A lot of people in Jonah’s day had long hated the city and people of Nineveh. As a center for the worship of Ishtar, goddess of love, sensuality, fertility, procreation, and war, the city was well-known since times ancient to Jonah for its decadent practices in the name of religion. As the capital city of the cruel Assyrian Empire, it was closely associated with the widely, intensely-hated Assyrians. No wonder Jonah didn’t want to go there! No self-respecting Israelite would want to have anything to do with that place or its people; everyone would delight in seeing it justly destroyed.
But God sent his prophet there to warn the people of Nineveh of their coming judgement. Jonah is not a light-hearted tale about a fish swallowing a man and then vomiting him up on land three days later; it is a profound story of God’s profound love for the least lovely of human beings. He loved them too much, even after centuries of their depraved idol worship and inhumane treatment of other peoples in the winning and maintaining of their vast empire, to let Jonah go his own way to avoid them.
Their repentance gave them another 250 years of prosperity before they were judged. I’ll save those details for when we read about them again in another book of prophecy. God demonstrated much patience even in judging people who were not His chosen people.
Are you like Jonah in your hatred for a people group? Do you have yourself convinced that your hatred stems from godly anger and therefore is honoring to God? Based on this story, how do you think God feels about those people? What do you think He thinks about your hatred?