Here is Boadt’s introduction to Jonah….
Jonah is found among the prophetic books, but it
is totally unlike any other prophetic book. It contains no oracles at all,
except the report of Jonah’s words to Neneveh in Jonah 3:5. It is the story about a prophet, and right from the
beginning we are warned to take this prophet with a grain of salt. The author
has a great sense of literary style, full of abrupt changes of direction in
thought, humorous touches, and unexpected twists in the plot. Verse 3 in
chapter 1 must have made Israelites of the post-exilic period roar with
laughter. The word of the Lord had come very solemnly to Jonah to go preach to
Neneveh but instead “he rose to flee to Tarshish”—i.e. in the exact opposite
direction! We are next treated to a scene of great comedy despite the danger
that it describes about the ship in peril. Jonah seems to be asleep in the
midst of a huge storm, while the sailors implore their gods in vain. When they
accuse him of the evil he agrees to be a human sacrifice to calm the angry
Yahweh. He is swallowed by a great fish and in its belly sings a grand hymn of
thanksgiving to Yahweh. Since it took him three days before God released him,
one wonders whether he repeated the hymn many times over.
The point to be made, of course, is that the
author of the Book of Jonah knew that his audience would enjoy the story and not be forced to choose whether it could
actually have happened or not, or whether the fish was a whale or a shark. Only
in modern times have Christians forgotten the ability of the Bible to tell
stories to make its points, and tried instead to explain everything
“scientifically.” Jonah is a rousing tale of a prophet gone off the deep end,
so to speak. The author makes some important points about prophecy and the
nature of God without ever losing his sense of humor while creating his outrageous
tale and its several separate plots.
Its major literary style is that of irony. Jonah
does everything a good prophet should not, from fleeing to refusing to speak to
complaining that God does not fulfill all the threats of doom that he made
Jonah preach. But it is also set up in a number of clever panels, so that the
prayer in chapter 2 parallels exactly the dialogue found in chapter 4, although
one is praise, the other complaint. The prophet takes action in chapters 1 and
3, but in one he refuses to act and in the other he does perform what God
commands. The whole four chapters make a marvelous series of reverses….
Even within single chapters, the literary style
is very cleverly arranged to move in one direction and then go in reverse….
Several other interesting incidents stand out in
the story of Jonah’s mission to Neneveh. The fact that Ninevah was three days
across in Jonah 3:3 has led to all kinds of guesses as to how large the city
would have been, or whether the author might have meant a three-day walk around
its edge since the ruins of the ancient city certainly were not large enough to
take more than a few hours to cross. Also note that God saves Jonah from death
despite his sin, yet Jonah will not let the Ninevites be saved from death even though
they repent. The author also makes the very sharp point in the final verses
that Jonah cared more for a leafy plant than for 120,000 human beings.
The hero of the story is himself a kind of ironic
note. Jonah ben Amittai is mentioned in 2 Kings 14:25 as a prophet who predicts
that King Jeroboam II will be able to expand his kingdom to take over the pagan
nations. Here Jonah is summoned to preach the opposite—that God will bless
these pagan nations. The book really addresses two major questions: (1) What is
the relation of Israel and her God to other nations? (2) What is the meaning of
divine justice? Jonah becomes a perfect character for the discussion of whether
God can in fact use a prophet to bring good news to pagan nations. Certainly,
the lesson is clear: God’s mercy is more powerful than his judgments, and his
plan will not be thwarted even by the negative “righteousness” of his prophet.
Along the way the author makes use of several major prophetic stories from
earlier books of the Bible. The prayer of Jonah in the belly of the fish
resembles the prayer of King Hezekiah during his illness in Isaiah 38:10-20.
Jonah’s stay under the leafy plant is built on a similar incident from the life
of Elijah—only Elijah proved obedient (1 Kgs 19). Nineveh finds faith as a
divine gift as Abraham did in Genesis 15:6. Above all, Jonah echoes expressions
taken from Jeremiah, such as his use of “man and beast” to stand for everything
that lives in the land (Jon 3:7-8), found in Jeremiah 7:20, 27:5, etc.
The reasons for reminding the reader of the
entire history of prophecy from the beginning until the post-exilic days
becomes clear in the final verses of the book. Does not God have greater pity
and compassion on people, even pagans, than Jonah demands he have about a mere
shrub? The book forcefully reminds Israel that prophecy had not simply been
aimed at condemning all their enemies and making them feel important. Instead
of claiming that their special place in God’s covenant made them separate and
better, they must recognize that God chose them to be witnesses to all peoples
that God also loves them.
The message of course is more than just this one
point. The story of Jonah has several lessons that work on many levels as we
read it:
(1)
it presents the universal
love of God even for Gentiles;
(2)
it shows God’s control over
all of nature and all peoples;
(3)
it ridicules some of the
narrow nationalism in Judah;
(4)
it is a satire on the
actions of many prophets;
(5)
it affirms that God is not
merely “just” in his actions;
(6)
in fact, God acts in strange
and sometimes humorous ways;
(7)
and we cannot figure God out
according to our desires.
In short, Jonah is both entertainment and lesson,
aimed at the community of Israel in the period after the exile. Nineveh is
clearly a city from the distant past with a vague geography which has become a
symbol for the author of the great capacity for both evil and good in all
peoples. Second Isaiah had said that Israel must be a servant who would be a
“light to the nations” (Is 42:6) in revealing Yahweh as the God of salvation.
Unfortunately, in the eyes of the author of Jonah, the Jews had forgotten that
their witness was above all to a God of forgiveness. Perhaps, too, there is a
pointed message to the community around Jerusalem, the great city of God—if even
Ninevah can turn to God in sackcloth and ashes, how much the more should Israel
put on sackcloth and ashes and beg forgiveness!
Jonah brings us to the close of life in Judah
under the Persians. It reminds us that the spirit of Israel had not died or been
frozen by Ezra’s reforms and the growing sense of stability centered on the priesthood,
the temple and the book of the law. Post-exilic Judaism kept alive its sense of
covenant and election as a gift of Yahweh to be shared with the world.
I wonder: have you ever tried to run away from
God and God’s call upon your life like Jonah tried to do? If so, how did that
work for you? Do you view God as the creator and lover of all people, or does
God play favorites? How might we be better communicators of God’s love in our
time and in our particular places among the people whom God has placed us?
Above all, I believe the book of Jonah teaches us that God gives second chances. In fact, God gives us as many chances as we need to get right with him and with others. Are you accepting your "second chance" from God today? Are you giving a "second chance" to others, to yourself?
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