Jonah

The book of Jonah stands out among the writings of the prophets in style and content but not so much in message.  It is ultimately a story concerning the love and compassion of God.  Jonah is a satire, as the introduction states, so it should be read as entertaining as well as religious.  Jonah’s prophetic message and the subsequent repentance works so well, with so little effort, that it is making fun of the Israelite’s inability to do the same after intense effort performed by other prophets.  In a sense, the original audience is represented by this insecure profit, Jonah, who is astounded and angered by the fact that the foreign nations are going unpunished while his simple pleasure—a bush to shade him from hardship—is denied him.  But it is Jonah who needs the prophetic lesson more than the Ninevites whom he is sent to “cry out against” (1:2).  By mixing the character of Jonah—representing the Hebrews—into the Babylonian/ Persian world along with its images we see a kind of resolution to the issues that Israel had during/after the exile.

By putting Jonah into context we can better understand how the original audience (perhaps the author himself) viewed the story.  The introduction of the book claims that the writing took place during or shortly after the Babylonian exile when the Hebrews were facing difficult relations with the Gentile world—the Babylonian/Persian Empire.  The story may have acted, for the contemporary audience, as a reminder that God loves all of his creation and that God’s compassion runs deep.  “‘[A]s early as the second century B.C.E’”, says Kenneth Craig on page 124 of his book, A Poetics of Jonah: Art in the Service of Ideology, (quoting Elias Bickerman) Jonah was considered an “‘outstanding example of deliverance.’” 

            Because this story was written around the time of the exile many of the Hebrews had certain issues in mind as to what the exile said about God—whether God had actually abandoned the Hebrews.  After being among foreigners and their customs the Israelites wondered why God was punishing them when what the foreign people were doing was much worse.   They also wanted to know, as James Ackerman states in his introduction, whether God would “be merciful if people repent.”  Jonah offered some answers to these questions.  In fact Jonah could be argued to be the best example of answering these questions because the story deals directly with the foreign Ninevites rather than with Israel itself.   

Jonah going to Nineveh serves two purposes for the reader.  First, it is a metaphor for the exile itself; the story takes a Hebrew—complete in his human insecurities and distance from God—out of his home and into the Babylonian/Persian world.  Second, it offers an arena for this satire to take place.  Everything that Jonah does in chapters 1 and 3 end up causing the Gentiles around him to fear and worship his God—the God of Israel.  But unlike any prophet we have seen, Jonah resists speaking on behalf of God and in fact does not do so at all until he reaches Nineveh.  Further, upon reaching Nineveh his whole prophesy is only eight (five, in the original Hebrew) words: “‘Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown’” (3:4).  This simple sentence, not even containing and instruction for repentance, causes the whole city to break out in (implied) prayer and to “put on sackcloth” (3:5).  Nineveh is saved (due to their repentance) which angers Jonah (as it probably did the contemporary readers) whom God consoles with a bush where Jonah had originally sat to watch the Babylonian punishment.  The prophet, as well as the reader, are left hanging and confused after the reaction of Nineveh to this short prophecy.

Jonah appeals to audiences, ancient and contempoary, because of his simple humanity.  Jonah illustrates the struggle of an insecure prophet running “from the presence of the Lord (1:3) which can be analogous to an insecure people who have repetitively gone from the presence of the Lord throughout their history.  Craig claims that Jonah fled from “the presence of the lord” (1:3) because Jonah did not think that he can do what is asked of him—much like Moses’ or Jeremiah’s lack of confidence (Exodus 4:10, Jer. 1:6).  Further, Jonah is unique in that it takes the whole story for Jonah to achieve closure in his prophetic call rather than a few verses in the case of Moses or Jeremiah (Craig, 79).  Like in our lives, the problem that Jonah faces takes some time and space to reach resolution.  The main body of the story is filled with uncertainty as to what is going on as we can relate to in the main body of our lives.

The final chapter explains Jonah’s insecurity in running away at the beginning, why Jonah was angry, and why god did what he did.  The withering of the bush and Jonah’s subsequent anger at this loss is an illustration of human dependence upon God.  Jonah is angered that something that gave him pleasure—given to him by God—was taken away from him.  God taking the bush from Jonah is the removal of the protection or grace of the Lord.  Without it “the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die” (4:8).  God’s final question (4:10-11), which is left open to Jonah (the reader as well), concerns whether God should not be concerned about Nineveh (the “great city” to God) when Jonah is so much affected by the bush which he had no hand in making.  In other words, why is Jonah so angered by the loss of God’s grace towards himself and so angry at the grace that God bestows upon Nineveh.

The message that God loves all of his creation and that it is us, like Jonah, who are in need of God’s word as much as others (i.e. the sailors or the Ninevites) can still be derived and understood by people today.  Part of the satire (and, perhaps, irony) of the story shows how we often, as humans, find fault elsewhere—with foreigners or with neighbors—when the one whom the message is probably directed to is ourselves.  The book of Jonah satirizes prophets and their success among their own people by showing a prophet who does everything wrong but is very successful—among gentiles nonetheless! By doing this, the same point is made as with the other prophets—stop your evil ways Israel! Listen to the words of God and repent so that God may show his love to you.  This is the ultimate message that can be appreciated by people of ancient or contemporary times.  

As for what this story means for me, I think it is a wonderful satire and twist of the concept of the prophet that allows me to see how we are as people.  I suppose that I can identify Jonah with our lives in some ways.  Called by God, he flees to Tarshish to escape the pressure.  We often do things like this in our lives—try to separate ourselves from the things that challenge us.  One religious message may be that when God calls you to do something then you must be able to do so otherwise God would not be calling on you.  When you are unsure of what God’s plan is you must remember that closure may not be reached until the end of your story—if at all.  The more secular message is that in the face of struggle or insecurity give your best effort because the Ninevites just might listen—the most unlikely people might respond to you.

But the most important message is more philosophical.   As Jonah sat outside the city of Nineveh angered by his loss of his bush, we see a reflection of ourselves as we are after everything goes wrong for us.  Jonah, representing the Hebrews after the exile, sits in his refuge after leaving Nineveh and ponders why the prophecy that he was sent to cry out against the Ninevites never occurred.  The Hebrews are wondering why Babylon was allowed to take them away, contemporary Christians are, perhaps, wondering what happened to the Final judgment of Christ, and we all wonder why the evil around us is permitted to persist.  Jonah sits in that place for all of us in situations such as these as a message that God knows you are there—be patient.

God asks Jonah if it is “right for you to be angry?” (4:4) Jonah responds; “Yes, angry enough to die” (4:9).  Jonah is angry because his bush, God’s grace, was taken from him (perhaps a metaphor for Jerusalem as well?).  But God’s response to him may also be directed to us.  If Jonah is concerned about losing something that he didn’t create, should God not be concerned about something he did create?  God loves all of his creation equally and will take care of it.  Jonah’s concern is not actually for our things, but for God’s things.  Therefore, he should not have been angered by what happened to the bush or to the Ninevites because God had it all taken care of.

 

 

 

Other work cited

Craig, Kenneth M., A Poetics of Jonah: Art in the Service of Ideology. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993.