The Book of Jonah opens with the prophet hearing God’s voice and moving in the opposite direction. This opening part of the first half of Jonah deals with God’s call, Jonah’s movement away from Nineveh, and the surprisingly faithful response of the pagans to the dilemma (storm) Jonah has put them in. Jonah goes east when God called him west. This causes a ‘storm’ that the pagan sailors recognise as of divine origin even while Jonah sleeps ‘the sleep of sorrow’ - without care for himself or them. In this story it is the pagans who behave both ethically and communally - not God’s prophet. Eventually Jonah behaves in a self-sacrificial manner, the storm ceases, and the pagans repent and give glory to God. Jonah is guilty of more than disobedience here. He is also using God for our own ends - religion to avoid community and neighbour. The story highlights a goodness and openness of those beyond the people of God and God’s determination to bring about our obedience for God’s end - not ours.

Our reading opens with the unlikely continuation of Jonah’s story. By all rights, the account of this prophet should end at 1:16. Jonah has been willingly cast into the sea - an unknown space that no one returns from. God, however, has not finished with Jonah. A large fish is ’appointed’ by YHWH to through the ‘belly of Sheol’ (v2). God is active even in the depths of the unknown. The repeated use of the Hebrew for ‘down’ throughout chapter 1 culminates in verse 6: ‘I went down…yet you brought me up…’. Jonah’s Psalm (a collection of Psalms) piques with his recognition ‘Salvation belongs to the YHWH’ - the same recognition that the sailors arrived at earlier in 1:16. Here is a God who reigns in heaven, earth, and hell. It is all too often the case that it is only when we have sunk to our lowest that we cry out to God.