Sermon on the Rogation of the Ninevites

A Persian Miniature illustrating the Book of Jonah

By Bp Joseph (Ancient Church of the West)

On January 22nd, the Christian East began the Fast of the Rogation of Nineveh in the East Syriac, Indian, Syriac and Chaldean Traditions, when the people of Nineveh lament their ancestor’s sins and repent at the preaching of Jonah, who brought the Message of God to the Mesopotamian nation and prepared them, like the Jews, to be a chosen nation in service to Christ’s Holy Gospel! 

In the late 19th Century, the Anglican scholar, the Rev. Henry Burgess, translated the Rogation of the Ninevites for English use, and the Assyrian Church of the East now uses this version for the English-language commemoration of this important, Far Eastern Christian fast. 

It begins...

(Refrain) 

“LORD, I HAVE ESCAPED FROM INIQUITY, 

LlKE A BIRD FROM THE MIDST OF THE SNARE;

IN THE NEST OF THY CROSS I WILL MAKE MY REFUGE

WHICH THE SERPENT CANNOT APPROACH.

BEHOLD, LORD, I HAVE FLED FROM MY SINS,

LlKE A DOVE FROM THE MESHES OF THE NET;

I WILL DWELL ON HIGH IN THY CROSS,

TO WHICH THE DRAGON CANNOT REACH.

A Jew among the wicked.

That mighty one ascended to the city,

And disturbed it with words of terror.

By means of the Hebrew preacher,

And became tumultuous like the ocean,

Through Jonah, who came up from the sea.

Like waves in the midst of the deep.

Jonah went down to the sea and troubled it;

He ascended to the dry land and terrified it:

The sea raged when he fled away.

By prayer the sea was quieted.

The dry land also by repentance.

He offered prayer in the great fish,

And the Ninevites in the mighty city.

And supplication the Ninevites.

Jonah fled from God,

And the Ninevites from holiness.

Yea, both of them, like criminals.

They offered repentance to her,

And were both delivered,

She preserved Jonah in the sea,

And the Ninevites in the midst of the dry land.

That it was proper the penitent should live.

Grace gave to him, in himself,

An example on behalf of sinners;

That as he was drawn out of the sea,

He should draw out the sinking city.

By Jonah who sprang from the deep.

“LORD, I HAVE ESCAPED FROM INIQUITY, 

LlKE A BIRD FROM THE MIDST OF THE SNARE; 

IN THE NEST OF THY CROSS I WILL MAKE MY REFUGE

WHICH THE SERPENT CANNOT APPROACH.

BEHOLD, LORD, I HAVE FLED FROM MY SINS,

LlKE A DOVE FROM THE MESHES OF THE NET;

I WILL DWELL ON HIGH IN THY CROSS,

TO WHICH THE DRAGON CANNOT REACH.”

Byzantine Icon of the "Resurrection of the Prophet Jonah", by Jonathan Pageau 

Jonah as a Caricature of Jewish Exclusion and Superiority 

Jonah’s name means “Dove” or “Messenger” and he is described as the son of “Amittai”, which means “Truth”. Jonah, another “victim of the prophetic schema” is portrayed by the Scripture as having no “back story” (although the Jewish apocryphal biographies translated into Greek from the 1^st-4^th Centuries, noted in Epiphanius of Salamis’ “Lives of the Prophets”, says that he was the boy Elijah revived in 1 Kings 17), a man without a reason for being other than being a “Messenger of Truth”, which gives him both a reason for existence and a noble lineage that supersedes all personal interests. God’s word is simple: “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before Me.” Unlike a good prophet, however, Jonah maintains his individuality and ability to choose, deciding that he does not want to go to Nineveh or the Assyrians because of some deeply-held aversion to offering a chance to repent to those who are undeserving of it. God says “go” and Jonah runs away from the East of Mesopotamia to go to Tarshish, which was probably ancient Carthage or Spain. Jonah thinks that by changing his topographical position, he will “Go down from the presence of the Lord.”

In what seems to be the point of the whole book, God shows Himself concerned with all people and to be all-powerful over the created world. He caused a storm at sea to inhibit the passage of the prophet. The sailors were afraid, each one calling on his god for salvation. They call on Jonah, “Arise, call upon thy God, if it so be that God will think upon us, so that we do not die.” After casting lots, it becomes apparent that the fault was with Jonah, and Jonah is then compelled to tell them his story. He tells them, “I am a Hebrew; and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who hath made the sea and the dry land.” This makes the sailors afraid, especially since they know that as creator of both the sea and dry land, Jonah’s God must be the reason for the storm. 

Jonah goes on to tell them his story, explaining that he was running from God. He also tells them to throw him overboard and resolve the issue. However, the men are aware of the danger of making a human sacrifice of the only man onboard that worships the God of Heaven and Earth, and attempt to row out of the storm. Finally, after all other options are exhausted, they throw Jonah overboard. 

This action seems insignificant to us today, but it shows that God was completely unaffected by the ancient world’s theory of local deity’s non-overlapping spheres of influence. According to this theory, the Jewish local God should have been limited by a change of venue. Instead, Jonah affirms to the mystified heathen sailors that it is his God who made the sea and the dry land (all the habitable places of dominion), and that the only relief from the storm is to throw him overboard. The rightfully horrified sailors refuse (the logical conclusion that, if this was a worshipper of the one, true God, and if this God was already mad, it might make things worse to kill the one man who was associated with this God). Jonah’s understanding also seems to be unrealistic, because the only assumed motive for his explanation would be suicide. He hated the Ninevites so much that he would rather die than go deliver God’s word to them? 

After Jonah is abandoned to the waves and God has him swallowed by the great fish, Jonah sings a song of repentance and faithfulness to God, constructed from a string of quotations from the Psalms. After much crying and lamenting, Jonah finally relents: “I will pay that which I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord.” With this the prophet is promptly vomited up, where he receives the word of the Lord the second time. 

“Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it what I tell you!” Having learned his lesson, Jonah gets up and goes to Nineveh, as the Lord had originally instructed. Jonah spent an unknown amount of time getting to the great city of Nineveh, which the Scripture says was three day’s journey across, and after he had traveled into the city a day, he began to cry, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” 

Remarkably, the people of Nineveh believed God, and immediately proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth. Word of this strange prophets oracle came to the king, and he put on sackcloth and sat in ashes, and proclaimed a fast in Nineveh for all people and animals from food and water. “Let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from His fierce anger, that we perish not?”

Jonah Preaching to the People of Nineveh (by Paul Gustave Louis Christophe Doré)

The story tells us that God immediately saw their works and turned away from the evil that he had purposed for Nineveh. But, this “exceedingly displeased” Jonah and he became angry. 

Then, Jonah, who had apparently repented in the belly of the whale prays one of the most honest prayers in Scripture - “I pray Thee, O Lord, was not this what I said when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish; for I knew that Thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness, and repentest of the evil. Therefore now, O Lord, take, I beseech Thee, my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” Jonah did not take delight in God’s forgiveness, but chose anger and “righteous indignation” instead, thinking that this was somehow the better path. By such prayers, Jonah shows himself to be the patron saint of religious fundamentalists everywhere! 

God responds, “Are you right in your anger?” And, thus, the whole issue is answered in full. The attitudes of hate, judgment and wrath that Jonah harbored were wrong. 

A Medieval Illustration of the Book of Jonah, Comparing Jonah to Christ's Resurrection 

But, even with this profound answer, the story continues. Jonah goes out of the city and sits on the east side, making himself a hut where he can see what happens to the city. He apparently thought that God was joking about His forgiveness. God then caused a gourd to grow up over Jonah, that it would shade Jonah from the beating sun. The Scripture says that Jonah “was exceeding glad for the gourd.” Then God caused a worm to eat the gourd on the morning of the next day, and the gourd withered away. After the gourd was gone, God caused the wind and heat to bear down on Jonah, so much so that Jonah wishes he were dead. And God said to Jonah, “Is it right that you are angry over the gourd?” This repetition ties the unmerited mercy of the gourd’s protection and God’s mercy towards the Ninevites together, and shows how Jonah was glad for mercy from the burning heat and schorching sun for himself, but was angry when such mercy was extended to others. Jonah, still missing the analogy, and to bring the point home to those who would hear the Scriptures later, responds… “I do well to be angry, even unto death.” Then God said, “You hast had pity on the gourd for which you did not work, nor made to grow, which came up in a night and withered in a night. And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand, and also many cattle?” With this, God again reiterates that He will have “mercy and not sacrifice” (Hosea 6:6, Matthew 9:13), that the “goodness of God leads to repentance”(Romans 2:4), and that He will “show mercy on those on whom He will show mercy.”(Romans 9:15) It is not for mankind to judge or to condemn our brothers, but to rejoice that we receive mercy as the worst and least worthy! 

Jonah, the Problem with a Literal Interpretation, and Christ’s Use of the Story -

Jonah is one of the most interesting books in the Old Testament. The connection of this narrative with the Early Christian themes of death and resurrection, repentance and redemption are many. Christ himself used the story of Jonah in the Gospels to make a point. He famously stated in Matthew 12:39 and Luke 11:29, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” Theologians and leaders have often argued about its literal nature, seeing an allegorical interpretation as incompatible with Christ’s saying – “The men of Nineveh shall rise up in the Judgment with this generation and shall condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, a greater than Jonah is here.” (Luke 11:32, Matthew 12:41) There are also unresolved problems of geography and scale in the Book of Jonah, leading many, including the Jewish Scribes of the Babylonian Literalist Tradition, to believe that the story was told in hyperbole as a morality play, not as a literal recounting of historical events. 

Regardless of the literal or figurative nature of the Book of Jonah, the way that Christ analyzed the meaning of Jonah is consistent with the Jewish Tradition as a whole. In all Jewish commentaries and interpretations, the book is meant to show God’s willingness to forgive if mankind will repent, accentuating the internal process of human fickleness, disobedience, and eventual repentance in the re-telling. This is why Jonah is to be read liturgically on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, in the Jewish Tradition. Jonah’s sin is the desire for judgment and truth, rather than repentance and mercy. His mistake was the belief that he could escape from God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, and his misunderstanding of the Jewish Covenant, which he believed excluded (rather than, of prophetic necessity, included) the Gentiles! 

On this Rogation Fast, the Syriac equivalent to the Jewish Day of Atonement in the Eastern Christian Tradition, let us remember the lessons of the Book of Jonah, receive the rebuke against hateful religiosity and reform our behavior to reflect the mercy and grace of God for mankind, Who is always willing to forgive and accept us if we repent.

Another Persian Illustration of the Book of Jonah, Showing the "Great Fish" as a Chinese Golden Carp