This will be my last post on the Tanakh, AKA the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible. We'll finally be moving on to the Christian canon. A couple of remarks about the denouement of the Book of Jonah are called for. First, Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian empire. Obviously, the emperor and the people there were not devotees of Yahweh, and there is no evident reason why the Big Guy in the Sky would single it out for destruction. On the contrary, of course, Assyria subjugated Judah and destroyed the northern kingdom before the Babylonians came along to finish the job. Yahweh is said to have made that happen because the Israelites weren't offering sufficiently slavish devotion. So this whole thing makes no sense in context, which is one reason why many people think it's intended as a sort of satire.
It makes even less sense that everybody would suddenly believe this uncredentialed interloper. Actually it's far from clear how he even survived and traveled since he was barfed out onto the beach with nothing but what was left of his clothing. That the Ninevehns even put sackcloth on their animals is a further indication that this is intended as a joke. The last chapter seals the case for me, it is comically ridiculous, and it ends with a pseudo moral. So this is a fitting note to end on.
3 Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.”
3 Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go through it. 4 Jonah began by going a day’s journey into the city, proclaiming, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” 5 The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.
6 When Jonah’s warning reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. 7 This is the proclamation he issued in Nineveh:
“By the decree of the king and his nobles:
Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. 8 But let people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. 9 Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.”
10 When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.
4 But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. 3 Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”
4 But the Lord replied, “Is it right for you to be angry?”
5 Jonah had gone out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. 6 Then the Lord God provided a leafy plant[a] and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the plant. 7 But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the plant so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, “It would be better for me to die than to live.”
9 But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?”
“It is,” he said. “And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.”
10 But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. 11 And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”
Footnotes
- Jonah 4:6 The precise identification of this plant is uncertain; also in verses 7, 9 and 10.
1 comment:
I see the story as a meditation on the refusal of human beings to take responsibility for their actions, and on their powerful desire to deny and run away from all problems. The god in this story is (as we've seen) atypically reflective and chill, counseling Jonah on the shortsightedness of misdirected anger and lack of compassion and empathy for others. If there's any parody here, I see it from the completely incongruous actions and counsel of an empathetic god who has apparently been absent from basically the entire group of books -- until the very end.
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