The Book Of Jonah

Jonah, son of Amittai (Jonah 1:1), was an active prophet during the reign of Jeroboam, son of Jehoash, the king of Israel (2 Kings 14:23-25) in the Biblical account.  He is tasked with going to Nineveh, the capital city of the Assyrian Empire, to preach against it because of its great evil (Jonah 1:2).  While the first chapter of Jonah does not specify the sin in question, 3:8 provides slightly more detail.  The ruler of Nineveh proclaims that his people are to give up their violence along with their broader immoral ways (along with many other parts of the Bible, the book of Jonah clearly presents morality as universal and having nothing to do with being a Jew or Gentile).  Violence is not always evil, but Yahweh's Torah law makes it clear what the distinctions are, and Assyria is recorded as using very unbiblical forms of torture that go far beyond 40 lashes (Deuteronomy 25:1-3) or cutting off someone's hand (25:11-12) for limited, particular sins.  The Assyrians are renowned for flaying people and displaying human skins, among other extreme brutalities.  The book of Jonah leaves which illicit acts of violence the city repents of unspoken, but the king does repent and instructs others to do the same (Jonah 3:10).

The prophet has already said while inside the great fish that "'Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs'" (2:8), and still he is disappointed and hostile when a pagan city does turn from its sins.  He does not want that same grace to be extended to the citizens of Nineveh.  No, it cannot be illegitimate to go so far as to hate unrepentant sinners as God does (Leviticus 20:23, Deuteronomy 25:15-16, Psalm 5:5-6, 11:5, Proverbs 11:20).  The text does not say if Jonah hated the residents of Nineveh or not, but it does eventually reveal that he was reluctant to go to the city not out of fear.  He admits he expected God to relent in his threatened punishment out of love: "'This is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish.  I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity'" (Jonah 4:2).

His error is not hating the Ninevites and this would not necessarily be immoral as long as he did not mistreat them himself.  It is hoping that they would not repent and wanting God to destroy them anyway.  The prophet of Yahweh is greatly displeased and angry (4:1) precisely because God had compassion on them "and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened" (3:10).  The idea that only the deity described in the New Testament loves and accepts repentance from practically anyone is asinine and assumed; the Old Testament describes God as loving Israel and foreigners (Deuteronomy 10:18-19), inviting all who are willing, regardless of ancestry, to become his follower (Isaiah 56:3).  It is also in the Old Testament that his love is said to outlast and eclipse his anger (Psalm 30:5), which parallels how the wicked will be exterminated in hell and undergo finite torment at most (Matthew 10:28, 2 Peter 2:6), yet the righteous and redeemed will live forever (John 3:16).

After God asks Jonah if he has any right to be angry over his mercy (Jonah 4:4)--mercy is an arbitrary thing by default that never has to be shown to anyone, so there is no basis either for demanding it or opposing it in itself--the prophet decides to wait to see what would happen to Nineveh (4:5).  God directly causes a vine to grow to provide shade, something Jonah was very delighted by (4:6).  He then has a worm chew the vine to the point of withering (4:7).  With his head now exposed to the sun, Jonah wishes he was dead and insists he is angry enough to die (4:8-9).  God again asks in this time if he has a right to be angry.  Appealing to the greater worth of any and all humans than plants (Genesis 1:26-27), Yahweh points out that Jonah has cared for a mere vine that he did not even cause to grow and that only lived for a day, while Nineveh is full of more than 120,000 people lost in their wickedness, and many animals as well (4:10-11).  "'Should I not be concerned about that great city?'" God asks.

Here, the book of Jonah ends.  There is no additional verse and thus the weight of Yahweh's words and the ideas behind them is left as the final thing for readers to dwell on.  The moral value of animal life is held up as reason enough to be hesitant to destroy the city, though the human presences, however marred by sin they are (and some horrendously great sins at that in light of what is elsewhere ascribed to the Assyrians), are what God is most concerned with.  The command for Jonah to prophesy in Nineveh (given what Jonah said he knew about God beforehand) and God's compassion towards the repentant inhabitants are examples in the Old Testament of how Yahweh does not damn Gentiles for being Gentiles and wants every fallen person to be saved (2 Peter 3:8-9).

To hate sin and sinners can be rational and righteous.  God despises both according the aforementioned verses and more.  Still, he loves not just some people, but all.  If love is what drives him to show mercy, as even the book of Jonah acknowledges, and he wants everyone to repent, then he loves everyone, Jew and Gentile.  The Biblical deity does not change (Malachi 3:6, James 1:17).  His affection and mercy are not novel in the New Testament.  Rather, the New Testament elaborates upon the divine love that is already established long before.  It is not just Israel that Yahweh shows mercy to.  Jonah dislikes this, and God draws attention to his hypocrisy.  As difficult as it can be to accept mercy directed towards the true worst of sinners, far more difficult than accepting mercy directed at oneself in some cases, to oppose it when God is willing to withhold deserved destruction could never be right.