Ninevah and the Fish Express

The narrative of Jonah being sent to deliver a message for God to Nineveh is perhaps one of the most familiar in the Bible. Not wanting to deliver the message to Nineveh, Jonah went in the opposite direction, to Tarshish, and ended up in the belly of a great fish.  After three days and three nights, the fish, evidently not liking the taste of Old Testament prophets, belched up Jonah onto the shores of Nineveh:

Jonah 2:10

And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.

 When God commanded Jonah a second time to deliver a message to the Ninevites, Jonah obeyed.

 Jonah 3:1–4

1Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying,

2“Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.”

3So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days’ journey in breadth.

4Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”

 Jonah walked a third of the way into the city, proclaiming God’s message to the Ninevites, who received his message with great humility. While we won’t go into the details of what takes place in the rest of the book of Jonah, what is interesting to consider is that the Ninevites worshipped Dagon, the fish god who was represented as half man and half fish.

 Just imagine being a Ninevite, who worships a fish god all his life, seeing a man being barfed up on to the shore by a large fish. 

 Wouldn’t he think that person was a direct messenger from the fish god, someone to listen to?  Wouldn’t he be someone special coming out of the belly of a fish?

 Just imagine the electric buzz reverberating throughout the city as Jonah made his way into the heart of Nineveh, proclaiming, “Forty days, and Nineveh will be overthrown.”  People stopped to stare and point at Jonah: “That’s the man that came out of the belly of a fish!” Others declared, “It’s miraculous. I saw him come out of the mouth of the fish with my own eyes!”  Still others said, “We had better listen to his words because Dagon must have sent him!” No wonder they immediately repented and accepted Jonah’s message, delivered on God’s behalf.

 While the Scriptures do not give such details, of course, it is curious that God chose to deliver Jonah to the shores of Nineveh by means of a large fish. God could have transported Jonah in any way He chose—via boat, via flotsam, via a strong wind. But the fact that God chose a large fish to deliver his prophet to a people who worshipped a fish god can’t be incidental.  Perhaps this is just God’s sense of humor. It certainly strikes me as funny. Whatever the case, I think it’s interesting that God chose to deliver his prophet to Nineveh via the Fish Express to a people who worshipped a fish god.