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Surveying the Text: Zephaniah

Joe Harby on

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Introduction

As with many of the other minor prophets, what we know about the author of the book is basically contained within the book. This book begins with an unusual genealogy, one which means that Zephaniah is probably the great-grandson of King Hezekiah, which would place him in the tribe of Judah. From the nature of the prophecies, we can place his ministry during the reign of his kinsman, Josiah, and this ministry was probably during the early part of Josiah’s reign. He makes reference to the “remnant of Baal” (Zeph. 1:4), and these were dealt with after the discovery of the law in Josiah’s reign (621 B.C.). Nahum and Jeremiah were more or less contemporaries.

The Text

“The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; He will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; He will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing” (Zeph. 3:17).

Summary of the Text

Like the book of Joel, the emphasis here in on the “Day of the Lord” (e.g. compare Zeph. 1:14-18 with Joel 2:1-11 ). And given what we learned about the fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy on the Day of Pentecost, we should locate the final fulfillment of this book in the same way. After Zephaniah introduces himself (1:1), we can break down this short book in this way:

Proclamation of universal judgment (1:2-6);
The Day of YHWH announced (1:7-2:3);
A series of oracles against other nations (2:4-15); Judgment declared against Jerusalem (3:1-5); Judgment on the nations announced (3:6-8);
A great change is approaching (3:9-13);
God bursts into song (3:14-20).

For those who want to believe that Jehovah is not the Lord of lords and King of kings, but rather a regional and much beloved tribal chieftain, note how the voice of prophetic authority never lets this happen. The word of Zephaniah comes against Philistia, Moab,

Ammon, Cush, Assyria, and of course Judah.

The general theme works like this—hopeless corruption now, certain judgment pending, and God’s deliverance as a certainty after that. We see this in the corruptions of Israel in the Old Testament, the cataclysmic judgments that befall her, culminating in 70 A.D., followed by the times of refreshing ushered in by the Messiah of God. These times of refreshing are when we are privileged to live.

Like Wine on the Lees

“And it shall come to pass at that time, That I will search Jerusalem with candles, And punish the men that are settled on their lees: That say in their heart, The Lord will not do good, neither will he do evil” (Zeph. 1:12).

The Lord has never appreciated tepid or lukewarm men and women. The phrase “on the lees” refers to wine that has been laid down in order to settle, undisturbed. However good that might be for wine, it is not good for your soul. If you find yourself saying, “God will not do anything much, either way,” beware. The Lord is walking through Jerusalem, lamp held high, and He is looking for you.

Hidden in the Lord

The name Zephaniah means “YHWH has hidden.” Remember that Zephaniah is probably of the seed royal, and may well have been a prince at Josiah’s court. Ungodly rulers often take a dim view of the seed royal (2 Kings 11:1), and so there may be an echo of deliverance in Zephaniah’s name. Whether that be true or not, he rejoices in the fact that God does in fact know how to hide His beloved.

“Seek ye the Lord, all ye meek of the earth, Which have wrought his judgment; Seek righteousness, seek meekness: It may be ye shall be hid in the day of the Lord’s anger” (Zeph. 2:3).

Even in the day of His wrath, God loves to make distinctions. He took Noah and family into the ark, He got Lot and some of his family out of Sodom, the plagues of Egypt did not fall upon Goshen, and Jesus warned His disciples about when they should flee from Jerusalem. God judges nations—as our nation is currently under judgment—but He is always mindful of His people. Pray that you might be hidden in the day of God’s chastisements. Enjoy life here in Sherwood Forest.

One of the blessings that God offers us is this. Though we are in the midst of it, He will protect us. “A thousand shall fall at thy side, And ten thousand at thy right hand; But it shall not come nigh thee” (Ps. 91:7).

With Singing

Dawn follows the black of midnight. The darkness might be overwhelming and oppressive, but joy comes in the morning. God is a Deliverer who loves deliverance. When He accomplishes it, He sings over it, and over the people He has delivered.

“The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; He will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; He will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing” (Zeph. 3:17).

Note the connection between the removal of fear and joy. In the previous verses, we see the presence of the Lord with us (3:15). God is Immanuel, and this is ours through the Incarnation. God is in our midst. Because of that, He tells us not to fear, and He follows it up with the exhortation to not have our hands be limp (presumably with fear). Why? Because the God who is with us is in our midst, and in our midst He is mighty. His presence is a saving presence, and He rejoices over us. He is content in His love; He rests in His love. He rejoices over us with singing.

Consider the magnitude of our deliverance and salvation. We are delivered—saved, purified, cleansed, put back together, sanctified, justified, made holy, grown up into maturity—to such an extent that God Himself bursts into song at the sight of us.
Is this your view of salvation? Are you preparing to be an everlasting delight to God Himself? Or do you think that at the last minute the lowest ranking scrub angel in the clean-up crew is going to drag you through the Pearly Gates with your shoelaces on fire? What do you think salvation is exactly?

This is something that God really wants us to grasp. Paul prayed this way for the Ephesians, very specifically. He said, “I . . . cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers; that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him: the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints” (Eph. 1:16–18). So when He sings, you should too.

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Surveying the Text: Habakkuk

Joe Harby on

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Introduction

Apart from what can be inferred from this book, we know nothing of the prophet who assembled it. But from the things described, we can see that he was a contemporary of Jeremiah, Nahum, and Zephaniah. The book is delivered sometime between 612 B.C. and 599 B.C.—before Babylon attacked Jerusalem, but after Babylon had become a hegemonic power.

The Text

“Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: But the just shall live by his faith” (Hab. 2:4).

Summary of the Text

In the first place, the structure of the book takes a chiastic form.

A How long must I wait for justice? (1:2-4);
B A great army is coming (1:5-11);
C Why are the less wicked punished by those who are more wicked (1:12-17);
D The just will live by faith (2:1-5);
C’ All wickedness will be put to rights (2:6-20);
B’ A great army from YHWH is coming (3:1-15);
A’ I will wait for justice (3:16-19).

Looking at the flow of the book in another way, we can see this: Habakkuk complains about the predominant corruption (1:1-4). God answers him by saying the Babylonians are going to come in to mete out His judgment on Judah (1:5-11). Habakkuk’s second complaint is that God is using evil men to judge men who are less evil (1:12-2:1). God answers him again by asserting that Babylon will be judged in due course (2:2-5). The next section consists of a series of woes pronounced against Babylon. Think of it as five strokes of a sword—the plunderer plundered (2:6-8), the proud conqueror shamed (2:9-11), the building of the builder is burned (2:12-14), the one who forces someone to drink will be forced to drink shame (2:15-17), and the silent idol remains silent before God (2:18-20). The book then concludes with a grand poetic statement of the prophet’s trust in God (3:1-19).

New Testament Commentary

One portion of this book is quoted three times in the New Testament, and all to the same effect. Paul takes it as his theme for the book of Romans, and we have seen that the verse he uses is at the chiastic hinge of the book of Habakkuk. “For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith” (Rom. 1:17). Paul highlights what the prophet highlights. He makes a similar point in the book of Galatians, which is dedicated to the same theme that the book of Romans is. “But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith” (Gal. 3:11). The author of Hebrews is urging his readers not to give up, not to forsake their duty to persevere. Keep running the race. And why?

“Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him” (Heb. 10:38).

But the first chapter of Habakkuk is also quoted by Paul when he is presenting the gospel to unbelieving Jews. Remember what the original context of Habakkuk was about, and notice how Paul applies it here to the unbelief present in his generation.

“And by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses. Beware therefore, lest that come upon you, which is spoken of in the prophets; Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish: for I work a work in your days, a work which ye shall in no wise believe, though a man declare it unto you” (Acts 13:39–41).

The Great Theme

The difficulty is the problem of evil, and when God promises to deal with that evil, the next difficulty comes in understanding the need for faith—because God rarely deals with these problems in the same way that we would. We know that God does it right by definition, and yet at the same time our moral sense tells us that something is quite wrong. Believing the universe is governed by absolute goodness is the only possible basis for thinking anything could be wrong with it now.

“Although the fig tree shall not blossom, Neither shall fruit be in the vines; The labour of the olive shall fail, And the fields shall yield no meat; The flock shall be cut off from the fold, And there shall be no herd in the stalls: Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation” (Hab. 3:17–18).

By Faith Throughout

Return to the first chapter of Romans. The just shall live by faith. Paul teaches us the doctrine of forensic justification, and this justification is punctiliar—it happens at a point in time. One moment a man is unjustified, and the next moment he is justified. But when he crosses that great border between the land of shadows and the land of the living, the faith that enabled him to cross that border does not evaporate. It does not disappear. It does not float off.

“For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith” (Rom. 1:17). This is a process that encompasses all of life, by necessity. This new life is inaugurated by faith, it is continued by faith, and it culminates in faith. It is by faith from first to last.

But faith requires an object, otherwise we are dealing with the nonsensical exercise of trying to have faith in our faith. Faith is the natural and ordinary response to the perceived faithfulness of God. When God and His Word are seen as faithful, then faith cannot be kept from appearing.

“Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised” (Heb. 11:11 ).

“So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Rom. 10:17). Believing is a verb that requires a direct object, and that direct object must be whatever God has said or done regarding the moment in which you are believing.

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Surveying the Text: Nahum

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Introduction

We know virtually nothing about Nahum, other than that this prophet was a magnificent poet. We have his name, this short masterpiece from him, and the fact that he was probably from Judah, from a town called Elkosh. He prophesied after the fall of Thebes (3:8) in Egypt (664-663 B.C.) but prior to the fall of Nineveh in 612 B.C.

The Text

“The Lord is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; And he knoweth them that trust in him. But with an overrunning flood he will make an utter end of the place thereof, and darkness shall pursue his enemies” (Nahum 1:7–8).

Summary of the Text

The book is a series of fierce taunts and denunciations of Nineveh, that great city of the Assyrians. These denunciations alternate with various reassurances and promises for Judah. After the attribution, the book begins with a triumphant hymn to God the Warrior (1:2-8), which serves as the introduction to the first great oracle (1:9-2:2). This whole thing is an acrostic poem. Nahum then gives us a vision of Nineveh’s ruin (2:3-10), followed up by a taunt (2:11-13). Then comes a series of oracles and taunts about Nineveh’s inevitable collapse (3:1-17), and the book concludes with a satirical dirge over the fallen empire of Assyria (vv. 18-19).

A Little Background

The modern city of Mosul in Iraq is the location of the ancient city of Nineveh. The modern Kurds who live near there are (loosely) descendants of the Medes, who were the people who destroyed Nineveh. One of the images that Nahum uses to taunt the Assyrians is the figure of a lion (2:11-13), a lion without a lair. This was a symbol that the Assyrians used for themselves. Isaiah had used the same image a century earlier in order to inspire fear among the Israelites (Is. 5:26-30). For more background, you might want to read 2 Kings 17-23 and 2 Chron. 33-34.

Consolation of Judah

The first chapter alternates between condemning Assyria and consoling Judah. Bad news for Nineveh will be good news for Judah (1:12-13). Though God had once afflicted Judah, He will now do so no more. Then a promise is given to Judah a few verses later (1:15). Good news comes from the mountain, with the feet of the one who brings good news—the wicked will be completely destroyed. The remainder of the book is good news for Judah that comes in the form of desolation for Nineveh.

The Courage of Nahum

Jonah had prophesied destruction against Nineveh a century earlier, and Nineveh had repented. Now they have cycled downward again, and Nahum brings a hostile prophecy, far more barbed than Jonah’s simple message had been. The first thing to note is that Nahum brings this word when Assyria is at the height of its power. “Thus saith the Lord; Though they be quiet, and likewise many, Yet thus shall they be cut down, when he shall pass through” (Nahum 1:12a).

During the entire time when Nahum could have conducted his ministry, Judah was a vassal state of Assyria. This would have been some time during the reign of Manasseh and/or Josiah. Nahum’s message would have been incendiary, but there is no sign that Nahum trimmed his prophesies to be more soothing to the easily offended.

The Law of Nations

A very common notion among evangelical Christians is that the law of the Old Testament was for the Jews. Not only do many think that the Old Testament is inapplicable to us, but they also believe that it did not apply to the Gentile nations of the Old Testament. One great problem for this view is that the prophets of God frequently speak to the Gentile nations in terms of fierce ethical rebuke. This happens, for example, in Jonah. It happens in Amos. And it certainly happens here. But what standard applies to a Gentile nation like Assyria?

The God of the Nations

The answer is straightforward, at least for those who those who refuse to divide the cosmos up into different jurisdictions—some for God and the rest for the devil. Jesus has been given the name that is above every name, and this means that in principle all belongs to Him. God is Lord by virtue of creation, and God is Lord again by virtue of the power of the blood of Christ. When the Day of Judgment arrives, no one will be able to draw an arbitrary line and argue that the sin wasn’t really a sin because he was standing on this side of it.

Listen to the following words and reflect on the solemn fact that God is just:

“Woe to the bloody city! It is all full of lies and robbery; The prey departeth not; The noise of a whip, and the noise of the rattling of the wheels, And of the pransing horses, and of the jumping chariots. The horseman lifteth up both the bright sword and the glittering spear: And there is a multitude of slain, and a great number of carcases; And there is none end of their corpses; they stumble upon their corpses: Because of the multitude of the whoredoms of the wellfavoured harlot, The mistress of witchcrafts, That selleth nations through her whoredoms, And families through her witchcrafts. Behold, I am against thee, saith the Lord of hosts; And I will discover thy skirts upon thy face, And I will shew the nations thy nakedness, And the kingdoms thy shame” (Nahum 3:1–5 ).

God of All

God is God of all. He is the source of all law, and the end of all justice. He is the only possible source of salvation—which He had shown earlier even to Nineveh. God’s

jurisdictions are unified. God’s authority is unified. God’s law and God’s gospel are unified. God’s voice in Scripture and God’s character in nature are unified. When God testifies, He never contradicts Himself. His grace and His justice do not contradict. His mountain ranges and His prophetic poets do not contradict. Only a fool or a pagan would say that God’s authority can be in any way divided. Why would we ever go along with the lie that our God is the god of the hills while their gods are the gods of the plains?

But though God is never divided, there is only one way for sinners to see and understand that lack of division—and that is to look to Christ on the cross, straight on.

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Surveying the Text: Micah

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Introduction

Micah was a younger contemporary to the prophet Isaiah, and ministered across the reigns of Jotham (c. 740 B.C.) and Hezekiah of Judah (who died 687 B.C.). Other contemporaries would be Amos and Hosea, which accounts for similar themes—they were all confronting the same kinds of cultural problems. The two great ones were idolatry and social injustice. The name Micah is a shortened form of a name that means “who is like YHWH?”

The Text

“He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; And what doth the Lord require of thee, But to do justly, and to love mercy, And to walk humbly with thy God?” (Micah 6:8 ).

Summary of the Text

In our text, we find a succinct treatment of what true religion looks like. Is God impressed with high pomp or pretentious sacrifices? What could I give that would earn God’s favor? The answer is nothing, nothing whatever, which men of understanding have always understood since the world began. If salvation is not all of grace, then there is no such thing as salvation.

The book of Micah is not long, and is a collection of oracles, bundled loosely according to this recurring pattern—warning, oracle of judgment, and promise of salvation. Each of three sections is begun with the call to hear/listen (Mic. 1:2; 3:1; 6:1). The first cycle begins with warning (1:2-16), moves to judgment (2:1-11), and concludes with the first word of hope (2:12-13). The second cycle begins with warning and declared judgment (3:1-12), but then turns to hope (4:1-5:15). The third cycle begins with warning (6:1-16), moves to a lament over judgment (7:1-7), and concludes with a promise of hope (7:8-20). As it turns out Micah should be credited with saving Jeremiah’s life, even though he lived a century earlier. Jeremiah was accused because he had prophesied destruction for Jerusalem, which was considered as treason by some, but certain elders of the land defended Jeremiah by pointing out that Micah had done the same thing (3:12), and Hezekiah had not put him to death (Jer. 26: 17-19).

Your Best Apocalypse Now

The better days of Uzziah are now in the rear view mirror, and the shabbiness of decadence and decay are definitely starting to show. False teachers are willing to start showing their true colors. “If a man walking in the spirit and falsehood do lie, saying, I will prophesy unto thee of wine and of strong drink; He shall even be the prophet of this people” (Mic. 2:11 ). As things get worse and worse, the fulfillment of earlier dire

warnings are entirely missed. When judicial stupor visits a people, the more manifest it is, the harder it is to see. “Therefore night shall be unto you, that ye shall not have a vision; And it shall be dark unto you, that ye shall not divine; And the sun shall go down over the prophets, And the day shall be dark over them” (Mic. 3:6 ).

Gospel Tension

Micah alternates between fierce Deuteronomic denunciations and glorious kingdom promises. This gospel is going to conquer the world, but an essential part of the gospel message is found in the key word repent. Repent and believe. Before we ask what we are to believe, we must first ask what we are to repent of. We are to repent of great wickedness, as defined by Scripture, and our views of how high salvation goes will be shaped by how deep we believe the sin went. In the book of Micah, he calls the mountains to witness (Mic. 6:2 )—may we do the same. As the Lord taught us, the one who loves much is the one who was forgiven much.

This tension stretches from Genesis to Revelation. God is not mocked—a man reaps what he sows,and yet through the death of Jesus Christ, a man does not reap what he sows at all. The curse runs through it all, and yet the grace of God runs as bedrock underneath that.

So Turn to the Promise

The judgments in the mouth of Micah were judgments that applied to Samaria and Jerusalem, to Israel and to Judah. But the promises were for the whole world. “But thou, Beth-lehem Ephratah, Though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, Yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; Whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting” (Mic. 5:2).

“But in the last days it shall come to pass, That the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established in the top of the mountains, And it shall be exalted above the hills; And people shall flow unto it. And many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, And to the house of the God of Jacob; And he will teach us of his ways, And we will walk in his paths: For the law shall go forth of Zion, And the word of the Lord from Jerusalem” (Mic. 4:1–2).

And Back to the Text

In this world, what is the consequence of having our sins washed away? What does it look like when God comes down and the mountains of our religiosity melt under His feet (1:3-4)? When God interferes with us, when He saves us, when He fixes us up, what does that look like? What we could not do with burnt offerings, what we could not do with rivers of oil, what we could not accomplish by giving our firstborn for our transgression, God did by sending His Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And when He did so, the result in our lives tastes like this. He has shown us what is good. He has taught what He requires.

He says three things. First, do justly. Second, love mercy. And third, walk humbly with your God. And I can only do this when I come to the cross. Only there can I do what is just. Only there can I love the mercy of God. Only there can I behold the humility of God. In Jesus I can do justly, in Jesus I can love mercy, and in Jesus I can walk with humility. Only there.

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Surveying the Text: Jonah

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Introduction

Jonah is a short book that records the famous story of a message being given to the prophet Jonah by God, and he rebels against the idea of delivering it. His motive for rebellion was that he despised Nineveh, and he knew that God was far more merciful than Jonah was disposed to be. So he fled in the opposite direction, and his goal was to get a long way in the opposite direction.

The Text

“Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee. But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: For as Jonas 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. The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here” (Matt. 12:38–41).

Summary of the Text

The scribes, the ordained men, and the Pharisees, the devout laymen, demanded that Jesus perform for them a sign. Jesus said that to hunt for a sign is an indication of an evil and adulterous generation. So the Lord went on to refuse them, but the refusal was a strange one. He said that no sign would be given to that evil generation except for the sign of Jonah—no sign but the very greatest sign. Resurrection is the sign beyond all signs. As Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of theketos (sea monster) so also the Son of man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. After Jonah “rose,” the men of Nineveh repented, and the contrasting implication is that the men of Jerusalem will not repent after the resurrection of Jesus.

Background of the Text

We don’t know a lot about the prophet Jonah. We know that he ministered during the time of Jeroboam II (2 Kings 14 25), and we know—given the fact that he had to be the source of the information recorded in the book of Jonah—that he had to have a highly developed sense of irony. The prophet Jonah is the butt of the story told here, but we should not forget that it this is, in some way or another, Jonah’s account of it.

The Basic Story

The book has only four chapters. In the first, Jonah is told to preach to Nineveh. He rebels because he knows how gracious God can be. They might repent, and Jonah didn’t want to risk that. He takes passage on a ship going the opposite direction, heading for

Tarshish. Some locate this in Spain, while the Vulgate and the Septuagint render it as Carthage. In any case, it was a long way from Nineveh, in the neighborhood of two thousand miles away. The Lord sent a tempest (Jon. 1:4), and Jonah tells the sailors to throw him overboard. They reluctantly do this, and Jonah is swallowed by a great monster of some sort (Jon. 1:17), a monster prepared by the Lord. The second chapter records Jonah’s prayer for deliverance, and concludes with the fish vomiting Jonah onto dry land. My suggestion here is that Jonah actually died—in 2:2 it says that he cried out to the Lord from the belly of Sheol, the place of the dead. When he comes back to life, he is still in the fish, and then he prays. And then in chapter 3 God suggested that “we try this again.” This time, Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, preaching a message of destruction—“Yet forty days, and Nineveh will be overthrown.” The message was heard with real repentance, from the king down to the livestock. Jonah was furious, and tells God that this is why he fled to Tarshish. He knew that God needed very little excuse to forgive sinners. God was just like that—incorrigibly low standards. God gave Jonah a plant to shade him from the heat, and then sent a worm to destroy the plant. When the heat struck Jonah to the point of fainting, so that he was ready to die, God compared Jonah’s greater pity for the plant than he had for the many thousands of the inhabitants of Nineveh. And there the story ends.

The Presence of the Lord

Jonah sought to flee from “the presence of the Lord” (Jon. 1:3 ,10 ); And so this is lesson number one. It cannot be done. The Lord is as present on the way to Tarshish as He was when He first spoke to Jonah. No doctrine is more self-evident than the omnipresence of God and no doctrine is easier—when in the grip of temptation—to forget.

All Except for Jonah

This is a book in which absolutely everyone and everything obeys, except for Jonah. God gives Jonah his mission, and so he heads due west (Jon. 1:3). So the Lord sent out a great wind over the sea, and the wind obeys (Jon. 1:4). The prophet tells the sailors to do a hard thing, and they do it (Jon. 1:16). The Lord prepared a great sea monster, and the sea monster was there, right on time (Jon. 1:17). Jonah preaches the Word of God, and the people of Nineveh believe God and obey (Jon. 3:5). The Lord prepared the gourd plant to shade Jonah, and it obeyed (Jon. 4:6). The Lord prepared a strong east wind to destroy the gourd plant, and it obeyed (Jon. 4:8). Everybody honors God in this book except for Jonah.

Greater than Jonah

The prophet Jonah slept in the boat in a storm (Jon. 1:5), and so did the prophet Jesus (Mark 4:38). In both instances, the winds and the waves were obedient. In one instance, the prophet slept the sleep of disobedience and in the other He slept the sleep of the righteous. One was supposed to go to a city that would repent, and the other to a city that would not. Both Jonah and Jesus died, and went to Sheol/Hades. Both of them were brought back, one in a type and the other in the great antitype.

And in the final contrast, the greater Jonah is delighted with our repentance, not furious. There is joy in the presence of the angels over just one sinner who repents (Luke 15:10). Who is this referring to? What is God actually like? We call it the Parable of the Prodigal Son, and some who want to be able to condemn somebody, call it the Parable of the Elder Brother. We really ought to call it the Parable of the Running Father, or the Father Who Jumps Fences.

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