{"id":78070,"date":"2020-07-26T14:26:45","date_gmt":"2020-07-26T11:26:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=78070"},"modified":"2020-07-26T14:26:45","modified_gmt":"2020-07-26T11:26:45","slug":"jonahs-theology-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/jonahs-theology-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Jonah\u2019s Theology 2"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Part 2 – <\/span>see chapter 1 for part 1<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Jonah is an exposition of God\u2019s overriding mercy and His goals for humanity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When Jonah echoes the 13 attributes of God from Exodus in this chapter, there is one conspicuous omission – truth. Jonah cannot bear to refer to the God that allows the repentance of heathens guilty of the greatest possible debauchery and evil as the \u201cGod of Truth.\u201d He didn\u2019t recognize that the repentance of evil heathens is the very purpose of existence, God\u2019s goal for history and Israel\u2019s mission.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Truth is repentance, repentance – truth.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jonah answers the question of Israel\u2019s destruction. The people failed irredeemably in their role as enlighteners. Like Jonah, they saw sinners as incorrigible heathens. Like Jonah, they failed to understand their purpose. They fled their mission, preferring death to life itself. As was the case in Jonah, it wasn\u2019t the heathens who were incorrigible, it was them. They were soon overcome by the repentant Nineveans, and consigned to history. God loves all his creations, even the beasts (as the obscure final line of the book tells us). If Jonah or Israel thought that there was some conflict between God\u2019s ability to be the God of Truth and the God of Forgiveness, the answer is here. Repent and you will be truly forgiven – Israelite, heathen, or even beast. Fail to repent and you will be truly destroyed, subsumed by those who do in fact repent.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jonah\u2019s mission of calling the world to repent is also Israel\u2019s mission. Finally cajoled by God, Jonah succeeds, but Israel didn\u2019t learn the lesson of Jonah and was doomed to destruction at the hands of the very people that Jonah\u2019s call to repentance saved. It wasn\u2019t the case that \u201c40 days and the city will be destroyed,\u201d but the prophecy had an echo, and about 40 years later, Israel indeed was destroyed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Was Jonah a real prophet or a post facto rationalization, a morality tale to explain the failure of Israel? As always, it is the message that matters and this short story forms a key piece in the puzzle that is the theology of the Tanakh.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","image":false,"embedded_video":"","video_duration":"","show_fb_comments":true,"credit_media":""},"tile":{"top_caption":"Jonah\u2019s Theology 2","main_caption":"Repent and you will be truly forgiven - Israelite, heathen, or beast. Fail to repent and you will be truly destroyed, subsumed by those who do in fact repent\u00a0","main_caption_size":"1","sub_caption":"","preview_embedded":"","preview_image":false,"preview_video":"","external_link":"","link_for_pay":false,"tile_gallery_items":false,"credits":""},"alternate_tile":{"top_caption":"","main_caption":"","main_caption_size":"1","sub_caption":"","hide_media":false},"tile_group":{"preview_image_url":false,"main_caption":"","sub_caption":"","":null,"popup_package_extra_content":"","read_time":""},"home_color":"","home_gallery_top":"","home_gallery_middle":"","home_gallery_book":"","home_gallery_bottom":"","seo":{"seo_title":"","seo_description":"","seo_default_title":"","seo_default_description":""},"links":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78070"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78070"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78071,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78070\/revisions\/78071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}