The Year of Mercy and the Prophet Jonah
condemn it, because at the preaching of Jonah they repented, and
there is something greater than Jonah here” (Lk 11:29-32).
In both Matthew and Luke, the sign of Jonah is Christological and
soteriological. Jonah’s sojourn in the belly of the whale is a sign of
Jesus’ death and resurrection. In Luke, there is a more universal
awareness of salvation. Salvation is a reality for the queen of the south
and the Ninevites, not just for the Jews “of this generation.”
The God of the Book of Jonah has a great sense of humor that undermines
silly and prejudicial assumptions that some religious people have and that
are difficult to displace.
Could we find another dimension or level of intensity to the sign of
Jonah? Following Luke’s hint of universal salvation, could we see in the
sign of Jonah that God is a God of mercy, compassion, and love for all?
That the God of the Book of Jonah anticipates the First Letter of Saint
John, affirming that “God is love” (4:15)? To probe this possibility, we
must go beyond the surface and popular narrative about Jonah and
the whale and grasp something of the whole text of this remarkable
little book.
To get beyond the Jonah and the whale narrative, of course, we need
to recognize that the Book of Jonah is theological fiction and not literal
history, a point well made by the Old Testament scholar Gerhard von
Rad: “The straightforward message contained in the Book of Jonah
has been distorted ever since people began to be puzzled by Jonah’s
sojourn in the belly of a fish. The minor detail whether this could be
accepted as an event that actually happened became the all-important
matter of contention, and it was left to modern criticism . . . to explain
the story properly. Quite obviously, it is a story with a strong didactic
content, and should not be read as an historical account. . . . The story
is told with a grace and ease unmatched in the prophetic literature.”7
Assyria and Nineveh
Perhaps we might say that there are two powerful symbols in this
story: the city of Nineveh and the prophet Jonah. We could not make a
better beginning in our understanding of Nineveh than by attending
to the very short prophetic Book of Nahum. Nothing is known about
the prophet Nahum except his name. It comes from the Hebr ]