Today’s first reading is again from the Book of Jonah. From yesterday’s reading, we recall: “10 When God saw by their actions how they turned from their evil way, he repented of the evil that he had threatened to do to them; he did not carry it out.” (Jonah 3:10) Great! The Ninevites repented, God relented, and Jonah’s prophetic mission is complete. As mentioned, that would have been an “they all lived happily ever after” ending. But there is another chapter in the story whose first verse gives us an idea that the story’s ending is anything but happy.
“But this was greatly displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry.” (Jonah 4:1) Jonah’s reaction reveals something about the nature of repentance. In Nineveh, the King and all the subjects repented in their heart and in their actions. And Jonah? While externally he is obedient, he has long since lost the inspiration that fueled his prayer in the belly of the great fish. When God relents of the destruction of Nineveh, the “fuse” runs out on Jonah’s own internal bomb. The prophetic saboteur falls prey to his own true feelings. When it becomes clear that Nineveh will be saved by the gracious mercy of God, Jonah is infuriated.
The author of Jonah has a clever word play in the verse around the root rā·ʿǎʿ. The sense of the verse is that Jonah is really angry because the way the world is supposed to work is this: the bad behavior should lead to a bad end, and Jonah takes it very badly that it does not. It is as though, in Jonah’s mind, the loss of the potential of God’s anger towards the well-deserving Ninevites, is what initiates or releases the anger from within Jonah. It does not dawn on Jonah to follow God’s lead. The one who praised the gracious mercy (2:2-10) clearly wants to place limits upon its distribution here in Jonah 4. What is whispered here becomes a “shout” so to speak as in Jesus’ parable of the Unforgiving Servant (Mt 14:23-35) when the servant for whom much is forgiven denies that same mercy to those in debt to him. In the hearing of the narrative, it is increasingly hard to stand with Jonah.
In the closing of the story, Jonah outside the city seems to have more concern for himself and the plant that was giving him shade but is now withering.
2 “I beseech you, LORD,” he prayed, “is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? This is why I fled at first to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, rich in clemency, loathe to punish.3 And now, LORD, please take my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live.”
Again, Jonah is praying. In Chapter 2, while in the belly of the great fish, Jonah prayed for life, he pleaded for God’s mercy. Now he prays for death (v.3). Before he cried out as the bars of the netherworld were closing, now he again descends to the final depth and asks that God shut the bars behind him.
Jonah finally says out loud what he has always been thinking: the LORD will fail to punish the ones who are so deserving of that divine punishment (in Jonah’s estimation). He makes it clear that he has been harboring this fear since the beginning when he was first called to go to Nineveh: I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, rich in clemency, loathe to punish. (Ex 34:5)
Jonah had been quick to give credal responses to the captain and crew, but they were words with little heart behind them. Now Jonah takes a credal response and uses it as a form of “I told you so…” or “I knew it!!” like punctuation on a divine mistake. The tone of the complaint is reminiscent of the older brother’s response to the father’s gift of mercy to the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:29) with its singular reference to one’s self and the complaint. Jonah is simply blind to the universality of God’s concern for all life.
Jonah answers that he could see no sense in living. It is as if he is responding: “How can I live in a world where God shows no mercy to me or this plant and wastes it on Nineveh, the enemy?
10 Then the LORD said, “You are concerned over the plant which cost you no labor and which you did not raise; it came up in one night and in one night it perished.11 And should I not be concerned over Nineveh, the great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot distinguish their right hand from their left, not to mention the many cattle?
The divine answer challenges whether Jonah has any interests other than self-interest. You were not a gardener who invested himself into the plant. There was no concern other than it’s providing shade for you. If your response is as it is, what do you imagine a gardener’s response would be – the one who tended and cared for it only to see it die wastefully when it could have been saved?
The none-too-subtle question needs no answer other than the one God provides.
The book ends with this question that challenges the hearers of then and now. God asks: “Should I not, may I not, be merciful even to Nineveh?” Is God free? Or must God act, as Jonah thinks, according to the narrow limitations of human justice?
I think Thomas John Carlisle closes this commentary quite well.
And Jonah stalked
to his shaded seat
and waited for God
to come around
to his way of thinking.And God is still waiting
for a host of Jonahs
in their comfortable houses
to come around
to His way of loving.
(Thomas John Carlisle, The American poet and Presbyterian minister, from his commentary on Jonah)
Image credit: Jonah and the Whale, Folio from a Jami al-Tavarikh (Compendium of Chronicles), Metropolitan Museum of Art | PD-US