Shabbat Shalom.

When Rabbi Erez first invited me to teach today, my initial instinct was to teach from this week’s Torah portion. I’ve taught on this passage, Pinchas, once or twice before, so I could easily have come up with a message that allowed me to rely on studies I’ve done in the past.

However, as I began to study the passage, I realized that the part I really felt a tug toward began in last week’s portion, and concludes at the beginning of this week’s portion. It brings to mind a topic that seems basic, but becomes a little more mysterious when studied closely. Exploring that theme led me eventually to the book of Jonah, primarily, more so than this week’s portion.

So let’s begin our journey today where I began my own study for the week, in the book B’midbar, a Hebrew word that means, “In the wilderness.” And I think we can all agree that’s a more appropriate name for this section of Torah than “Numbers.”

Anyway, let’s begin our study at B’midbar / Numbers, chapter twenty-five, verse one:

B’midbar 25:1-13
Isra’el stayed at Sheetim, and there the people began whoring with the women of Mo’av. These women invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, where the people ate and bowed down to their gods. With Isra’el thus joined to Ba’al-P’or, the anger of ADONAI blazed up against Isra’el.

ADONAI said to Moshe, “Take all the chiefs of the people, and hang them facing the sun before ADONAI, so that the raging fury of ADONAI will turn away from Isra’el.” Moshe siad to the judges of Isra’el, “Each of you is to put to death those in his tribe who have joined themselves to Ba’al P’or.”

Just then, in the sight of Moshe and the whole community of Isra’el, as they were weeping at the entrance to the tent of meeting, a man from Isra’el came by, bringing to his family a woman from Midyan. When Pinchas the son of El’azer, the son of Aharon the cohen, saw it, he got up in the middle of the crowd, took a spear in his hand, and pursued the man from Isra’el right into the inner part of the tent, where he thrust his spear through both of them—the man from Isra’el and the woman through her stomach. Thus was the plague among the people of Isra’el stopped; nevertheless, twenty-four thousand died in the plague.

ADONAI said to Moshe, “Pinchas the son of El’azer, the son of Aharon the cohen, has deflected my anger from the people of Isra’el by being as zealous as I am, so that I didn’t destroy them in my own zeal. Therefore say, ‘I am giving him my covenant of shalom, making a covenant with him and his descendants after him that the office of cohen will be theirs forever.’ This is because he was zealous on behalf of his God and made atonement for the people of Isra’el.”

Now, that’s a hefty bit of Torah, isn’t it? There are many things one could discuss based on these thirteen verses alone. But what resonated with me during my study this week was the type of atonement that took place between Pinchas and ADONAI, and these extreme actions of Pinchas that God honors as an act of righteousness.

Certainly, the specific sin that Pinchas is responding to is as brazen as they come. Here, the community of Isra’el present in the wilderness has entered into the most basic of sins forbidden in the Torah: they had joined in the worship of other gods. To make matters worse, they had entered into sexual sin with the women of Mo’av as well, thus defiling both their bodies and their spirits.

In the context of last week’s portion, we know that this is a tactic used by Balak, on the advice of the prophet Bil’am. We learned that part of the reason God refused to be manipulated by Bil’am into allowing Isra’el to be cursed is that He found “no perversity among them.” Thus comes the temptation of the women of Mo’av, with their sins of the flesh and spirit.

And it works. The children of Isra’el fall into sins of the flesh and sins of the spirit, going so far as to bow down and worship other gods, the gods of the Mo’avites. This compromises somewhat the children of Isra’el.

That alone, dayienu, would have been enough. Through Moshe, God begins to pronounce a significant punishment. He is in the middle of ordering the chiefs of the people to be hanged in the sun, and for all who joined in the idolatry of the women of Mo’av to be put to death.

Try to imagine the scene. Leaders of Israel and many others are being put to death. Moshe is speaking God’s judgment against them. Families are weeping as they are torn apart. Righteous members of the community who did not join in the idolatry and other sins are watching their own brothers, fathers, and other family members who did join in, as they are led away to be put to the sword. Torah tells us that as Moshe is saying all this, the people of Isra’el are sitting in front of the Tent of Meeting, the very place where God’s presence dwelled with them, and they are weeping in sorrow.

And then.

And then along comes an Isra’elite, apparently oblivious to all that is going on around him, and he has with him a woman of Mo’av, one of the very women who helped tempt Isra’el into this moment of judgment, punishment, and sorrow.

Does he look at all this going on around him and change his mind? Send this woman of Mo’av on her way? No. He takes her to the Mishkan, the Tent of Meeting where the presence of HaShem dwells, and the implication is that he begins to repeat with her there the very same sins of the spirit and the flesh that started all this.

Now, some might ask, the Tent of Meeting? Really? Wouldn’t it be his own tent? And certainly that would be bad enough. But as Rabbi Erez pointed out to me this week, in the entire Tanach the Hebrew word Ha’kubah (The Tent/Canopy) is used only here. It is thought by most to refer to some type of canopy at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting. This seems to fit the usage of the tent, the context flowing with the previous reference to the Tent of Meeting, rather than his tent. The single usage of the word appears to be due to the fact that it is derived—in grisly fashion—from kevah (stomach).

This is absolutely too much for Pinchas. He is a descendant of Aharon the cohen, the priest, and he has learned to be zealous for God. He has a fearful respect for God and His commands. And in this one instance, in this one situation, he takes an action that, today, seems brutal to us, perhaps, with our modern sensibilities. He runs a spear through the both of them, as they are engaged in the acts of their sin.

This is not the sort of action that would be deemed acceptable today. Yet these were unique circumstances. Remember the context. ADONAI Himself had taken the people out of slavery in Egypt. He had kept them alive during a lengthy sojourn in the desert, where He supernaturally provided for every need. That generation enjoyed a special closeness with God difficult for us to even comprehend today. And yet did this produce a generation of the most faithful men and women who had ever lived? Sadly, for most of those present in that generation, it did not.

So it takes a unique brazenness, even hard-heartedness, to walk through the middle of a community so specially provided for by God, in the middle of a process of repentance and atonement, in the middle of a scene where family members are grieving as their loved ones are being put to the sword, and to then start doing the exact same thing all his fellow community members are being punished for doing.

In this unique and singular case, Pinchas’ act brings an end to all the blood-letting, the plague and judgment going on around them all. Any other time, his action would most likely be considered a violation of the command not to murder. But this one time, it is seen as an act of atonement.

So, what is atonement, exactly?

A popular saw among Bible teachers is that if you break the English word up into three words, you get “at-one-ment” and they then go on to explain that atonement is the process of becoming at-one with ADONAI. But we get more than simple English word games if we explore the Hebrew word.

We know that the festival Yom Kippur means “Day of Atonement,” and that kippur is a Hebrew word that connects back to the word kaphar. Kaphar means “to cover over” in Hebrew. It is used to describe the pitch in Noah’s ark that made it water-tight during the flood; it’s also used to describe the cover of the ark of the covenant.

Hebrew scholar Jeff A. Benner, author of the book “The Living Words,” writes of the word kaphar:
“If an offense has been made, the one that has been offended can act as though the offense is covered over and unseen. We express this idea through the word of forgiveness. Atonement is an outward action that covers over the error.”

Now, this sort of passage is why some people allege that God as portrayed in the Torah is an angry God of judgment, while God as portrayed through Messiah Y’shua in the B’rit HaDashah is a loving God of forgiveness. Of course, most of us here know that this is not the case. God is unchanging, and in both the Tenakh and the Brit HaDasha, ADONAI always represents himself as both loving and forgiving, as well as holy, righteous, and able to deliver punishment to those who dwell in their sin. ADONAI does not change.

Yet due to the complex nature of HaShem, sometimes He is hard to understand. And if we think struggling to understand the complexity and mystery of HaShem is something new to our generation, it is not.

Which brings us to the book of the Tanakh I really want to discuss today: the book of the prophet Yonah.

Part of the reason I enjoy the book of Yonah so much and wanted to teach on it today is that I believe there are great messages in this book that are often overlooked. Too often, the story of Yonah is written off as a bit of a Jewish fairy tale, a legend with no basis in the history of the Jewish people, and a book that is often best left to Torah Tots story times. Its simple morality message of “there is no place you can run away from God” is often the only insight drawn from this prophet. And in doing so, I think many of us are missing out on quite a bit that is relevant to us and to our understanding of HaShem.

So let’s start our study of Yonah today by reading the first few verses. The book of Yonah begins like this:

Yonah 1:1-3a
The word of ADONAI came to Yonah, the son of Amitai: “Set out for the great city of Ninveh, and proclaim to it that their wickedness has come to my attention.”

But Yonah, in order to get away from ADONAI, prepared to escape to Tarshish.

Now, the first thing we’ll notice is that the narrative begins immediately, with Yonah being given a mission by HaShem. He’s told to set out for Ninveh and proclaim God’s judgment against them.

We’re not told, really, who Yonah was, other than the son of Amitai. We’re not really informed in the Yonah narrative about why he’s fleeing from God’s command to him. These things just take place and we sort of figure out as we go that Yonah is a prophet. The reason for his flight from God’s command is left mostly behind a veil of mystery.

Yet can we gather some clues that might help contextualize this story? We can.

Louis Ginzberg, a conservative Talmudic rabbi who lived from 1873 to 1953, wrote a seminal work that gathers and summarizes some of the traditions and folklore of the Hebrew people, called Legends of the Jews. From volume four of that work, on pages 246-247, we are given this insight into who Yonah was:

Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, vol. 4
Among the many thousands of disciples whom Elisha gathered about him during his sixty years and more of activity, the most prominent was the prophet Jonah. While the master was still alive, Jonah was charged with the important mission of anointing Jehu king. The next task laid upon him was to proclaim their destruction to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. This doom did not come to pass, because they repented of their wrong-doing, and G-d had mercy upon them. Among the Israelites Jonah was, therefore, known as “the false prophet.” When he was sent to Nineveh to prophesy the downfall of the city, he reflected, “I know to a certainty that the heathen will do penance, the threatened punishment will not be executed, and among the heathen, too, I shall gain the reputation of being a false prophet.”

This insight, based on an ancient Hebrew midrash, is helpful to our efforts to understand the prophet Yonah and why he would attempt to flee from HaShem’s command. We are told he was one of the most prominent disciples of Elisha, that he was involved in appointing Yehu king, and most importantly… that he was tasked with prophesying destruction toward the city of Yerushalayim, and when that city repented, the destruction was held off by ADONAI and did not come to pass.

However, we also see the root of the potential problem here. Among the Israelites, we are told, Yonah had acquired a nickname: the false prophet.

Now, it might be hard for us to understand the seriousness of this nickname today. After all, we live in a time where secular prophets like Jeanne Dixon have been accurate maybe ten percent of the time, and are lauded as geniuses. We look at the French poet and self-appointed seer, Nostradamus, whose quatrains can only be force-fitted to be accurate after something major has occurred, and our entire culture fears his accuracy.

But we in the early part of the twenty-first century don’t understand the prophetic office, or prophetic accuracy, the way the Hebrew people of Yonah’s day did. Prophets of those times were held to a much higher standard. To be considered a true prophet of ADONAI, one must be accurate every single time. We read this, in part, from:

Deuteronomy 18:20-22
“‘But if a prophet presumptuously speaks a word in my name which I didn’t order him to say, or if he speaks in the name of other gods, then that prophet must die.’ You may be wondering, ‘How are we to know if a word has not been spoken from Adonai?’ When a prophet speaks in the name of ADONAI, and the prediction does not come true—that is, the word is not fulfilled—then ADONAI did not speak that word. The prophet who said it spoke presumptuously; you have nothing to fear from him.

So, there are the stakes, laid out for us in the words of the Torah itself. If a prophet speaks presumptuously in the name of HaShem, or in the name of false gods, he must be put to death, and one of the signs that HaShem did not speak through such a prophet is that the prediction did not come true, the word was not fulfilled.

One hundred percent accuracy. No exceptions. No guesses. Only speaking exactly what HaShem tells you to say, when He tells you to say it. No second chances. Speak falsely once, and you’re subject to a death penalty.

That’s a high standard. But it’s understandable, as well, because by this Biblical standard, prophets were representatives of HaShem. If there were false words found in their mouths, that would reflect on God. And is there ever a false word that flows from the mouth of God? Of course not.

By this high standard, all the secular so-called prophets of our time would never have lasted very long.

And this is why this label of “false prophet,” if the Hebrew tradition about Yonah is accurate, would be such a source of concern. It doesn’t take many people calling you a false prophet before someone’s going to act on that. It is reasonable to surmise that under such circumstances and background, the prophet Yonah could very well have been in fear of his life, and perhaps was even no longer welcomed in the Land.

With this insight, it becomes more understandable why Yonah might be hesitant. After all, this isn’t the first time he’s been asked to declare a day of destruction against an entire city. It’s happened before, and the people repented and the city was spared.

Keep in mind that in the ancient world, in Yonah’s time, there was really only two places for someone like Yonah to be. He could dwell in the Land of his people, or he could dwell among the nations. If indeed there is evil speech—lashon hara—circulating about Yonah in the Land of Isra’el, then one of those options, in his mind, has already been eliminated. If he is being called a false prophet, this is no casual insult or nickname; it’s the shadow of death hanging over him.

And so, all Yonah has left to him is to live among the nations.

And then, as the book of Yonah opens, God calls for him to give a repeat performance, this time against a city among the nations. In Yonah’s mind, the fear for his own life was likely great. He’d been called to prophesy against Yerushalayim, the city repented and was spared, and as a result he’s called a false prophet in the Land of Isra’el.

Now, if he follows God’s command, he fears the same thing will happen; the people will repent, and even the nations will offer no refuge for him. And Yonah’s struggle, many have observed, is against the seemingly contradictory character qualities of God. Namely, that he had been told by God to speak of destruction against at least one city and perhaps another, and yet labeled a false prophet when God holds off that destruction in favor of showing His mercy. How can both things be true?

You see, just like us today, even a prophet like Yonah sometimes had a hard time understanding the mysteries of HaShem. He struggled with the same questions. How can he be considered a prophet, if the destruction HaShem instructs him to foretell doesn’t come to pass? That is the fuel to this fire of evil speech against Yonah. Tied into it is this idea that God is not like a man who changes His mind with the wind, yet He is a compassionate and forgiving God as well. These seem, to our mind, to be contradictions. Therefore, they seem mysterious.

Let’s read deeper into the Yonah narrative. As we all know, he hops a boat to Tarshish, but a storm comes up and threatens to kill all on board. Yonah tells those he is with to toss him into the sea, and the storm will pass. They are reluctant to do so, but eventually feel they have no choice, and ask God not to hold the blood of Yonah against them.

Then comes the huge fish. The breed of fish is not named as a whale, even though that is often assumed. Some Hebrew traditions hold that it may have even been Leviatan, the great creature of the deep. Whatever it might have been, however, is not of great importance to our purposes. The point is that Yonah is swallowed and spends three days and three nights in the belly of this large fish.

And the second chapter of Yonah demonstrates what that time in the belly of the fish brings out in him. Let’s read the prayer he prays as he rests in the belly of the large fish, starting in:

Yonah 2:3-10
Out of my distress I called to ADONAI,
and he answered me;
from the belly of Sh’ol I cried,
and you heard my voice.
For you threw me into the deep,
into the heart of the seas;
and the flood enveloped me;
all your surging waves passed over me.
I thought, “I have been banished from your sight,”
But I will again look at your holy temple.
The water surrounded me,
threatened my life,
the deep closed over me,
seaweed twined around my head.
I was going down to the bottoms of the mountains,
to a land whose bars would close me in forever;
but you brought me up alive from the pit,
ADONAI my God!
As my life was ebbing away,
I remembered ADONAI;
and my prayer came in to you,
into your holy temple.
“Those who worship vain idols
give up their source of mercy;
but I, speaking my thanks aloud,
will sacrifice to you;
what I have vowed, I will pay.
Salvation comes from ADONAI.

Now, consider for a moment how that last line would be read in Hebrew. It reads, “Yeshuatah La’ADONAI.” Salvation comes from HaShem. Or, Yeshua comes from the LORD.

Yeshua, the Messiah, the salvation of Isra’el, comes from the LORD. Yeshuatah La’ADONAI. That is the final confession of Yonah in the belly of the big fish. Yeshua comes from the LORD. That is the confession that regains Yonah his freedom, his second chance to obey HaShem’s command.

Now, this is where some rabbinic traditions get a little, shall we say, poetic? There are traditions that suggest that Yonah lived in complete comfort in the belly of this big fish, using its eyes as windows into the sea, to observe all of God’s undersea wonders, and that a huge diamond shed light on the entire area.

Of course, we know such things could never be, and are certainly not suggested by the text. Nor would they lead to such a prayer of humility. Nor would they lead to Yonah’s change of heart.

Yonah’s prayer affirms God’s goodness amid Yonah’s own rebellion. It compares his surroundings in the big fish to she’ol, which is often translated as “the pit,” “the grave,” or even “the abode of death.”

And if we imagine for a moment the possibility of Yonah living inside a large fish for three days, we can paint a portrait of how he must have looked on the shores of Ninveh after being spewed up by the fish.

As a result of the digestive juices, most of his clothes were probably in tatters. It’s possible Yonah suffered bites, acidic burns and other wounds. His hair would have at least have been disheveled, if not burned away. I mean, Yonah was very likely half-digested. He probably hadn’t eaten in all that time, and it’s likely he smelled pretty bad, too.

While God did spare his life, Yonah did not show up on the shores of Ninveh in a smart three-piece tuxedo, a perfect haircut, and a smile on his face, looking like the modern-day concept of an evangelist. This is a man who, by admission in his own prayer, has almost literally been to the abode of death and back again.

So when Yonah, looking this way, starts to march around Ninveh shouting, “In forty days, Ninveh will be overthrown!” in Yonah 3:4b, it’s no small wonder that we’re told he’d barely finished his first day of prophesying against Ninveh before the people of that great city believed God. The message was coming from someone who looked at least half-dead himself!

All the people of Ninveh then begin to wear sackcloth and ashes and repent from their wickedness. Now, that’s a nice, tidy little phrase, but I think we miss the extent of it with our modern, Western ears and preconceived notions. This was not just an, “Oops, I sinned. Sorry, God” moment. Not at all.

In his book, Legends of the Jews, on page 251 of volume four, Ginzberg writes of the Ninveh repentance these words:

Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews
The penance of the Ninevites did not stop at fasting and praying. Their deeds showed that they had determined to lead a better life. If a man had usurped another’s property, he sought to make amends for his iniquity; some went so far as to destroy their palaces in order to be able to give back a single brick to the rightful owner. Of their own accord others appeared before the courts of justice, and confessed their secret crimes and sins, known to none beside themselves, and declared themselves ready to submit to well-merited punishment, though it be death that was decreed against them.

Now, the words of the King of Ninveh are problematic to some in Yonah 3:9, where, after ordering all this repentance, we read this quote from the King:

Yonah 3:9
“Who knows? Maybe God will change his mind, relent, and turn from his fierce anger; and then we won’t perish.”

It’s stated very similarly in the Masoretic text and translated that way. Yet the way it’s worded trips people up. We know elsewhere that God has revealed about himself that He “isn’t like a man, who changes His mind.”

Yet it’s an imperfect translation that stops us.

Back in the days just before the days of Messiah Yeshua, as the Aramaic language grew in popular use in Isra’el, the rabbis of that day decided to translate the Tenakh into Aramaic, so God’s message could be more widely understood by all.

These efforts gave rise to what is known as the Aramaic Targums. These were very liberal translations because the scribes in charge of the translation knew that some concepts easily understood in Hebrew wouldn’t carry over to the new tongue and culture, so they made efforts to expand on the text, adding in extra insights and explanations, and sometimes going so far as to add in contextual information, Hebrew traditions and folklore that were not part of the Torah text, but helped capture their understanding of Torah at that time.

For example, the passage in Numbers that says, “a star shall rise out of Jacob” would drop the poetic expression in this Aramaic rendering. If the rabbis of that time believed “star” to be a reference to Messiah, they’d simply render the verse, “Messiah shall rise out of Jacob.”

So while the Aramaic Targums are not a hundred percent reliable as literal translations of the text, they are useful for understanding the Hebrew Tenakh, as it was popularly understood in the days of Yeshua and His talmidim.

Thus, there is help for us, to be found in an Aramaic Targum of the book of Yonah. The Targum renders the King of Ninveh’s words quite differently. Instead of suggesting God changes him mind, it reads:

Targum Jonah 3:9
“Whoever knows that there are sins on his conscience, let him repent of them and we will be pitied before the Lord.”

So, under this Targum rendering, God does not change His mind; He shows pity. That is more consistent with our understanding of HaShem.

And this gets to the heart of the whole conflict Yonah faced.

Was the charge against Yonah accurate? Was he truly a false prophet, simply because he may have prophesied the destruction of Yerushalayim and it did not come to pass? Was he truly a false prophet, because he prophesied the destruction of Ninveh and it did not come to pass?

Of course not.

His prophecy was true because had those in Ninveh not turned completely away from their wickedness, God certainly would have carried out his destruction of Ninveh. It is not accurate to call Yonah a false prophet, simply because a city he said would be destroyed was not immediately destroyed. He would only be a false prophet if he said the city would be destroyed, and then the city was not destroyed even though they did not repent.

This is another key to understanding these dueling aspects of God. He will do what he says, but He will also show mercy and forgiveness when repentance is genuine. God’s pity, His mercy, does not make Yonah a false prophet.

However, that does not mean all is well with Yonah. There’s trouble brewing, and a deeper message to this book of Yonah. Let’s start reading again in:

Yonah 3:10-4:2
When God saw by their deeds that they had turned from their evil way, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.

But this was very displeasing to Yonah, and he became angry. He prayed to ADONAI, “Now, ADONAI, didn’t I say this would happen, when I was still in my own country? That’s why I tried to get away to Tarshish ahead of time! I know you were a God who is mericful and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in grace, and that you relent from inflicting punishment.”

Before we continue, don’t those words sound familiar? Where have we heard them before? Well, of course, in:

Exodus 34:6-7
And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.”

So it’s clear that Yonah knew his Torah. He’s quoting Exodus here, even as he’s expressing his frustration and anger toward God.

And I must say, one of the wonderful aspects of the Hebrew prophets, I think, is that even when they are upset, they do not speak falsely about God. Can you imagine, even in your anger, what it would be like if you constantly told yourself the truth of who God was and is? If we never allowed ourselves, as we can so often be tempted to do, to place blame and condemnation for our own action on God, how much better off we might be.

It’s a quality we see in the book of Job, and it’s a quality we see when Yonah’s in the belly of the fish, and we see it again even here. So let’s continue reading:

Yonah 4:3-4
Therefore, ADONAI, please, just take my life away from me; it’s better for me to be dead than alive!” ADONAI asked, “Is it right for you to be so angry?”

Now, to my ears at least, that’s always seemed a little extreme.

“God, you’re too merciful! You’re too forgiving! Just kill me now!”

Yet, funny as it may seem out of context, Yonah’s facing, for him, a serious issue. He’s called upon Yonah to prophesy the destruction of a city in the Land of Isra’el, only to have the city spared and to be referred to as a false prophet; and now the same thing has happened in the nations. For Yonah, there is nowhere left to turn.

For, you see, part of what we see in Yonah is not ridiculously suicidal despair over God’s mercy. What we see is something that probably hits close to home for many of us: Jonah has allowed the impressions of other people to matter more to him than God’s impression of him.

Yonah has been obedient. He’s been a truthful prophet. But because the people see him differently, he despairs. You see, my theory is this: Yonah had so lost his perspective that he was more interested in achieving a specific end result than he was in seeing God’s purposes fulfilled.

The opinions of others mattered to Yonah so much that he’d rather see a city full of people destroyed, than to see them repent. In essence, Yonah’s failing is that he wanted to be right. He wanted to be right more than he wanted God to be worshipped.

So we get the castor-bean plant episode where God raises up a vine overnight to provide Yonah shade, and then kills the same plant the next day. God’s purpose is to remind Yonah of His sovereignty. But Yonah expresses again that he feels he’d be better off dead than alive, which elicits this response from God in:

Yonah 4:9-11
God asked Yonah, “Is it right for you to be so angry about the castor-bean plant?” He answered, “Yes, it’s right for me to be so angry that I could die!” ADONAI said, “You’re concerned over the castor-bean plant, which cost you no effort; you didn’t make it grow; it came up in a night and perished in a night. So shouldn’t I be concerned about the great city of Ninveh, in which there are more than 120,000 people who don’t know their right hand from their left, not to mention all the animals?”

The simplicity of the message of Yonah can be misleading. While it’s easy to write off as a children’s lesson about being forgiving, there is much more here.

One intriguing aspect is a story that has, by many rabbis, been attributed to be connected to Yonah.

In I Kings 17, we read about how the prophet Elijah visited a widow and her son and how the son died after eating a meal provided by the prophet. Elijah then takes the boy up to the attic, prays for G-d’s mercy, and the life of the boy is restored. Although the text of I Kings does not name this son of a widow by name, rabbinic tradition holds that his was, in fact, Yonah, who would become a disciple of Elijah and, later, his successor, Elisha.

While we cannot be completely sure this tradition is true, since the boy is not named in the biblical text itself, it certainly lends more background to how Yonah reacts to the merciful actions of ADONAI.

If true, his life has been a pattern of brushes with death and restoration by God. One would imagine Yonah would appreciate more than most God’s abundant mercy, and yet because he has become more concerned with the opinion of others than the opinion of God, he despairs over God’s mercy… mercy he himself has benefitted from both in the text of Yonah, and possibly in other ways suggested by Jewish tradition.

When explaining the purpose of the book of Yonah, the Jewish Encyclopedia has this to say:

Jewish Encyclopedia
[Jonah, as] J. Wellhausen has best expressed it, is directed “against the impatience of the Jewish believers, who are fretting because, notwithstanding all predictions, the antitheocratic world-empire has not yet been destroyed;—because ADONAI is still postponing His judgment of the heathen, giving them further time for repentance. ADONAI, it is hinted, is hoping that they will turn from their sins in the eleventh hour; and He has compassion for the innocent ones, who would perish with the guilty.”

Ultimately, isn’t this a struggle we’ve all felt at one time or another? We rejoice when God saves us, and then despair when we observe the evil of others. It becomes easy to forget that we, too, were once in the crosshairs of His wrath.

And to procure atonement, it would be wise to take a lesson from the Ninvehites. Repentance is not lip-service toward regret for doing wrong, or for being caught at doing wrong. It’s not just words. Words of repentance must be accompanied by actions. We should seek to make whole those whom we’ve harmed, rather than offer mere words of apology.

And we must put our old ways behind us. As it says in the Mishnah in:

TA’AN 16A
“He that confesses his sin and still clings to it is likened to a man that holds in his hand a defiling object; though he bathes in all the waters of the world he is not cleansed; but the moment he casts the defiling object from him a single bath will cleanse him, as it is said (Prov. 28:13): He who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy.”

Therefore, perhaps, returning now to where we began in this week’s parashah with the actions of Pinchas, perhaps we can better understand what drove him to such extreme actions. To allow in the wilderness community even one member to continue in the very sins the rest of them were repenting for would have nullified and made void all the deaths that were being carried out. Torah tells us that Pinchas’ actions spared lives that day; yet even with his actions, twenty-four thousand Hebrews still died.

That can lead some folks to think God is capricious, that he delights in the taking of life. May that never be said of HaShem! We must remember that no single verse, no single chapter, no single book of the Tenakh or the B’rit HaDasha exists in a vacuum. We must strive to take in all that God has revealed to us in all of His Word.

So the next time someone suggests to you that stories like the tale of Pinchas paint HaShem as cruel and unconcerned with the deaths of others, remind them of the book of Yonah, where, thanks to the genuine repentance of the people, and despite the anguish His mercy caused Yonah, God spared an entire city because of the innocent lives, the great number of the people, and even the innocent animals that would have perished alongside the wicked.

Ninveh was no Sodom; it was no Gomorrah. Had they not repented, that city could have joined them in their destruction. Yet the book of Yonah shows that God will show His mercy, rather than His judgment, to all who walk away from wickedness with a pure heart toward ADONAI.

May all of us, like Jonah, cry out, Yeshuatah La’ADONAI. Salvation comes from our God. Yeshua, the Messiah, comes from our God!

Shabbat Shalom.