Why did Jonah try to go to Tarshish instead of Nineveh?

Now Jonah was a very wilful man, and instead of at once going to do what God told him, he does the very opposite. Do you know why Jonah did not go at once to Nineveh? That comes out in chapter 4. When the mercy of God to this guilty and doomed city was manifested, Jonah was very displeased. He said: "I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before to Tarshish; for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil" (Jonah 4:2).

There was not much that was loveable about Jonah, unless it was his fierce patriotism. This may have accounted for much in him that to us appears repellent. He did not want to carry any message from God to Nineveh, “bloody city, full of lies and robbery,” for he knew enough about the God he served, to know that if they hearkened to His word and repented of their sins, they would be forgiven and spared, even as it turned out. And he had no wish except that Nineveh should perish utterly without a warning. Why should the oppressor of his people be spared? So he fled, not from Nineveh, for he was no coward; it was not men that scared him from the will of God, it was from the presence of the Lord that he fled. What he feared was an out-pouring of the mercy of God upon an alien and guilty foe. In his concern for his nation and his own reputation, he was selfish, miserable, without compassion, and despicable—as unlike his God as he could possibly be.

There was not much that was loveable about Jonah, unless it was his fierce patriotism. This may have accounted for much in him that to us appears repellent. He did not want to carry any message from God to Nineveh, "bloody city, full of lies and robbery," for he knew enough about the God he served, to know that if they hearkened to His word and repented of their sins, they would be forgiven and spared, even as it turned out. And he had no wish except that Nineveh should perish utterly without a warning. Why should the oppressor of his people be spared? So he fled, not from Nineveh, for he was no coward; it was not men that scared him from the will of God, it was from the presence of the Lord that he fled. What he feared was an out-pouring of the mercy of God upon an alien and guilty foe. In his concern for his nation and his own reputation, he was selfish, miserable, without compassion, and despicable — as unlike his God as he could possibly be.

Verse 3. Jonah rose up at once, but instead of going to the east towards Nineveh he fled in the other direction. Tarshish in Spain was his goal. It is also stated that he fled from the presence of the Lord. This cannot possibly mean that he fled from the presence of Him whom he knew as the omnipresent One. The Psalm of David which speaks of this expressly was then in the possession of Israel, and Jonah must have known it: "Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there: if I make my bed in sheol, behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me" (Psalm 139:7-10). He did not flee from the presence of the Lord in the sense of escaping His knowledge and authority. It means that he left the land of Israel where Jehovah dwelt; he fled from the service-commission he had received.

If we look for a motive of this disobedient prophet we find it given in the book itself. In chapter 4:2 we read, "Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish, for I knew that Thou art a gracious God, and merciful, and slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest Thee of evil." But why should he fear that God might be merciful to Nineveh and save the city? It was undoubtedly a national spirit which possessed the prophet. It has been suggested that the prophet knew that the Assyrian would be used by the Lord as the instrument to punish Israel and that he thought if Nineveh would perish the people Israel might be saved. Inasmuch as God might show mercy to Assyria, Assyria would then be used as the rod upon Israel, and for this reason he was disobedient to the commission. But the direct prophecy that the Assyrian would be the staff in the hand of the Lord to bring judgment upon Israel was made through Isaiah (chapter 10), and that revelation had not yet been given, for Jonah lived before the prophet Isaiah. It was rather the fear Jonah had as a Jew that the conversion of the Gentiles might rob his nation of the distinction of being the nation of election, to whom Jehovah had revealed Himself exclusively. He therefore went to Joppa where he engaged passage on a ship which was to bring him to Tarshish, which he never reached. It was at Joppa where centuries later another Jew, who was also jealous for his nation, had a vision which made it clear that the gospel should be preached to the Gentiles. That Jew was Peter (Acts 10).

Turning then to our prophecy, we read, "Now the word of Jehovah came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me. But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of Jehovah, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of Jehovah." But in Jonah is seen the stiff-neckedness of man. Jehovah told him to go east, and he at once hurries west; that is, he flies exactly in the teeth of the divine command. To some this seems unaccountable in a prophet; to the rationalist it is incredible, and casts a doubt on the historical character of the entire book. But we have to learn that flesh is no better in a prophet than in ourselves. For the real difference between men is not that the flesh of some is better than that of others, but that some have learned to distrust themselves altogether, and to live another life which is by faith, not by flesh. Therefore it is that the believer only in fact lives to God so long as he goes on in dependence on Him. The moment he ceases to do so, wonder not at anything he says or does. Here we have a flagrant witness of it in Jonah. He was told to go to Nineveh; but "he rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of Jehovah, and went down to Joppa," — that is, to the neighbouring port of Palestine on the great sea, the Mediterranean, in order to go west.

"And he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of Jehovah. But Jehovah sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken. Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every man to his god, and cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it of them. But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship; and he lay, and was fast asleep." Now it cannot be doubted that there must have been some strong (however unjustifiable) impulse which gave a contrary bias to this godly man, as undoubtedly the prophet was. What was the motive? To our minds singular enough, but none the less influential over him for all that. Jonah was afraid that God would be too good! If Nineveh repented, he suspected that He would show it mercy. He feared therefore that his own character as a prophet would suffer. He did not choose them to hear the threat that God was giving to destroy the Ninevites for their wickedness, lest they might humble themselves under his preaching, and the threatened judgment might not be put into execution, and Jonah would thus lose his honour. What a miserably selfish thing is the heart even of a prophet, unless just so far as he walks by faith! Jonah did not so walk, but allowed self to gain a transient mastery. I do not speak of what Jonah felt as a man, but of his jealousy as he thought for his office. He could not bear that his ministry should be jeoparded for a moment. How much better to trust the Master!

Jonah, on hearing the word of Jehovah, made a dash for the port of Joppa. He would flee from His presence! Vain effort! Ps. 139 stresses this very definitely. But why did Jonah refuse the divine commission to preach to the men of Nineveh! Jonah 4:2 tells us. The known goodness of God was his difficulty. He was sure that if the Ninevites repented of their wickedness God would show mercy. In that case Jonah felt that his dignity would be affected to proclaim a judgement which was not executed! Rather let a whole vast city perish than that his credit should suffer! It seems almost incredible that a man born of the Spirit could be so self-important and behave so contemptibly! This story, so simply told, is written as a warning to us all. If we get out of communion with God, His tender compassions become foreign to us; harsh feelings develop, and we behave abominably. We shall doubtless meet Jonah in the glory of God ere long (like ourselves, a sinner saved by grace): but meantime let us seek to be as unlike him as possible in our service and testimony for God.

But here is a man, and how like he is to us, absolutely upset when he found that God had spared this mighty mass of people. There was never such an effect produced by a short sermon before or since. Two millions were bowed down by one preaching. Oh, may God raise up preachers like that! Oh for men whose preaching is after that stamp! But poor Jonah says, "If I go and preach coming judgment, I know God so well, that, if they repent, He will spare them, and then they will laugh at me, and I shall lose my character." Poor Jonah! He did not like the message that God gave him to deliver, and therefore took his own way, going due west to Joppa instead of east to Nineveh.

But in the book which bears his name, there is no notice of this prophecy. It opens, however, with something that is in character with it. It opens with the Lord giving Jonah a commission to go and preach against Nineveh, and Jonah's refusal to do so, because, as he tells us himself afterwards, he knew that the Lord was "gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repented Him of the evil," (Jonah 4:2). He had been taught to know that this was the way of the God of Israel, by his experience of His late doings in Samaria, and he thus suspected that such would be His way now in Nineveh. But his Jewish temper, so to call it, was strong in him. He could not consent to be the bearer of mercy to the Gentiles. He had, without reserve, published the good tidings in Samaria, but he could not consent to do the same now in Nineveh of the Gentiles.

All this disclosure of the hidden springs of the prophet's disobedience is very significant. He had fled from the presence of the Lord, but enmity to the Gentiles was the real cause of it all. And thus we may say, Like prophet, like people. Jonah's sin is Israel's sin. Israel has always refused the thought, that the Gentiles could stand in the favour of God; and in delineating their sin, "forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles" is noticed by the apostle as the last great feature in the full form of their sin (1 Thess. 2:16). Then the wrath came upon them to the uttermost, as now upon the prophet. He refuses to go to Nineveh, believing that God would turn the curse into a blessing; but turning his back upon the Lord, goes down to Joppa, and there takes a ship to Tarshish. The wrath, however, comes upon him to the uttermost. Vengeance suffers him not to live. A wind from the Lord lies heavily upon him, and upon those who sail with him, and the ship was like to be broken.

It does not seem to have been fear for his personal safety that made Jonah turn aside from the clear command given him by God. In reading the book of Jonah, one is impressed with Jonah's courage, not with his cowardice. In the second and third verses of the fourth chapter, we hear Jonah saying (after God had spared Nineveh) : "Ah, Jehovah, was not this my saying when I was yet in my country? Therefore I was minded to flee at first unto Tarshish; for I knew that Thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great loving-kindness, and repentest Thee of the evil." Jonah well knew God's character for mercy — it would be hard to find a more glorious description of it than here. Did Jonah think that he could presume on God's mercy, and loving-kindness, to dare to disobey Him? Is it not possible that we, who glory in the knowledge of the love and grace of God, as revealed in His Son our Lord Jesus Christ, sometimes presume on that grace and love to treat His commands with lightness? May God in His mercy preserve us from such a sin; and open our eyes, if we have already been guilty of it.

Jonah's reluctance to obey, appears to have been fear that God would turn from His wrath and spare Nineveh. Was this the pride of heart that could not bear to "lose face," as we would say in China? Or, was it the bitter prejudice of an Israelite towards a Gentile nation? Or, did Jonah's eye look forward some fifty years and see the king of Nineveh coming against his own native land? (2 Kings 15:19)

One marvels that Jonah should wish to flee from the presence of such a God, instead of enjoying the sunshine of His love and favor. Why should he wish to escape from Him? It would seem that he well knew that if the guilty city of Nineveh should repent, that the Lord would also repent of the evil, and not do it. On the one hand, "my saying" as to the destruction of the city would not come true, and Jonah's reputation as a prophet be affected. And on the other hand, it may well be that Jonah's eye looked down the years, and saw that before so very long, "my country" would be desolated by the very city he now hoped to see destroyed. They are both motives that touch us very closely: loss of reputation and loss of our country would carry very great weight with almost every one of us, and move us to do strange things indeed.

So we see that Jonah's displeasure, and his anger, were caused by God's abundant mercy, and because God did not bring a terrible punishment on a rival nation, whom Jonah wished to see destroyed. If we are honest, I suppose that most of us know full well that in our own hearts we have been guilty of the very same thoughts with regard to nations that are rivals of our own.