. If God shows mercy simply because the people of Ninevah, and the animals, are His creation, then mercy isn’t a matter of spiritual calculus. It’s a matter of divine prerogative. Remorse and repentance are spiritually important but they don’t have anything to do with God’s compassion. In other words, you can’t earn forgiveness by repenting. That is an oxymoron. Forgiveness happens only because God decides to forgive, not because you went through the “stations of the cross.”
Try to wrap your head around this. It’s so counterintuitive to our way of thinking about righteousness. Deep within our religious culture resides the idea that somehow if we just do the right rituals and obey that right commands we will be deserving of forgiveness. We would never dare say this out loud, but underneath all our weeping, confessing, and grieving about the past, we still believe that penitence will result in forgiveness. Automatically! “Just do this. Just say these words. Just pray this prayer and everything will be fine.” Where have you heard something similar? Well, the end of the book of Jonah is here to tell you that your view of repentance might need some correction. And now maybe you’ll have more appreciation for God’s statement to Moses, “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion to whom I will show compassion,” (Exodus 33:19), reiterated by Paul in Romans 9:15 (“I will have mercy on whomever I have mercy, and I will show compassion to whomever I show compassion”). The hard truth in Jonah is that God freely decides. This has significant implications for understanding the actions of Jonah (and the purpose of the story).
Simon notes that there is no mention of hostility toward Ninevah concerning idolatry, nor toward the gentiles on the ill-fated ship. “Similarly, the Lord’s response, through the incident of the plant and the explanation that follows it, is clearly intended to justify God’s mercy in and of itself, . . .”[2] Furthermore, there isn’t any textual support for the idea that Jonah was distressed when his prophecy did not come to pass. Whether the people of Ninevah are punished or not isn’t the point of the story. The point of the story is the complete freedom God has in showing mercy. “Only when the proponent of strict justice realizes his own humanity can he understand the fundamental dependence of mortals on human and divine mercy.”[3] This is our lesson too. Compassion is never calculated nor can it be coerced. While we should never take God’s mercy for granted, we are not the ones who initiate it. It starts and ends with God.
Topical Index: mercy, compassion, Exodus 33:19, Romans 9:15, Jonah 4:11
