National and civil religion always tends to shut out those who do not fall in the boundaries of our particular nation. The ancient lands had their own national gods. Some in Israel thought of their God that way. God would have none of it. At a point in history the Assyrians had been cruel terrorist to the people of God; Israel hated them with an intense personal hatred. So God sent Jonah to preach to them. It horrified Jonah who went in the opposite direction. We have missed the story of Jonah over the debate of “can a man be swallowed by a fish and live?” That is not the point. It was not what swallowed Jonah, but what Jonah would not swallow. It was hard for Jonah to share a message of repentance from His compassionate God with enemies and aliens. God is still wanting to teach us to be as compassionate as our God is.
“Then the LORD said, ‘You had compassion on the plant for which you did not work and which you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and perished overnight. Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?’” Jonah 4:10-11 (NASB)
