Jonah essay

The Jonah essay presented some interesting ideas concerning the book of Jonah. The book of Jonah demonstrates God's love for humanity and the importance of repentance. The essay analyzes the book of Jonah in two parts; one in which Jonah becomes a type of "negative Oedipus" (Buber, 146) as his actions to go against God's instruction ultimately work to fulfill the will of God, and another in which Jonah's completion of the "divine mission" (146) lead to his unhappiness. This culminates in God putting Jonah back into perspective through an illustration combined with words of wisdom. The main aspect of this essay that I wanted to discuss concerned Jonah's unhappiness and near indignance resulting from knowledge of God's love and compassion. After reading Jonah on my own I had always considered Jonag's anger as a result of worry about his reputation as a prophet, that Jonah wished for the people's destruction because he had decreed it; if his prophesy failed to come true, people might view him as a phony. Nevertheless, the essay's analyzation provides a much deeper context. Jonah views Nineveh as a threat to the Israeli reputation, because the Israeli people constantly disobeyed God while the Ninevites repented at once. As an Israelite, Jonah sees this as an assault on himself and his well-being. Nevertheless, by refusing to obey God, he further demonstrates the stubbornness of the Israelites and by "reserv[ing] salvation" (Buber, 155) for the Israelites he acts fundamentally "anti-Jewish" (155) because the Jews themselves were not a special people until God selected them. This concept on its own illustrates how people can sometimes look down on people who were in their same situation after they themselves have been delivered. Jonah makes this mistake here, failing to recognize that the Ninevites a type of Israel, a people brought to God through divine ordinance. By attempting to keep salvation for himself and the Israelites, Jonah antagonizes himself and his own people who were only saved by the grace of God. God attempts to show Jonah this concept through the creation and destruction of the "kikayon." Since God created all things, he can be gracious and show mercy to whom he chooses, and thus Jonah's actions constitute an attempt to act in the role of God, deciding which peoples should and should not receive salvation. God attempts to show Jonah that by acting against the Ninevites and in so doing fighting against God's love and compassion, Jonah fights himself and his people.