The Upside-Down, Perfectionist Prophecy of Jonah

According to tradition, the book of Jonah is read in its entirety during the afternoon service of Yom Kippur. Two statements in the Mishnah provide indirect evidence as to why. The first cites the Ninevites who, heed the titular prophet’s warnings to set aside their sinful ways, respond to his message with exemplary fasting and repentance. The second cites Jonah’s supplications in the belly of the fish as an archetype of efficacious prayer. Yet to see this biblical book as a straightforward story modeling prayer, fasting, and repentance betrays the back and forth in this most uniquely troubling and spare of prophetic encounters.

Jonah is not so much about repentance as about the prophet’s protest, or refusal to prophesy, and not about the prophet’s persuading the Lord to have mercy but about the Lord’s having to persuade the prophet that mercy is just. The prophetic temperament is here so nakedly troubled that I’m tempted to call the book an account not of a prophecy but of a therapeutic relationship. The real question is who will heal whom.

Like many tales of prophets, the book begins with the Lord picking a man and giving him a message. But things go off the rails pretty quickly: