What has Jonah thinking telling them to throw him into the deep?
Read Jonah 1:7-16
Did Jonah really think God was going to send a large fish to swallow him up and spit him out a few days later right where he needed to go when he asked them to throw him in the water? Seems like a bit of a stretch, doesn’t it? If Jonah really wanted to, don’t you think he could have told the sailors to turn around and the storm would stop? There are so many possibilities for what could have happened, and yet Jonah asks them to throw him in the water; why?
Maybe a better question is why did Jonah ask them to throw him into the deep? To put it another way, why did Jonah ask them to throw him into hell? Remember, being a Jew he would have grown up being afraid of the water, so he’s not planning on swimming to Tarshish, so what is Jonah thinking?
Did you figure it out yet? Jonah wanted to die. His whole view of God was turned upside down by this call to preach salvation to the pagans, so he sells everything and goes to the deep. The storm breaks out and Jonah is sleeping down below while everyone else is in a panic. When blame falls on him, his request is to be thrown into the water and left to die. Jonah is completely done with life.
There are times in our lives when we just want to be done, as if things couldn’t possibly get any worse. It’s in those moments when we meet God, just maybe not always in the way we expect.
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