The Call of Jonah

Religions , 2022

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2021

2023

Jonah is considered one of the 12 Minor Prophets in the Hebrew Canon. The circumstances in Jonah are dated around 785 B.C. and in the Jewish canon it is part of a larger book “The Twelve”. In Christian Scripture it is a separate book. The short account seems to oppose narrow Jewish nationalism of the eight century B.C. The short exegetical analysis I attempt follows the processes described by Henry Virkler and Karelynne Ayayo.

Quite likely, one of the first biblical characters that most of us heard of was Jonah. It's his being thrown overboard, his three days in the belly of the great fish, and his safe, if undignified, return to dry land that make Jonah's story so appealing to children. But when we return to the Book of Jonah as adults, read it as a whole, and ask ourselves what it's doing here in the Bible, we discover there's much more to it than the great fish. It's a funny, subversive story, with a strange, challenging, open-ended conclusion: did you notice how it ends with an unresolved question from God hanging in the air? This short book is well worth reflecting on carefully, perhaps especially for what it says about Israel in relation to the Gentiles, the wider world of other nations and their gods; and also, in this Creation season, we shouldn't miss what it says about God's love not just for human beings but for everything that he has made. In fact, the book ends with God asking Jonah if he should not be concerned about the huge human population of Ninevehand also all its many animals. This morning we listened to the whole narrative, for reasons of time skipping just Jonah's prayer from the belly of the great fish. Let's recap what happens. It starts: 'The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai'. That Hebrew name means 'Dove, son of faithfulness'. But as we shall see, Jonah is neither a dove nor faithful, so we're off to an ironic start: the funny but painful tension between what this representative of Israel's faith is called (is called to be) and what he is really like. Because Jonah does not respond faithfully to God's call to preach to the city of Nineveh; he disobediently tries to flee to Tarshish, as far as he can go in the other directionwe might say Tipperary or Timbuktu. And as we shall see, Jonah is certainly no dove of peace. But Jonah is pursued by God, and the ship on which he embarks for Tarshish is engulfed by a storm. The crew of the shipthe captain and sailorsare not Israelites like Jonah, but pagans, worshippers of other gods; but nevertheless they are seen in a surprisingly sympathetic light. While these pagans call out to their gods and do what they can to save themselves, Jonah neither prays nor helps, asleep below deck. When challenged, he accepts that the storm is his fault and that he should be cast into the sea, but the sailors respond with compassionate humanity, trying to row to land so as to save Jonah's life. In the end, they do throw him overboard, but very reluctantly, and when the sea then grows calm, they turn in awe to the God of Israel. They come over rather well, these pagans: they seem decent, kind human beings, and god-fearing too. In fact, possibly they take the God of Israel more seriously than Jonah seems to… Jonah, meanwhile, is brought back to land by a great fish; the word of the Lord comes to him a second time, and now Jonah goes to the vast pagan city of Nineveh, a place where the God of Israel is not known or worshipped. And he proclaims to the Ninevites that God's judgment is coming upon them. Surely he'll be ignored, laughed at, or stoned to death. But amazingly, the whole city responds in repentance and faith. The king announces a fast, and everyone puts on sackcloth; even the animals put on sackcloth and fast. This is comic book stuff. Did Israel ever respond to its prophets like this pagan city? Did the preaching of Isaiah or Jeremiah ever move Jerusalem like this? So God repents and does not destroy Nineveh. Now, how would we expect Jonah to react? Is he pleased that his message has been so effective and that God has shown mercy on this city? No. Jonah is furious. He didn't want God to be

This paper deals with the underlying characterizations of Jonah in the synoptic accounts of Jesus' stilling the storm. I claim that since Jesus is diametrically opposed to Jonah in this story, his respective characterizations in the synoptic accounts may serve as an indication ab opposito of three diverse ways of characterization of Jonah, which in turn may be set in a broader context of Jonah's images in the contemporary literature. Also, the possibility and the criteria of the interpretative move applied in this paper, as well as the possibility of its further application to other storm-stilling stories, are discussed in detail.

Covers a wide range of publications in major langages : academics, pastoral, popular. I searched several databases (Ecole Biblique de Jérusalem, Israel National Library, BIBIL, Old Testament Abstracts,...) I also integrated bibliographies from major commentaries. My own bibliography is an ongoing work and I will gladly receive new datas from researchers in the field. Not all fields of my bibliography are complete but I gathered several hundreds documents (books and articles).

Hebrew Studies, 1996

1996. James Limburg, Jonah: A Commentary. Reviewed in Hebrew Studies 37:175-77