THREAD:
Atonement: Jonah, Justice, and a Mercy that Covers

(You guys probably know the drill by now, since I'm hopelessly stuck on the Biblical feasts—I just can't shake being discipled by the calendar.)

Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, is the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, and consequently the most solemn. The Torah lays out the rituals of the commanded annual observance in Leviticus 16.

The chapter opens with Aaron’s two sons, who “drew near to the LORD and died,” (Leviticus 16:1) tragically highlighting the fundamental problem of a Holy God of an unclean nation, and perhaps the overriding tension of human history:

How can people draw near to God’s presence when their sin means approaching Him is death?

The answer, as it turns out, is through the work of atonement.

While “atonement” in a lay sense means to make reparation for our wrongdoing, it is impossible from a human standpoint to “make amends” for our transgressions. No matter how sorry we are for what we have done, justice demands more than repentance—it demands sacrifice.

This is where the Day of Atonement comes in.

God lays out a specific process for the High Priest of Israel to approach and worship Him on behalf of the nation of Israel, carving out one day a year where the chosen people of YHWH can draw near to Him through this priestly intermediary.

Entering into the Holy of Holies where the presence of God resided required a very involved set of rituals to ensure the ceremonial cleanliness of the High Priest, the ceremonial cleanliness of the people, and the ceremonial cleanliness of the temple objects.

These rites included confession over a sacrificial substitute in the form of scapegoats, and the slaughter of several animals, their lifeblood being a key component of the atonement exchange.

(Leviticus 17:11)

As the Israelites performed the required fast and Sabbath rest, the priest poured out the substitutionary blood of animals for them, crossed the veil between the clean and the holy, and worshiped before the mercy seat and God’s presence.

The mercy seat (or place of atonement) in the Holy of Holies is called the kapporet (כַּפֹּרֶת) and is from the same root in Hebrew as the word atonement or covering (כִּפֶּר, kippur).

This perhaps gives us a deeper insight into the meaning of atonement: as the kapporet was the golden covering of the Ark of the Covenant, so must atonement involve a type of covering.

At the end of this description of the process of atonement, the LORD tells Moses three times that the Day of Atonement is to be a statute forever, a holy day observed annually when Israel would know that she was cleansed of all her sins.

In the Tabernacle and in the first and second Temples, the High Priest would follow his instructions and make atonement for the people of Israel.

However, after the destruction of the second Temple, the observation of the holiday became more complicated, as sacrifice was no longer an option. Modern observances focus on what God required of the people of Israel, and the day is spent fasting, praying, and resting.

After having spent the previous forty days in repentance and reconciliation with the hope of being inscribed in the Book of Life, most observant Jews attend several Yom Kippur services in the synagogue praying and listening to the scriptures.

PROPHET JONAH AND MANY CATTLE
One passage of scripture that is always read on Yom Kippur is the book of Jonah. In fact, this book is inextricably linked to the Day of Atonement.

The story itself is not a straightforward story—its rather puzzling, in fact—and it doesn’t have a clear connection to atonement. Why would this be a central reading for this holy day?

Jonah himself is an obscure character.

Besides the short book of Jonah, there is only one other place he is mentioned, and that is in 2 Kings 14:25, where we find that he is a prophet during the reign of Jeroboam II and his father’s name is Amittai (אֲמִתַּי) meaning, “my truth.”

This prophetic son of truth heard the word of the LORD one day, saying, “Arise and go to Nineveh and call out against it, because their evil (רָעָה pay attention to this word's thread in the story) has come up before me.”

Though Jonah is a prophet who understands God’s omnipresence/omnipotence (he later explains this concept to pagan sailors in Jonah 1:10), Jonah flees his calling, sailing on a boat in the opposite direction to where God has asked him to go.

Jonah’s objection to preaching to this foreign people isn’t explicitly stated at this point, but Nineveh was the flourishing capital of the Assyrian empire who would brutally capture and exile his countrymen just a couple generations might lead readers to assume that Jonah…

…viewed Assyria as a threat and would be only too happy to pronounce judgment on these Assyrians. But it is not so, and we are left wondering what could be the cause of Jonah’s irrational flight.

In an effort to go as far away from the voice and presence of God as possible, Jonah falls asleep in the inner part of his getaway ship.

Of course, this is not beyond the reach of God,(Psalm 139:8) who controls the winds and the waves and stirs up a storm that threatens to tear apart the boat.

Jonah is awakened by the boat’s captain, who is amazed that he is not calling upon his god since capsizing and death seem imminent.

When Jonah joins his fellow passengers, they decide to cast lots to find out, “on whose account this evil (רָעָה) has fallen upon us.”(Jonah 1:7) The lots fell on Jonah, who knows exactly why the tempest is raging.

The men ask what they should do, and Jonah says, “Hurl me into the sea.” His fellow passengers are hesitant, knowing that they could possibly be guilty of murder, but after trying other alternatives of escape, they did as Jonah said.

Instead of drowning, however, the LORD appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah for three days and three nights.

From the belly of this fish, Jonah finally calls on the LORD.

He doesn’t repent, he doesn’t promise to change his course, but in his prayer, he acknowledges the LORD is the only source of salvation.

The LORD tells the fish to vomit Jonah on dry land, and Jonah now makes his way to Nineveh.

Nineveh is a huge city which takes three days to cross on foot, and Jonah walks for a day preaching a five-word message (in Hebrew, at least), “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”(Jonah 3:4) Despite the lack of details or hopeful alternatives, the people of…

…Nineveh believe God, call a fast, and mourn in sackcloth and ashes.

Even the king, when he hears the words of Jonah, takes off his royal robes, puts on sackcloth, and decrees a national fast: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything.

Let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who knows?

God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.” (Jonah 3:7-9)

This sounds incredibly like what the people of Israel are supposed to do on Yom Kippur.

The prophet Joel even quotes this gentile King almost exactly in Joel 2:14 in the context of Israel repenting and pleading for mercy. Unlike Israel, though, Nineveh lacks the High Priest to make atonement for their city.

Nevertheless, when God saw that these Assyrians had turned from their evil (רָעָה) ways, He relented from the disaster (רָעָה) that He had said that He would do. Jonah is furious.

Only now do we learn why Jonah initially fled his calling in the words of his angry prayer, “O LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country?

That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.

Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”(Jonah 4:2–3)

Several surprises are in this accusatory prayer of Jonah’s. Not often is God bitterly charged with being merciful and loving.

Also unexpected is Jonah using YHWH’s description of Himself from Exodus 34:6-7 to explain his existential crisis.

But perhaps this (mis-)quote is our best clue to understanding Jonah’s rage: instead of repeating Exodus 34:7 exactly, when Jonah should have said, “who will by no means clear the guilty,” he instead says, “relenting from disaster.”(רָעָה)

Jonah is bitter that God is clearing the guilty (apparently against His stated character) and relenting from disaster when the Ninevites are guilty of heinous crimes.

This “change of mind” and “relenting from disaster(רָעָה)” seem, in themselves, evil.(רָעָה)(Jonah 4:1) Where is the justice? Doesn’t God care about His Word and the reputation of His prophets?

What is the point of living a godly life and following the laws of ritual purity if all you have to do is repent and call upon the name of YHWH to avoid condemnation? Where is the sacrifice? Why live in this unjust and capricious system?

YHWH’s teaching response is equally surprising. He firsts asks Jonah, “Do you do well to be angry?” Jonah doesn’t answer, but instead goes outside the city and makes a booth, hoping that Nineveh will fall and be destroyed after all.

God then appoints a plant to grow and shade Jonah. Now, Jonah already had the shade of the booth he built, but there must have been something special about this plant, because in not only covered him, but it also saved him from discomfort (רָעָה).

Jonah was exceedingly glad about the plant and loved it.

However, the next day the LORD appointed a worm to eat the plant, and it withered and died, leaving Jonah exposed to the beating rays of the sun and hot winds, and he became utterly discouraged.

So discouraged and angry, in fact, that he repeats his request that God take his life.

God asks him, “Are you angry about the plant?”

Jonah answers, “Angry enough to die!”

God then says, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night.

And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?”

And like a parable, the book ends on that ambiguous question.

What did YHWH mean for Jonah to understand from the plant? How does his second death-wish relate to his first?

The second time Jonah was angry enough to die, he was mourning the loss of his covering from evil.(רָעָה) YHWH pointed out, that Jonah did nothing in order to receive that covering, but that it was in fact, an act of mercy from his Creator.

If Jonah didn’t want to live in a world without justice, he equally did not want to live in a world without mercy.

But how can these two concepts be reconciled? How can God be a god “who by no means clears the guilty” and a god who “relents from disaster”?

The place where justice and mercy meet is in the work of atonement and where God’s character is gloriously vindicated. Just as with the people of Nineveh, even if Israel repented with her whole heart, she still would not be made clean of her transgressions.

Repentance is good and right, and the correct posture after assessing your sinful nature and appealing to the mercy of God.

However, Israel and the nations need an intermediary, a High Priest who can make intercession for us, who is wholly clean and can pass through the veil to enter the inner sanctum, approach the mercy seat, and ask that God Himself be the covering for His people.

God justly requires that sin be paid with death,(Romans 6:23) and He made a way for us by being both priest and sacrifice.

Jesus the Messiah, the greatest and final High Priest, (Hebrews 7) through the offering up of His body atoned once and for all for His people, fulfilling all righteousness, tearing the veil that separated us from the Holy of Holies, and covering us so that we can draw near to…

…the mercy seat with confident, grateful hearts to worship the presence of God.

And as Christ came once to bear the sins of many, so He will come again. Not to deal with sin this time, but to rescue those eagerly awaiting Him fully and finally from this present evil age. (Hebrews 9:28)

“The dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”(Revelation 21:3–4)

Under this eternal Messianic rule where we freely and continuously draw near to our beloved God, there will still be a Day of Atonement, as it is a statute forever.

For endless years we will remember and rejoice in the saving work of our just and merciful King, who subjected His own body to judgement that He might be our covering from evil, our blessed atonement.

Amen. Maranatha.

P.S.

Here is the article for those who prefer. :) https://www.faipublishing.org/articles/yom-kippur