"From a theological viewpoint, the book of Jonah is one of the most important books in the Bible," writes Ed Christian in the current issue of Spectrum.1 I agree because the book is a milestone in the revelation of the nature of God’s compassionate love.

In the last words in the book of Jonah God asks a rhetorical question: "Should I not be concerned about that great city? (4:11 NIV). The Hebrew word translated into English as "concerned" is chus. Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner write that the word expresses sorrow or compassion for its object.2 In these last words of the book God asked the question, "Should I not show loving compassion for Nineveh?"

When scholars who worked on the New International Version translated God’s last complex statement in his debate with Jonah they extracted the clause that expressed the rhetorical question and made it into a single sentence. A form of the word chus is used twice in the full-length statement.

Verses ten and eleven may be condensed and paraphrased as follows: Jonah, you have shown compassion [chus] for one plant that was unfairly killed, should I not show compassion [chus] for 120 thousand Ninevites and many animals? God used Jonah’s noble compassion for the plant to argue that the same loving compassion should be directed toward the people and animals in Nineveh.

Perhaps Jonah’s emotional outburst at the death of the plant was not totally selfish. Did he not also show unselfish compassion for the sailors when he offered to be thrown into the sea in order to save their lives?

Perhaps selfishness was not the primary factor impelling Jonah’s flight toward Tarshish. Perhaps he was moved by loyalty to what he thought had been revealed about God’s love, forgiveness, and punishment. In the opening statement in the prayer-debate in chapter four Jonah said,

O Lord, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That 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." (4:2 NIV)

Everything in this statement except the idea that God relented from sending punishment seems to come from the words that describe God in an epiphany on Mount Sinai.

The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation. (Exod. 34:6-7 NIV)

This statement seems to say that even though God forgives wickedness, rebellion, and sin, he punishes sinners for sins that have been forgiven. Again, punishing people for forgiven sin seems to be taught when God forgives the rebelling Israelites on the border of Canaan, and then punishes them by not permitting them to enter the Promised Land. (Num. 14:17-23) Apparently forgiveness in these passages involves God no longer being angry and continuing his loving presence in their midst, but at the same time not relenting from punishment.

At least twelve times prior to the return from exile, use of compassion was rejected [chus] in dealing with wrongdoing and wrongdoers (Deut. 7:16; 13:8; 19:13, 21; 25:11; Jer. 13:14; Ezek. 5:11; 7:4; 8:18; 9:5, 10; 24:14). For example, the Hebrew word chus is used in Deuteronomy 19:21. "Your eye shall not pity [chus]; it shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot." (RSV)

This verse says you should deal with wrong by administering proportionate retributive punishment. You should not let your eye flow with tears of compassion. Justice requires punishment, and compassion should not diminish or omit punishment.

A bizarre, almost pornographic law that rejected compassion is found in Deuteronomy 25:11–12: "If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity [chus]."

The idea that justice requires punishment even in the presence of repentance and forgiveness pervaded the culture. About the time of the exile, Ezekiel received revelation correcting this concept of justice. He asked sinners, "Why will you die?" (18:31). Why will you receive the death penalty for your sins? He spoke for God, promising that if by faith they repented, God would give them "a new heart" (36:26).

When Ezekiel taught that neither the fathers nor the children would suffer the death penalty for sin if by faith they repented and received forgiveness and eternal life those who thought otherwise responded: "The way of the Lord is not just" (18:25). In contrast, Ezekiel taught that justice does not require punishment for forgiven sin. Evidently, Jonah’s faulty theology in which justice requires proportionate retributive punishment for forgiven sin needed to be corrected.

In the prayer-debate in Jonah chapter four God asks Jonah, "Have you any right to be angry?" (4:4). Jonah thought he did. Evidently he believed that if God were just he would destroy the people of Nineveh as he had promised, even if they repented. If so, Jonah would have been filled with righteous indignation because God failed to destroy the city.

In Jonah 4, God seeks to teach Jonah that he deals with sin and sinners with loving compassion. It is just for God to be compassionate with sinners and not to punish them if they receive repentance and forgiveness, and gain a new heart. The importance of this revelation is that people who believe that justice requires proportionate retributive penalty tend to be punitive and vindictive in their treatment of neighbors. The last word of the book of Jonah is that God is a God of compassionate love who forgives repentant sinners and does not punish them for sin that has been forgiven.

The penal substitutionary view of the Atonement presupposes that justice requires proportionate retributive penalty for forgiven sin. According to this view, if sinners do not themselves receive the penalty for the billions of forgiven sins, the infinite God must receive an almost infinite amount of penalty in the death of Christ. Yet Ellen White writes, "Humanity died; divinity did not die."3 These words suggest that Jesus did not receive an infinite amount of dying penalty.

If justice does not require a penalty for forgiven sin, as Ezekiel and Jonah teach, what are the implications for the penal substitutionary view of the Atonement?

Notes and References

1. Ed Christian, "The Shocking Message of Jonah" Spectrum 31.4 (fall 2003): 26.
2. Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, eds., Lexicon in Veteris Testamenti Libros: A Dictionary of the Hebrew Old Testament in English and German (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1958), 282.
3. Ellen G. White, Selected Messages (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1958), 301.

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