April in 2 Chronicles & 2 Kings with Obadiah, Joel, Jonah, and Amos

1. 2 Kings 4
2. 2 Kings 5
3. 2 Kings 6 & 7
4. 2 Kings 8
5. 2 Chron. 21
6. 2 Kings 9
7. 2 Kings 10
8. 2 Kings 11
9. 2 Chron. 22
10. 2 Chron. 23
11. 2 Kings 12
12. 2 Chron. 24
13. Joash Character Study
14. 2 Kings 13
15. Obadiah 1
16. Joel 1 – 2:17
17. Joel 2:18 – 3:21
18. 2 Kings 14
19. 2 Chron. 25
20. 2 Kings 15
21. 2 Chron. 26 & 27 
22. Jonah 1 & 2
23. Jonah 3 & 4
24. Amos 1
25. Amos 2
26. Amos 3 & 4
27. Amos 5
28. Amos 6
29. Amos 7 & 8
30. Amos 9

Put Jonah on the Prophets Shelf!

Jonah 3 & 4 - "Should I Not Be Concerned?"

LINK: Jonah 3 & 4

BACKGROUND

The fish (never says whale in the Hebrew) transported Jonah back in the right direction, and Jonah delivered a very simple message:

Yet forty days and Nineveh 

will be overthrown.

(Jonah 3:4)

Nineveh repented in sackcloth and ashes, but Jonah responded by pouting! God used a plant, a worm, and a scorching wind to teach Jonah about His mercy. Jonah grieved over the death of the plant in which he had no part in making grow. Jonah cared more for the vine than for the human lives in Nineveh! He cared more for his personal comfort than for the spiritual destiny of thousands of people.

Donald E. Baker paraphrases Jonah 4:11-12 beautifully:

Let’s analyze this anger of yours Jonah. . . .It represents your concern over your beloved plant – but what did it really mean to you? Your attachment to it couldn’t be very deep, for it was here one day and gone the next. Your concern was dictated by self-interest, not by genuine love. You never had a devotion of a gardener. If you feel as bad as you do, what would you expect a gardener to feel like, who tended a plant and watched it grow only to see it wither and die? This is how I feel about Nineveh, only much more so. All those people, all those animals—I made them; I have cherished them all these years. Nineveh has cost Me no end of effort, and it means the world to Me. Your pain is nothing compared to Mine when I contemplate their destruction. (“Jonah and the Worm,” His. October 1983, p. 12)

It is of historical note that Nineveh’s repentance was short-lived for it was destroyed by the Babylonians in 612 B.C. The entire Assyrian empire was toppled by them in 609 B.C.

REFLECTION

The key verse in this book is found in 4:11:

“But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?"

From the beginning of Bible Book Club, I have been “tapping my drum” and saying that, from the beginning, God’s intention has been that Israel would be a conduit of His love and mercy to all the peoples (remember Genesis 12:1-3 – they were “blessed to be a blessing”). He is a God of “all the earth,” and He will be worshipped by all peoples (Revelation 5:9-10; 7:9-17). 

Johannes Vekuyl says, “He is cutting a path directly through the weary and plodding activities of men in history in order to achieve his goals among the nations,” and the book of Jonah is a case in point!

Please read what Vekuyl goes on to say:

The book of Jonah is so significant for understanding the biblical basis of missions because it treats God’s mandate to his people regarding the Gentile peoples and thus serves as the preparatory step to the missionary mandate of the New Testament. But it is also important for catching a glimpse of the deep resistance this mandate encounters from the very servant Yahweh has chosen to discharge his worldwide work.

Today there is much talk and writing about “educating the congregation” and “educating personnel” for mission. Jonah is a lesson in educating a person to be a missionary: it reveals the need for a radical conversion of one’s natural tendencies and a complete restructuring of his life to make it serviceable for mission.

The title of the book is the personal name of the unwilling prophet, Jonah. . . . The author uses this personal name to portray for his readers a missionary who has no heart for the Gentiles and who, like the later Pharisees, cannot tolerate a God who shows them mercy. In the words of the Dutch author Miskotte, “the writer intends to picture a person who is the exact opposite of an apostle.” The author of Jonah warns his readers against this intolerant attitude and sets before each of them the question of whether he or she is willing to be transformed into a servant who works to accomplish the mandates of God.

As the author sees it, Israel has become so preoccupied with herself that she no longer directs her eyes toward the world of the nations, Israel, the recipient of all God’s revelation, refuses to set foot in alien territory to tell the other peoples God’s message of judgment and liberation. But the message of the book also is addressed to the New Testament congregation which tries various ways of evading her Lord’s command to speak his message to the world.

Jonah’s crafty evasion efforts represent a lazy and unfaithful Church which does not heed its Lord’s command. God has to wrestle against Israel’s narrow ethnocentrism which tries to restrict his activity to the boundaries of Israel alone and against the Church’s ecclesiocentric refusal to go out into the world to proclaim God’s message and do his work. The writer is bent on convincing his readers that the radius of God’s liberating activity is wide enough to cover both Israel and the Gentiles.

It is a miracle that Jonah, with its strong warning against ethnocentrism, ever made its way into the canon of Scripture. It squarely sets forth man’s attempt to sabotage God’s worldwide plans so that its readers – Israel, the New Testament Church, and us – can hear what the Holy Spirit is trying to tell them through the medium of this little book. (Verkuyl, Johannes. "The Biblical Foundation for the Worldwide Mission Mandate." Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: A Reader 2009: 45-47)

APPLICATION

Gut check: How is your mercy meter? Are you concerned about those who do not know and have never heard about the love of God through Jesus Christ, especially people you have never met in other countries?

The message of salvation is for all people. God’s grace extends beyond the accessible places we go to on short-term trips. I am not saying that the people in those countries are not worthy of our compassion and love, but they are making the calls and asking you to come. I am talking about the people who don’t have your number. I am talking about the people who need people like us to move into their neighborhoods and provide a tangible expression of the love of God. They might not live in the nicest places. They might have a very bad reputation in the world’s eyes because of what you have heard on the news; but they, like the people of Nineveh, are an object of God’s compassionate concern. Should we not be concerned?

You might start by praying for the Unreached of the Day. I listen to the podcast and have the app (with multiple languages) on my phone. 

If you want more ideas about how to put that budding concern in motion, contact me on my contact form at Body and Soul Companion.

PRAYER

Lord, give us Your heart of compassion for all the peoples of the world. Help us to be concerned. We pray this in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Jonah 1 & 2 - Don’t Go West Young Man!

By NordNordWest (self-made, using  GTOPO-30 Elevation Data by USGS) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-3.0
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

LINK: Jonah 1 & 2

Please read INTRODUCTION TO THE PROPHETICAL BOOKS if you have not already done so. 

BACKGROUND

Here is where Jonah fits within the historical narrative of the Bible:

2 Chr. 25-26:    796-750 (Parallel in 2 Kings 14-15)

                         784-772 - JONAH 1-4 (Northern)

                         760-750 - AMOS 1-9 (Northern)

Jonah prophesied right before Amos and Hosea. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria. The northern kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians in 722 B.C. 2 Kings 14:23-27 mentions Jonah and his ministry during the reign of Jeroboam II, king of Israel (793-753 B.C.). The king of Assyria at that time was Shalmaneser IV who reigned from 783-772 B.C.

Nineveh was about 500 miles northeast of Israel. It was on the east side of the Tigris River and the distance required for the journey would have taken more than a month. (15-20 miles a day). Nineveh was in what is today Iraq opposite the modern-day town of Mosul. The name is "Ninive" on the map above. 

Instead of going east like God told him, Jonah went west away “from the presence of the Lord” toward Tarshish in Spain. Historians believe it is probably the southern city of Tartessus, which was 2,500 miles west of Joppa.

Why would Jonah want to run the opposite way? Well, for one thing, Assyrians were known for their savagery. Here is an excerpt from the journal of an Assyrian king:

Three thousand captives burned with fire . . . their corpses I formed into pillars . . . their governor I flayed; his skin I spread upon the wall of the city . . . from some I cut off their hands and their fingers and their noses . . . of many I put out their eyes . . . I formed a pillar . . . of heads against the city gate, and 700 men I impaled on stakes.

Secondly, they were steeped in idolatry with temples dedicated to the gods of Nabu (god of literacy and wisdom), Asshur (main god of Assyria), Adad (god of weather), and Ishtar (goddess of love and war).

If we put ourselves in Jonah’s shoes, we might have gone west too!

We will learn more about the wickedness of Nineveh when we read the book of Nahum later this year. Nahum prophesied from 650-620 B.C.

Can a Man be Swallowed by a Whale and Live?

A whale hunter, James Bartley, was swallowed by a whale in 1891. A day later, the whale was cut open, and James Batley was still alive, although it was a month before he was able to think clearly. (Vedral, Joyce; A Literary Survey of the Bible, p. 95)

REFLECTION

THE SCARLET THREAD OF REDEMPTION

Jesus mentions Jonah’s three days in the whale as a picture of his death and resurrection in Matthew 12:38-42:

Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to Him, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.” 

But He answered and said to them, “An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign; and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet; for just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up with this generation at the judgment, and will condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. The Queen of the South will rise up with this generation at the judgment and will condemn it, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and behold, something greater than Solomon is here."

APPLICATION

As I update this for 2014, the area around Nineveh has a modern savagery going on in the name of ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). Pray that God will raise up a modern-day Jonah to proclaim His message to the people there.

Also, pray through this 30-Day Prayer Guide for ISIS.

2023 Update: According to this article from the United States Institute of Peace, ISIS/ISIL is still a problem. This prayer guide can be used for any terrorist group. There are many throughout the world. 

PRAYER

Lord, help us to not want to flee from Your presence and go the opposite way from Your will for our lives, no matter how scary it might feel to go Your way. Thank You that You are with us always, even to the end of the age. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Introduction to the Prophetical Books

INTRODUCTION TO THE PROPHETICAL BOOKS

Download the Year Two BBC Overview and Timeline 

The Bible is not written in chronological order but according to the type of book:

Books of Moses (Law or Pentateuch): Genesis - Deuteronomy 
History: Joshua - Esther
Poetry and Wisdom Literature: Job - Song of Solomon
Major Prophets: Isaiah - Daniel
Minor Prophets: Hosea - Malachi

I find it easier to understand prophecy when it is read in the context of the historical period. So, that is why we are interspersing the prophets in the historical context of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles. 

I will not be doing a strictly chronological approach because I do not want to jump back and forth once we start a prophetic book. So, when we get to a book like Isaiah, that covers the reign of four kings of Judah spanning six decades, we will read through all of those kings in 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles before we study the entire book of Isaiah.

The prophetical books are broken up into two sections: 5 Major Prophets (Isaiah - Daniel) and 12 Minor Prophets (Hosea - Malachi). We will read them in chronological order. That way we will get breaks between the longer major prophets of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel with the shorter Minor Prophets. Here is a brief rundown of the order of the historical dates for each prophet with the Major Prophets highlighted in bold. They are all B.C.:

841-824.....Obadiah (this date is hotly debated!)

825-809....Joel

784-772.....Jonah 

767-755.....Amos 

755-714.....Hosea 

-----722 Assyrian Captivity of Northern Kingdom of Israel

739-681.....Isaiah 

733-701.....Micah 

650-620....Nahum 

636-623....Zephaniah 

627-574.....Jeremiah 

574-538.....Lamentations 

621-609.....Habakkuk 

605-586 Babylonian Captivity of Southern Kingdom of Judah

605-536.....Daniel 

593-559.....Ezekiel 

------538 Cyrus of Persian issues edict allowing Jews to RETURN to land

520-505.....Haggai 

520-489.....Zechariah 

435-415.....Malachi 

Theologically, the prophets concentrate on warnings of impending judgment, teachings about righteous living, encouragement to the faithful and oppressed, and predictions of God's future plans.

                                                                                         

I am approaching the prophets with fear and trembling! :)  I hope that you are game and that breaking up the longer books of the Major Prophets with the shorter books of the Minor Prophets will make it easier! I believe God has so much to teach us through the study of these books.

I LOVE what Eugene Peterson says about the prophets:

Over a period of several hundred years the Hebrew people gave birth to an extraordinary number of prophets – men and women distinguished by the power and skill with which they presented the reality of God. They delivered God’s commands and promises and living presence to communities and nations who had been living on god-fantasies and god-lies. 

Everyone more or less believes in God. But most of us do our best to keep God on the margins of our lives or failing that, refashion God to suit our convenience. Prophets insist that God is the sovereign center [emphasis mine] not off in the wings awaiting our beck and call. And prophets insist that we deal with God as God reveals himself, not as we imagine him to be [Isn't that powerful? Ponder that for a moment].  

These men and women woke people up to the sovereign presence of God in their lives. They yelled, they wept, they rebuked, they soothed, they challenged, they comforted. They used words with power and imagination whether blunt or subtle. . .  

Prophets make it impossible to evade God or make detours around God. Prophets insist on receiving God in ever nook and cranny of life. For a prophet, God is more real than the next-door neighbor.  (The Message Remix, p. 1194, 1197)

With fear and trembling, let us start the prophets in the next post!