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Hello and welcome to the Tyndale House podcast.

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I'm Francie Cornes, I'm the Communications Officer here

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at Tyndale House,

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and I'm joined again by Tony Watkins, who's the Fellow for Public Engagement

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here, and Peter Williams, who is the Principal at Tyndale House.

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And in our last episode, we were looking at the Book of Amos and how to read it.

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And in this episode, we're going to look at Jonah.

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So we'll do similar

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to what we did last time, looking at the background of the book,

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then digging into the text a bit and then talking about the audience.

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And this will be probably a two-part episode,

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depending on how quickly we get through these bits.

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So let's start with the background.

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Who was Jonah and what was going on in the world that he lived in?

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Okay, the book of

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Jonah only tells us that he is the son of Amittai.

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But he does appear in 2 Kings 14,

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during the time of,

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Jeroboam the Second, who was king

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in the northern kingdom of Israel.

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So 2 Kings 14:23, ‘In the fifteenth year of [King] Amaziah

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son of Joash king of Judah,

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Jeroboam, the son of Jehoash, king of Israel,

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began to reign in Samaria, and he reigned for 41 years.

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He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.

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He did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam

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the son of Nebat which he made Israel to sin.

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He restored the border

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of Israel [from various places] . . .

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according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel,

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which he spoke by his servant

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Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was from Gath-hepher.’

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So he is living,

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presumably, Gath-hepher is one of the places in the the region called the Shephelah,

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the foothills between the mountain spine up the centre of Judah and Israel,

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and the coastal plain where the Philistines lived.

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But, but Gath-hepher not far from,

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from the Philistine city of of Gath.

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So that little passage is saying that

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the king is doing things because Jonah's told him to?

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More that he's incredibly successful because,

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and that's in line with a positive prediction that Jonah made.

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And some people would build something on this cameo.

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And I think it it's fine.

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We've only got a few clues that the only other thing we know about Jonah,

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other than this book is that he makes some wonderful, positive

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prophecies about

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Israel, which then get fulfilled: expansion.

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And and so you could see that, as you

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know, he'd be really he'd like,

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the positive message there. Of course,

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at one level, he,

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you know, likes the idea that,

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God's enemies will be,

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overthrown,

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which eventually is a message he's prepared to deliver.

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He really doesn't like that, that they're going to do

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okay. So you could try and put these together and imagine

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that he's, you know, think of him, let's say, as a patriot,

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who wants Israel to do

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well and does not want Nineveh, the Assyrians, to do well.

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And and that can explain quite a bit in the book.

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Obviously, we're making a lot out of just some hints, but it seems reasonable.

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P: I mean, it's at least consistent. F: Okay.

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And that's

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reminds us that Jonah is a very different kind of a, of a prophetic book.

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So it is it is one of The Twelve, what in English we often call minor prophets.

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It's part of the Scroll of the Twelve, the the 12 shorter prophets

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that were included onto one scroll.

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But it is so different from the other prophets because it is

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not it's not the words of Jonah, apart from

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 this one line, ‘40 more days and the city will be overthrown.’

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T: in chapter 3. P: And the prayer

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And and his his

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yeah, and and his prayer in chapter 2.

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But it's not it's not the, primarily the announcements of a prophet

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to the people of God.

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And yet we have this account that he was saying things

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to God's people about what was going to happen.

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And those are not recorded for us.

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So so it yeah, it's it's a different kind of book because of it being narrative.

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And so that kind of takes us on to talking about the text.

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Because Jonah is very

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different from the other prophetic books.

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Being narrative rather than his words.

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How how should we kind of, do we need to approach it differently to how

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we've approached some of the other books that we've looked at in the series?

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Yes and no.

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No, in that we approach

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all Bible passages the same way.

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At one level, we are always wanting to know what is the background here,

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what's actually going on in the text, how was this heard in their context?

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How do we hear it today?

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So, so at that level, yeah, it's it's exactly the same in many ways.

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Jonah is much, much easier than other prophets

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because narrative is is more familiar to us.

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It's easier for us to understand what's going on.

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We still

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need to dig into it, but it's much more accessible to us than some of the

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the the other language of the prophets we've talked about their imagery and,

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and, and some of the metaphors that, that, that are,

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somewhat alien.

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They can make us stumble a little bit.

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We have to be prepared to slow down and to think hard about them.

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There's a danger there, of course, in that we we read Jonah too quickly

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and at a at a too shallow level because we don't have to stop and slow down.

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It feels very familiar to us, and therefore we don't necessarily

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think about it quite as hard as as we should.

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But we do need to ask the question if this is a prophetic book

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preserved in the in the Scroll of the Twelve,

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we'll get to this later,

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rather than now,

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but in what sense, how does this book speak to the people?

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Because that still seems to me its primary original function.

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It's not simply recording a nice story

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about what Jonah did, but this is God's word to his people then,

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and and enduringly through the generations since.

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Right.

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So we, should we just dig into the, dig into the text?

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So if I read chapter one first probably,

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and then and then you can

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comment on what you, what you read.

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So, chapter one

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‘Now, the word of the Lord came to Jonah,

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the son of Amittai, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh,

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that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come before me.”

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But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.

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He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish.

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So he paid the sat and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish, away

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from the presence of the Lord.

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But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea,

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and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up.

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Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried out to his god.

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And they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it

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for them.

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But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had lain down

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and was fast asleep.

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So the captain came and said to him, “What do you mean, you sleeper?

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Arise, call out to your god!

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Perhaps the god will give a thought to us, that we may not perish.”

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And they said to one another, “Come, let us cast lots, that

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we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us.”

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So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah.

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Then they said to him, “Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us.

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What is your occupation, and where do you come from?

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What is your country, and of what people are you?”

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And he said to them, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord,

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the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”

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Then the men were exceedingly afraid, and said to him,

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“What is this that you have done!”

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For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord,

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because he had told them.

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Then they said to him, “What shall we do to you, that the sea

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may quiet down for us?”

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For the sea grew more and more tempestuous.

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He said to them, “Pick me up and hurl me into the sea;

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Then the sea will quiet down for you, for I know it is

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because of me that this great tempest has come upon you.”

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Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to get back to dry land,

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but they could not, for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them.

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Therefore they called out to the Lord, “Oh Lord, let us not perish

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for this man's life, and lay not on us innocent blood, for you,

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Oh Lord, have done as it pleased you.”

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So they picked up

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Jonah and hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging.

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Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord

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and made vows.

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And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah.

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And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.’

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So what do you make of chapter one?

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It's great, isn't it?

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It is perhaps worth commenting that,

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chapter, the beginning of chapter one and the beginning of chapter three,

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are very closely connected with each other.

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You've got almost a, a direct repeat

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to some extent of, of of what's going on when we get to chapter three.

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So the book divides into two halves. So,

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but it's

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yeah, we've got a lot going on here.

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That the word of the Lord has come to Jonah saying, go one way.

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And he goes exactly the opposite way.

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And he, you've got this progression of going downwards

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as he flees, Jonah rose to flee from the presence of the Lord.

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He went down to Joppa, and he paid the fare, and he went down into the ship.

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He's going away from the Lord.

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And then he goes, he lies down and and goes to sleep.

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So he's going down, down, down.

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in his flight from from the Lord.

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Which is quite fun.

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And that's really important because in verse two, Arise, go to the great city

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and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.

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So you can think of God as on high.

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If you like, and the evil has come up.

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He's noticed it.

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And therefore you might think, well, the way to get away from God

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is just going down, down, down and far away.

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And so you've got twice this reference,

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verse three and verse four, actually twice in verse three,

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from the presence of the Lord, and like, Gods very difficult to escape.

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And so there is this, I mean,

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comedic, ridiculous, element to what he's doing.

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He's paying money.

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Worst deal ever to get away from God by going,

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due west, you know, to,

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Tarshish, various candidates, in the Mediterranean for that.

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But the idea is something very, very far away.

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Nineveh,

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is in Iraq.

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It's it's it's on the east.

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He's he's going west and he is trying to get away.

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The other thing is very deliberate use of words.

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I mean, a friend of mine read this book out loud in Hebrew in four minutes.

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It's incredibly brief, but the the use of the word great.

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That great city there in verse two.

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But then, God's response when,

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he runs away is a great wind.

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That means a great tempest, so you’ll see a mighty tempest,

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different words will come out in the English,

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or the great fish, the great fear that they have.

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There'll be great joy later on.

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All sorts of times this word is coming back again and again.

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There are other theme words, but I just love the fact that he runs

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away from God, and God hurls a wind.

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And, you know, this is a very imprecise sort of thing to throw out a wind.

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You don't expect

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that's going to have a precise effect, but of course the wind cause the waves.

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The waves cause the boat to be breaking up.

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And there they are

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throwing lots.

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And for me, calculating the physics of this is fascinating.

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So you can think of a wind causing waves, causing boats to move around.

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And then inside this, the physics of people

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throwing around a lot so that it lands

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exactly. You know, you can imagine it is like a die.

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It doesn't have to be like, a modern one.

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But so it lands on Jonah,

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and then he's trying to escape the God who could do those sort of calculations.

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I mean, this is for me,

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it is, you know, absolutely extraordinary.

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And of course, God hurls the wind.

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Soon the sailors are hurling the cargo.

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Eventually they're hurling Jonah.

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So so you have this set of

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actions

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going on,

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which are absolutely fascinating in terms of the way it's so carefully crafted

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and it's showing consequence of this ridiculous action of Jonah.

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T: Yeah. F: And just when, in terms of, 

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So he's fleeing from the Lord and it says, I was just intrigued by,

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when in verse eight they're asking him, you know, tell us what's going on.

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And he says, ‘“I am a Hebrew

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and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”

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Then the men were exceedingly afraid, and said to him, “what is this you've done?”

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For the men knew that he was fleeing

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from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them.’ What's different?

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What if so, if he got on the boat and said, ‘I'm fleeing from the Lord?’

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What about that was like, okay, cool, you do you.

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And then when he then says, ‘oh, I'm a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord,

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F: the God of heaven, who made the sea.’ P: Yeah.

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So I think he's told them he's fleeing from the Lord after he's been woken up.

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F: Oh, okay. P: But the interesting thing is,

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I've seen it with young children

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where they sometimes think when they shut their eyes that they become invisible.

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And so there’s this idea that somehow if he just goes to sleep,

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God goes away, I think is there.

00:13:57:20 - 00:14:01:22
But the sailors, of course, have a fascinating role.

00:14:02:04 - 00:14:05:04
And here we got the captain, because the captain

00:14:05:04 - 00:14:08:04
is telling the prophet to do some praying.

00:14:08:21 - 00:14:10:24
Which is a fascinating thing.

00:14:10:24 - 00:14:13:17
The sailors end up,

00:14:13:17 - 00:14:14:23
sacrificing to God.

00:14:14:23 - 00:14:17:20
The sailors are worried about innocent life.

00:14:17:20 - 00:14:21:06
Oh, please, God, don't let us be guilty for an innocent life.

00:14:21:11 - 00:14:25:11
Whereas we're going to find later on the prophet Jonah isn't remotely

00:14:26:00 - 00:14:29:09
worried about having the blood of people of Nineveh on his hand, and,

00:14:29:09 - 00:14:30:24
you know, whatever happens to them. So,

00:14:32:14 - 00:14:34:06
there is this reversal – some

00:14:34:06 - 00:14:37:07
people call him an anti prophet – a revert . . . you know, this,

00:14:38:15 - 00:14:40:20
inversion that that's, that's going on.

00:14:40:20 - 00:14:41:12
But actually

00:14:41:12 - 00:14:44:22
I like verse 6 particularly

00:14:45:01 - 00:14:48:09
where, you know, ‘what do you mean, [you] sleeper? Arise,

00:14:48:09 - 00:14:50:20
call out to your god. Perhaps God will give us a thought.’

00:14:50:20 - 00:14:53:20
Because in the pagan captain's mind,

00:14:54:09 - 00:14:58:00
the storm is because a god is not thinking about them.

00:14:58:06 - 00:15:03:10
Whereas in fact, the storm is precisely because God is thinking about Jonah.

00:15:03:10 - 00:15:05:17
So so again, it's

00:15:05:17 - 00:15:08:17
the the subtlety here,

00:15:08:21 - 00:15:09:18
the richness,

00:15:09:18 - 00:15:13:13
it is massive.

00:15:14:16 - 00:15:19:14
And and then the fear, he fears God, but does he fear enough?

00:15:20:06 - 00:15:23:05
P: Is a question T: Well it’s so hollow, isn't it?

00:15:23:05 - 00:15:26:13
If he did fear God, he would not be going on on the ship.

00:15:26:13 - 00:15:29:13
He would not be going down, down, down and heading the wrong direction.

00:15:29:17 - 00:15:32:22
He's he's doing that precisely because he does not really fear God.

00:15:32:22 - 00:15:35:22
So these these I mean, it's

00:15:35:22 - 00:15:38:22
I think it's a very hollow claim that he's making at that point.

00:15:38:22 - 00:15:42:03
Or is he is he actually coming to his, beginning

00:15:42:03 - 00:15:45:03
to come to his senses and, and saying,

00:15:45:06 - 00:15:50:08
yeah, that the God that I, that I claim to fear, the God I claim to to speak for

00:15:50:14 - 00:15:53:18
he is the one who's made all of this and therefore he is responsible.

00:15:53:22 - 00:15:56:22
So it's no wonder that they they fear a great fear,

00:15:56:22 - 00:16:01:14
because this is not just a provincial god, this is not a territorial god.

00:16:01:20 - 00:16:05:24
This is the the ultimate God who is, who made the sea and the dry land.

00:16:05:24 - 00:16:09:02
They’d be very familiar with, with, with passengers

00:16:09:02 - 00:16:13:05
from different places having gods from their, their own towns that

00:16:13:14 - 00:16:15:09
Well, it's no big deal to us.

00:16:15:09 - 00:16:17:03
But if this is the God who made the sea

00:16:17:03 - 00:16:19:04
and the dry land, then they're really in trouble.

00:16:20:08 - 00:16:23:08
The narrative also is very good at,

00:16:24:03 - 00:16:26:03
having gradual increase, if you like.

00:16:26:03 - 00:16:30:01
So, that the storm is getting worse and worse the whole time. And

00:16:31:02 - 00:16:33:22
these sailors,

00:16:33:22 - 00:16:35:22
they're trying to out row God,

00:16:35:22 - 00:16:38:22
which is, you know, difficult again.

00:16:39:10 - 00:16:42:10
And, and so that's, that's going on in verse,

00:16:43:02 - 00:16:46:01
12, 13, sorry.

00:16:46:01 - 00:16:49:02
And they're calling out to God that, you know, they,

00:16:49:11 - 00:16:53:23
they shouldn't be guilty of, this man's innocent blood.

00:16:53:23 - 00:16:55:06
You've done as it pleased you.

00:16:55:06 - 00:16:57:18
I mean, they really have got,

00:16:57:18 - 00:17:00:19
you know, fairly good theology there.

00:17:01:04 - 00:17:04:03
And then they're going to fear God again in verse 16.

00:17:04:03 - 00:17:08:02
And it seems that they've gone from fearing to even more fearing.

00:17:09:05 - 00:17:11:23
So, we've got that in

00:17:11:23 - 00:17:14:15
verse 10 verses verse 16.

00:17:14:15 - 00:17:17:15
They, they begin by fearing then they have a great fear.

00:17:17:19 - 00:17:20:21
And so the storm's getting bigger the whole time that the ships

00:17:20:21 - 00:17:24:21
thinking about breaking up every, everything’s, the word choice

00:17:24:21 - 00:17:28:05
is so deliberate through this chapter, very dramatic,

00:17:28:21 - 00:17:31:23
to get you, to, this point.

00:17:33:18 - 00:17:33:23
Yeah.

00:17:33:23 - 00:17:35:09
I, I love the ship

00:17:35:09 - 00:17:38:24
thought about breaking up and it's, it's not obvious in English, but the

00:17:39:07 - 00:17:40:01
So yeah.

00:17:40:01 - 00:17:45:07
In Hebrew, it’s ḥishshᵉva lᵉhishshaver thought is ḥishshᵉva 

00:17:45:16 - 00:17:47:01
hishshaver to break up.

00:17:47:01 - 00:17:48:20
It thought about breaking up.

00:17:48:20 - 00:17:51:20
And what you're finding here and it’s something

00:17:51:23 - 00:17:55:18
Tony's alluding to, is there's animation going on in the inanimate.

00:17:56:00 - 00:17:59:12
So just as we're going to see in this book, there is a

00:18:00:02 - 00:18:03:02
fish, big sea creature which obeys God.

00:18:03:15 - 00:18:08:14
We're going to find that there is a, a plant which, obeys God.

00:18:08:14 - 00:18:13:00
There is a, plant-eating creature which obeys God.

00:18:13:24 - 00:18:15:10
And all of that's going on.

00:18:15:10 - 00:18:18:15
And the whole final line is going to be about animals. But

00:18:18:15 - 00:18:23:09
you have in this that the sea is getting angry.

00:18:23:20 - 00:18:26:16
So they're actually talking about the sea ceasing from its raging.

00:18:26:16 - 00:18:29:03
And and we might read that as you know, sea rage, don’t they?

00:18:29:03 - 00:18:33:24
But but actually in the Hebrew it is more more graphic.

00:18:33:24 - 00:18:35:13
It's not just an analogy

00:18:35:13 - 00:18:37:12
rage, this is proper anger.

00:18:37:12 - 00:18:42:15
The sea is going to cease from its anger, and the ship is thinking about

00:18:43:04 - 00:18:44:20
breaking up. And all of this is again,

00:18:46:00 - 00:18:47:01
what's the difference between

00:18:47:01 - 00:18:50:01
something that's alive and not? God's will.

00:18:50:04 - 00:18:51:08
That's the fundamental thing.

00:18:51:08 - 00:18:54:24
Like God, who can raise up children to Abraham from stones,

00:18:55:17 - 00:18:58:07
you know, stones are deaf to humans.

00:18:58:07 - 00:19:00:04
They're not deaf to God.

00:19:00:04 - 00:19:03:21
You know, and so you have this whole thing that the God

00:19:03:21 - 00:19:07:00
who can animate anything is the God

00:19:07:00 - 00:19:09:12
this crazy prophet is fleeing.

00:19:09:12 - 00:19:12:03
And that's,

00:19:12:03 - 00:19:13:17
just brought out for us,

00:19:13:17 - 00:19:17:04
P: you know, so beautifully in this chapter. F: That, just to say that,

00:19:17:04 - 00:19:18:21
so that's verse four, it says,

00:19:18:21 - 00:19:21:23
well, in the ESV, it says so that the ship threatened to break up.

00:19:21:24 - 00:19:22:20
P: Yeah. F: So you're saying that’s

00:19:22:20 - 00:19:23:07
P: Yeah. Yeah.

00:19:23:07 - 00:19:25:01
F: . . . the ship thought to break up

00:19:25:01 - 00:19:25:22
And so

00:19:25:22 - 00:19:28:22
when you look in a dictionary at this word ‘threatened’,

00:19:28:24 - 00:19:32:20
this is the only occurrence you can find with that meaning.

00:19:33:03 - 00:19:35:07
And of course, you can take it, and even in English,

00:19:35:07 - 00:19:37:06
P: in more than one sense. T: Yeah.

00:19:37:06 - 00:19:38:18
Something's threatened to happen.

00:19:38:18 - 00:19:42:00
You can have in an inanimate sense, but you can also have it

00:19:42:01 - 00:19:46:04
threatened to break up, if you read that more in an animated way.

00:19:46:04 - 00:19:49:04
So I think that maybe part of the reason behind the word choice here

00:19:49:04 - 00:19:50:04
for the English Standard Version,

00:19:51:14 - 00:19:52:05
it does seem

00:19:52:05 - 00:19:55:05
to have those two possibilities.

00:19:55:23 - 00:19:57:03
T: And, sorry. P: Yeah, yeah.

00:19:57:03 - 00:20:00:08
Well, I was I was just going to say with, with the word choice being so careful.

00:20:00:08 - 00:20:03:10
Then, then when you in verse three, he paid the fare.

00:20:03:21 - 00:20:05:19
It's not,

00:20:05:19 - 00:20:07:24
It's clearly in Hebrew it's not

00:20:07:24 - 00:20:09:04
he paid his fare

00:20:09:04 - 00:20:10:11
He paid its fare

00:20:10:11 - 00:20:12:19
He paid the fare for the ship.

00:20:12:19 - 00:20:18:06
So actually, Jonah is investing, a huge amount of money to, to, to

00:20:18:10 - 00:20:23:07
because it appears that he is funding the whole ship's fare,

00:20:23:07 - 00:20:27:02
the whole ship's voyage to go to Tarshish.

00:20:27:16 - 00:20:31:14
He's he's sunk everything into into running away from the Lord.

00:20:31:19 - 00:20:34:19
F: Sorry which verse was that? T: verse three.

00:20:35:04 - 00:20:35:23
So as you say.

00:20:35:23 - 00:20:37:01
Yeah, absolutely.

00:20:37:01 - 00:20:39:18
T: The worst deal ever. P: Yes.

00:20:39:18 - 00:20:42:18
But he's heading to Tarshish, which is,

00:20:43:06 - 00:20:46:20
T: it’s thought to be Spain, probably P: That's the most likely.

00:20:46:20 - 00:20:48:15
But there are there are other possibilities.

00:20:48:15 - 00:20:51:16
But when you look at references to Tarshish in the rest of Scripture,

00:20:51:16 - 00:20:55:20
apart from the one reference in in the end of Isaiah,

00:20:55:20 - 00:20:59:08
where it's a little more ambiguous, in in every other place is Ezekiel

00:20:59:16 - 00:21:03:08
27 in particular, it's, it's associated with luxury.

00:21:03:11 - 00:21:06:11
So he's, he's spending a lot of money,

00:21:06:15 - 00:21:09:18
but he's is trying to escape to a place

00:21:10:02 - 00:21:13:12
where he seems to be imagining he's going to have,

00:21:14:11 - 00:21:15:00
to be able

00:21:15:00 - 00:21:18:05
to deliver, an idle, luxurious life free

00:21:18:05 - 00:21:21:05
from the interventions of God and God's,

00:21:21:14 - 00:21:24:14
requirements to go and speak to Nineveh.

00:21:24:16 - 00:21:26:14
He's,

00:21:26:14 - 00:21:29:05
we've talked before about the idea of shalom

00:21:29:05 - 00:21:32:10
within, within the whole of the Hebrew Bible.

00:21:32:10 - 00:21:36:06
But in within the prophets, in these the four relationships with God,

00:21:36:06 - 00:21:38:05
with other people, with the world around us and with ourselves.

00:21:38:05 - 00:21:39:24
You see all of these within Jonah.

00:21:39:24 - 00:21:42:24
But but Jonah is heading off,

00:21:43:00 - 00:21:45:11
having having emptied his coffers.

00:21:45:11 - 00:21:49:00
He's heading off to try and build some pseudo shalom on his own terms.

00:21:49:18 - 00:21:53:13
And what he finds is exactly the opposite of what he's looking for,

00:21:53:14 - 00:21:57:22
because everything is falling apart and even even the the ship and the sea.

00:21:57:22 - 00:22:00:00
These apparently inanimate objects,

00:22:00:00 - 00:22:03:13
They're against him, too, because they've been animated by by the Lord.

00:22:04:12 - 00:22:04:20
Okay.

00:22:04:20 - 00:22:07:22
And so then this chapter ends with Jonah

00:22:07:22 - 00:22:10:22
being swallowed by a big fish.

00:22:11:22 - 00:22:14:12
Anything to say on that?

00:22:14:12 - 00:22:15:21
Well, I mean a few things.

00:22:15:21 - 00:22:18:07
Firstly, ‘the Lord appointed a great fish,’

00:22:18:07 - 00:22:22:08
we read, and so, that's, appointed

00:22:22:14 - 00:22:26:04
you get again in 4:6, 4:7, 4:8,

00:22:26:12 - 00:22:30:18
where God, appoints a plant, then a worm, then an east wind.

00:22:30:21 - 00:22:33:23
So again, God's just in charge of everything.

00:22:34:06 - 00:22:37:06
And then, great fish. People,

00:22:37:12 - 00:22:40:02
the meaning of the word fish has changed over the last couple of hundred years

00:22:40:02 - 00:22:41:17
since Linnaeus.

00:22:41:17 - 00:22:43:10
So, so that now

00:22:43:10 - 00:22:46:10
things like whales are not classed as, as fish,

00:22:46:11 - 00:22:49:14
but in the taxonomy of the day back then,

00:22:50:03 - 00:22:53:13
you know, basically everything in the sea that’s swimming round is

00:22:53:15 - 00:22:57:09
a is a fish it’s interesting when you get this word used in the Gospels,

00:22:57:23 - 00:22:59:01
It uses the word kētos.

00:22:59:01 - 00:23:01:23
and we get cetacean and other words like that from,

00:23:03:09 - 00:23:05:04
for a whale.

00:23:05:04 - 00:23:08:04
And. Yes, absolutely extraordinary.

00:23:08:07 - 00:23:12:04
And, Christ picks this up in, in Matthew chapter 12

00:23:12:04 - 00:23:18:24
as a picture of his own burial and then, eventual resurrection,

00:23:19:11 - 00:23:21:22
as we're going to see that he doesn't stay in the,

00:23:21:22 - 00:23:24:24
the belly of, of of, of the fish or whale.

00:23:25:17 - 00:23:29:03
So, absolutely, unforgettable

00:23:29:19 - 00:23:34:08
From time to time, you hear people making a great thing of the,

00:23:34:08 - 00:23:35:09
the possibility you,

00:23:35:09 - 00:23:38:24
you know, how is this physically possible for somebody to, to be in the,

00:23:39:06 - 00:23:42:04
the belly of a, of a of a humpback whale or of a whale

00:23:42:04 - 00:23:45:04
shark or wherever and and,

00:23:45:09 - 00:23:48:19
there's still a story circulating around on the Internet of this guy

00:23:48:19 - 00:23:51:21
called James Bartlett, who was swallowed by a humpback whale in the South Pacific,

00:23:52:05 - 00:23:55:14
South Atlantic in the late 1800s from a whaling ship.

00:23:56:04 - 00:24:00:00
There's there's absolutely no evidence for this story whatsoever.

00:24:00:00 - 00:24:01:13
And yet it's still it circulates and

00:24:03:06 - 00:24:03:21
so

00:24:03:21 - 00:24:05:17
why do we why do we have to feel that

00:24:05:17 - 00:24:09:04
we have to, to bend over backwards to try to, to justify something

00:24:09:04 - 00:24:12:09
T: where, I mean, clearly the Lord has sent this great fish P: Its absolutely miraculous.

00:24:12:09 - 00:24:14:21
P: Yeah, yeah. T: This is a miraculous thing.

00:24:14:21 - 00:24:20:03
F: There was actually a video recently of a guy T: There was! F: being swallowed in a kayak and being spat back out again

00:24:20:03 - 00:24:21:05
He was spat out pretty quickly.

00:24:21:05 - 00:24:23:14
T: He wasn't in there for as long P: Ah I didn’t see this

00:24:23:14 - 00:24:25:14
T: this poor guy P: I obviously need to get on TikTok for this

00:24:25:14 - 00:24:28:14
he's going to be called Jonah for the rest of his life. Isn’t he?

00:24:29:11 - 00:24:33:00
But, but yeah, we don't need to do to reach for

00:24:33:00 - 00:24:37:18
for fanciful tales and for for stories that that have no basis in history.

00:24:37:18 - 00:24:42:02
When, when we believe in a God who has all of the elements

00:24:42:02 - 00:24:46:17
and all of the creatures at his disposal and, and can make them work

00:24:46:17 - 00:24:50:07
in whatever way he likes, it's it's not difficult for him.

00:24:50:13 - 00:24:50:19
Yeah.

00:24:50:19 - 00:24:54:12
And I think also, you know, the the the point is that

00:24:54:12 - 00:24:57:12
in ordinary circumstances this would be certain death.

00:24:57:20 - 00:25:00:15
And so there is that, that sense in which,

00:25:00:15 - 00:25:02:24
you know, this is very much like a resurrection.

00:25:02:24 - 00:25:03:09
Okay.

00:25:03:09 - 00:25:07:13
Jonah doesn't actually, die, but, you know,

00:25:08:13 - 00:25:08:21
there

00:25:08:21 - 00:25:12:24
is this amazing miracle that he is preserved and lives

00:25:12:24 - 00:25:16:00
to, appear again in this wonderful book.

00:25:17:07 - 00:25:17:13
Great.

00:25:17:13 - 00:25:20:13
Well, we'll draw it to a close for this episode.

00:25:20:16 - 00:25:23:16
So we'll continue to talk about Jonah in the next episode.

00:25:23:16 - 00:25:24:24
Thanks very much for joining us.

00:25:24:24 - 00:25:26:21
Thank you both for joining me.

00:25:26:21 - 00:25:29:14
Yeah. Please do rate review, subscribe.

00:25:29:14 - 00:25:32:04
And let us know in the comments, any questions that you've got

00:25:32:04 - 00:25:35:00
or any thoughts and reflections from the episode. Thanks for listening.