The Jonah Problem Redux

Bruce Alderman wrote an interesting post today on what has to be somewhere close to my favorite book of the Bible–Jonah.  He referenced an earlier post of mine from my Threads blog, but I’m not really commenting on that part.  I should also note that while I call Jonah somewhere close to my favorite book, that is a comment that causes my students in real life to burst forth with gales of laughter, since I have labeled way too many passages as my favorites.

But the thing about Jonah is that there are so many different things you can get from it.  One key element is the way in which people get hung up on the miracle of the great fish, even though pretty much nobody would claim that’s the point of the book.  The great fish is largely a literary device to move the character forward.  You have the twist of Jonah heading off to the Spanish coast (to use an anachronistic name) but then winding up closer to Nineveh than when he started.  It’s an interesting note on the idea of running away from God.

Bruce focuses on the hardship in which God places Jonah.  Often we’re afraid to comment on such things, but is God really being fair here?  He calls Jonah to go to Nineveh, makes him preach this unpopular message, and then turns and makes him into a false prophet.  I’m pretty certain we’re supposed to read that subtext in the story; I doubt a Jewish audience would miss it.

So you have the intertwining of several messages at this point.  First, there is the message that God cares about people who are not Jews.  If, as is probable, Jonah was written during the time after the exile, this attitude to foreigners may well stand in opposition to the official position reflected in Nehemiah’s activities.

Second, there is God’s focus on compassion over vengeance or judgment.  No Jew of the period would imagine that Nineveh hadn’t deserved destruction.  (Note also that if the general dating I referenced earlier is correct, Nineveh had already been destroyed at the time the book was written, making it an interesting “what-if” type of story.)

Finally there’s the notion of the call of God on a person, and just how that may work out for the one who is called.  I wonder if Jews might have seen in this a bit of the impact of their call or chosenness on their own lives.  Being God’s chosen has not always been particularly pleasant for the Jewish people!

I like to bring up Jonah when talking about spiritual gifts because inevitably someone is bound to comment on how nice it would be to be a prophet.  I have to suggest they think again.  Prophets don’t necessarily live happy lives.

When teaching about how to study the Bible I use the phrase “the Jonah problem” in another way, however, which focuses on what Jonah does outside the city.  He’s waiting to see what God will do.  His interest is in the destruction of the city–or not.  So he hangs out waiting for God to act, when it turns out that God has already acted, but not in the expected way.  I define this “Jonah problem” as “looking for the wrong miracle.”

I like to connect Jonah with Jeremiah 18.  Jeremiah is another excellent example of a prophet called into a very unpleasant situation.  He has to live in a city under siege and preach surrender, thus getting all the patriots up in arms against hm.  In Jeremiah 18 God provides him a vision to explain how it is that God can allow Jerusalem to be destroyed when he had earlier made an eternal promise to David.  (See Psalm 89:3-4, for example.)  God makes the claim there that he gets to change his mind.

What I see in Jeremiah 18 is a fairly clear pointer to God’s major concern in prophecy.  We tend to look at prophecy as a way of learning what is going to happen.  God’s use of prophecy is to change people’s behavior.

If a parent tells a child that he will not get to watch TV tonight unless he cleans his room, it is not the parent’s intent to inform the child as to what his evening will be like.  Rather, the parent wishes to get the child to clean his room.  If the room is cleaned, nobody becomes annoyed when the child gets his TV time.

Perhaps we should consider giving God the same latitude.