Building and Breaking Down Walls

A few months ago I was leading our adult Bible class at church in a study of the book of Jonah. Did you know that Jonah is mentioned in the Bible in one other place outside of the book that bears his name?

That mention occurs in 2 Kings 14:

2 Kings 14.25
[Jeroboam II, King of Israel] was the one who restored the boundaries of Israel from Lebo Hamath to the Dead Sea, in accordance with the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, spoken through his servant Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath Hepher. 

According to 2 Kings, Jonah son of Amittai was the prophet to helped Israel restore the northernmost border of Israel. This border would have been the boundary between Israel and an invasion from Assyria.

Given this history we can understand a bit about why Jonah ran from God's call, and perhaps even why God selected him in the first place.

Here was a prophet who had built a wall being sent to extend grace to the very people that wall was intended to keep out.

I suggested to the class that Jonah's call would have been like a Trump-supporter who was fired up about the border wall between the US and Mexico getting called to a ministry with illegal immigrants.

That cognitive dissonance may have between too profound for Jonah to tolerate. So he ran.