Clearly enough, the book of Jonah is
an unusual book. Though
located among the seventeen prophetic books, Jonah contains no prophe-
cies or preachings, except for a brief pronouncement: "Yet forty days,
and Nineveh shall be overthrown" - a prediction that does not come
true. The book of Jonah does not look like the other prophetic books,
replete as they are with extensive visions and preachments yet with
minimal historical and biographical information. The book is
entirely
devoted to the tale of an unwilling, uncooperative, and unmerciful
messenger who refuses to deliver his message until coerced into doing
so.
Jonah also does not look like any of the Hebrew prophets,
and no-
where is he specifically referred to as a prophet. Although he
is not de-
picted as a false prophet, he is nevertheless quite different from
Amos
or Isaiah or Jeremiah or Ezekiel - even the lesser prophets, such as
Ha-
bakkuk, Haggai, and Obadiah. The very unprophetic character of
the
book and its "prophet" ought at least to arouse suspicion that this
material may require special canons of interpretation. Indeed,
the loca-
tion of such an unprophetic prophet and unprophetic book in the pro-
phetic literature rather than among the historical books in itself
suggests that the story is not properly classified as history.
If Jonah is a prophetic book, it must be because the prophetic
mes-
sage of the book is the story as such. The real prophet is the
writer of
the book of Jonah, who is offering this story as his prophetic deliver-
ance. He is like the prophet Nathan, who appeared before the
errant
king David to tell him a rather innocent-sounding story (of the rich
and
poor shepherds), leading to David's unwitting self-judgment.
Nathan
had only to say: "Thou art the man!"
The book of Jonah does not begin by informing us what kind of
narrative literature it is. That silence, though, should not
be taken to
imply that the book is therefore historical and biographical, given
the
many possibilities within narrative literature. Since satire
and irony
were established prophetic devises, those options can hardly be ruled
out. In fact, they are much more likely, considering the may
peculiar-
ities of the book and its placement among the prophetic books.
The oft-cited observation that Jesus refers to the story of
Jonah -
"For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the heart of the
earth" (Matt. 12.400) - does not prove the historicity of the story.
Such
a reference may imply no more than a comparison with an episode
from a familiar story. If a modern writer, for example, were
to refer to
an incident in Hamlet or Othello as precedent for a contemporary situa-
tion, we would not take the reference as proof that the person believed
these plays to be biographies or historical treatises.
In its biblical context the figure of Jonah could not have been
used
as a historical account of an unparalleled prophetic event, the total
con-
version of the populace of the pagan city of Nineveh and its preserva-
tion from destruction. No corroborative evidence has been found
within
or without the Bible for any such conversion. A prophet named
Jonah
is mentioned in 2 Kings 14:25 in the time of Jeroboam. Yet if
the book
of Jonah is his biography, it credits his ministry with results that
are the
opposite of what actually occurred, since Nineveh - during or shortly
after the historical Jonah's lifetime - instead of repenting and being
converted, swept down and conquered Israel. The Assyrian archives
make no mention of an dramatic religious changes; rather, they pre-
sent a consistent pattern of military activity and worship of the gods
and goddesses of the Assyrian pantheon. Nineveh, furthermore,
was
not finally saved from destruction but was destroyed by the Babyloni-
ans in 612 BC.
Everyone in the immediate audience of the book of Jonah
would
have known this: that the Ninevites, far from undergoing a moral and
religious transformation, were the people of the capital city of the
As-
syrian empire, which had devastated Jewish cities, killing many of
its
people, deporting much of the surviving population, and bringing in
non-Jewish peoples from other conquered areas of the empire (2 Kings
17). This knowledge is precisely the basis for the satire that
is now go-
ing to be told, preposterous though it may be historically. In
fact, the
account is much more workable as a satire because of its preposterous-
ness. No foreign city or people had been despised as had Nineveh
and
the Assyrians. The author of Jonah could not have chosen more
un-
likely and undeserving recipients of divine grace. Nineveh offered
the
most extreme - and therefore ideal - test case for the ethical and
theo-
logical issues with which the book of Jonah is concerned. The
pro-
phetic charge given to Jonah to preach to the Ninevites provides the
supreme measure of Jewish attitudes and opinions on these issues.
It
also provides the supreme measure of divine mercy and forgiveness.
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