THE MORE I READ the story of Jonah nestled among the serious Minor Prophets of the Old Testament, the more fantastic and hilarious it gets. Everything is turned upside-down.
Jonah’s story follows Amos, who rips into rich people who “lie on beds of ivory and lounge on their couches.” It precedes Micah, whose Lord calls us “to do justice and to love kindness.” But Jonah spends his energy running away from Yahweh. In fact, Jonah is never even called a prophet in the book that bears his name. His interests and concerns are completely different from the Deity who has called him. Only entombment inside a “great fish” will drive his bedraggled, stinking self to the city that needs to repent. Even so, Jonah will perceive his surprising success as an utter failure.
But that’s getting ahead of the story. Most Hebrew prophetic books are collections of oracles unmoored to narrative, but Jonah’s tale has a setting, characters, and a plot! If you didn’t learn this in children’s Sunday school, here are the bare bones of the action:
Yahweh tells a man named Jonah to go east to the city of Nineveh to cry out against its evil. But Jonah flees in the opposite direction on a ship traveling west. A huge storm blows in, so when Jonah says it’s his fault, the sailors reluctantly throw him overboard. The storm immediately stops. A “great fish” swallows Jonah for three days and nights. Then God makes the fish vomit Jonah out on dry land.
In part two, Yahweh repeats his original imperative: Go to Nineveh and warn them of destruction. Jonah does so, expecting a fireball from heaven to burn the city to the ground. Instead, the king repents of his evil and asks all his subjects, as well as the animals, to demonstrate repentance by wearing sackcloth. So God changes God’s mind and does not destroy Nineveh. Jonah is angry because the Ninevites do not get what they deserve. He sulks under a bush God creates for him. The ensuing conversation underlines Jonah’s resistance to the merciful and loving character of Yahweh. The ending is ambiguous.
The necessary background
Although the book of Jonah is placed among the writings of Hebrew prophets, historical persons who wrote about historical events that usually can be dated, the author and date of Jonah are unknown. Rather, the book is named after the protagonist and was written anonymously sometime between the 8th and 2nd centuries B.C.E. It is a mixture of prose and poetry, leading some to think the Hebrew psalm of Jonah 2:2-9 is possibly older material incorporated into the story later.
The narrative itself is set in the 8th century B.C.E., at a time when the Assyrian Empire was flexing its muscles and demanding heavy tribute from the tiny kingdoms of Judah and Israel. Eventually it would swallow Israel and scatter its people among the nations into permanent exile. Nineveh was its capital, the origin of its cruelty and conquest. Writing earlier, the prophet Amos already knew how the Assyrians would herd prisoners into exile by roping them together with fishhooks through their noses (Amos 4:2).
Although most scholars assume that Jonah is fiction, they debate whether it should be classified as parable, satire, or midrash. Hebrew Bible scholar Phyllis Trible settles for midrash—a type of literature that explicates a biblical passage. The passage in this case is Jonah 4:2, which refers back to passages such as Numbers 14:18, Exodus 20:5-6, and Exodus 34:6, where Yahweh is proclaimed as “merciful and gracious ... abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” As we shall see, however, Jonah finds no comfort in Yahweh’s mercy and love.
Is this guy really a prophet?
He sounds like one. “The word of the Lord came to Jonah ...” It starts exactly the same way the books of Hosea, Joel, Micah, and Zephaniah begin. But “Jonah, son of Amittai” is so shocked by the command to go the great city of Nineveh that he “set out to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.” Every verb in verse 3 moves Jonah farther away from Yahweh’s presence. Tarshish is probably in Spain, far to the west, in the opposite direction from Nineveh to the east (located in what is now Iraq).
The fact that Israelites feared the sea highlights Jonah’s horror of preaching to Nineveh. With no good harbors, Israel never developed shipping as did the Greeks, who could easily hop from island to island without detailed instruments. Texts in Job, Psalms, and Isaiah refer to Leviathan, the imagined and scary “dragon in the sea.” That Jonah would rather risk encountering a sea monster than confront Nineveh suggests a consuming hatred of the enemy.
Jonah finds out soon enough that Yahweh follows him to the sea, whipping up a storm so fierce that the ship fears it will crack up (1:4). In fact, Yahweh the puppet master pulls the strings throughout the story: arranging the lot (1:7), preparing a fish (1:17), speaking to the fish (2:10), changing God’s own mind (3:10), and appointing a bush, a worm, and an east wind (4:6-8). The more Jonah takes matters into his own hand, the more he is thwarted.
Back in the ship in 1:5-6, we meet pagan sailors crying to their gods for salvation from the storm. The captain goes to Jonah, who is snoring in the hold, wakes him, and asks him to call on his God for help. Through casting lots, they find out that Jonah’s God is responsible for the storm because Jonah is fleeing God’s command (1:7, 10). Throughout the crisis, the non-Israelite mariners behave more like the “gracious and merciful” God of Jonah than he himself does. Only reluctantly do they throw him overboard. The storm instantly ceases, and they offer a sacrifice to Jonah’s God and make vows (1:16). In spite of Jonah doing everything wrong, Yahweh’s actions have converted the sailors.
A “great fish” swallows Jonah, and after three days and nights, Jonah’s prayer in 2:2-9 sounds more like what one would pray after deliverance. One would expect to hear more desperation, confession, and repentance rather than a desire to see God’s holy temple (2:4). But in any case, Yahweh speaks to the fish, which vomits Jonah out on dry land. What a revolting scene that must have been!
Again, “the word of the Lord” comes to Jonah with the same command (3:1). Jonah drags himself to the huge city and repeats his short speech. “Forty days more, and Nineveh will be destroyed!” Once again non-Hebrew, idol-worshiping pagans respond to Yahweh’s message more enthusiastically than does Jonah. The king hears of Jonah’s warning and calls all his people and all their animals to fast from food and water and wear sackcloth on their heads to demonstrate their repentance. (Horses? sheep? Even the chickens?) The hyperbolic humor is unmistakable! At that point, God changes God’s mind and does not destroy the city (3:10).
This infuriates Jonah, after all he has been through. “I knew it!” he screams at God through gritted teeth. “Isn’t this what I said back in my own country? I knew I couldn’t trust you to destroy Nineveh!” The sacred words of promise now drip with sarcasm. “I knew you were a gracious and merciful God, always ready to relent from punishing! That’s exactly the problem! I give up. Just kill me now. I’d rather die than live in such an upside-down world!” (4:1-3).
Jonah stalks outside the city to sulk, though he is grateful for the bush that shades him from the sun. God sends a worm to attack the bush, and Jonah is truly ready to die. Absolutely everything has gone wrong for him, and now his God has betrayed him by saving his worst enemies and killing his bush. We never know what happens to Jonah, because God has the final lines. “You cared about the life of one bush, Jonah. But should I not be concerned about a great city full of both repentant and innocent people? Should I not also care about the plight of animals?”
Before wrestling with the overall theology of this story, note unspoken issues of gender that balance the all-male human characters. The ship (feminine in Hebrew) takes on a female persona as she fears breaking up. Jonah lies asleep down in her hold; the feminine images of belly and womb within the ship, the fish, and in Sheol itself (2:2) continue to both save and entrap Jonah in this wrestling match between Jonah and his God. In addition, the “city” is feminine (in Hebrew), and half the inhabitants of Nineveh are presumably female, most of whom would be innocent victims of her destruction.
What’s the point?
Phyllis Trible has convinced me that this whimsical tale is indeed a midrash on Israel’s scripture that Yahweh is merciful (Jonah 4:2; Exodus 34:6, etc.). What Jonah hurls at God in biting sarcasm is precisely the bedrock of Israel’s faith. “You are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing!” The prophet who got everything wrong stands for ancient Israel, who so often assumed Yahweh was their exclusive deity. Jonah’s story exposes the resentment and bitterness that arise when pagan others behave more like Israel’s merciful God than do the chosen people.
Harry Stout’s book Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War reveals Jonah-like thinking during that bloody American conflict. His research shows how church and state in both the North and the South relentlessly claimed that God was on their side. At the same time, neither side observed the classical principles of just war theology as to the cause or conduct of the Civil War. Neither side imagined that God cared about the welfare of their enemies. We are still paying the price.
Today, with God-and-country theology still so prevalent, Americans have not yet learned much about Jonah’s God. Because our worst enemy today is ISIS, our military and media seem to treat any suspicious act by a Middle Eastern Muslim far more seriously than violent plans or acts by white, homegrown terrorists. To some, all Muslims are suspect.
But God’s mercy and love remain the core theology of the three Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. How ironic that so much of the strife in our world today arises from those with their roots in one or other of these faiths. How hard it is to imagine that our God cares about and stands ready to forgive those we consider our enemies. The same is true on the personal level, where we tend to judge others’ actions more harshly than our own.
But God’s concerns are even wider than extending love and mercy to nations or individuals in direct conflict with each other. Destroying Nineveh would involve “collateral damage,” the euphemism our military uses for the innocent people they kill when going after “bad guys.” Yahweh’s last words to Jonah express care for “more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left,” as well as “many animals.” This concern extends even to animal rights!
Jonah, the bumbling, resentful prophet, teaches us a searing lesson in spite of getting everything wrong. God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love for all of creation—even the people we love to hate.
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