Articles
Beasts in Sackcloth: The Satire of Jonah
The prophetic books of the Old Testament share many similarities in terms of message, tone, audience, and style of writing, and they are designed to work together to present the entire picture of God’s revelation to the people of Israel. Having said that, each individual work is a unique piece of literature designed to serve as a self-sufficient message to its audience. While they share similarities, each prophetic book has a particular goal in mind with its message. One of the most unique messages is that of the oldest book in the prophetic corpus: Jonah. In fact, the book of Jonah almost doesn’t even seem to be a book about prophesy at all; in the original Hebrew language, there’s only five words of prophesy in the whole book! In Jonah’s story, everything seems to be “overturned.” The prophet of God rebels, pagans recognize Yahweh, heathens repent, and the story seems to end without any resolution! What’s going on in this prophetic book, and what are we supposed to take away from it?
Jonah’s story is an odd one from the very get-go. He’s commissioned by God to go to Ninevah and cry against it, and alarms are already going off in the reader’s mind. We know who Jonah is since he appears in 2 Kings 14:25 as a prophet to the Israelite King Jeroboam II, where he prophesies the restoration of Israel’s borders from Hamath to the Sea of the Arabah (as a side note, the fact that this prophesy is seemingly revered by Amos in Amos 6:13-14 may be evidence that we should already doubt Jonah’s character). He’s an Israelite prophet, and we would normally expect him to prophesy to Israel. Certainly, his contemporaries Amos, Hosea, Micah, and Isaiah had lots of things to say about Israel’s need for righteous repentance! In fact, Jonah is the only prophet that we read of that is explicitly sent to a foreign nation to proclaim against it. While we read of oracles against the nation in books like Amos and Jeremiah, there’s no indication they physically went to those places to prophesy against them. Yet Jonah is being sent to the Assyrian capital of Ninevah, the very heart of the empire oppressing Israel and her chief military concern. Perhaps this explains why Jonah’s response to God is also so odd; the prophet of God does not proclaim the message, but instead “rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord,” (Jonah 1:3). This is a very odd statement for a number of reasons, but chief of them is that Yahweh is not a regional deity; He is the Creator who rules over the whole world, but Jonah thinks he can flee to Tarshish and escape the reach of God? Certainly, Tarshish was a far-off place (in fact, it was the furthest you could go in the opposite direction of Ninevah!), but Jonah seems to be treating Yahweh more like a pagan idol limited to his chosen city rather than as the infinite Lord of Lords.
Despite his efforts, Jonah is utterly unable to escape the Lord (as we would fully expect!). A great storm strikes the sea as Jonah’s ship sails to Tarshish, and a further oddity occurs: the prophet of God is asleep and clueless as to what is occurring, but the sailors immediately identify the storm as supernatural! It is important to recognize that sailors had a very strong stereotype as pagans in Jonah’s day, and were often considered to be low-class, uneducated brutes who believed every superstition (some of this stereotype exists to this day). Yet it is these pagan sailors that have to awaken the prophet and get him to start praying to his God! When these sailors discover Jonah is the culprit behind their current predicament, Jonah piously answers “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land,” (Jonah 1:9). This is a patently ridiculous answer given Jonah’s circumstances: if he really thinks God made the sea and dry land, why does Jonah can flee to Tarshish and escape Yahweh? If he fears the Lord God of heaven, why does he not obey his commands? The sailors quickly see through this silly answer because Jonah has already told them that he’s fleeing from the presence of the Lord! So not only is this prophet of God running away from his responsibilities, he’s telling all of his companions that he can get away from this God by getting to Tarshish!
The sailors, understandably freaked out by the predicament this rogue prophet has brought upon them, ask Jonah what they need to do to calm the seas. This seems a pretty obvious answer: Jonah should pray to God, ask for forgiveness, and go to Ninevah! God is merciful and will most assuredly let His prophet go do what He’s commissioned Jonah to do. Instead, we’re stunned to read that Jonah’s solution is for the sailors to throw him to his death into the raging sea! This is ludicrous. God is not a pagan idol like Molech or Chemosh, and He does not respond to human sacrifice. It is clear that Jonah, who has failed to escape the presence of the Lord, is trying another tactic to avoid the will of the Lord: if he’s dead, he can’t go to Ninevah! The sailors, again showing more righteousness than the prophet, absolutely refuse to abide by this; if this man is a servant of God, surely the sailors will face the wrath of Yahweh for killing his servant! With the storm increasing (and God’s prophet refusing to offer any other solution), however, the sailors are forced to abide by Jonah’s wishes. Yet they provide one last indictment of Jonah; while the prophet of God has yet to consult God on anything, these pagan sailors pray earnestly to the Lord for mercy for their deeds! Amazingly, Yahweh shows mercy upon these pagans; the sea immediately stops its raging upon Jonah’s entrance into the sea, and the sailors “feared the Lord greatly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows,” (Jonah 1:15-16). These sailors have shown far more faith, trust, and obedience to the Lord than our prophet Jonah!
Jonah’s story continues with the well-known episode of his three days and nights in the belly of the great fish. Sometimes lost in the debates of whether Jonah is alive or not is that Jonah’s prayer in chapter 2 is just as odd as the events of chapter 1. He never actually repents of his failure to obey Yahweh and never asks forgiveness for his transgressions, although Jonah does thank God for not abandoning him and promises to uphold his vow. It is interesting to note, however, that this vow is preceded by a note in 2:8 where Jonah says, “those who regard vain idols forsake their faithfulness, but I will sacrifice to you…that which I have vowed I will pay.” Jonah makes the point that he isn’t an unfaithful pagan, but through this point of the story it’s actually been the pagans who have been far more faithful than Jonah! Despite the oddity of the prayer, God comically saves Jonah from certain death by having the fish vomit him onto the dry land. Finally recognizing the impossibility of escaping God, Jonah complies with God’s command to “arise, go to Ninevah the great city and proclaim to it the proclamation which I am going to tell you,” (Jonah 3:1).
While we might expect the prophetic book to start looking more like a normal message, however, the oddities only continue. We’re informed that Ninevah is a massive city that takes three days just to cross through, yet Jonah only goes in a single day’s walk. So, he’s not even in the center of the city, but he delivers his prophetic message: “Forty days and Ninevah will be overthrown,” (Jonah 3:4). This is an absurdly short sermon (it’s only five words in Hebrew), and it seems completely lacking in what we would expect of a prophetic oracle. There’s no description of what Ninevah has done or how they have sinned, there’s no declaration of how Ninevah can respond or repent of their sins to avoid this fate, and there’s not even a mention of who is responsible for this upcoming calamity; God’s name is nowhere to be found in this sermon! It’s almost like Jonah is intentionally sabotaging the message to Ninevah by preaching the bare minimum. Despite this odd sermon, however, the Ninevites respond in an incredible fashion. Even though Jonah hasn’t actually told them there’s any way to avoid the fate of being overturned, the king of Ninevah proclaims that every single inhabitant of the city, down to the very cows of the field, is to fast and cover themselves in sackcloth, repent of their sins, and plead earnestly to God for mercy. These pagan Ninevites are some of the most penitent sinners we see in the whole Biblical story, and they are far more responsive to God than Jonah has been! Accordingly, God turns away from his fierce wrath against Ninevah and spares the city, even down to the sackcloth-covered beasts. The great irony of this section is that Jonah’s prophesy was that the city would be “overturned.” This word can mean destroyed or overthrown (as it’s used in Genesis 19:21), but it can also indicate a great transformation or change (1 Samuel 10:6). Ninevah (and this entire story so far!) has been overturned, and the great pagan city has turned fully to God in repentance. Jonah’s prophesy comes true, albeit not (as we will see) how he expected or desired it to come about.
Given that this is by far and away the most successful prophetic oracle ever recorded, one would expect Jonah to be ecstatic. Despite his pretty lousy service, God has made something incredible happen through it. Instead, Jonah is furious. He reveals why he had been fleeing from the Lord to begin with: “I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity,” (Jonah 4:2). This is actually a direct quote from God’s description of himself in Exodus 34:6, but Jonah is throwing it back at God almost like an accusation. Jonah knew that God would forgive the Ninevites, and it was this exact circumstance of Ninevah being forgiven and spared that Jonah sought to avoid. He wanted Ninevah to be utterly obliterated, and now that this has been spoiled he demands that God kill him; Jonah would rather die than live with a God who is merciful to his enemies.
It’s here that we anticipate a lightning bolt coming from heaven to strike Jonah down for his words, yet God simply responds, “Do you have good reason to be angry?” (Jonah 3:4). Jonah doesn’t answer, but instead storms off to the outskirts of the city and waits to see if the city will still be destroyed; perhaps their repentance will falter, and Jonah will get to see his enemies destroyed after all. Oddly enough, God actually shelters Jonah with a plant that grants him shade against the hot sun. The next day, however, God sends a worm to attack the plant so that it withers, and God sends a scorching wind that causes Jonah to suffer from heat exhaustion. Again, the wayward prophet demands death from God, and again God asks, “do you have good reason to be angry about the plant,” (Jonah 4:9). Jonah angrily responds that he is justified, and God notes that Jonah had compassion on a plant that he neither planted nor caused to grow and had existed for a mere day; in light of that, shouldn’t God have compassion on Ninevah, a great city filled with people and animals that God had created? Then the book ends! There’s no record of Jonah’s answer, there’s no further discussion of what happens to the Ninevites, or anything else; the book ends with God asking Jonah whether he can accept God’s compassion on his enemies.
That’s the point of the whole book. Jonah, if written today, would be classified as a satire. That’s not to say that this isn’t a true story: the use of Jonah by Jesus in the gospels of Matthew and Luke would seem to verify its authenticity. The way Jonah and the people of the story are portrayed however, is very purposeful. The story uses very well-known stereotypes of characters, but completely reverses them: the prophet Jonah is rebellious and unmerciful, the pagan sailors are righteous and fear God, the pagan King of murderous Assyria humbles himself before God, and even the cows of Ninevah repent of their sins before God! The absurdity and extreme circumstances of the story, as well as the extensive use of humor and irony, are designed to critique the character flaw of Jonah: he’s unmerciful towards his enemies and cannot stand the idea that God would be!
Yet the point of the story is ultimately not Jonah himself: notice that Jonah isn’t the one who the final question is addressed to, and we never receive his answer to God’s query about Ninevah. Instead, the question is addressed to us as the reader! Jonah is being held up to us as a mirror. In its satirical portrait, we see our own character flaws reflected back at us and we’re forced to ask ourselves the same question as Jonah. Can we accept that God will be merciful and love our enemies? Can we rejoice that God loves His enemies, particularly when we were once those very enemies? This is the beauty of this satirical book; it’s ultimate audience of critique is not the prophet Jonah, but all those who read his story. God has preserved this lesson for us so that we can reflect on it and learn it for ourselves. As we have been shown mercy as God’s former enemies, so we too must show mercy on our enemies and rejoice when they are forgiven by God!
