There is
belief and then there is belief.
The oppressed people of Israel “believed”
God had sent Moses and Aaron to deliver them from Egyptian slavery until Pharaoh
suddenly doubled their workload and they
began having doubts.
But we shouldn’t be too hard on them: it’s easy to
believe something when it’s purely theoretical and doesn’t cost you anything. When belief
persists despite resulting in humiliation, physical injury, hunger or economic
loss, that’s when it starts to look a little more credible.
The book of Jonah tells us that the people of Nineveh “believed God”. There was nothing abstract
or theoretical about it.