78. The Prophet Jonah Releases Assyria into Ministry (Jonah & Isaiah)

The nation state of Assyria before any expansion.

Isaiah 10:6 tells the world in as clear a use of language possible, that not only was Assyria sent by God to correct Israel and Judah, but they were also commanded what to do and how far to go in their actions. I want to know how Assyria were spoken to by God, and how were they instructed  how far to go. It has been a question I have been ruminating over for years. Was the Assyrian Rabshakeh joking in Isaiah 36:10 when he said that Yahweh had said to the Assyrian king to go and destroy Judah. Isaiah 10 tells us that he was told to go, but not to destroy Jerusalem and Judah. How did Assyria hear from God?

My answer is: Jonah.

Jonah being swallowed by the great fish is a significant account in scripture, and one that Christ Himself refers to plainly assuming its authenticity. But for what I want to refer to in the book of Jonah, the giant fish, or whale is a bit of a red herring (sorry about the pun!). What I am about to share I have read nowhere, heard nowhere and have not been clued in by the wisdom of any biblical authority. This is a pure and revelatory piece of Lannonism I am about to share. In short, I would like to suggest that Jonah released Assyria into their Middle Eastern crusade to bring as many nations as possible into serfdom under their jackboot,…eh …sandals, making them pay tribute money to the coffers of Assyria. In fact if I was particularly bold, I would even suggest that their imperialistic “war machine” like philosophy inflicted on many nation states of the Middle East (which was to destroy their real estate and exile them to live somewhere else) were only practice runs prior to Israel’s exile and the dispersion of the ten tribes. Under God, it can be seen to have been merely a build up until Assyria had taken Israel. Follow the history and the biblical references as we go.

Jonah preaching the shortest sermon ever to Nineveh.

My reference to Jonah in this narrative is greatly related to Isaiah, especially Isaiah 10:5-34, which is a prophecy made shortly before 722 BC about a miraculous occurrence that took place in 701 BC in the fields and grasslands that surrounded Jerusalem. It was a miracle that closed Assyria down for a brief period.

2 Kings 14:25 explains how Jonah was alive in the days of Jeroboam II of Israel. Jonah came from Gath-Hepher a town in the beautiful countryside of the Galilee. Jeroboam II reigned the longest of any of the kings of the northern kingdom for 41 years, namely 793 BC through to 753 BC. The eighth century BC was one of the most incredibly tumultuous periods of Middle Eastern history.  Through the rising and falling of many different kings and nations, and the ebb and flow of empires, as the middle East time line moved into the seventh century BC the map and the national borders were almost unrecognizable to what it had been a century before.

It has to be said for Jeroboam (known as Jeroboam II because of Jeroboam the son of Nebat who was the first monarch of the Northern Hebrew Kingdom of Israel) that his four decade ”plus” reign was, economically, the most prosperous period of  the ten tribe state’s history. Spiritually, however, Jeroboam like the rest of the northern kings was an utter “write-off.” Idolatry was rampant. For a crystal clear perspective on what was going on read Hosea, Amos and Micah. It was a seriously wicked period to have lived in. The poor weren’t safe at all, and the lack of anything that even sniffed of a welfare state made it hell on earth for the downtrodden oppressed masses.

One important observation has to be made here, namely that for the first two or three decades of Jeroboam’s reign, Assyria as a nation was not to be feared by the Hebrew people. Assyria had a long and chilling history, and was undoubtedly a cruel race with a long line of bloodthirsty kings with bloodcurdling philosophies of how to handle prisoners of war. However, at this point of biblical history only its very closest neighbours had any grounds to fear oppression. The wickedness at this point of time and its parochial vision of local conquests only, made Assyria merely a foreign sounding kingdom in the life of the two Hebrew kingdoms. Nothing to write home about! Just a nation of violence and nastiness with a long history, and thankfully, were a long way distant from God’d people in the nation states of Israel and Judah.

Assyria, however, was to rise in a matter of 30 to 40 years into the eighth century BC into what was then, the biggest empire that had ever been known in the Middle East.  Yet, when Jeroboam took the throne and when Jonah was in harness as a prophet – Assyria  was holding nothing like that gravitas or kudos that the passing of time was to give them.

Almighty Yahweh called Jonah to go to Nineveh. Something is often missed with this call of God. This is huge. I have heard preachers expound and teach from the book of Jonah, but have hardly ever heard Nineveh being noted as one of the capital cities of Assyria. I say “one of the capital cities,” not because Assyria ever had more than one capital city at any one time, but Nineveh was one of those cities which at one period of time was indeed designated as Assyria’s capital centre. Different Assyrian kings appointed different cities as their capitals. From my reading and research nobody seems to know for certain at which particular point of time Nineveh was the capital. If it was not capital at the time of Jonah’s visit, it would make the account all the more God-inspired that Jonah should visit Nineveh when it was not the capital city at the very same time that the king was in residence there.

So, the comparatively mediocre Assyria that was to burgeon into the most feared and belligerent fighting force in the world in the 730’s, 720’s and 710’s BC, round about the days of the 770’s and 760’s was hardly on the agenda for political debate or discussion, even though they were infamous for their cruelty and arrogance. And Jonah was commissioned to give them a message from Yahweh.  It must have been problematic for any of Jonah’s friends or family. Why should God send Jonah to what would have been generally perceived as a comparative non-entity of a nation. But the book of Jonah lets us know that Jonah knew exactly what God wanted and what Assyria’s response would be. That is the very reason he did not want to go.

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I am convinced that Jonah was a contemporary of Isaiah, even if it was only in the early days of Isaiah’s life. It’s only conjecture and ultimately open for free discussion, but there is also a vague and strained possibility that he could have been contemporary with Amos, Hosea, and Micah.

I am also of the opinion that when Jonah, both scarred and maimed by the acid of the whale’s stomach in which he had spent circa 72 hours, came preaching into the great Assyrian city of Nineveh, the buck of Assyrian accountability and responsibility landed on the desk of the king who, at that point of time would have been Ashur-Dan III. He reigned from 773 through to 756 BC.

During the reign of Ashur-Dan there was very little war-mongering activity. The general behavior of most Middle Eastern autocrats like the Assyrian kings was to write, record and leave Stele’s and Menhirs for generations to read, explaining how many battles they had won and how much tribute money had been paid to them. However, in periods of decline and defeat, they generally kept their mouths shut. Ashur-Dan III and his period of kingship was indeed one of this latter kind of reign. Externally it was a difficult period for Ashur-Dan because a nation known as Urartu was diminishing Assyrian strength and confidence on the battle field. The borders of the land under Assyria’s rule had considerably diminished during his years on the throne. Having lost face to Urartu in 773 he also was whipped by the kingdom of Damascus.

Internally, we have records that the Assyrian aristocracy and court dignitaries were limiting Ashur-Dan’s freedom to reign as he wished. It seems it was similar to King John’s rule in England. The wealthy princes of Assyria didn’t seem to think Ashur-Dan III was charactered enough for the position he held. He had succeeded Shalmaneser IV and was to be succeeded  by Ashur-Nirari V for 9 years before the mighty dictator like Tiglath Pileser III strutted his stuff on the international scene and entered into the annals of one of the greats of Assyrian history. To add to Ashur-Dan’s pressures, there was a great plague throughout Assyria in 765 BC, and for several years on from 763 BC there were public revolts against the regime that ruled. Poor old Ashur Dan!

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There are two unarguable items that took place in Ashur-Dan’s reign that enable us to know exactly when he was on Assyria’s throne. First: On June 15th 763 BC there was a solar eclipse. His Chronicles record this event, and modern scientists can vouch for the exact date. This eclipse is an anchor for historians to date all sorts of world events. Secondly: There was a very severe earthquake in his reign. I ask the question; Was this not the same earthquake that took place in the reign of Uzziah? The same rift that runs through Africa, into and through Israel continues up into the vicinity of Assyria and Nineveh’s geographic location. Uzziah’s earthquake would seem, obviously, to be Ashur Dan’s earthquake also.

Finally, there is a third strange fact of Ashur-Dan III’s reign. Some may think that this is the strangest thing of all. In 764 BC, uniquely in the annals of all the Assyrian rulers and their history, Ashur-Dan III never left home for a warring campaign. If one is aware of the warmongering, swashbuckling, raping and pillaging culture of Assyria’s long history this assumes some kind of mammoth significance. If it had never occurred before, what circumstances precipitated its occurrence in 764 BC.  This is a very strange and bizarre fact of history.

When wondering how? What? Why? And where the source of this inactivity and ceased warfare came from, I suggest to my readers that the entire root and fruit of this non-warring sabbatical year of Assyria’s horrific history of violence should be laid at the feet of a certain Hebrew fellow who went by the name of Jonah, son of Amittai, a prophet of Yahweh that came from Gath-Hepher in the Galilee in Israel.

After the scandal of “Fishgate,” which left Jonah looking more than embarrassed, the prophet finally ran through the streets of Nineveh with, as far as the Bible tells us, the shortest sermon ever recorded. It was much shorter even than Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, and one that changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the vast city which, by the way, excavations have proved that it would genuinely have taken three days to walk around.

“In forty days Time, Nineveh shall be overthrown!” We have no other rationale given to us in the Bible concerning Assyria’s dealings with Yahweh.  Whatever else was said, however he said it, even if the scars of the whale’s stomach acid had mutated any of his features, the result was an absolute direct act of God on the hearts of the people of Nineveh. The entire city repented. The king ordered fasting and the wearing of sackcloth which was, in Old Testament times, and even for gentile heathen nation’s it seems, an expression of total remorse and repentance. Even the animals were not to be fed and were to be blanketed with sackcloth. Now that is bizarre!

I suggest, by logical extrapolation of the history of  Assyria at that time that Jonah hit downtown Nineveh in 764, possibly, late 765 BC.

I have several thoughts to substantiate my hypothesis concerning all this.

• The people repented before the God in whose name Jonah had spoken. And they repented big time. Repentance towards God brings relationship with God. Relationship with God brings some sense of peace and a consciousness of the Almighty. Even without a deep biblical understanding of the nature and character of Yahweh, the Assyrians simply must have had some kind of inward character and attitudinal change.
• Surely it is logical and rational to assume that both the people and their king MUST have sought a more in depth dialogue with Jonah in the midst of their repentance. “In forty days Nineveh will fall,” is hardly a full theological treatise about who Yahweh is, and how they were to maintain their new found relationship with Him.
• If Assyria’s sins, thus far in their incredibly long history, had “filled up” in God’s view, making them ready for Judgement, surely there must have been a reason in the eternal purposes of God for the saving of Assyria, who, according to the book of Jonah, were only forty days away from predestined national annihilation. They were NOT world conquerors prior to Jonah’s ministry visit, and it was a decade or so later that Tiglath Pileser III was raised up. That is when Assyrian imperialism really took off.
• A prolonged period of, for want of a better term, “national Yahwehistic reflection,” after Jonah’s prophetic ministry seems logically to have been the cause of having stopped Assyria in their warmongering tracks for a year or so at least – possibly a little longer.

I know that King David was a warmonger on God’s behalf for the chosen people of Israel  and the purposes of God in the midst of Old Testament revelation, so I would not like to press this point too far. However the evil cruelty of Assyria must have been highlighted in sermons or prophecies that we are not privy to in Jonah’s time in Nineveh. The murderous cruelty of Assyria was infamous in Jonah’s day, and is still the main plank of Assyria’s infamy today.  All I am suggesting is that with the reality of repentance, and the clear conviction of the Spirit of God that pervaded the minds and hearts of the population of Nineveh after Jonah’s ministry, the year’s break in warfare seems a logical conclusion to the result of Jonah’s supernaturally successful “Billy Graham Crusade.” And 764 BC was the only year I have read of when an Assyrian king stayed home and allowed the rest of the world to get on without them.

• The fact that one of the later Assyrian kings actually claims that God had sent him (Isaiah 36:10) to chastise Israel and Samaria as well as Judah and Jerusalem, suggests to me that by some prophetic encouragement from Jonah, the repentant kingdom of Assyria was informed, instructed – or even possibly commanded to deal with Israel and Judah for the reason that they were not as Godly as Ashur-Dan III had been in their deep expressions of repentance to the words of one of His prophets..
• In Isaiah 10:5-34, we have it clearly stated by Isaiah that God had purposed Assyria to be the axe of God’s judgement on the Hebrew people, and that certain clear parameters had been set for them in their execution of the divinely ordained judgement. Isaiah insists that the king of Assyria, no matter who he was, knew God’s rules of engagement.
• In essence I am saying that it was Jonah’s visit to Nineveh and his harsh and severe message to the Assyrians that brought Assyria into “God’s vineyard” as it were, fulfilling God’s purpose for Israel and Judah. This means that the big fish is really a small red herring that distracts readers from the mighty purpose that was contained in Jonah’s visit to Nineveh.

During the days of Ashur-Dan’s and Assyria’s weakness, Syria became free to attack Israel, and then later befriend the northern kingdom after they had refused to pay more tribute to Assyria. They even tried to get King Ahaz of Judah to stand with them and fight Assyria once the great Tiglath Pileser III had assumed the Assyrian throne. Isaiah had something strong to say about that (Isaiah 7). The problem was that Syria and Israel must have clearly believed that they were going to defend themselves against another weak king like Ashur-Dan III, and even his successor Ashur-Nirari V. Little did they know of the animalistic fighting skills of Tiglath Pileser III. Both Syria and Israel bit off much more than they could get in their mouths, never mind chew.

Assyria’s breath taking rise to world power was so quickly achieved that the empire could not be governed properly. The governmental ruling base was far too small for such an incredibly widespread number of conquests and reluctant tributaries. Having swollen to mammoth proportions the Assyrian Empire declined quicker than it had exploded on the world.

In 732 BC, Syria was wiped out by Assyria and the people were exiled to a place called Kir. The years from 727 BC to 722 BC saw Shalmaneser V, Tiglath Pileser’s successor, wipe Israel and Samaria off the map. Shalmaneser died just as the siege broke through at Samaria and Sargon his successor finished the job by razing Samaria to the ground, exposing the cities foundations in a few fields that were used for agriculture just as Micah and Amos had prophesied.

By 687 BC Assyria, under Esarhaddon, was at their widest stretch as an empire. Their domain was so huge that Assyria’s military might could not contain or sustain it, and thus, many of its subject states learned how to break free. In 650 AD both Egypt and Media broke away from Assyria’s grip and stood independently. In 625 tiny little Babylon also broke free of Assyrian oppression, became independent and ultimately became the force to rid the world of Assyria once and for all. Finally, in 612 AD, 153 years after my hypothesis that Jonah had brought salvation to Nineveh and Assyria, the great city was razed to the ground by the Babylonians.  It would seem that in those 150 years or so since Jonah’s visit to Nineveh, Assyria had filled up their sinfulness before Yahweh and no prophet was sent to save them. Nahum prophesied of Nineveh’s fall. But did he write after it had fallen?  In 609 BC the Assyrian nation state was totally dissipated and vanished from the map by Babylon’s final battle with Assyria.

Assyria itself, in its own national border, without its conquered serfdom covered what is now North Eastern Syria, South Eastern Turkey, and the western corners of Iraq and Iran. Assyrians, ethnically talking, are still in existence though in small populations. Assyrians are Semitic in origin and have only ever been based in what was ancient Mesopotamia. They are neither Jew nor Arab.

Our next page will exhibit fully how Assyria mishandled their divine mandate to bring judgement to the Hebrew people’s idolatry.  If I am correct, Jonah brought imperialistic aggression out of Assyria around 764 BC. Isaiah announce how they were going to fall at the gates of Jerusalem for simply stepping continually far beyond God’s parameters. The situation that Isaiah foresaw in Isaiah 10 took place in 701 BC when Sennacharib besieged Jerusalem.

Jonah was therefore, clearly a prophet with a major world impacting ministry.