While relevant to Old Testament missiology, the primary purpose of the book of Jonah is not to beat this drum. Rather, its main focus is on the problem of evil. Evil has reached such immense proportions in Nineveh that God is poised to destroy it in much the same way as he had formerly destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. The book centres around the tension between the kind of world Jonah wants to live in and the kind of world we actually do live in. Jonah cannot bear to live in a world where evil goes unpunished. However, he has not thought this through very well and he shoots himself in the foot with his citation from Exodus 34:6-7. This text presupposes a context in which Israel’s own evil had reached depths fully justifying the nation’s complete annihilation by God. Indeed, Yahweh announced to Moses that this was precisely what he intended to do and it is only the mercy and compassion of God that spared Israel from this fate.
Logically, if God punishes evil then the entire world would be annihilated within the blink of an eye. If we want sinful people to experience the love of God then, until the time when God will judge all evil in conclusive fashion, we must accept the necessity of living in a world where great evil and terrible atrocities are committed.
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