A Wideness in God’s Mercy

Our sensibilities have been outraged by the gruesome mutilation of the

bodies of six of our jawans by Pakistani brigands. Even more brutal is
the fact that they were captured on May 14 and tortured for more than
a week before killing them. Still worse is the deception of the Pakistani
army chiefs who said that they had no knowledge of these missing
jawans when the Indian authorities initiated inquiries. When this
barbaric act was confirmed by a Red Cross post-mortem, and telecast
nation-wide the day before Indo-Pak talks were to begin, my
immediate reaction was: “To hell with talks! Enough of soft options!
Justice must be done! Our soldiers must be avenged! Teach Pakistan a
lesson they’ll never forget! Blast them to smithereens! The
government must be crazy to talk to mad-dog murderers and expect
them to change!”

Jonah must have reacted exactly the same way when Yahweh
commissioned him to go and talk to the people of Nineveh. For the
Ninevites had ravaged the Israelites and reduced Israel to rubble.
Nahum describes Nineveh as the “city of bloodshed, (bloody city)
utterly deceitful, full of booty -- no end to her plunder!” (3:1) “For who
has ever escaped your endless cruelty?” he asks (3:19). Zephaniah
had prophesied Nineveh’s destruction in vitriolic oracles of doom (2:13-
15). Nineveh, which is today’s Northern Iraq, became the Assyrian
capital under Sennacherib (704-681) and remained the capital until the
end of the empire. In 722 BC Assyria captured Samaria and deported
its citizens (2 Kgs 17). Though Nineveh is described quantitatively as a
‘great city’ (1:2, 3:2, 4:11), an ‘exceedingly great city’ (3:3), ‘three
days journey in breadth’ (3:3) and with a population of 1,20,000 (4:11);
it is described qualitatively as having a reputation for wickedness (1:2),
evil and violence (3:8,10).

Asking Jonah to be an ambassador to Nineveh was like asking the

brother of a soldier who had been tortured and killed in Kargil to
accept a peace mission to Pakistan. God was calling Jonah to offer a
future to the very country that had put an end to Israel! No wonder the
reluctant Jonah fled to Tarshish. But the ship he absconded on proved
to be his ‘Titanic’. He ended up in the belly of a huge fish who could
not stomach him for long and vomited him onto dry land. After being
digested by the fish, Jonah was more pliable to listen to the word of
God, which came to him a second time. He picked up his megaphone
and began to blast the eardrums of the Ninevites with the prophecy of
doom. And lo and behold! The Ninevites repented! And God repented
as well! He calls off the destruction he had planned against the city.
They change their mind and so God changes his mind as well.
Repentance is metanoia--a change of mind. God repents- the Hebrew

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word ‘naham’ describes God’s action, but instead of rejoicing, Jonah is
fuming with rage- the Hebrew root ‘nahar’ describes the prophet’s
anger. ‘Nahar’ means nostril and is a symbol of anger. Jonah literally
snorts in fury at the indiscriminate mercy of God. 4:1 reads like this in
the original: “But this evilled a great evil to Jonah, and he burned with
anger.”

Earlier Jonah had prayed for life from the belly of the fish and had
praised God for saving his life (2:2-9). Now, like Elijah, he prays thrice
that the Lord end his life (4:3,8,9). Why has Jonah done a theological
somersault in his faith? What is Jonah’s problem? Why is he griping
about God showing mercy to Nineveh? Has he not just recited the
great Israelite creed affirming that Yahweh was “a gracious and
compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness,
and one who relents concerning calamity”? (4:2) What is bugging
Jonah is not so much that God repents, but for whom God repents. It is
not so much God’s compassion, but the object of God’s compassion.
Nineveh had taken up the sword and should perish by the sword! By
pardoning and saving Nineveh God had circumvented justice. It was
sheer madness! Had God not punished Israel in 721 BC and Judah in
587 BC by allowing foreigners to destroy them completely? Why then,
was he letting Nineveh off the hook now? Such discrimination on the
part of God was unjust. If God’s justice was warped and if God actions
were so unreliable and undependable, what difference would faith
make after all? Death was the only way out. Jonah had also lost face.
His credibility had taken a beating. His prophecy would not be fulfilled
now. But that was not his greatest problem as his colleagues in the
prophetic ministry too had experiences of unfulfilled prophecy. Jonah
pleads for death because God has given life to the Ninevites. It is
actually Jonah who was ‘lost’ not the Ninevites.

And so Jonah slams the door on dialoguing with God and walks out of
the city. He ends up sulking under a tent he has erected waiting to see
what would happen to Nineveh. God had dealt with Nineveh. Now God
deals with Jonah through an object lesson. He ‘appoints’ (manah) a
castor oil plant to grow over Jonah as “a shade over his head to deliver
him from his discomfort” (4:2). Interestingly, the same word ‘appoint’
(manah) is used four times in the book each time to refer to a natural
phenomena appointed by God to execute his purposes. Earlier, God
appoints a great fish to swallow Jonah (1:17). Now, God appoints a
plant to shelter Jonah (4:6). But the next day, God appoints a worm to
attack the plant and kill it (4:7), and then God appoints a scorching
east wind to ruffle and rattle Jonah (4:8). Jonah is furious with God for
destroying the plant. God destroys the plant when he should have
destroyed Nineveh! God was not angry when he should have been
angry! For Jonah, God is whimsical and capricious. And so he reiterates

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his threat of suicide. But then come the punchline. God shoots back
saying: “You had compassion on the plant for which you did not work,
and which you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and
perished overnight. And should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the
great city in which there are more than 1,20,0000 persons who do not
know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many
animals?” (4:10-11). God weaves an argument from creation to
compassion. Nineveh is to God what the plant has become to Jonah. If
Jonah pities the plant, which he has neither created nor nourished nor
known, then certainly God should pity Nineveh (and by logical
extension, all creatures) because he has in fact created them, provided
for them and knows their need. And so God’s compassion is inevitable!

Both nature and God play a pivotal role in the book of Jonah.
Throughout the book nature is obedient to God and appointed by God
to execute his saving purposes. In chapter 1 God hurls a great wind
against the ship (1:4). Nature turns hostile because one human being
has disobeyed God in fulfilling God’s redemptive purposes. But when
the sailors execute justice by throwing the culprit Jonah into the sea,
harmony is restored. The sailors worship God for restoring the
ecological balance. Now God appoints the fish as his instrument of
salvation to swallow Jonah and deliver him from the sea. In Chapter 3,
the animals of Nineveh join its citizens in collective fasting and
repentance. Nineveh cares for its animal population. In Chapter 4,
nature instructs Jonah. A plant shades him; he delights in the plant. A
worm kills the plant; he pities the plant. A fierce wind blows upon him,
the sun assails him; he faints and asks to die. God uses creation to
argue for compassion on Nineveh. Finally, God has the last word
defending his extended compassion to Nineveh’s citizens and its
animals. Nature co-operates with God’s plan. Jonah pities a dying plant.
And thus an ecology of compassion becomes a theology of
compassion.

But above all, it is God who plays a major role in the story. In 44 verses
of the book there are 39 references to God. (The divine name Yahweh
is mentioned 25 times, God 13 times, and Lord God once). This is a
story about Jonah, but more precisely about God and Jonah. The story
reminds us that compassion is supreme in God’s ways with his
creatures. It is a universal compassion, extending equally to all of
them. Of course, one may argue that God repents only when he saw
the Ninevites repenting (Ch 3). But over and above, God’s compassion,
the book of Jonah hammers home the message of God’s sovereign
freedom and superabundant grace. While Nineveh’s repentance was a
necessary precondition for God’s repentance, it was not in and of itself
sufficient. God’s repentance rested finally in his own sovereign
decision. Ironically, the heathen have tremendous insight into God’s

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sovereign freedom when they declare thrice (1:6, 1:14, 3:9) that God
does as God pleases. Though God may be motivated to save because
of human prayer and penitence, God remains ultimately free to decide
whether he will have pity (Ex 33:19- “I will be gracious to whom I will
be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show
compassion”). Yet God is not capricious. His ultimate will is to save his
creatures and he will always act in ways that is finally in accordance
with his redemptive purposes. Perhaps with this in mind, Isaiah would
later say: “Let the wicked forsake their ways, and the unrighteous their
thoughts; And let them return to the LORD, And He will have
compassion on them; And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon.
‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Neither are your ways My
ways,’ declares the LORD. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the
earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than
your thoughts.’” God has the right to do what he pleases with Nineveh
because he is Creator. Jonah has no right to bring God to court because
he is creature.

During the season of Pentecost, it may be appropriate for us to identify

with Jonah and repent of our self-righteousness. Too often we have
played the ‘big brother’ of the Prodigal Son who resented his brother’s
homecoming instead of rejoicing over it. It is high time we willingly
surrender ourselves to God as an extension and as instruments of his
compassion. Compassion is your pain in my heart. As we approach the
Eucharistic table, remembering the death of Christ, let us remind
ourselves that in forgiving Nineveh, God takes upon himself the evil of
Nineveh. God bears the weight of its violence and evil, the pain of a
thousand plundered cities. God chooses to suffer for Nineveh, even to
die. As we celebrate Ecology Sunday it may also be fitting for us to
repent of our rapacious attitude to nature, and willingly surrender
ourselves to God as stewards of this glorious creation God has
entrusted to our care. Let me close with these beautiful words from the
hymn by Frederick Faber (1814-1863):

There’s a wideness in God’s mercy

Like the wideness of the sea
There’s a kindness in his justice
Which is more than liberty.

For the love of God is broader

Than the measure of man’s mind
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.