now, and the prophet and the people knew then, that the Assyrian kingdom had a propensity for the abuse of power, and impulse for violence, as witnessed when the Assyrian Empire destroyed the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 721 BCE. Given this, the searching and difficult question must be asked: why would God set out to save a nation, particularly with the somewhat extreme measures witnessed in Jonah, knowing that Assyrian Empire would in fact come to destroy Israel? So then, the question arises as to whether God should be proactive in saving Israel knowing that destruction looms or simply allow Israel, the people, including the innocents, and land to be punished? Part of the complexity in Jonah is the fact that it not only points to the theme of divine mercy for all people, including the Assyrians whose track record for abuse of power and violence is known and documented, but also the question of divine justice. Thus, would a just God save the Assyrians, or for that matter invite the Assyrians to repentance knowing that with the possibility of repentance, these very Assyrians will indeed destroy Israel? In this regard, perhaps one might argue that Jonah, aware as he was of the Assyrian history and propensity for violence, and the execution of unbridled power, simply did not want to have God exercise what is very much a part of who God is, namely a God of justice and mercy. One might also argue with some justification that one should not be condemned on the basis of what one imagines might happen in the future. This is a philosophical principle that humans might employ in pondering human realities, but it poses greater complexities with regard to God. It is far too easy and perhaps even simplistic to speak of devastating punishment and violence such as exile and Shoah; slavery or war, as ordinary suffering. Those who have had these experiences and have survived to have a memory can never be the same; the landscape of their lives has been irreparably altered.
God does not seem to take the evil with all of the necessary seriousness. Jonah began by addressing himself to ra‘atam of the Ninevites (1:2) and he brings them back middarkam hara‘ah, from their evil way (3:10), thus averting their punishment. God repents of the ra‘ah which he had intended to do to them (3:10). But this is precisely ra‘ah gedolah, a great evil (4:1) in Jonah’s eyes . . . Jonah clearly expected the literal fulfillment of his oracle of doom against Nineveh. He preached to the Ninevites, not in order to bring them to repentance, but in a spirit of vengeance that is without parallel in Israelite prophecy . . . For ancient Israel, being is inseparable from performing. Abraham is the one who leaves Ur and becomes the father of faith; Jacob is the one who fights with the angel and deserves to be called Israel; Amalek is the wicked one who tries to thwart the fulfillment of Israel’s destiny. Similarly Nineveh is the destroyer of Jerusalem, the concentration camp for God’s people. God’s decision to spare it perpetuates a fatal threat to Israel. One must always bear in mind the historical character of the reality of which the Bible speaks. It is furthermore in the name of the historical integrity of the “actors” and their acts that Jonah is also as much message as messenger. He feels totally implicated in the Nineveh affair, vis-à-vis which he keeps no objectivity. When the oracle’s outcome is the antipode of the prophet’s expectation, it is clear that Jonah is left with an unbearable split of his personality. He was wholly committed to his message “yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” A reprieve of the sentence or, worse, a verdict of cancellation is violation of his person.21
One of the arguments, legitimate and arguable, is whether one can make such judgments suggesting a kind of determinism that punishments are made on the basis of what one might expect or anticipate in the future. Indeed the entire fabric of repentance would unravel if indeed a person of tomorrow would always reflect the person of yesterday particularly in terms of evil intent or actions. And this is surely a message of redemption, that is, one is not left to wither and die in one’s present reality. The reason why YHWH would have repented of the evil even after the announcement by Jonah that Nineveh would be destroyed in forty days underlines why one must attend to repentance seriously, and not make judgments on the basis that one’s repentance cannot be believed to carry over into the future. Yet, this decision by YHWH and the decision to allow Babylon to become another prison of the Israelites led to the razing of the Temple and the destruction of Jerusalem. The LaCocques argue that in fact, while this kind of dramatic change is possible, it would in fact take a miracle, and since the history of change is not predicated on miracles, this kind of dramatic change by the Ninevites is not likely.
The Nineveh of tomorrow is not necessarily the Nineveh of yesterday. This, in part, is the lesson of the book of Jonah. But for this metamorphosis to happen, no less than a miracle must occur. Only a miracle can alter the unswerving course of heavenly bodies, but Jonah’s “logic of faith” militates against such a hypothesis, not only because history is not made up of miracles, but when they do occur it is in Bethlehem, in Judah, in Palestine. That they can actually happen in Nineveh is in Jonah’s eyes a remote possibility that is not to be envisaged. For all practical purpose, Nineveh is what it represents; it represents evil. Jonah’s anger does not, therefore, emerge from solipsism and parochialism. It is a righteous wrath for which Jonah feels no shame.22
In this narrative, fundamental conventions are overturned. We are fully expecting that the prophets will listen and obey whatever it is that YHWH has told them to pronounce, even though they might be reluctant or even refuse or be in a state of question. Finally the expectation is that they will listen and follow. In Jonah, both expectation and convention are overturned as Jonah refuses, and the Ninevites listen, and thereby have a reprieve and Nineveh lives; in time Nineveh will return to destroy Israel. Thus, one wonders whether this is a sign of God’s mercy, weakness, or as the Wisdom of Solomon testifies that this is indeed an expression of God’s omnipotence. The fact that God is creator, is both able and willing and perhaps compelled precisely to act in the manner because God is God.23 Perhaps, it is the case that Jonah is not disappointed as he knew from the beginning that God would likely do this and so now he must decide if in fact this will undermine his credibility as a prophet. He made a pronouncement as mandated by God only to see his words lead to a divine reprieve not to the punishment that he believes the Ninevites deserved. The circumstances that emerged might very lead him to wonder if he misconstrued his calling and the message. That is to say, it is not simply that Jonah knew that the mercy of God was such that it will likely be given to the evil Ninevites but that he will begin to wonder about his role. Given, that he might have concluded that YHWH’s decision will inevitably lead to the demise of Israel, along with other prophets such as Elijah and Jeremiah, he might wonder if it is not better to die than endure this sense of doubt and divine betrayal. But as is the case with all of the prophets who saw death as an option, God would have none of it.
Jonah’s theology is not one-sided; he cannot be accused of believing an authoritarian God who would lack the attributes of mercy and compassion . . . Jonah, therefore, simply chooses to call into question the exercise of divine mercy toward Nineveh. This, he thinks, is tantamount to warming a snake on one’s breast . . . Clearly the prophet does not seek to protect himself; he, rather, puts himself in jeopardy, as he did on the boat, showing to all that he is not a coward . . . He rejects any idea of an absurd existence where justice is flouted by the very one who is its initiator, its founder and its guardian.24
Given this, one of the ongoing questions that continues to be in the forefront of our consciousness, and one which needs to be reckoned with is that of the quality of redemption. Is redemption possible in every instance even in evil hearts and those who have a perpetual evil inclination and impulse? To point to the defining instance of our time, the Shoah, is it possible to imagine redemption for Hitler and the Nazis? Is the mercy shown to Nineveh an indication that even for the Ninevites, knowing their historical propensity for evil and what in fact they did to Israel later, there is still hope for transformation and the justification of redemption? In a dialogue between Origen and Jerome regarding this very issue, the two early Church Fathers came to radically different conclusions. “Origen insisted upon the full pardon of the repentant sinner; at the end even the devil will be converted. Jerome reacted to this opinion with indignation, rhetorically asking whether ultimately there will be no difference between the Virgin Mary and
