Once upon a time, a long time ago, in the land of Judea, in the area of the world we now call Palestine, there lived a man named Jonah. It came to happen one day that Yahweh, the Lord God, spoke to Jonah in a clear and distinct voice. "Jonah," the voice said, " you are to go to Nineveh, that great city of Assyria, and denounce the inhabitants of that city because of their sin. Because they have been so sinful," the Lord God Jehovah said, "the city and all its people will be utterly destroyed."
Now Jonah was very glad to hear that the wrath of God was going to be visited upon the capital city of the hated Assyrians. But he, himself, had no intentions of going there. Thinking that the Lord God Yahweh could not see in the dark, Jonah, in the middle of the night, went to a port city on the Mediterranean and there boarded a ship bound for Tarshish, a town in what is now called Spain.
When he boarded that ship bound for Tarshish, Jonah immediately went into the hold of the ship with the thought that the Lord God Yahweh could not notice him there. If only he could reach Tarshish, Jonah thought, he would be out of the jurisdiction of the Lord God Yahweh and Yahweh would not be able to renew his command that Jonah go to Nineveh.
At its appointed time, the ship upon which Jonah was hiding set sail. But it was not very long before they were on the high seas and a terrific and violent hurricane struck the little craft with full force. The storm raged and the ship rocked and tossed in the angry sea.
Now it happened that the sailors on that ship had come from many different lands and were followers of different religions. As the storm continued to rage, each of them began to pray to their own national gods for salvation from the sea. When their prayers did not prove effective, and the storm continued in all of its fury, one of the sailors remembered that Jonah was still in the hold of the ship. Perhaps, the sailor thought, a prayer to his god might be of some help.
Hurrying down to the hold of the ship they found Jonah asleep---he must have been a really sound sleeper---and they shook him until he was awake and demanded that he pray to his god to rescue them from the hurricane.
But the storm continued to rage and the sailors became even more fearful that the ship would be broken up and sink. When all the prayers did not work, the sailors decided to utilize an old custom of the time, which was to draw straws to see which of them had sinned so greatly that the divine power of the universe should vent such rage so destructively. The lot fell to ---you guessed it---Jonah.
"What kind of religion do you have?" demanded the sailors. "Who is your god?" "I am a Hebrew and I fear Yahweh, the God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land," replied Jonah. "Why is your god so Angry?" they demanded. "If the storm continues much longer, we shall all perish" they cried in terror. "What shall we do?"
"There is only one thing to do" said Jonah, "you must throw me overboard." At first the sailors protested; they did not want to harm Jonah. But knowing the ferocity of the storm, and heeding the insistence of Jonah, they finally acted. They threw him overboard.
Immediately the storm began to abate. The crew was saved. As for Jonah, he no sooner hit the water than he was swallowed by giant fish, a giant fish that had been prepared by the Lord God Yahweh to fulfill his own divine purposes. Jonah spent three long days in the belly of that whale. To kill time, he even composed a hymn. And then he was vomited up on the beach. He was back where he came from.
Once again the voice of the Lord God Yahweh appeared to Jonah: "Go to Nineveh and tell those wicked people that because of their abominable sins they are going to be utterly destroyed." This time Jonah went to Nineveh. The Lord God Yahweh had a way of being persuasive. One incredible boat ride and a nerve wracking journey through the belly of the whale was enough to convince Jonah.
When Jonah got to Nineveh he discovered that Nineveh was truly a very great city. It was so large that it would take a good walker three days to walk across it. That's a big city. There were probably more than a half million inhabitants of this city because there were at least 120,000 children to be found there.
When Jonah reached Nineveh he walked one full day's journey into the city and there, in the midst of that great city, he gave the message of the Lord God Yahweh: "Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown."
Jonah must have been the most forceful and eloquent preacher the world has ever known. As the result of his single Nineveh sermon, you see, every single person in that city, from the greatest to the least, repented in sack cloth and ashes---business must have really been good in sack cloth that year. Even the King, convinced by Jonah's superb rhetoric, dressed in sack cloth and ashes and proclaimed a national day of repentance.
As for Jonah, he had carried the word of the Lord God Yahweh to Nineveh and it had been a rugged and trying experience. He needed some rest and relaxation. So Jonah went to a high bluff overlooking the city where he might relax and witness in all its spender the destruction of the city, the great spectacle of fire and brimstone.
While Jonah was waiting on that overlook, expecting the wrath of God to descend upon Nineveh at any moment, it suddenly became very hot and Jonah became very uncomfortable. As a matter of fact, it got so hot and uncomfortable that Jonah felt he was about to die---wanted to die, even---and prayed to the Lord God Yahweh that he might die.
Seeing Jonah's desperate condition, the Lord God Yahweh caused a plant, a gourd of some variety, to grow up around Jonah in such a way as to give him coolness and shade. And Jonah was comfortable once again.
Meanwhile, back at the heavenly ranch, the Lord God Yahweh heard the prayers of those hundreds of thousands of people in Nineveh and decided not to destroy them, after all. Their prayers were answered with mercy.
And that made Jonah very angry. "You mean to tell me," he protested to the Lord God Yahweh, "that you took me from my home in Judea, terrified me by a great storm on the sea, made me spend three days in the belly of the whale, required me to walk all of those dirty and dusty miles to Nineveh, only to change your mind, only to now tell me that you are not going to destroy them after all? I can't believe this nonsense. I would rather be dead."
Hearing this, the Lord God Yahweh caused a worm to get into the gourd that was providing shade and comfort to Jonah and the plant withered and died. Once again Jonah was hot, uncomfortable, and mad! The sultry east wind roasted him and the merciless sun beat down on his head. And once again Jonah prayed to die.
And the voice of the Lord God Yahweh came to Jonah one last time. "Are you angry with me, Jonah, because of the plant? You do well to be angry with me! But what kind of person is it who would not only be angry because a plant died but also because a whole city, with its thousands of children, was spared?"
"You mourn," the Lord God Yahweh went on, "because of the death of a plant, and yet demand of me that I not show mercy to the people of this city, people who have repented of their sins and want to lead a good life? Do you do well to be angry with me, Jonah, because I have chosen to show loving kindness to people rather than wrath?"
Jonah: the Sermon
by
Rev. Ronald Knapp, Minister Emeritus,
First Unitarian Church of Omaha
© October 14, 2001
Most of us have come out of some more orthodox Christian background, and, in the process, have rejected much of that which we considered, in our infinite wisdom, superstitious and irrational in our various religious histories. The book of Jonah is, for most of us I expect, one of the casualties of those wars of liberation. Who can believe incredible stories about a man living for three days in the belly of a whale? Who would want to believe it?
There are times, I think, when we are far too serious in our approaches to our religions inheritance. Far too serious, that is, when a sense of humor might open up for us new pathways to understanding. Jonah, again, is a case in point.
It is one of those numerous situations where, in methodology at least, the Unitarian Universalist have more in common with the fundamentalists than we do with the main line Christians which we call orthodox. What Unitarian Universalists and the fundamentalists seem to share, frequently at least, in the acceptance of a literalism in methodology. We both tend, for example, to apply the same test to the book of Jonah: is it or is it not true? By this we mean, is it or is it not a fact that some ancient spent three days on a journey through the belly of a whale? The only difference between us is that the fundamentalists answer "yes" and we answer "no". Both of us, or so it seems to me, get bogged down in the wrong question, and thereby miss the point.
Hitching our wagons to the methodology of literalism, which is something we are not very likely to do with other literature, often leads us to a place where we miss the beauty and the truth of the scripture. A sense of humor might, in relationship to Jonah at least, open up something special for us.
I am saying this, I guess, because I think that if we could break the spell literalism seems to have cast over us, we could once again enjoy---and maybe even find meaning in-- some of the great stories of our Judeo-Christian tradition.
The book of Jonah is one such story. It is, perhaps, one of the really great stories of the ancient world, a story that may have the potential, as all good literature does, of speaking across time and culture to us and our generation.
If we try to read Jonah as history, we get bogged down in absurd detail, but when we read it as literature and see it set over against its own time, it becomes both a delightful tale and carries an enduring message. When we confuse literature with history, or poetry with prose, or fiction with fact, we end up distorting its meaning. To read Jonah as history would be like someone a thousand years from now reading St. Exupery's "The Little Prince" or Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land and accepting or rejecting it on whether interstellar space travel was possible in those days. To read Jonah we have to think not in terms of history or fact, but in terms of literature and poetry. And in terms of satire. Jonah is, indeed, an outrageous book, but then it was meant to be!
Jonah, as literature, is satire. My dictionary defines satire as "a poem or prose work holding up human vices, follies, etc. to ridicule or scorn" or "trenchant wit, irony, or sarcasm used for the purpose of exposing and discrediting vice or folly." And that fits the book of Jonah.
The book of Jonah is satire. The book of Jonah is a spoof on some prevailing religious ideas and practices which the author of the book considered to be both bad and contrary to the best understanding of Hebrew faith. To understand Jonah as satire, however, may require an incursion into the historical epoch in which it was written and into the historical epoch which provides the setting for his story. Both of those -- the setting of the story and when it was written -- are very important to any proper understanding of Jonah. Jonah was written for the fourth century B.C. and the setting of the story is the Eighth century B.C.
In the fourth century B.C. the Jews and their nation were and had been for some time under the control of the Persian Empire. In so far as Biblical scholars can tell, this was a rather peaceful time for Judea, at least in terms of international politics. For much of its history Israel and Judea had been caught as a buffer state and as a battle ground between Egypt on one hand and the various Mesopotamian empires on the other. But during the days of the Persian Empire, a long period of relative stability had settled over the entire middle eastern world. During this period, the Jews were permitted to develop their religion, to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, and to practice their religion with little official interference from the Persian Empire.
During this period the Hebrew religion came under the influence of two successively legalistic leaders, a governor named Nehemiah and a priest named Ezra. There are books of the Bible named after these two leaders and in many ways Ezra can be considered the father of Judaism.
Fearful, and not without some justification, that the religion of Israel would be blemished by contacts with the world, with Zoroastrianism, for example, these two leaders sought to purify both the ideals and the practices of the Hebrew religion. They laid great stress on the Torah and on the faithful keeping of the Mosaic law.
Under the influence of Nehemiah and Ezra the walls of the city of Jerusalem were rebuilt, the temple restored and the children of Israel recaptured a new sense of their own destiny and a renewed appreciation of their own religious inheritance.
But there also developed, at this time, a new connotation for the expression, "God's chosen people", an expression that reinforced an exclusivism. It was an exclusivism that could easily be distorted into the view that the children of Israel had not been "chosen" for a special responsibility or a special mission, but for special privilege and special destiny. It is not too great a distance from being a special people to being a superior people. In this context, an image of an exclusive God emerges, a God who is concerned about the children of Israel, and who loves them, but who is not concerned about, and does not love, the foreigner.
This perspective was reinforced by laws and practices that were developed in Judea of that time. Ritual practices separated the Jews from the Gentiles, for example, and laws forbidding intercourse, both figuratively and literally, between Hebrew and foreigner were adopted. At first intermarriages was forbidden and later on existing intermarriages were broken up. Genealogy became very important. Religion tended to become a racial imperative: the best Jew was one who could trace his ancestry through an unbroken Judaism for a long, long time into the past. Racial purity became a hallmark of valid religion. Acceptance in the sight of God became more and more dependent on the pureness of racial heritage.
The religious climate of the Hebrew world in the Fourth century B.C., then, was one of a dual emphasis on racial purity and on the legalistic interpretation of the Torah. Religion, that is, consisted of being born correctly and scrupulously practicing the peculiar devotional rites of the Hebrew tradition.
In this historical context two important books of the Bible were written. The two books were written as protest against what was happening within Hebrew religion itself. One of these books is a delightful novel that seeks to debunk the notion of racial purity by suggesting that even David, the most impressive hero of Hebrew history, did not have a pure racial inheritance. Can you guess which book that is? It is the book of Ruth.
The other book is a short story, written as satire. That is the book of Jonah. Jonah was written to debunk current Hebrew thought, to hold up the vices and follies of then current Hebrew thought to scorn, to show it in comparison with the real greatness of Hebrew faith and to demonstrate that in such a comparison it would be found wanting. Jonah is protest literature.
I said earlier that both the time it was written (the fourth century B.C.) and the time of the setting of the story (eighth century B.C.) are important to an understanding of the story. The eighth century setting of the story is important because in Hebrew history this was the era of the great prophets, like Amos and Hosea and Micah and Isaiah. We still call these people the eighth century prophets.
The eighth century for the Hebrews was not a time of relative stability like the fourth century, but rather a time of great oppression. It was an era when the cruel and brutal Assyrians ruled that part of the world, when the children of Israel were being sent into exile in foreign lands, when the very stuff of life for the Hebrews was being violated.
In the midst of oppression, however, the call of the prophets was for justice and concern and love and kindness based on a view of life that transcended narrow nationalistic boundaries. God was a judge but he was a judge of all people. The vision of the eighth century prophets was a vision of great moral and ethical intensity. The exclusivism that was developing at the time of the book of Jonah was written was not new to Hebrew history. It was present in the eighth century as well. But in the midst of all of the Assyrian oppression, there was, and the stories of the prophets were cause for remembrance, the constant voice of an ethical imperative at the core of Hebrew faith. Life itself, and human life, was sacred.
Compare, if you will, the pathetic adventure in prophecy of a Jonah to that of Amos. This rugged country man, who spent his days tending sheep in the desert and working in the sycamine orchards, journeyed to Bethel, a sacred temple town, and there, on the steps of the temple itself, he denounced Hebrew religion in so far as it lay stress on form and ritual and not on the ethical imperative. Speaking as the prophets did, with an "I" representing God, Amos says: "I hate, I despise, your feasts; take away from me the noise of your singing: but let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream."
Compare, if you will, the message of the "prophet" Jonah with that of the prophet Hosea, who saw love as the central element both of the divine principle and of human responsibility, and with the prophet Micah, who said: "What does the Lord require of thee but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God." The Hebrew word here translated as "to love kindness" is a crucial word in Hebrew ethical thought, "Chesed". How could anyone claim to be religious, Amos said in his sermon at Bethel, simply because they obeyed all of the ceremonial rules and yet cheated people and were unconcerned with those in need, with widows and orphans, for example. "Woe unto you," Amos shouts, "because you go to temple, give your tithes, obey the dietary rules, and then "sell the needy for a pair of shoes."
Where is the Chesed, where is the love, where is the concern, where is the justice, where is the righteousness in the book of Jonah? Certainly not in the heart of the prophet himself. There is some in the hearts of the pagan sailors who are, after all, quite reluctant to throw our Jonah into the sea. There is repentance in the hearts of the people of Nineveh. There is concern in the voice of God. But not in Jonah!
What the author of Jonah is dealing with is a problem as old as the ancient world and as new as today. The unknown author of the book of Jonah is working against a view of religion which separates the saved from the unsaved, the believer from the infidel, the insider from the outsider, the friend from the enemy.
What the book of Jonah is, is a literary attempt to espouse a philosophy of Universalism, to counteract the chauvinism of his day, by pointing out its absurdity and by lifting up the ideal of universal kinship. The author of the book of Jonah is, therefore, also a humanist because basic to his philosophy is a rejection of the superiority of Judaism, and the realization that our humanity is a more basic fact than our different religions, or our different races, or our different nationalities. We have a responsibility to each other, the author of the book of Jonah believes, that transcends the differences that divide us.
What concerns the author of the book of Jonah is people: not who they are, but what they do; not what gods they worship, but the quality of their lives; not the color of their skins, but the measure of their concern; not the nation of their citizenry, but their commitment to the good. Not even a prophet of God, one who has a special commission from the Lord God Yahweh himself, not even one who has made the journey through the belly of a whale---who does not, in the end, care about people--carries the true divine message.
That message, for the author of the book of Jonah, is
clear. It is a message reflected in the little verse:
They questioned my theology
and spoke of modern thought,
bade me recite a dozen creeds
I could not as I ought.
I've but one creed I answer made
and do not want another.
I know I've passed from death to life,
because I love my brother.
(and sister)! It is the message reflected in the Universalist side of our religious heritage, a message carried in one of our familiar verses:
He drew a circle to shut me out:Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win.
We drew a circle that took him in.