“”Wherefore they cried unto the Lord, and said, ‘We beseech Thee, O Lord, we beseech Thee, let us not perish for this man’s life, and lay not upon us innocent blood; for Thou, O Lord, hast done as it pleased Thee.'” Jonah 1:14
The book of Jonah is a book of salvation. First, it is a matter of saving Jonah from himself, his bitterness towards his enemies and those of Israel. Secondly, it is a matter of saving the mariners, or sailors, on the boat in which Jonah was seeking to escape the presence of God. Then it was the Ninevites, who were going along with their lives, not knowing that the judgment of God was coming. It appears that only one man could intervene to prevent it Jonah.
Jonah was called and commissioned by God to communicate the word of God to the Ninevites. That word was one of judgment, a judgment that was about to break upon them. Jonah, because of the hatred in his heart towards the Ninevites and their brutal treatment of his people, actually wanted their destruction. His bias and bent of his heart was such that it blinded him to all else. This prophet of God, a minister of the God who is ever working to seek and save the lost, needed “saving,” being saved from himself, his sin, and now his blindness. It would take three days in the belly of a fish, in darkness and misery, for Jonah to repent of his unwillingness to obey God. However, by the grace of God, there would come a moment when Jonah would declare: “They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy.” (Jonah 2:8) Jonah need saving from these “lying vanities,” these idolatrous thoughts which would lead one to trust in something, or someone, else than God, and Him alone. This God did, and Jonah would become the instrument through which the Ninevites would hear the word of God, repent, and be delivered from pending judgment.
We do not know a great deal about the mariners, or sailors, except the fact that they had different gods, for the captain of the ship would tell each one to cry out to his god to save them. But when Jonah told them who he was, and what he was doing in fleeing from the God of the Hebrews, whom he feared, declaring that He was the “God of heaven, which made the sea and the dry land,” they knew exactly who they were dealing with, for they were exceeding afraid, and then asked him, “Why hast thou done this?” We then find the mariners seeking to avoid Jonah’s admonition to throw him into the ocean, as they feared God in doing so. Not able to row against the wind and the waves, they then cried out to the Lord, seeking Him for forgiveness, and pardon, as it was apparent that the Lord had ordered the circumstances, and Jonah’s solution was the only one left. Once Jonah was thrown overboard, the sea “ceased from raging.” It was then that these mariners “…feared the Lord exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice unto the Lord, and made vows.”
As for the Ninevites, who were seemingly going along with their normal lives, and uneasingnly so, there was certainly that working of the Spirit which was convicting them that they were not right with God, that what they were approving was evil, and that the violence they were so accustomed to, was wrong. When the words of the Lord being given forth by Jonah were heard, a conviction of sin was created in the hearts of the Ninevites, from the king to the lowliest of them all. There was the conviction that what Jonah was declaring was the truth, and that indeed, they would be destroyed in forty days. They humbled themselves, repented of their sins, crying out to God to save and deliver them. The God of the Hebrews had met Jonah at the bottom of the sea, the mariners in the midst of a storm, and the Ninevites facing the coming judgment.
Dear Father, Save us all today. In Jesus’ name, Amen.