Preaching Jonah for All its Worth

In order to really hear Jonah we need to attend to what Brevard Childs called the discrete witness of the OT, before moving on to how it is received in the NT. Jonah meant something to its OT audience/s, and this should be our first focus of attention. Jonah 1:1, for example, alerts us to typical OT prophetic revelation coming to Jonah, and “Nineveh” became the capital of one of Israel’s great enemies, Assyria. We neglect this “historical” dimension to our detriment.

Equally important is the type of literature we find in Jonah. Amidst the twelve minor prophets Jonah, uniquely, is narrative about a prophet. Read Jonah in the Hebrew and you will soon discover that Jonah is exquisitely crafted narrative. Thus, an awareness of OT narrative and how it works is an indispensable tool for accessing the message of Jonah. It is through the poetics of the text that we hear its message. See the section on “Narrative” in David J. H. Beldman’s chapter “Literary Approaches and Old Testament Interpretation,” in Craig G. Bartholomew and David J. H. Beldman, eds., Hearing the Old Testament: Listening for God’s Address (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), including his references to further literature in the footnotes. Leslie C. Allen, The Books of Joel, Obadiah, Jonah and Micah (NICOT. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), and Kenneth M. Craig, A Poetics of Jonah: Art in the Service of Ideology (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1999), are important and useful sources in this respect.

To really hear Jonah we need imagination. We need to imagine ourselves sitting amidst a group of OT Israelites listening to the story, picking up on the references to other parts of the OT. As we do so we will become alert to Jonah’s privilege of being a recipient of God’s words, of the absolutely extraordinary commission that comes through those words, and we will find ourselves conflicted about Jonah’s reaction. In the process it will gradually dawn upon us that Jonah is … us, Israel, who have the comparable privilege of having God’s oracles. We will journey with this most reluctant prophet who eventually performs God’s command but then becomes exceedingly upset when God does not execute judgement on Nineveh. On the role of imagination in biblical interpretation see Trevor Hart, “Imagination and Responsible Reading,” chapter 15 in Craig G. Bartholomew, et al., eds., Renewing Biblical Interpretation (SAHS 1. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), and Nicholas Wolterstorff’s response.

Read thus, all sorts of important themes will be pushed to the surface. Themes like: as recipients of God’s words what sort of responsibility do we have to the nations? Are God’s words just for his people (Israel) or are they also for the other nations? On this missional note see Stephen B. Chapman and Laceye C. Warner, “Jonah and the Imitation of God: Rethinking Evangelism in the Old Testament,” JTI  2.I (2008), 43–69. Are we really to care for our great enemies, for those who have caused us so much pain? It is hard here not to recall Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s profound point in relation to 1 Peter 3:9:

     “The world lives by the blessing of God and of the righteous and thus has a future. Blessing means laying one’s hand on something and saying, Despite everything, you belong to God. This is what we do with the world that inflicts such suffering on us. We do not abandon it, we do not repudiate, despise or condemn it. Instead we call it back to God, we give it hope, we lay our hands on it and say, may God’s blessing come upon you, may God renew you, be blessed, world created by God, you who belong to your Creator and Redeemer.”(1)