My colleague, Dr. Brian Turner, is a master teacher. Last week he drew my attention to a line from Jonah 1:17 while covering a class for me:
“Now the LORD provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah….”
Translations vary for the underlined verb: designated, prepared, ordained. They are all about the same. Yet it was Brian’s next question that stuck with me.
“Was that fish a punishment or a gift?”
Well?
Of course, the two need not always be opposed. In Jonah’s story as we have it, the thing that kept him from drowning was the monster that swallowed him.
I use “monster” advisedly since it is the word Jesus chose when recounting Jonah’s story in Matthew 12. In Mosaic of Atonement, I noted how Christ likens his own time in the depths of the earth to Jonah’s sojourn in the belly of a ketous: monster, sea beast, or sea serpent. Why say it that way? (There is, of course, another Greek word for fish [ikthus].)The early church had a field day with allusions to Leviathan and Sheol—and they are not entirely unwarranted.
But for my class, Dr. T’s conclusion was as follows: “That fish rescued Jonah.”
I’ve been thinking about that line ever since, and it feels pregnant with applications:
First, perhaps we ought to exercise some caution before distinguishing what feel like punishments from gifts of saving grace. The DUI. The divorce. The downsizing. All hurt tremendously. But time is needed to know how they might be turned for good.
Second, the line from Jonah reminds us that divine sovereignty is a mysterious but ultimately benevolent doctrine. Don’t believe the press. Though God authors neither evil nor death—he does enlist unlikely incubators in the service of his grace. He’s still preparing fish. Hence even “monsters” and Sheol may turn out to be part of the “all things” that work together for our good. That’s the sign of Jonah of which Jesus spoke.
Third, a deciding factor between punishment or gift was what Jonah chose to do while in the belly of the beast. So too for us. To be merely swallowed by the fruit of foolish choices (or mere bad luck) is not enough. To be clobbered may not change us for the better.
Not every jail cell is rock bottom. Not every diagnosis grants a new lease on life. Not every firing becomes “the best thing that ever happened to me.” What we do next matters.
As Jonah recounts: “I called out of my trouble and distress to the LORD, And He answered me; Out of the belly of Sheol I cried for help, And You heard my voice” (Jonah 2:2).
Of course, it would be wrong to diminish every tragedy or consequence as somehow a sugar-coated blessing in disguise. Not so. Sometimes a fish is just a fish. And some occurrences are just evil, plain and simple. Hence, Isaiah was right to pronounce “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil” (5:20).
Still… I think Dr. T. was right to seize upon the value of this verse: “The LORD provided a huge fish.”
I’ll end with a line from Walter Wink that has always stuck with me when questioning which “monsters” to curse and which to kiss.
“History belongs to the intercessors—those who believe and pray the future into being. But to see the future, it is necessary to kiss the dragon—to embrace the terrifying and the repulsive—only then does it transform.”
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