Students of ancient religions will likely recall that the
vast majority of non-Israelites (and, frankly, far too many Israelites too) were pantheists, and that the vast majority of the
gods these people worshiped actually possessed very limited portfolios.
In the Ancient Near East, every major city had its own patron
deity. The Egyptians
had literally dozens of them, each with specific areas of responsibility. So
Montu was their god of war, Neper their god of grain, Osiris their ruler of the
underworld, Nut their sky goddess, Ash their god of the Libyan desert, and so
on. The Sumerians
had more than 3,000 deities, major and minor, including Ashur, god of wind
and Nergal, god of plagues. The gods of all major ancient religions divvied up responsibilities
over the world in this way, and the effect of this multiplicity of gods was invariably
to lessen the impressiveness of any individual deity.
Even the Canaanite god Baal, named 63 times in our Old
Testaments and a major factor in Israelite idolatry, was primarily known as a
fertility god.
How does this relate to our study of Jonah? Read on, my friend ...
Jonah 1:7-10 — A Major Problem
“And they said to one another, ‘Come, let us cast lots, that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us.’ So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. Then they said to him, ‘Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?’ And he said to them, ‘I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. Then the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, ‘What is this that you have done!’ For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them.”
So They Cast Lots …
Among Hebrews there is a long history of lot-casting that
goes back at least as far as the
Law of Moses and probably long before that. From time to time God condescended
to reveal his will to the leaders of his people through the seemingly-random
practice of casting lots. So the Israelite high priest cast lots to select
animals for sacrifice. The land of Canaan was divided among the twelve tribes
by casting lots, and subdivided into family plots through the same process. In
David’s day, the duties of the Levites were assigned to them by casting lots,
and in Nehemiah’s day, the citizens of Jerusalem were chosen by lot.
Lot-casting was not a Hebrew distinctive: history tells us people
from many nations engaged in it, and even the Bible contains references to
non-Hebrew lot-casting, such as Haman in the book of Esther or the Roman
soldiers at the cross of Christ.
It is unlikely that the lot-casting engaged in by the
mariners in Jonah held any deep religious significance for them. The vessel Jonah
boarded in Joppa was almost surely a foreign one. Its mariners worshiped a
variety of foreign deities, and thus could point to no particular divine
instruction that would give them any real confidence in the outcome of the roll
of a die, polished stick or pebble. They were simply superstitious, as men have
been throughout history, and having no other way of assigning blame for their
problems, they decided to select a scapegoat by casting lots.
The Lot Fell On Jonah
The writer of Jonah does not come out and say that God responded to the lot-casting
of the mariners by directly influencing the outcome of the lot, but that would not be
an unreasonable inference for us to draw. In any case, the result of the process was that Jonah was
singled out. The finger of blame pointed squarely at him.
One feature of the narrative I find immensely interesting is
that Jonah from the very beginning seems quite resigned to his fate. Although
he has chosen to flee from the presence of God and from his assigned task, he
has not abandoned his religion and does not behave as a heretic or apostate. He
is bluntly honest
with his traveling companions about where he is going and what he is doing. He falls
asleep with no trouble at all right in the middle of great peril with full
confidence that despite being on the run from God, nothing can happen to him
apart from God allowing it.
Here, upon being fingered by the outcome of the
lot, he does not make the least attempt to deny responsibility or avoid the
inevitable consequences of his choices, and shortly he will volunteer to be
thrown overboard to save his shipmates. These would seem to be indications of
genuine, character-transforming devotion to God and they strongly suggest his flight to Tarshish was an uncharacteristic act. Despite his reluctance to obey God’s voice,
Jonah is no Balaam.
The Real Question
The mariners have a series of four questions for Jonah, to
which he does not reply directly for the most part. Rather than answering
precisely what they have asked, Jonah answers the question that is most
relevant.
It strikes me this is a fine model for Christian testimony,
and one that we see repeatedly in the teaching ministry of the Lord Jesus. He
often responded
to a question with a question, answered
questions he had not been asked, or declined
to answer questions he was asked, probably because the question that is
asked is not always the issue that really needs addressing. So Jonah skips
right by questions about his home and occupation. Even the word “Hebrew” is not
terribly specific (Edomites, Ishmaelites and Moabites were just as much Hebrews as Judeans
and Israelites), and I suspect Jonah only offers that bit of information
in order to get to the really important point, which is that he is a worshiper
of YHWH, the God of Israel, “who made the sea and dry land”.
Jonah is quite literally about to get himself into deep
water here, but he makes no effort to avoid it. In fact, he is quite helpfully
nudging the whole process along. Note that the subject of Jonah’s God has not
even been explicitly introduced. It is Jonah who brings God into the picture.
In doing so, he reminds us that if we genuinely know the Lord, the marks of our
interactions with God remain much more a part of who we are than we might
realize, even when we are not in right relationship to him. Nobody who truly
knows God is ever exactly like the unbelievers around him, even when their
resemblance to their Lord is blurred by sin.
The God of the Sea and Dry Land
There is more to the way Jonah identifies YHWH to the
mariners than may be evident to the modern reader on first pass. The statement
that he is “the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land” may slide right
by us without explicitly declaring its relevance; after all, such descriptions
of God are quite common in scripture.
However, if we keep in mind the very limited areas of
sovereignty thought to be possessed by the various deities these mariners
worshiped, Jonah’s statement takes on greater significance. In identifying his
God with heaven, the sea and the earth, Jonah is declaring him to
be the God of Everything. The prophet is basically telling the mariners, “I worship
a God who trumps all your little tin-pot deities put together, and he happens
not just to be in charge of the waves washing over the side of this boat, but
he actually made them from scratch. Oh, and incidentally, he’s angry with
me …”
Jonah puts it a little more circumspectly, but that’s
essentially the message he is conveying.
Understandably the mariners are appalled. The seriousness of
their plight is now apparent. If Jonah is really the problem, then the storm
battering their ship is not about to go away on its own.
___________________________
Photo of the Stele of Qadesh courtesy the Louvre Museum [CC BY-SA 2.0 FR]
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