As we saw in the Introduction, Jonah was a prophet and the only other prophecy that is recorded is that predicting the extension of Israel's borders. So perhaps he was used to giving "nice" words! Assyria, whose capital city was Nineveh, was the major threat to Israel. Moreover, Israel's sin meant that she was heading for a fall.
Against this background Jonah is told to go to Nineveh and warn them that their evil has come before the Lord. Now this would presumably be a rather dangerous venture for Jonah to embark upon, for it is unlikely that the Ninevites would take too kindly to an Israeli prophet telling them how to live their lives. If we knew nothing more of the story, then fear would be the most obvious explanation of why Jonah decided to flee, but as we will see later this does not appear to be reason.
Jonah decided to flee from the presence of the Lord. This is a very human reaction, when God is telling us to do things we don't want to do we seek to flee from His presence. However, as Psalm 139 shows, this is a futile exercise, for we cannot escape from God, and Jonah was about to discover this.
Jonah ran away to sea, but God sent a great storm and the ship he was on was threatened with being sunk. Jonah, however, was fast asleep. Now why was this? Maybe he was just so relived to be away from God, as he thought, or maybe he had faith that the storm would not result in death, or perhaps he was just so exhausted after running away.
The crew and the captain apparently knew about Jonah's faith. Either that had worked out what it was, or he had told them. The captain tells him to put his faith into action. Sometimes the world is more interested in us activating our faith than we are. When faced with circumstances they cannot control they turn to the church to call on God.
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