Prophecy essay??

I honestly had a difficult time trying to comprehend what the essay’s main argument was. However, from what I did understand, the essay gave a lot of great insight into the structure and meaning of different parts of the Book of Jonah. The author goes into detail about how the first arc of the story starts off with a long sequence that just gets the story back to where it started—“the whole first part is spent just in getting Jonah back to the point from which the story can begin again.” I thought that this was a great observation and I like that the author touched upon just why this was done. I also was quite surprised at the author’s insight about how “Jonah’s behavior after the prophecy is not unrelated to his behavior before.” When reading the Book of Jonah, I didn’t really pay that much attention to these underlying things and so it was interesting to notice what the meaning of these things could be, especially with the contrast between the modern and traditional perspectives that the author provides. This also led to the interesting discussion of the possibility that he didn’t repent at all. The essay also gave much more insight into the reasons why Jonah was reluctant to tell the prophecy—which I was curious about—and also why he was mad at the end. I am not familiar with the historical references and Biblical references in the story, but this essay gave a good historical insight into the story by mentioning his relationship with Israel and as an ex-Ninevite. The essay also shed light onto Jonah’s role as a prophet. I don’t really get how important Jonah’s role was—there was only one line of prophecy and apparently there’s a possibility that one of the sailors may have went to the place before Jonah even got there, and so just the appearance of the prophet led to repentance. There were also a couple of parts that I wasn’t too sure I understood—for example, the author states that “the folksy almost anecdotal tone of the story would appear to render it somewhat anti-prophetic.” I wasn’t too sure what the author meant by it being anti-prophetic. I also wasn’t too sure what the author meant by “anti-sacrificial.” Also, the whole argument with the kikayon was very convoluted and I am not quite sure what the author was trying to say, but I did sort of get that the author is trying to say that the story seemed to try to get people to return to the ways of God by showing how Jonah’s encounter with the plant showed some insight into himself and his behavior of idolatrous behavior that was somehow related to his relationship with Israel and his fear of being exposed as so????