The satire has ended abruptly, without any resolution
or moralizing,
in fact very much as a humorous anecdote ends suddenly with the
punch line. One either gets the point of the joke immediately
or not at
all - or perhaps, like the proverbial Englishman, a day later.
The satire
has ended with a question directed at Jonah, a question filled with
great
irony, a question that completely reverses the supposed wisdom of
Jonah's sense of justice and the seeming foolishness of God's sense
of
compassion. Jonah's wisdom is reduced to foolishness, and God's
foolishness is revealed as wisdom.
The question is not answered because it is the final punch
line. It is
not answered also because the reader or hearer of the story is invited
to
answer, to answer initially with a laughter that sees the foolishness
of
Jonah and acknowledges the wisdom of God. Yet, as in all great
comedy, the butt of the laughter is not just the comic figure immediately
before the audience, but the audience itself. The comic figure
represents
the audience, so the point of the joke has not been fully understood
until this further step has been taken. The fool strikingly enacts
the foolishness of our own hypocrisies and contradictions.
Who then is Jonah? He is, most immediately, the
fellow Jew who
displays Jonah's attitudes, perhaps justifiably so by ordinary canons
of
justice in view of the oppressions of the Assyrians and other conquering
peoples throughout Jewish history. Such attitudes may also seem
justifiable in the name of a divine status bestowed upon the children
of
the Abrahamic blessing and covenant. Yet, finally, all such justifications
are without justification before the higher court and the larger wisdom
of divine grace.
Ultimately Jonah is like all of us, for all of us, individually
and
collectively, behave like Jonah at some time or another. We,
too, have our
good reasons for doing so. We, like Jonah, are inclined to believe
that
the kingdom of God operates primarily in our midst; within our nation,
race, denomination, or political party. We are fairly confident
that God
is specially present among us and is less interested in and less available
to other peoples. Surely he will show little mercy or forgiveness
to our
opponents and our enemies, not should we. From our assured vantage
point "Vengeance is mine, saith the LORD" is the last word relative
to
the unmistakably evil peoples, ideologies, and nations of the world.
And just as certainly, we are the anointed instruments of divine
vengeance.
From a literary standpoint the book of Jonah is a comic
masterpiece,
delightful but also devastating in its humor, irony, and satire.
Through various comic devices it brings Jonah's beliefs and attitudes
to
a reductio ad absurdum. From a theological standpoint the book
is to
be ranked as one of the most thoroughgoing Old Testament statements
of a universal religious vision. God, as the Creator of all,
is the God of
all places and peoples. There is nowhere that God is not present
and
available, no situation in which he cannot work and his voice cannot
be
heard, no place that is completely godless. At the same time,
as Creator
of all peoples, god is not only the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
and their descendants, but the God of all nations. All are his
children and, unlike unjust parents who spoil some of their children
while ignoring or rejecting others, this God extends love and care
to
all.
Furthermore, not only can no one escape from the power
and
presence of God but this God is the god of grace and mercy. No
one stands
outside God's grace, just as no one stands outside God's presence.
God - foolishly, from Jonah's perspective - pardons and delivers even
those who are totally undeserving. Nineveh stands as the ultimate
test
of the divine capacity for unmerited grace. If even Nineveh can
be
spared, who cannot be forgiven?
Taken from Chapter 7 of
AND GOD CREATED LAUGHTER
The Bible as Divine Comedy
by Conrad Hyers
1987 John Knox Press