An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 179: Some stuff about a whale^H^H^H^H^H Big Fish; and when you want to see a good smiting but don’t get one (Jonah 1-4)

Jonah 1-4
Some stuff about a whale Big Fish; and when you want to see a good smiting but don’t get one.

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT

For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

Jonah 1

“And they said every one to his fellow, Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah.”

Ah, finally, something different. As with Daniel, I can see why elements of Jonah’s story have entered popular consciousness whilst Obadiah and Amos, with the same old prophecies, have not.

Jonah is told by God to preach in Nineveh, but he panics and takes ship to Tarshsish instead. Whether he is afraid of being a prophet for God, or if Nineveh is not a nice place to go, is not clear. Perhaps it’s both.

Anyway, God causes a storm and the sailors are afraid. Jonah, meanwhile, is asleep, and they wake him up to pray to God. They also cast lots to see whose fault it is, and the lots point to Jonah. I’d have thought this kind of fortune-telling would be against God’s law, but the sailors are evidently gentiles as Jonah identifies himself as a Hebrew.

“Then were the men exceedingly afraid, and said unto him, Why hast thou done this? For the men knew that he fled from the presence of the LORD, because he had told them.”That’s an awfully clumsy bit of writing – put the bit about Jonah telling them first, then make the sailors afraid! Anyway, Jonah tells them that to save the ship he must be thrown overboard – this self-sacrifice element was new to me, I thought that the sailors panicked and threw him overboard on their own initiative. Actually, credit to them, they are caught between throwing an innocent man overboard and all dying at sea; at first they try to row back to shore but the storm won’t let them. So they throw Jonah overboard, the storm abates and the sailors offer prayers to God.

Jonah, of course, is swallowed by a “great fish”.

Jonah 2

“Then Jonah prayed unto the LORD his God out of the fish's belly”

Jonah is in the belly of the “fish” for three days and nights, during which he offers up prayers to God, notably the message is that the prayers need to be sincere. Jonah’s problem before was that he was trying to do his own will when God wanted him to do something else; not a popular choice with Yahweh.

But Jonah is sincerely sorry, and so the fish vomits Jonah up onto dry land.

Jonah 3

“And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”

God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh again, and this time he does. Within the city he preaches that it will fall within forty days and, remarkably, everyone listens to him. Even the king puts on mourning sackcloth and the city repents of its sins, and so God hears this and decides to spare it. Now if only all the other prophets had such an easy time of it!

Jonah 4

“But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry.”

Jonah now behaves like a spoilt child. He wanted Nineveh to be destroyed, and now says that he wants to die. This seems like an extreme over-reaction from Jonah, and possibly he has borderline personality disorder that his emotions are so over-charged.

He goes and lives in a hut overlooking the city and waits to watch it get destroyed. God makes a gourd plant grow over the hut, and Jonah enjoys the shelter, but then gourd withers and he is battered by the wind. God points out to him that he was upset enough about a gourd plant dying, so perhaps Jonah should feel a bit more compassion for “six score thousand people” (that’s, what, 120,000). And there the chapter ends. I guess we are left to adduce that Jonah agrees and Nineveh is saved.

Short and to the point, the book of Jonah. I can see why the most famous incident comes from the first two chapters and his sulking about not watching Nineveh get destroyed is not so well known. Actually none of this paints Jonah in a very good light, but he does at least come across as quite human and flawed and not just a mouthpiece for God. It’s interesting that of all the prophets and dire warnings from God, Nineveh actually take Jonah seriously and so are spared. You’d think this would happen more often to showcase both God’s mercy and the wisdom of heeding His prophets, but the usual method is that people don’t listen and so have to have a good smiting. It also amuses me that Jonah firstly tries to shirk his role as a prophet, and then gets all sulky because people actually listen to him when he wants to see them all punished. How righteous of him!