There’s nothing more thrilling to me when something unusual turns up in the Sunday lectionary. By ‘unusual’ I mean anything that isn’t from second Isaiah, which the lectionary repeats so often I have officially given up on writing about it (fear not, this strike may not last very long…).
But this week: the book of Jonah! What joy! Read on for what you need to know about Jonah, his rage, and the worm appointed to harass him.
Jonah Under his Gourd, Maarten Van Heemskerck, 1561
Context
Many of us will be familiar with the book of Jonah from Sunday school, or perhaps from popular culture. The story of Jonah being swallowed by a ‘whale’ - though the Hebrew simply says ‘large fish’ (דָּג גָּדוֹל, dag gadul) - is a popular one.
To summarsie the story; God asks Jonah to go to Nineveh and ‘cry out against it’ (1:2) so that the people might repent. Jonah does not wish to do so and subsequently experiences something of a ‘time out’ in the belly of big a fish.
Eventually, Jonah makes it to Nineveh and the people heed his words and repent. In 3:10 we hear that God ‘changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring down upon them’.
All is well for the city, but not for Jonah who at the beginning of chapter 4 enters into what can only be described as a big tantrum. And why? Because he did not think it was fair that the people of Nineveh should be saved.
The book’s implicit comments on ideas about foreignness give us a clue about its dating. Like the book of Ruth, a major concern of Jonah is the status of non-Israelite groups and how they might be included in the people of God. As I’ve mentioned before, there is significant disagreement between texts like Jonah and Ruth, and Ezra-Nehemiah on the issue of foreignness. This probably indicates that these texts were all written around the same time, in a post-exilic context, where issues like intermarriage had come to the fore.
It is also important to note that the book of Jonah is really quite funny. The text is full of hyperbole and madness. Although it is placed amongst the minor prophets, Jonah is something more like a novella or a parable. It is as comedic as the book of Ruth is idyllic.
Content
In chapter 4, Jonah becomes very angry and takes himself off to the edge of the city to wallow in his rage. At this point, in v6, God appoints a bush to grow to provide Jonah with some shade. Here, we see something of the comedic nature of the text.
The word which is here translated as ‘appointed’ (יְמַן, yeman) is used several times throughout Jonah. It appears first in 1:17, where God ‘appoints’ the large fish to swallow Jonah. In 4:6, once again, God ‘appoints’ the bush to grow and give Jonah shade. Just a few verses later, though, God ‘appoints’ a worm to destroy the bush, sending Jonah back into a fit of rage.
All the uses of the verb ‘appoint’ in this story remind the reader that God is ultimately in control. Jonah can do nothing to wriggle out of God’s will for his life and more than he can control whether the bush lives or dies.
In our own attempts to assert control over the things around us, we might remember Jonah. God reminds Jonah that he ‘did not labour’ for the bush, nor did he grow it, in 4:10, and in doing so shows that Jonah can control little about his life and his surroundings. More than this, Jonah’s understanding of what is fair and right is limited.
Here, the passage picks up on the same theme as is found in the gospel reading (Mt 20:1-16). Jesus tells a story about a landowner, who employs people at different stages of the day but pays them the same wage.
The idea that ‘it isn’t fair’ is found both in the response of the people in the parable and in Jonah’s response to the salvation of Nineveh. But in both passages, we are reminded that God’s grace isn’t fair. It is much wider and deeper than simplistic ideas of fairness. And isn’t that good news? I certainly think so.