Playing With Words

   Perhaps people today would better bet the full comic effect of
Jonah's foolishness if the imagined the story being told by Bill Cosby,
after the fashion of his retelling the story of Noah and the flood. On the
other hand, approaching the story from the standpoint of contemporary
culture inevitable has its disadvantages. Certain details of the comic
caricature of Jonah, for instance, are more apparent in the Hebrew. No
doubt these allusions were clearer to the people who first heard or read
the story.
   The opening words of the book of Jonah are a case in point. "Now
the word of the LORD came to Jonah the son Amittai." Innocent as
these words may seem, in Hebrew they contian two important allusions
that are central to the comedy that is to follow. Jonah means "dove," a
metaphor sometimes used for the people of Israel, as in Psa 74:19.
Now the image of the dove brings with it a trail of associations that - as
the story indicates - are opposite of what Jonah (Israel) really is.
   The dove is associated with hope, as in Noah's sending out a dove
to find land after the flood. Yet this dove (Jonah) behaves in a most
contrary manner: sent out to warn of impending destruction, he refuses
lest the judgment be averted. The dove is also associated with the
theme of escape from troubles and evils, as in Psa 55:6. Yet this
dove (Jonah) tries to escape from doom.
The dove is further associated with love, as in the Song of Solomon, in
which the beloved is dovelike: "My love, my fair one... my dove"
(2:13,14). Yet this dove (Jonah) has not only no love for the Ninevites
but not a penny's worth of sympathy or pity. Jonah is no dove at all; he
is a hawk. Perhaps the only Hebraic association that is directly applicable
to Jonah is that he is "like a dove, silly and without sense: (Hos 7:11)
Certainly, flightiness and silliness aptly describe Jonah's
behavior throughout the story.
    The other ironic allusion in the opening words is contained in the
phrase "son of Amittai." Amittai means "faithfulness." A second
contradiction with which the story is to deal is announced at the start.
This "son of faithfulness" is completely disobedient. His response to
the divine command is totally contrary to it. "Dove son of Faithfulness"
flies off in the opposite direction lest he become the bearer of the
least olive leaf of hope, love, and salvation.
    The only other biblical context in which "Jonah son of Amittai"
appears is equally significant to the story. The Jonah of 2 Kings 14:25
prophecies during the reign of Jeroboam, son of Joash, who is
classified as a very wicked king who "did what was evil in the sight of
the LORD; he did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of
Nebat, which he made Israel to sin" (24). Yet despite the wickedness
of Jeroboam, God, in his mercy, decides that he will not "blot out
the name of Israel from under heaven, so he saved them by the hand of
Jeroboam: (27). The theme of salvation in spite of great evil, along
with the literal meaning of "Jonah son of Amittai," made the association
surrounding the name of Jonah especially useful in developing a
comic parable.
    Another comic devise in the book of Jonah is the juxtaposition of
the imagery of rising and falling. The command given to Jonah is
"Arise, go to Nineveh". Jonah's immediate response is to rise
but to "flee to Tarshish." This fleeing is then described in a succession
of descents. Jonah "went down" to Joppa and boarded a ship. Once at
sea he had "gone down" into the hold of the ship, had "lain down,"
and had fallen into a deep sleep. The sailors who were desperately trying
to save the ship, when they found him, commanded him to "arise"
and call upon his God. When they cast (down) lots to determine who
was the cause of their situation, the lot "fell upon Jonah." Rather than
repent and offer to rise up and go to Nineveh, Jonah volunteered to be
thrown into the sea and therefore go down in death to Sheol. Literally
and figuratively, Jonah, to avoid rising up to go to Nineveh, went
down, down, down, down. Yet, no matter how low Jonah stooped or
to what depths he sank in his disobedience, God saved Jonah from
destruction, just as God later saved Nineveh from destruction - with the
one difference that Nineveh repented; Jonah did not. We can imagine
him muttering as the great fish snatches him up and transports him back
in the direction of Nineveh, "Curses, foiled again."
   Actually, what Jonah is said to have muttered during his three days
in the stomach of the great fish is a long prayer. The prayer seems so
out of character for Jonah and so eloquent for its gastric setting that
some interpreters have suggested that it is probably a later addition.
The prayer, however, repeats the theme of descent in chapter 1 in a long
cascade of imagery. (2:2-6) In other words, to put it less poetically,
Jonah dropped to the bottom like a stone!
   The prayer itself sounds exemplary in its peity and suggests that
Jonah has undergone a dramatic conversion. On closer examination,
however, it is the prayer of someone who has turned to God in his
extremity and as a last resort. Pious phrases, grand promises, and sacred
vows easily pour forth from the soul in desperate circumstances. As
John Holbert has suggested, Jonah's words are typical of what we
might call "fox-hole" religion, or in this case "fish-belly" religion.
There is some question about the extent of the transformation.
   Although Jonah acknowledges that God has rescued him from certain
death by preparing a fish to dive down and swallow him, Jonah
does not once acknowledge any guilt or evildoing on his part. He
neither confesses nor repents. In fact, while offering thanksgiving to
God for deliverance - "thou didst bring up my life form the Pit"
Jonah places all the blame for his predicament upon God. The
prayer in chpt. 2 thus continues the comic satire of the self-
contradictions of Jonah's position and behavior. It was Jonah, not God and
not even pagan sailors, who proposed that he be thrown into the
sea. Yet in the prayer Jonah blames it wholly upon God: "thou didst
cast me into the deep... Then I said, ‘I am cast out from thy presence;
how shall I again look upon thy holy temple?'"
   Jonah seems to have learned little about God's presence from the
experience, for he still localizes God in Israel and imagines him in
residence in the temple in Jerusalem. This is reaffirmed in verse 7, in
which Jonah says, "my prayer came to thee, into they holy temple."
The theology of Psalm 139 has still not gotten through to Jonah: "If I
make my bed in Sheol, thou art there! If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there they hand
shall lead me..." Perhaps even more relevant would be the words
of Amos 9:2-3
   In this case the "serpent" is a great fish who has swallowed the
bite whole and who by now has a bad case of indigestion and beaches
itself. The juxtaposition of the last sentences of chpt. 2 is especially
humorous. No sooner does Jonah exclaim piously, "Deliverance belongs
to the LORD!" than the fish throws up! "It vomited out Jonah
upon the dry land." At last the long downward spiral of descent
is reversed. He now very literally comes up from the depths of the
sea and is thrown up from the belly of the fish. Surely it is the most
humiliating and undignified example of salvation in the Bible.

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