Jonah, Justice, and Mercy that Covers
This article is part of a series on the holidays and calendar of the Hebrew Scriptures. You can read our other articles about biblical Jewish feasts here.
A Meditation on Yom Kippur
Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, is the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, and consequently the most solemn. The Torah lays out the rituals of the commanded annual observance in Leviticus 16.
The chapter opens with Aaron’s two sons—who “drew near to the LORD and died,”[1]—tragically highlighting the fundamental problem of a Holy God of an unclean nation, and perhaps the overriding tension of human history: how can people draw near to YHWH when their sin means approaching Him is death?
The answer, as it turns out, is through the work of atonement. While “atonement” in a lay sense means to make reparation for our wrongdoing, it is impossible from a human standpoint to “make amends” for our transgressions. No matter how sorry we are for what we have done, justice demands more than repentance—it demands sacrifice.
This is where the Day of Atonement comes in, where God lays out a specific process for the High Priest of Israel to approach and worship Him on behalf of the nation of Israel, carving out one day a year where the chosen people of YHWH can draw near to Him through this priestly intermediary.
Entering into the Holy of Holies where the presence of God resided required a very involved set of rituals to ensure the ceremonial cleanliness of the High Priest, the ceremonial cleanliness of the people, and the ceremonial cleanliness of the temple objects. These rites included confession over a sacrificial substitute in the form of scapegoats, and the slaughter of several animals, their lifeblood being a key component of the atonement exchange.[2]
As the Israelites performed the required fast and Sabbath rest, the priest poured out the substitutionary blood of animals for them, crossed the veil between the clean and the holy, and worshiped before the mercy seat. The mercy seat (or place of atonement) in the Holy of Holies is called the kapporet (כַּפֹּרֶת) and is from the same root in Hebrew as the word atonement or covering (כִּפֶּר, kippur). This perhaps gives us a deeper insight into the meaning of atonement, as the kapporet was the golden covering of the Ark of the Covenant, so must atonement involve a type of covering.
At the end of this description of the process of atonement, the LORD tells Moses three times that the Day of Atonement is to be a statute forever, a holy day observed annually when Israel would know that she was cleansed of all her sins.
In the Tabernacle and in the first and second Temples, the High Priest would follow his instructions and make atonement for the people of Israel. However, after the destruction of the second Temple, the observation of the holiday became more complicated, as sacrifice was no longer an option. Modern observances focus on what God required of the people of Israel, and the day is spent fasting, praying, and resting. After having spent the previous forty days in repentance and reconciliation with the hope of being inscribed in the Book of Life, most observant Jews attend several Yom Kippur services in the synagogue praying and listening to the scriptures.
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One passage of scripture that is always read on Yom Kippur is the book of Jonah. In fact, this book is inextricably linked to the Day of Atonement. The book itself is not a straightforward book, and it doesn’t have a clear connection to atonement. Why would this be a central reading for this holy day?
Jonah himself is a somewhat obscure character. Besides the rather short book of this minor prophet, there is only one other place he is mentioned, and that is in 2 Kings 14:25, where we find that he is a prophet during the reign of Jeroboam II and his father’s name is Amittai, meaning, “my truth.”
One day, this prophetic son of truth heard the word of the LORD, saying, “Arise and go to Nineveh and call out against it, because their evil (רָעָה) has come up before me.”[3] (Pay close attention to the Hebrew word רָעָה or ra’ah, as it is a thread woven throughout the story that is translated as several different words in English.)
Jonah is a prophet with understanding of God’s omnipresence and omnipotence—he later explains this concept to pagan sailors in Jonah 1:10— yet Jonah flees his calling, sailing on a boat in the opposite direction to where God has asked him to go.
Though Jonah’s objection to preaching to this foreign people isn’t explicitly stated at this point, that Nineveh was the flourishing capital of the Assyrian empire who would brutally capture and exile his countrymen just a couple generations would lead readers to assume that Jonah viewed Assyria as a threat and would be only too happy to pronounce judgement on these Assyrians. But is is not so, and we are left wondering what could be the cause of Jonah’s irrational flight.
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In an effort to go as far away from the voice and presence of God as possible, Jonah falls asleep in the inner part of his getaway ship. Of course, this is not beyond the reach of God,[4] who controls the winds and the waves and stirs up a storm that threatens to tear apart the boat. Jonah is awakened by the boat’s captain, who is amazed that he is not calling upon his god, since capsizing and death seem imminent. When Jonah joins his fellow passengers, they decide to cast lots to find out, “on whose account this evil (רָעָה) has fallen upon us.”[5] The lots fall on Jonah, who knows exactly why the tempest is raging. The men ask what they should do, and Jonah says, “Hurl me into the sea.” His fellow passengers are hesitant, knowing that they could possibly be guilty of murder, but after trying other alternatives of escape, they did as Jonah said. Instead of drowning, however, the LORD appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah for three days and three nights.
From the belly of this fish, Jonah finally calls on the LORD. He doesn’t repent, he doesn’t promise to change his course, but in his prayer, he acknowledges the LORD is the only source of salvation.
The LORD tells the fish to vomit Jonah on dry land, and Jonah now makes his way to Nineveh.
Nineveh is a huge city which takes three days to cross on foot, and Jonah walks for a day preaching a five word message (in Hebrew, at least), “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”[6] Despite the lack of details or hopeful alternatives, the people of Nineveh believe God, call a fast, and mourn in sackcloth and ashes. Even the king, when he hears the words of Jonah, takes off his royal robes, puts on sackcloth, and decrees a national fast: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.”[7]
This sounds incredibly like what the people of Israel are supposed to do on Yom Kippur. In fact, the prophet Joel when urging Israel to repent before the Day of the Lord, quotes this gentile Kings reasoning almost word for word, “‘Yet even now,’ declares the LORD, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.’ Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster. Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the LORD your God?”[8] But while Israel had a High Priest and method and means of atonement, Nineveh, like all gentile nations are left without a covering.
Nevertheless, when God saw that these Assyrians had turned from their evil (רָעָה) ways, He relented from the disaster (רָעָה) that He had said that He would do. Jonah is furious. Only now do we learn why Jonah initially fled his calling in the words of his angry prayer, “O LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”[9]
This accusatory prayer of Jonah’s has several surprising elements. Not often is God bitterly charged with being merciful and loving. Beyond this, Jonah using YHWH’s own description of Himself from Exodus 34:6-7 to explain his existential crisis: “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” But as Jonah is reciting this well known passage, he mis-quotes it. Perhaps this is our best clue to understand Jonah’s rage: instead of repeating Exodus 34:7 exactly, when Jonah should have said, “who will by no means clear the guilty,” he instead says, “relenting from disaster.” (רָעָה)
Jonah is bitter that God is clearing the guilty (apparently against His stated character in Exodus) and relenting from disaster when the Ninevites are guilty of heinous crimes. This “change of mind” and “relenting from disaster (רָעָה)” seem, in themselves, evil (רָעָה) to Jonah.[10] Where is the justice? Doesn’t God care about His Word and the reputation of His prophets? What is the point of living a godly life of obedience and following the laws of ritual cleanliness if all you have to do is repent and call upon the name of YHWH to avoid condemnation? Where is the sacrifice? Why live in this unjust and capricious system? Does anything really matter?
YHWH’s teaching response is equally surprising. He firsts asks Jonah, “Do you to well to be angry?”[11] Jonah doesn’t answer, but instead goes outside the city and makes a booth, hoping that Nineveh will fall and be destroyed after all. God then appoints a plant to grow and shade Jonah. Now, Jonah already had the shade of the booth, but there must have been something special about this plant, because in not only covered him, but it also saved him from discomfort (רָעָה). Jonah was exceeding glad about the plant and enjoyed its benefits.
However, the next day the LORD appointed a worm to eat the plant, and it withered and died, leaving Jonah exposed to the beating rays of the sun and hot winds, leaving him utterly discouraged. So discouraged and angry, in fact, that he repeats his request that God take his life.
God asks him, “Do you do well to be angry about the plant?”
Jonah answers, “Angry enough to die!”
God then says, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?”[12]
And like a parable, the book ends on that ambiguous question. What did YHWH mean for Jonah to understand from the plant? How does Jonah’s second death-wish relate to his first?
The second time Jonah was angry enough to die, he was mourning the loss of his covering from evil. YHWH pointed out that Jonah did nothing in order to receive that covering, but that it was an act of a mercy from his Creator. If Jonah didn’t want to live in a world without justice, he equally did not want to live in a world without mercy.
But how can these two concepts be reconciled? How can God be a god “who by no means clears the guilty” and a god who “relents from disaster”?
The place where justice and mercy meet is in the work of atonement and where God’s character is gloriously vindicated. Just as with the people of Nineveh, even if Israel repented with her whole heart, she still would not be made clean of her transgressions. Repentance is good and right, and the correct posture after assessing your sinful nature and appealing to the mercy of God, but in itself it has no power to take away sin. We, Israel and the nations, need an intermediary, a High Priest who can make intercession for us, who is wholly clean and can pass through the veil to enter the inner sanctum, approach the mercy seat, and ask that God Himself be the covering for His people.
God justly requires that sin be paid with death,[13] and He made a way for us by being both priest and sacrifice. Jesus the Messiah, the greatest and final High Priest,[14] through the offering up of His body atoned once and for all for His people, tearing the veil that separated us from the Holy of Holies, and covering us so that we can draw near to the mercy seat with confident, grateful hearts to worship the presence of God. Like Jonah, who spent 3 days and nights in the belly of a fish, so Jesus spent three days and nights in the heart of the earth.[15] But as Jonah was caught between a longing for justice and a longing for mercy, these two characteristics met with perfect harmony in the person of Jesus Christ.
As Christ came once to bear the sins of many, so He will come again. Not to deal with sin by His act of atonement, but to rescue those eagerly awaiting Him fully and finally from this present evil age, breaking all barriers of separation.[16]
“The dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”[17]
Under this eternal Messianic rule where we freely and continuously draw near to our beloved God, there will still be a Day of Atonement, as it is a statute forever. For endless years we will remember and rejoice in the saving work of our just and merciful King, who subjected His own body to judgement we deserved that He might be our merciful covering from evil, our blessed atonement.
Amen. Maranatha.
Devon Phillips is just a pilgrim longing for the Day of the revealing of the sons of God and the redemption of our bodies. Meanwhile, she is privileged to serve in the Middle East with Frontier Alliance International and contributes regularly to THE WIRE. She can be reached at devon@faimission.org.
[1] Leviticus 16:1
[2] Leviticus 17:11
[3] Jonah 1:2
[4] Psalm 139:8
[5] Jonah 1:7
[6] Jonah 3:4
[7] Jonah 3:7-9
[8] Joel 2:12–14
[9] Jonah 4:2–3
[10] Jonah 4:1
[11] Jonah 4:4
[12] Jonah 4:10–11
[13] Romans 6:23
[14] Hebrews 7
[15] Matthew 12:39–41
[16] Hebrews 9:28
[17] Revelation 21:3–4