The story of Jonah is one of the most familiar narratives in the Bible. “Jonah and the whale” is a meme of long standing in our Western culture, even if in the text, the “whale” was actually a great fish of unidentified species. The message of this story is not quite as well-known but is every bit as powerful as the lasting image of the prophet in a fish’s belly: the message of the universal power of repentance, of teshuvah. It is the message of our own need to encourage it and stand behind it, and of never allowing ourselves to rationalize any stance against it, even for the loftiest of reasons.
The whole book is only four chapters long, short enough to be read in its entirety as part of the Torah reading service on the afternoon of Yom Kippur. Short as it is, its message is worthy of that holy day’s message of returning to G-d, getting things right, and, as its liturgy proclaims, aiming for an all-encompassing goal: establishing that “G-d, the G-d of Israel, reigns and His rule is sovereign over all.”
The book begins with Jonah being charged by G-d in a prophetic vision to go to Nineveh and proclaim its impending doom due to its blatant wickedness. Nineveh was the capital city of the Assyrian Empire, whose army later destroyed the Northern Kingdom of Israel and was stopped in the Kingdom of Judah only at the gates of Jerusalem. Its kings are portrayed in the Bible as fearsome and evil, possessed of “majestic pride and overbearing arrogance” (Isaiah 10:12).
The prophet Isaiah had the king of Assyria saying these words: “By the might of my hand have I wrought it, by my skill, for I am clever. I have erased the borders of peoples; I have plundered their treasures, and exiled their vast populations” (Isaiah 10:13).
Though G-d’s condemnation of Nineveh in the book of Jonah is brief and short on specifics, we find in other places in the Bible a fuller picture of Nineveh’s imputed faults. Of that capital, the prophet Nahum writes (Nahum 3:1–5):
Ah, city of crime, utterly treacherous, full of violence, where killing never stops! Crack of whip, rattle of wheel, galloping steed and bounding chariot! Charging horsemen, flashing swords, and glittering spears! Hosts of slain and heaps of corpses, dead bodies without number—they stumble over bodies. Because of the countless harlotries of the harlot, the winsome mistress of sorcery, who ensnared nations with her harlotries and peoples with her sorcery, I am going to deal with you—declares the Lord of Hosts.
There was no doubt, in other words, about the wickedness of the place. Nor did Jonah seem in doubt that he really was hearing a clear directive from G-d. But instead of fulfilling his charge, Jonah turned and went in another direction, fleeing to Jaffa to escape on a ship to Tarshish, across the Mediterranean Sea.
Was this an act of mere cowardice? The text doesn’t go inside his mind, nor offer any judgment from without. But if Jonah thought that he could escape G-d, he was shortly proved wrong. Jonah’s ship was caught in a fierce storm and began to founder. The sailors and passengers were terrified, calling to their various gods for help. Uncannily, they believed that someone on board has caused their danger, coming on board with bad karmic baggage. They chose a lottery as the best way of identifying the responsible party, and immediately, the lot fell on Jonah. They asked him what his business was and what he had done, and Jonah owned up to the fact that though he served the G-d of both sea and land, he was fleeing from the task G-d had imposed upon him.
This galvanized the people on board. They all seemed to recognize the authority of G-d, despite their prayers to the many gods just moments before. In response to their question of what they needed to do to escape the storm, Jonah volunteered that they should toss him overboard. That they did, only after they failed in a desperate effort to regain the shelter of the shore.
The men of the ship are portrayed as newly G-d-fearing, and they have evoked Jonah’s own courage, who has now embraced his fate at last. The men on the boat did not suggest throwing Jonah overboard, and they tried hard to save themselves some other way. When they did listen to Jonah and tossed him, they cried out to G-d not to hold them guilty of hurting him; and when the storm faded and they were safe, they offered a sacrifice and vows to G-d.
Cast into the water, Jonah was swallowed by a great fish that G-d had prepared. In the fish’s belly, Jonah turned to G-d in prayer, a prayer which has all the confidence of a thanksgiving offered after a salvation. Prayer finished, the fish spewed Jonah out onto the land. G-d once again charged him to go to Nineveh on the same mission, and this time Jonah complied.
Jonah came into Nineveh and announced that the city would be overthrown in forty days. His words brought the same kind of positive and immediate reaction as did his words with the men on board ship. Whereas up to this point, the city had been uniformly portrayed as thoroughly guilty, it now had an immediate change of heart. With outward gesture and inward sincerity, the whole city made a U-turn, praying to G-d to spare them. G-d responded immediately as well, and renounced the punishment He had decreed.
This distressed Jonah, who now first reveals why he had run away in the first place: he knew G-d to be forgiving. He foresaw that his words of admonition, spoken effectively, would cause the people of Nineveh to be contrite, and that would be enough for G-d. Jonah now said that he would rather die than live.
Jonah went outside the city and built a hut, where he sat, waiting to see what would happen to the city. A bad place to be in the Middle Eastern heat—but G-d made a kikayon plant grow to provide Jonah some shade. But then, G-d sent a worm to destroy the plant and a hot east wind to follow, making things so miserable that again Jonah begs for death.
G-d solicitously asked Jonah if the loss of the plant grieved him, and he answers that it did. G-d then asked why He Himself should not be grieved by the loss of an entire city, both human and animal kinds, who were, after all, basically ignorant, “not knowing their right hand from their left” (Jonah 4:11), the humans in the same category as their cattle. With that question, the book comes to an end.
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Was Jonah such an egotist? Was this all about hurt feelings? Was Jonah the type of person that would have had a whole city die rather than have him be a little embarrassed because his prophecy of doom would go unfulfilled due to the evildoers’ repentance?
The Oral Torah fills out the picture a little more than the Bible’s brief story. One of the oldest Midrashim, the Mechilta, teaches that Jonah was a defender of the Jewish people. His concern was not selfish; rather, it was that Nineveh’s instant turnaround in repentance would show the people of Israel in a bad light. Rather than have the people shown unfavorably before G-d in comparison with the people of Nineveh, Jonah risked his life and ran in the other direction.
In this light, Jonah’s actions are principled, even self-sacrificing. That is in tune with his volunteering to throw himself in the sea, and his readiness to accept death. He risks confrontation even with G-d to plead his case; his camping-out in front of Nineveh reminds moderns of sit-down protests.
However good Jonah’s motivations might be, though, the book describes a lesson he is taught and one meant for all to understand. The goal of our life is to bring the world to acknowledge G-d and act upon that acknowledgement. Returning to G-d is the great leveler. As the Rabbis teach, a person who returns to G-d stands in a place even higher than that of a completely righteous and holy person. As Jewish mysticism teaches, the Mashiach will come to bring the righteous to attain that higher level of one who returns to G-d.
Before G-d, all our distinctions are trivial compared with His purpose. The power of teshuvah—of return—lifts everyone and causes evil to vanish instantly. Our job, teaches this jewel of a book, is to empower ourselves, and all whom we meet, to take this path of return.
