Commentary on Jonah 3:10—4:11

The entertaining book of Jonah is full of humor, irony, and absurdity. Readers and preachers should approach its interpretation in an appropriately playful manner, such as the Veggie Tales faithfully do in their 2002 feature film.

Jonah was a prophet

Jonah is unique among the Book of the Twelve, or Minor Prophets, in that it is a story about a prophet rather than a collection of prophetic oracles. Indeed, the only prophecy that Jonah utters is a five-word Hebrew proclamation in 3:4, “Forty days more (and) Nineveh (shall be) overturned!” (my translation). 

The reluctant prophet Jonah is, ironically, the most successful of all Hebrew prophets. He is responsible for the conversion of an entire ship’s crew of gentile sailors (1:16), which Jewish midrash identifies as representative of all 70 nations of the earth. And his five-word proclamation leads to the fervent repentance of the entire population (“everyone, great and small”) of Nineveh, that most wicked of ancient cities. 

While readers are meant to understand Jonah’s use of “overthrown” in a violent sense, like Sodom and Gomorrah are “overthrown” in Jeremiah 49:18, the verbal form (a passive or reflexive participle) also means “overturned” in the sense of changed or transformed. In this sense, the prophecy comes true when all the citizens and the king of Nineveh repent of their evil ways.

Great and evil Nineveh

The protagonist of the book is traditionally identified with the figure of Jonah son of Amittai from 2 Kings 14:25, who prophesies in the days of King Jeroboam II (prior to 750 BCE). In the book’s eighth-century setting, Nineveh is indeed a powerful symbol of evil and cruelty. The prophet Nahum’s entire book is a damnation of Nineveh’s wickedness and rapacity: “Woe, city of bloodshed, utterly deceitful, full of plunder—no end to the prey!” (Nahum 3:1). 

As part of its brutal conquest of the ancient Near East, the Assyrian Empire destroyed the nation of Israel in 722 BCE and exiled the 10 northern tribes (2 Kings 17:5–6), who are lost to history to this very day. Under Sennacherib, the Assyrian army also pillaged the southern kingdom of Judah and besieged Jerusalem itself in 701 BCE (2 Kings 18–19), before its miraculous deliverance. 

If any city deserved destruction by the hand of God, therefore, it should be Nineveh. The prophet Nahum (1:2) thus defends the justice and righteousness of God in humiliating Nineveh: “A jealous and avenging God is the LORD; the LORD is avenging and wrathful.” While Nineveh is not destroyed in the story of Jonah (or any time during the eighth century BCE), the city was in fact pillaged by the Babylonians and Medes in 612 BCE and left uninhabited for all time. Tourists can still visit its ruins just outside the city of Mosul in northern Iraq. 

The twist in our story, of course, is that the great evil city responds to the short sermon with true repentance. Even the animals of the fields are made to fast and wear sackcloth (3:7–8)! God therefore renounces the “calamity” or “evil” he had intended to bring upon Nineveh when he sees that the people of Nineveh, from great to small, “turned from their evil ways” (3:10). 

Jonah’s anger

Rather than be proud of the effect his evangelistic preaching had on the citizens of Nineveh, Jonah is angered by God’s decision to spare these enemies of Israel.

Readers may disagree concerning the honesty of Jonah’s explanation in 4:2, but his anger at God’s compassion for the people and animals of Nineveh is real. Our anti-hero takes phrases from what is perhaps the most theologically programmatic description of the God of Israel in Exodus 34:6–7, which extols God’s compassion, mercy, forgiveness, and steadfast love, and throws them in God’s face as an accusation rather than praise. 

God is indeed gracious and merciful, “abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing,” unlike the mortal Jonah (see also Numbers 14:18; Joel 2:13; Psalm 103:8; 145:8; Nehemiah 9:17, and elsewhere in scripture). God’s grace and mercy extend to even the most depraved of God’s children, much to Jonah’s chagrin. 

Jonah melodramatically asks for death rather than to tolerate his wretched existence as the Bible’s most successful prophet. (Compare the petulance of Elijah on Mount Horeb in 1 Kings 19.) He obstinately stations himself to the east of the city in hopeful anticipation of its destruction, as though God would again have a change of heart to agree with his righteous anger. 

The lingering question

The story about the reluctant prophet concludes (4:11) with a question rather than a moral, which leaves the meaning of the entire book in the hands (and heart) of every reader of the text. 

The New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition translation of the verb as “concern” in 4:10–11 misses the nuance of the Hebrew, which really means “to pity” or “to have compassion.” Should not God have compassion on the humans and animals of Nineveh when they repent? Jonah had “pity” on the bush that arose in one night and disappeared in another, yet he has no compassion for the teeming humanity (and herds) of the great city of Nineveh.

Jonah seems to believe it is only just for Nineveh to be “overthrown” (3:4) in the sense of destruction rather than repentance. This theme of justice and God’s compassion are central to the book’s interpretation, even if the book itself never uses the word “justice.” 

For this reason our passage pairs very well with another lectionary reading for today, the parable of the laborers in the vineyard in Matthew 20:1–16. Both texts consider the appropriateness of unmerited grace from God for those who we think are underserving. Like those who toiled all day long, Jonah takes offense that others might receive grace. 

Even as an ironic or absurd story, the book of Jonah reminds us to think of our own worst enemies as worthy of divine love, compassion, and forgiveness. As the famous Christian hymn declares, “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy, like the wideness of the sea.” We would do well to answer God’s question at the conclusion of Jonah by attuning our hearts toward God’s grace and compassion rather than our own righteous sense of just deserts.