Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A – Jonah 3:10-4:11
But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry [Jonah 4:1].
Jonah’s story is among the most familiar in the Old Testament—or at least we remember its most memorable scene. There is a storm, a man thrown overboard, and an enormous fish. Many of us remember a whale, though the text clearly says fish. After three days, the fish vomits Jonah onto dry land. A man who seemed certain to drown has been rescued. It makes a satisfying ending.
And yet, the story doesn’t end here. The fish has become so dominant in many of our memories that we can forget why Jonah was on board the ship in the first place. Yahweh had told him to deliver a warning to the city of Nineveh, but Jonah had fled in the opposite direction. He was running away from Nineveh, away from the LORD.
Of course, spending three days inside a fish can cause one to reconsider one’s travel plans. When Yahweh calls him a second time, Jonah goes to the city.
There, his sermon is brief—just five words in Hebrew. He tells the people that in forty days, their city will be overturned. Then comes a miracle greater, I think, than surviving three days in the fish’s belly. The entire city repents. Even the king exchanges his royal robe for sackcloth and sits in ashes. Yahweh sees their collective repentance and changes His mind. He won’t destroy the city. Their future is still open. This makes for another satisfying ending. Yet, instead of being delighted that his message has worked—many prophetic messages from others did not — instead of being jubilant that so many will be saved from destruction, Jonah is furious.
What does Jonah have against Nineveh? Well, actually quite a bit, if one looks at Israel’s history. The city was Assyria’s capital. That empire destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE, and subjected Judah, the southern kingdom, to invasion and tribute. In his palace at Nineveh, the Assyrian king Sennacherib had the conquest of the Judahite city of Lachish carved across the walls. The carvings displayed captives being marched away, prisoners flayed alive, and other forms of torture—all as a boast. For those who heard Jonah’s original story, Nineveh was a name with deep wounds attached. It’s asking a lot for Jonah, or any Hebrew, to want mercy for a city like Nineveh.
Jonah shows his great and deep anger when he explains himself in the text that has come down to us as chapter four. Jonah knows well Yahweh’s nature. And so, he bitterly reaches for one of Israel’s foundational confessions. He echos the words Moses heard on Sinai: “gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love” [Exodus 34:6]. He flings back the creed at God as an accusation. “That is why I fled to Tarshish in the beginning,” he says [Jonah 4:2]. “I knew you were forgiving.”
Armed with a bit of history, we can see that Jonah did not run because he doubted Yahweh’s mercy. He ran because he was certain of it. And Jonah was also certain that such mercy should not be given to those in Nineveh.
God answers with a question, “Is it right for you to be angry?” [Jonah 4:4, at least that is the translation of the question offered by most English Bibles]. I hear a reprimand in those words, a question that has an already decided answer, i.e., “No!” But well-respected Old Testament scholar, Robert Alter, translates the verse differently. In his translation, Yahweh asks, “Are you good and angry?”
Depending on how one hears it, the question offers different possibilities. Said with tenderness, it gives Jonah room to admit how angry he truly is. Alternatively, if it is said with incredulity, it exposes a Jonah who is ready to die when a city lives. Either way, and perhaps both at once, it invites Jonah to hear himself. Yahweh gives Jonah room to reflect upon his anger.
But Jonah will give Yahweh no answer. Instead, he walks out of the city, builds a shelter east of the walls, and sits down to watch, still hoping, apparently, that something might yet go wrong for Nineveh.
Ah, but Yahweh isn’t finished. He appoints a plant—the same verb used for the fish that is “appointed” to swallow Jonah. The plant grows up over Jonah and shades his head. Jonah, who was unhappy at the prospect of those in the city remaining alive, is suddenly extremely happy about the plant.
The next morning Yahweh appoints a worm to attack the plant. It withers. Then Yahweh appoints a scorching east wind. The sun beats on Jonah’s head until he grows faint and asks, again, to die [4:8].
Seeing Jonah’s rage over a spared city and his anguish over a dead plant cause Yahweh to ask the special question a second time. “Are you good and angry about this, too?” This time Jonah answers. “Angry enough to die” [4:9]. It’s the only direct answer Jonah gives in the entire book.
Jonah felt the shade from the plant come and go roughly within a day. He is capable of that kind of reversal. That is essentially what has happened to Nineveh. The city had what appeared to be a fixed sentence: 40 days, then destruction. But what seemed fixed turned out not to be fixed at all. Its overnight reversal should have moved Jonah, but it has not.
Yahweh points out the gap in Jonah’s reaction.
You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left and also many animals?” [Jonah 4:10-11].
Yahweh doesn’t dispute the death of Hebrews and cruelty of the Assyrians at Lachish. Jonah isn’t told to forget what had been done to his people. Instead, Yahweh seems to be saying, now that Nineveh’s sentence has been lifted, what is it that Jonah wants for Nineveh’s future? The answer, of course, is that despite the people’s turning from their old ways, Jonah still wants the city leveled and its inhabitants killed. The facts have moved on, but Jonah has not.
This is where the short OT book leaves Jonah. Nineveh’s story is finished. It has a future into which it can walk. On the other hand, Jonah’s story is incomplete. Yahweh hasn’t withheld an ending from Jonah, for Yahweh is still present within the conversation. Yahweh is still asking. But Jonah doesn’t provide Yahweh (or us) with an answer. Does he go back into the redeemed city? Does he sit with the withered plant? Or does he head toward Tarshish again?
I think that’s the question the book leaves for those of us who read this text long after Jonah is gone. We aren’t asked if our anger has good reasons. Yahweh admits those reasons may be enough to make us “good and angry.” We’re asked instead if, in spite of that anger, we can still imagine a good outcome for the ones we’ve decided are past hoping for, and whether, if we could imagine it, we would let ourselves want it.
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