Emmanuel
Third, from the Anglican Old Testament scholar John Eaton: “The
theological point of the tale is of great significance, showing that God’s
love is infinitely broader and deeper than the resentful, sectarian,
nationalistic attitudes that warp many ostensibly pious people.”3
Eaton picks up on resentment, sectarianism, and nationalism, three
toxic influences that can destructively infect how we think of God, not
simply how Jonah thinks of God.
The Context of the Book of Jonah
The context in which the Book of Jonah was written is in the wake
of the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, 587 BCE, and the
traumatic experience of the Babylonian Exile. When the people of
Judah were permitted by Cyrus the Persian to return to their native
land and to rebuild their temple, “a defensive ghetto mentality
prevailed.”4 The Jews became inward-looking, insular both ethnically
and religiously. Non-Jews were to be excluded from God’s care and
concern. The Book of Jonah was designed to combat the insularity
of post-exilic nationalism and patriotism, and so “the Book of Jonah
became . . . a propaganda tract to ward off the rampant nationalism of
the post-exilic period.”5 “God and God’s salvation are ours, not yours,
whoever you are,” tended to be the attitude.
The Dominican theologian Paul Murray has written: “I am convinced
that the Book of Jonah is the most profoundly Christian of all the
books in the Hebrew Bible, and the book from which we have most to
learn at the beginning of this new millennium.”6
To get at Murray’s meaning, let us proceed as follows. In the Gospel
of Matthew, Jesus invokes Jonah in a two-fold way: “For as Jonah was
three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so the Son of
Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth”
(Mt 12:40). Jonah’s descent into the belly of the whale is a sign of the
Lord’s descent to Sheol, the place of the dead, before his resurrection.
In the Gospel of Luke: “This generation is an evil generation;
it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it, except the sign of Jonah.
Just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so will the Son of Man
be to this generation. At the judgment, the queen of the south will
rise with the men of this generation and she will condemn them,
because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom
of Solomon, and there is something greater than Solomon here. At
the judgment, the men of Nineveh will arise with this generation and
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