Jonah's point [was: Re: concordance & genesis (edited)]

George Murphy wrote:

>>Because remember - Jonah doesn't _want_ Nineveh to be converted! That's why he ran away in Ch.1 - not because he was afraid of persecution or anything of the sort but because he hated the Ninevites (as, given their treatment of Israel, what Jew wouldn't) & didn't want them to repent. He wanted God to destroy them - vgl. 4:1-3. So he walks a little way into Nineveh, says the minimum message that God has told him to speak, and walks out. He can say, "OK God, I've done what you told me to" - confident that his few words can't have any effect. But God _does_ want Nineveh to be converted, and uses even this feeble means in order to save it.

    Sixth, of course "Should not I pity Niniveh?" (Jonah 4:11) make[s] sense in a 'merely didactical parable' - though it is hardly "hypothetical." IT'S THE WHOLE POINT OF THE STORY! It's the quite non-hypothetical attitude of the God of Israel to the insular Israelite Jonah, expressed in a rhetorical question. (Because Jonah already knows that YHWH is "a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm" [4:2].)<<

God's love for all nations is certainly a valid point of the story, but to me a profounder such point emerges in relation to what is going on in Israel and Judah at the time. Both Israel and Judah are slipping irreversibly into sexual relations with foreign gods (Ezekiel 16, 23), behavior that leads ultimately to their conquest and destruction. Israel and Judah are God's own people (his wives-Jeremiah 3). God sends messenger after messenger to bring them back to him, but they repent superficially if at all (Hosea 5:14-6:5), for they find foreign gods irresistible, and their desire for them is insatiable (Jeremiah 2:25). Against this background the Ninevites, who were never God's people, repent immediately and unreservedly at a minimum of preaching. Hence God's message through Jonah: "Unfaithful Israel and unfaithful Judah, if you don't return to me, it's not so hard to find someone else who will."

Jonah didn't want Nineveh to repent because he knew God's chosen people were not repenting.

The Assyrians actually did Israel a favor in Jonah's day by diminishing the Aramean threat, so I'm not so sure Jonah hated them. I interpret his behavior to indicate instead that he felt God's love was about to go from Israel to foreigners, and he hated the thought of that.

This interpretation of the story favors parable over history, because Jonah's message was never intended for Nineveh but for Israel and Judah. However, despite all the exaggerations I see no humor in it. This period of Israel's history--from Jereboam I of Israel to the captivity of Judah--to me has always seemed unrelentingly and unrelievedly serious. The Lamentations are most appropriate.

Don

 
Received on Tue Dec 16 05:41:33 2003