JONAH

Jonah is the Haftorah on the afternoon of Yom Kippur. This short book is only 4 chapters and 47 verses long. The usual thinking is that this placement is because of the theme of repentance.  Jonah emerges from the “big fish” (there’s no whale in Hebrew) and proclaims that the people of Ninevah, a non Israelite city have sinned and need to repent.  The people of Ninevah recognize their wrongs, declare a fast, put on sackcloth and ashes and confess their sins in the hope that the divine “may turn back from his wrath, so that we do not perish.” (3:9)  YHVH accepts their repentance and does not destroy them.

We can easily read this short book as a cautionary tale of what might happen to us if we sin.  Only there’s a reality that if the divine has the power to punish evil doers, He certainly does not exercise it in ways that make sense. I wish Psalm 92 were true.  (92:5-7)

Though the wicked sprout like grass,
though all evildoers blossom,
it is only that they may be destroyed forever.

Surely, Your enemies, O LORD,
surely, Your enemies perish;
all evildoers are scattered.

But that’s just not my experience. As John Mellencamp sings “They say people get what they deserve, but Lord, sometimes it's much worse than that.” (lyrics to Empty Hands).

Let me instead offer a very different approach to the text and read it as the story of Jonah’s psychospiritual maturation.  I believe we should see Jonah as a hero whom we should emulate. I’m going to discuss this in the context of the following three themes:

• ·        The role of depth in Jonah’s transformation

• ·        The numbers 3 and 40. 

• ·        The flow of the story from Jonah’s fleeing to his final lesson taught by the death of a plant

The story begins, as is well known, with Jonah fleeing from fulfilling the call from the divine to prophesy at Ninevah.  He’s not the first prophet who resisted his call—Moses argues strenuously against going to Egypt after having his mission revealed to him in his encounter at the burning bush until YHVH says enough, just go.  Jonah could have argued with YHVH, but instead he flees. How should we understand this?  Is it an act of cowardice, an easy reading, or an act saying that I’m not ready to be a prophet? 

One hint to us is that all of his fleeing is in a downward direction.  Jonah flees Israel down to the Philistine territory of modern day Jaffa, just south of Tel Aviv (1:3).  He hires a ship to take him away from Israel.  Jonah immediately goes downward into the hold of the vessel (1:5) and sleeps through the beginning of the storm that threatens the ship.

Jonah then does something remarkable, unusual and absolutely essential for his spiritual growth:  he takes responsibility. When the crew draws lots to find out who is responsible for the storm and the lot falls upon Jonah, he fesses up about who he is, that he is fleeing the divine command and that he is the reason the sea is storming.  He even tells the crew to heave him overboard, another downward movement (1:12).  The crew attempts to save him by seeking to return to land, but the storm grows even worse and they reluctantly heave him overboard—and the storm stops.

The next downward movement is into the belly of the big fish where he spends three days and nights.  This is obviously a further descent. Then his prayer, assembled from different verses from Psalms, when he is inside the fish (2:3-10) begins with Jonah placing himself in the underworld.  Jonah calls out from the belly of Sheol (the biblical concept of the underworld) in verse 3, says he was cast into the depths in verse 4, was engulfed by the deep in verse 6 and was enclosed by the bars of the earth but brought up from the pit by the divine in verse 7. 

Having mythically descended to the underworld and I would argue completing the work he needs to do in the depth, Jonah’s prayer concludes with a return to the divine.  “What I have vowed I will perform” (2:10).  YHVH commands the fish to spew Jonah up onto dry land and Jonah’s return from the underworld to this middle world is complete.

To what extent does this description of Jonah’s descent to the underworld and return to this world speak to you?  What is your experience with sinking to the depths and returning?

Jonah, the text is careful to tell us, spends three days and three nights in the fish’s belly.  The city of Ninevah is portrayed as being “an enormously large city, a three day’s walk across” (3:3).  JPS comments that this is “an impossibly large distance for an ancient city.” This makes me think that three isn’t just some random number but is meant to communicate something.  What’s the significance of the number three?

Here are some options.  There are three mother letters in the Sefer Yetzirah from which the world is made.  There are three patriarchs, though why Joseph isn’t included mystifies me. There are three sons of Noah.  There are three worlds in many Native cosmologies, an upper world, a lower world and a middle world and this is present in the Bible with the idea of Sheol and also in the idea of the Temple in Jerusalem as connecting the three realms, an idea that R. Arthur Green rightly applies to the Tzaddik in Hasidism. I wonder if maybe the use of three days and nights inside the fish is telling us that a new Jonah will be born in a way that spending 1 day might not? I’m much clearer that the number three is significant than I am about how we might interpret it.

We also have the number forty in our text. Jonah arrives in Ninevah after accepting his commission and says “Forty days more and Ninevah shall be overthrown.” (3:4).  This use of the number forty lets us know that the residents of Ninevah are given an opportunity to transform and mature. 

The number forty represents the time of transformation.  Moses ascends Mount Sinai for forty days (Exodus 24:18, 34:28).  This is echoed in Elijah’s fast of forty days and nights when he flees Ahab and goes to Mt. Horeb where he goes into the cave and hears the still small voice of the divine. (I Kings 19:8-12).  It’s also echoed in the vision fast of Jesus, a man who was born and died as a Jew, lasting 40 days and nights.  Forty is also the number of years our ancestors wandered in the desert in the generational vision quest where they failed to find their way to adulthood and were thus condemned to die in the wilderness.

What do you make of either the number three or the number forty’s presence in our story?  What other indications tell you that the story you are hearing is a story of transformation?  

Let’s look at the flow of the story.  Jonah seeks to run away from what he has been commanded to do. I would suggest that this is more common than we might think.  Many of us have run away from what we have been called to do, though in our day it is usually by not listening to ourselves and instead listening to what society wants from us. Then instead of fleeing to the light, he instinctively heads down—down to Jaffa, down to the hold of the ship, down to the big fish, down to sheol and the pit.  Only after he has thoroughly descended can he turn to the divine and accept his mission. He accepts his divinely appointed task and preaches to the Ninevites and is oddly successful.  Most if not all of the prophets in the Hebrew Bible are not successful in getting our ancestors to repent and change their behavior.

Only Jonah is not done growing—the story teaches us there is another huge step for him in his growth. “And God renounced their punishment He had planned to bring upon them, and did not carry it out.” (3:10) However, “this displeased Jonah greatly, and he was grieved.  He prayed to the Lord, saying, O Lord! Isn’t this just what I said when I was still in my own country [Ninevah is not in Israel]” (4:1-2). 

I’m not quite sure what his ostensible complaint is—maybe something like why did I have to go through this if you were going to spare them anyway? JPS says it is because his proclamation did not come true. Others say that he knew that the fact that the Ninevites repented and were saved reflects badly on the Israelites who routinely did not listen to the exhortations of their prophets. Thus, he did not want the Israelites to look bad. (Ibn Ezra, Radak).  This interpretation seems a bit off because the condemnation of Israelites is standard fare for prophets. Maybe we can make more sense of this by following through the story. I think his complaint is a sign that he still has more spiritual maturation to do.

Jonah had previously gone outside of town to sit and wait to see what happens.  The divine causes a shade plant to grow overnight and to which Jonah becomes attached.  Then the divine sends a worm that kills the plant and a hot east wind that beats him up, to the point that he “begged for death saying I would rather live than die.” And then he reiterates how deeply grieved he is about the plant when queried by the divine (4:8-9). Well, says YHVH, you care deeply about this plant for which you did no work, should I care less about this people and their animals (4:10-11).  The book ends with the implication that God saved the Ninevites because he cared about them.  

So obviously we can interpret the ending as being an expression of God caring for all people.  But I want to look at Jonah’s transformation.  The transformation isn’t done when he accepts his charge to preach repentance to the Ninevites. He’s had his vision, he’s accepted his calling as a prophet of YHVH, he preaches effectively to the people of Nineveh, enjoying vocational success, but he still needs to learn something, because the man underneath this plant isn’t a spiritually mature adult yet. Visions by themselves aren’t enough; we also need to have the truth seared into us by a hot east wind.

One of the striking things in this story is that there are no Jews besides Jonah.  Further, all the non Jews, the sailors and the citizens of Ninevah, are all God fearing and actually strive to do the right thing. Most prophetic literature is a Jewish prophet preaching to stubborn Israelites who won’t listen and thus to whom bad things happen and/or the promise of good things happening if Israel follows the divine.  There are a few other minor prophets concerned with non Jews, such as the books of Nahum and Obadiah, two books which seem really obscure to me. But this is a text read in a prominent place in the Jewish liturgical calendar. Further, it can’t be just because it preaches the importance of repentance; there’s a ton of texts that do that aimed at Jews. Rather I think it is because it is the story of a Jew who sought to flee from his unique purpose on the earth and came to embrace it through some deep transformational work.

What do you think Jonah needs to learn that is the lesson of the shade plant and its death? Have you accepted and embraced your unique purpose on the earth?  Is there more you need to learn to truly fulfill that purpose?

QUESTIONS

To what extent does this description of Jonah’s descent to the underworld and return to this world speak to you?  What is your experience with sinking to the depths and returning?

What do you make of either the number three or the number 40’s presence in our story?  What other indications tell you that the story you are hearing is a story of transformation?  

What do you think Jonah needs to learn that is the lesson of the shade plant and its death? Have you accepted and embraced your unique purpose on the earth?  Is there more you need to learn to truly fulfill that purpose?