NOTES for Jon 1:8-16

The Book of Jonah is unique in its own way. It is unique not because, as some biblical scholars suppose, it was written when Nineveh already lay in ruins: anachronisms occur in other biblical books as well. The mention of Nineveh as the center of world evil testifies, if not directly then indirectly, to the pre-exilic origin of the book. In those times Nineveh was the symbol of man's opposition to God. Later Babylon would become such a symbol.

The uniqueness of the book lies elsewhere: it is not a collection of prophetic sermons, as the other prophetic books are, but a book about a prophet, about how difficult it is to follow God's will even for someone who, it would seem, has already made his choice. Jonah knows perfectly well what God wants from him: he heard His voice quite clearly. The problem is not spiritual deafness, but unwillingness to go where Jonah is sure nothing good awaits him.

Jonah himself offers to be thrown overboard at the critical moment, and this only proves that he understands perfectly well that what is happening is not accidental: it is God's hand, from which one cannot run away. He is so unwilling to go to Nineveh that to the very end he tests the firmness of His hand. He says: throw me into the sea.

To end up in a stormy sea, even on a board or raft, means certain death. One can be saved in such a situation only if God directly intervenes. Jonah as it were provokes God to such intervention. He shows Him: if You do not want to free me from the task entrusted to me, then here, I throw myself into the sea, and if You need me, You will not let me drown and will deliver me wherever You Yourself want.

It is not immediately clear which there is more of here: challenge, trust, or both at the same time. Only one thing is clear: such an act presupposes strong and sufficiently trusting relations with God, which, for all their trust, can at times be quite ambiguous. As between close people, all kinds of things happen: quarrels, stubbornness, misunderstanding. But, as between people, all this does not cancel the fact of closeness and trust.

In the end God nevertheless delivers His servant to the place. True, in a very unusual and even fabulous way: in the belly of a giant sea animal. In translation it is sometimes called a whale, sometimes a fish, while in the original the matter is a sea monster. The prophet still has to do what God assigns him.

Today's reading describes a real pattern of behaviour in someone who suddenly realises what God wants of them. If this is the very first time you have become aware of the reality of God's presence and realised just how clearly His wishes are expressed, your flight may be even more serious than Jonah's. On the other hand, even if it is not the first or second time you have understood that the road takes a sharp turn and that you thoroughly dislike the place it will lead you to, however devoted and obedient you may be, you will try to turn off in any possible direction. It is not even a refusal—you cannot refuse, because you understand that God has said so—but an attempt to avoid doing God's will without saying ‘no’. Yet any such human refusal, understandable and always possible though it is, has the same effect on creation as an earthquake of seven or eight points on the intensity scale. You turn off the path, board the first ship you find, and the world around you shakes, threatening death to everyone who has not the faintest idea where you are fleeing or from what. Once you have understood the cause of all cataclysms of this kind, there are two ways to act. First, you can remain living inside the whale, in complete isolation, in a disgusting, rotting rubbish heap. Or you can say, ‘What I have promised, I will fulfil’, and the whale will spit you out where you did not want to go.