Jonah 3:1-5, 10

Jonah is a short 4 chapters. It appears in the Lectionary only twice. Both contain the pivotal verse 3:10. More important, and not as obvious from the text, Jonah is being asked to speak to his enemies, Assyrians. It's one thing to love your neighbor, even if you disagree with them, it's another to speak to them and warn them something bad is going to happen to them if they don't change their ways. I don't know the details of the Assyrian crimes, but let's just say they were a tough crowd. In this case, lucky for Jonah and I guess for them too, they decide to allow him the right to speak despite their differences.

The Lectionary gives us the statement, twice, about God being merciful. That's a theme here, but there is also a lot of time spent showing Jonah as a bit of a buffoon. One of my favorite bloggers for Old Testament views is John Holbert. He sees Jonah as a parody of a preacher gone bad.

Mark 1:14-20

Not a whole lot happening in this short verse. The ministry is beginning, and Jesus is shown to be an authoritative speaker. We don't get to hear just how he was so convincing, but we get no hint of an argument either. That they were fishermen is probably more important than just the opportunity for the play on words "fishers of men", which translations have update to "people".

These are workers, but they probably aren't poor, probably literate, perhaps in Aramaic and Greek. We will later meet tax collectors who are recruited into the group, much easier to identify them as not well liked. We don't get much information here, but fish were an important staple and fisherman could demand a high price. This could be a statement about giving up those pursuits for a more noble cause.