The story of Jonah centers around repentance and God’s mercy. Jonah is given a task by God to travel to Nineveh in order to announce its imminent destruction. Jonah tries to avoid doing this by fleeing to Tarshish, but after spending three days in the belly of a whale, he repents and travels to Nineveh. Once he arrives, he announces that the city will be overthrown in three days. The King of Nineveh mandates repentance in the hopes that it will cause God to change his mind and spare the city. God does indeed spare the city, which causes Jonah to become angry.
The story of Jonah contains parallels to the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis. In both stories, God is anthropomorphized. He speaks, he reasons, and he can potentially change his mind as a result of man’s actions. In Genesis, Abraham argues with God in an attempt to convince God to spare Sodom for the sake of the righteous people who may be living there. Jonah, on the other hand, attempts to flee. It is not clearly stated why, but after the Ninevites do repent, Jonah becomes resentful and angry. He tells God he knew this was going to happen and that is why he attempted to flee in the first place. Jonah sets up a lean-to outside the city, where he sits and waits, as if to tell God that he won’t leave until God does what he said he was going to do.
This story raises a question about the way that people perceived God when the book of Jonah was written. Was this story written at a point when God was being refashioned from a tribal deity into an unchanging entity? Other interesting points in the story are the recognition of other gods, the implication that God controls other nations as well as Israel, and that anyone can repent and turn back to God.
Image: By Unknown – Metropolitan Museum of Art, online collection: entry 453683, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32908844
Bradley Farless 