Talk:Jonah 4:1-11

4:1-5 - False prophet?

Joe, I'm anxious to hear you elaborate on these thoughts, I'm really not sure what you mean by false prophet. Over at Jim F.'s SS lesson, we discussed these verses a bit. In particular, I think it's important to understand Jonah's desire to die, and I think it's a purposeful contrast to Moses and Elijah who also wanted to die—but ironically, their desire to die was b/c the people would not repent whereas Jonah's desire to die is b/c the people did repent. I think this is the most straightforward (i.e. facile!) way to read this.

I think another way to read this might be that Jonah was trying to commit a premeditated sin—that is, he knew he could refuse the prophetic call and that he could repent later and God would be merciful. But I think this reading is a stretch....

Also, if I had to guess what you're getting at, it seems you mean something like Jonah making a liar out of God. That is, God said he would punish Nineveh, and with Nineveh repenting, God's word effectively becomes suspicious/dubitable. Or perhaps you are going in the same direction we did on Jim's lesson, that Jonah is upset b/c he didn't want God to be merciful to the Ninevites? --RobertC 16:42, 4 Sep 2006 (UTC)

Re: false prophets, Deut 18:22 is interesting in this context--though I'm not sure what to make of it. I'm not sure I can defend this interpretation ver well, but I had presumed that when Jonah says "I fled ... for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful..." that Jonah's concern was simply that he didn't want the people to repent. I can see that maybe being made a fool of was part of his concern, but I always read this as a case where Jonah doesn't want people outside of Israel to enjoy the blessings Israel enjoys. --Matthew Faulconer 06:31, 5 Sep 2006 (UTC)

Okay, a little background. A few months ago, I was teaching seminary (I taught Book of Mormon last year, and I had a class entirely of graduating seniors; my modus operandi was never to prepare anything, but simply to come together and explore the text of the Book of Mormon together), and something led us to consider Paul's poem on charity (probably somewhere in Ether or Moroni). As we read 1 Cor 13:8, I asked the class if they believed Paul is right to say that "prophecies shall fail." As we discussed it, it came to me, and I mentioned it to them, that Jonah was an example of a failed prophecy: the prophecy of destruction never comes to pass. We had a rather interesting discussion about failed prophecy and the nature of charity as going, then, beyond all prophecy, and I went home.

Later that day, I found that idea tugging at me, so I began to study Jonah in some detail and depth (I had read it through a few times before, but had never dedicated anything more than five minutes to the whole book). I worked through my own reading of it entirely before I consulted any commentaries, etc., and I was interested to read in Terry Eagleton's "J. L. Austin and the Book of Jonah" (in The Postmodern Bible Reader, ed. Jobling, Pippin, and Schleifer) an interpretation rather similar to my own (fascinating that I was approaching the text from Paul, and he was reading it as a British Marxist, and we came to a very similar reading). Perhaps my focus on the role of the prophet in the narrative is a result of the pathway that led me to the text, but I think that perspective opens up a curious way of reading the text.

So here is how I think this passage must be read: there are two ways of reading Jonah's refusal to prophesy. On the one hand, it might be read in terms of the post-exilic struggle between the "Judeans" and those of the "Older Testament." On this reading (and I think this is the commonest among good scholars), Jonah represents the Judean sentiment that only those under the covenant (and then only those under the covenant in the Deuteronomistic interpretation) may have any claim on Jehovah's mercy, etc. The book then becomes complaint literature, written by those excluded by the prevailing Judean mobocracy (as were, apparently, Ruth, Third Isaiah, the Song of Solomon, etc.). Jehovah must be read, in such a context, as the God who overthrows the boundaries being established at the time. That the "bad guys" are figured as the prophet of the Lord is fascinating: one absolutely must read Jonah in light of the critique of the prophet (whether that is understood as a criticism of prophets like the early Zechariah, or whether that is understood as a literary flourish that sets up the prophet as the frustrated tool of the Lord who eventually must admit that all are to be brought into the covenant). On the other hand, Jonah might be read in terms of the failure of the prophecy, independent, so to speak, of the question of the boundaries of the Abrahamic covenant. On this reading, the flight, the return, and the final dadaist drama are all drawn together under the question of the nature of the prophetic call. Such a reading might decontextualize the book historically and open it more radically so as to bear on books like Isaiah and Jeremiah, rather than just on later books like Malachi and Haggai.

The trick, however, is that these readings are, in the end, one and the same, I think. Hence, I'm not trying to re-route Jonah away from the "selfish" reading, the exclusionary reading (where Jonah doesn't want the Ninevites to be a part of the covenant). In both readings, what is particularly difficult to work out is the nature of the prophet. On the first reading, one is forced, as I said, to take up the question of the prophet as able or unable to avoid the call of mercy that extends beyond the boundaries of the covenant. On the second reading, one is force, as I said, to take up the question of the prophet in his very nature. These two questions are one and the same: what is prophetic subjectivity, due to the call of the Lord and in the face of the Lord? If the prophet is, in the end, a mediator or a go-between, how much power does he have, and can he thwart the desires or mercy of the Lord? I think the readings run together in the end. The wonderful thing about such a reading is that it allows for the historical context of the post-exilic struggles, while recognizing that the author of the book was trying to think through the nature of books like Isaiah and Jeremiah at the same time: it becomes a historical text that situates the rest of the OT.

Hence, I think we have to read this particular verse as having a double sense: Jonah fled from the Lord's call because he despised the nature of the prophetic call, but this can only, in the end, be an ultimate lack of charity, since his radical care for his own self betrays his absolute lack of love towards so many people and even cattle (hence the discussion of worth in last verses of chapter 4). (The cattle thing is, I think, by the way, a joke. I think the author was looking for a laugh by having the Ninevite king command the animals to be clothed in sackcloth. The return to the question of cattle at the end is supposed to recall the humor at a rather tense moment. The effect it has is wonderful.) On this double reading, Jonah's (read: the Judeans') ethnic cleansing of sorts is a question of selfish refusal, of a self-love made possible only by the Lord's call that is used to refuse the full meaning of the Lord's call. This last point is perhaps the riches aspect of the book: Jonah/Judea has been called into the Abrahamic covenant, and so has only come into a sort of selfhood through that call, which is then soundly usurped in a twisting of the nature of the covenant (the covenant was made in the first place so that the nations, the Gentiles, would be saved). The Judeans, in the end, are idolaters: they make Jehovah another national deity.

I hope that background helps. It certainly doesn't seem so cryptic. I need to work all of this into the commentaries. Back when I was working on Jonah, I posted a number of questions in hopes that it would spark some discussion, but nothing happened, so I left the project alone. But perhaps we ought to resume the project now? --Joe Spencer 14:38, 5 Sep 2006 (UTC)

4:6-11

I am confused by these last few verses. It is relevant that the reason Jonah seems to have pitied the gourd is because he got shade from it. Really this seems more like self-pity. The Lord's care for Nineveh doesn't seem to be the same at all. So I am confused as to how this example of the gourd helps to explain why the Lord wants Nineveh saved. --Matthew Faulconer 06:30, 4 Sep 2006 (UTC)

Good question. I think it must be that God is using Jonah's self-pity against him more than drawing an analogy between his and Jonah's feelings. If Jonah wants so badly to spare the gourd, which is very low on the totem pole in terms of intrinsic worth and potential ("came up in a night, and perished in a night"), isn't God justified in wanting to spare the people of Nineveh? And even if the people of Nineveh didn't "deserve" to be spared, the milk and meat benefits of the cattle would seem far more beneficial to mankind than the shade that the gourd provided, so God is more justified in wanting to spare Nineveh and its cattle than Jonah is justified in wanting to spare the gourd.... --RobertC 13:07, 4 Sep 2006 (UTC)

I think we ought to read this last chapter as a great mystery, not as a (I hope this doesn't sound accusing!) facile analogy made by the Lord. The "dadaist drama" of chapter 4 can only be interpreted in terms of the whole book's theme. I think that the major problem the Book of Jonah is trying to deal with is the question of prophetic subjectivity. It is an exploration of what is means to be a prophet, and how one suffers as a propeht. Jonah's rejection of the call appears to have been fueled by his desire not to be a false prophet, which he knew God would impose on him. With that in mind, the drama that plays itself out here in the end is not a question of the relative worths of Ninevah and the gourd, but the meaning of prophetic repetition, of the historicity of a prophet.

Wow, I just realized how cryptic that paragraph is. I need to work out some of this in the commentary. Toward a Marxist reading of Jonah! --Joe Spencer 15:58, 4 Sep 2006 (UTC)