Don Winterstein wrote:
> 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.
This is a possible but I see nothing in the text itself to support this
interpretation. There is no mention of the people of Israel.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
Received on Tue Dec 16 08:33:22 2003
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