of Jonah invites us to take a spiritual journey, whether or not we leave our own hometown. Jonah asks us what it means to follow God’s way in a world of terrorism, xenophobia (fear of strangers), and fear-based politics. God calls us toward world-changing discipleship in our time. Will we run away from God’s vision or follow God’s call to embrace otherness, with all our ambivalence and anxiety, or will we baptize our prejudice and hatred in the waters of religious faith?
A Word of Thanks. I want to give thanks to the members of my Sunday morning Bible Study class at South Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, in Centerville, Massachusetts for their interest, openness, and desire to grow in faith. This study emerged out of a three-session series in February 2016. I am blessed to be pastor of a congregation where spiritual growth, biblical study, and faith formation is at the heart of its mission. I want to thank Patricia Adams Farmer, Jan Fletcher, and Chris Twyeffort, who read and commented on the text. I also wish to thank Terence Fretheim for his insightful and innovative text, The Message of Jonah. His insights as a biblical scholar complemented and enriched my theological approach to the Book of Jonah. I pray that as you read this text your own world will open up to embrace unexpected companions in God’s journey of Shalom.
1 Terence Fretheim, The Message of Jonah: A Theological Commentary (Eugene: OR: Wipf and Stock, 2000), 19.
2 Ibid., 19.
Chapter Two: A Whale of a Story?
I grew up watching the television show “Dragnet.” It’s still one of my favorites and on occasion I still tune into cable television to follow the exploits of Detective Sergeant Joe Friday as he seeks to apprehend some of Los Angeles’ most notorious criminals. A hallmark of Friday’s style involves his invocation “Just the facts, ma’am” whenever someone he’s questioning begins to ramble, go off topic, or suggest a fantastic explanation for a crime he or she has observed. For Friday, the facts are everything. There is no room for vagueness, poetry, or speculation.
This same fact-based approach is true for many Christians. When they read the Bible, they assume that everything happened just as reported. Any hint of poetry, legend, or myth places the veracity of a particular text or the whole biblical witness at risk. To suggest any point of contact with pagan folk tales or assert that certain biblical stories are fictional is to doubt God’s own integrity. As one bumper sticker proclaims, “The Bible says it. I believe it, and that settles it!” To question the factuality of the Book of Jonah — whether a character like Jonah actually lived, was swallowed by a big fish, or preached to the real citizens of a real Nineveh — is an act of impiety and challenge to God’s word and wisdom. After all, the literalist asserts, if you can’t trust the factuality of Jonah and its tale of a friendly fish, the factuality of the crucifixion and resurrection are also subject to doubt.
As I seek to fathom the Book of Jonah, I follow the wisdom of the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead who noted that although factuality is important, “it is more important that a proposition be interesting than true.” The Book of Jonah presents us with a provocative and interesting proposition, “God can change God’s mind, reverse God’s previous positions, and embrace the enemy while chiding God’s chosen ones.” The Book of Jonah is a folk tale, but it is more than a literary bagatelle or amusing story. Jonah is a playful and artistic window into God’s care for humankind and the non-human world.
An interested reader might begin with the question, “Who is Jonah and what do we know about him?” Much to Joe Friday’s and the biblical literalist’s chagrin, the only proper response is “virtually nothing.” Apart from this short text of four chapters and forty eight verses, the name “Jonah” appears in only one other biblical passage and this passage says nothing about a prophetic journey to Nineveh, a storm at sea, or a miraculous fish. According to 2 Kings 14:24, in the 8th century BCE, the ethically ambiguous King Jeroboam II of Israel “restored the border of Israel from Lebo-hamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which he spoke by his servant Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet, who was from Gath-hepher.” Scholars note that the name Amittai means “faithfulness” or “truthfulness,” while the name Jonah means “dove,” a term often applied to the people of Israel (Hosea 7:11; 11:11; Psalm 74:19).
The curious reader will also be thwarted as he or she attempts to fathom when, where, or to whom the Book of Jonah was written. Some scholars suggest that the Book of Jonah was written between the sixth and fourth century BCE, but the exact occasion and audience are unknown. They suggest that its vague description of the city of Nineveh implies that the book was written after the destruction of Nineveh in 612 BCE. Perhaps, the Book of Jonah was written to counter the nationalism and xenophobia that surfaced in the time following the return of the Jewish nation from captivity in Babylon. (538 BCE) The Assyrians, whose capital was Nineveh, were hated by the Jews. As God’s instruments of wrath, they had defeated the Northern Kingdom, Israel, and carried its citizens into exile (2 Kings 15:29; 18:9-12). Assyrian soldiers under the leadership of King Sennacherib marched to the gates of Jerusalem, the capital of the Southern Kingdom, Judah, and, apart from divine intervention, would have conquered the city. According to legend, God killed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in one night to secure the freedom of Jerusalem (Isaiah 37:38).
It was clear to any right thinking Jew that God hated Assyria, and so should the Jewish people. God showed no mercy to the Assyrian soldiers and neither should we! Nationalism and theological orthodoxy demanded that while God will save Jerusalem, Nineveh is outside the scope of God’s loving providence. Still, the Book of Jonah is full of surprises and the ten minutes it takes to read the book may change your understanding of God’s character and action in the world.
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