Jonah Wanted Vengeance
The Book of Jonah
The story of Jonah is one of the most popular stories in the bible. We all know some version of it. The simplest version in pop culture is: Jonah gets eaten by a whale, then God saves him after three days. Even though the story is quite short, just four chapters, there is a lot to this story that popular versions leave out.
If you want a deep dive into this story, I recommend the Bible Project’s Jonah class. It’s 13 hours of dissecting every part of the story, learning key Hebrew words, and comparing the story to the rest of the Bible. I took the class recently. It’s free and of high quality.
What can I add to this conversation about Jonah?
The story is about a conflict between Jonah and God. Why does Jonah run away? Why does God send a giant fish to eat Jonah? You only find out the source of this conflict at the end, in Chapter 4. Jonah hates the people of Nineveh, and he wants God to destroy them. But God doesn’t destroy them, because they repent. Jonah doesn’t like this outcome, even though he saw it coming.
Humans have moral judgements, and we love it when our moral judgments line up with God in the Bible. When God says “do not murder” or “love your neighbour”, we agree. But sometimes our moral judgements don’t align with God. Jonah has good reason for hating the Ninevites. They conquered the world using violence and cruelty. They are the ancient equivalent of Nazis. Any reasonable human would hate the Ninevites and want to defeat them. God in the Old Testament is often seen as punitive and angry. If any nation deserves God’s “wrath”, it would be the Ninevites.
At first, God also wants to destroy them. But as always, he warns them and gives them a chance to repent. The Ninevites repent, and God doesn’t destroy them.
It’s the same thing God did for Jonah. God was going to destroy Jonah, which is why Jonah ended up in the belly of a fish. But Jonah prayed and repented from inside the fish, and God saved Jonah from destruction.
Jonah likes it when God saves him, but he hates it when God saves the Ninevites. That’s because Jonah thinks he is a good person, and the Ninevites are evil. Good people should be saved, but not evil people, right? Isn’t that what Christianity is all about? Not according to the writer of the book of Jonah.
What makes Jonah think he can judge good and evil? It might seem obvious in this case. The Ninevites are violent and Jonah isn’t. But maybe Jonah isn’t so different from the Ninevites. What would Jonah do if he had more power than the Ninevites? He’d probably invade Nineveh and violently overthrow their government. From his perspective, that would be the right thing to do. But in the process, he’d be creating the same violence he wanted to stop.
Perhaps the root problem is thinking people are evil. Maybe the reason Nineveh became violent was that they thought their victims were evil. Many atrocities have been committed by people who think they know who is evil and who is not. So should we just stop making judgments? Wouldn’t that mean people who do evil things would get away with it?
The writer of Jonah is asking us to condemn evil acts, but not the people who commit them. People can change. God’s goal is to change people so they do good things instead of evil things. If people stop committing evil, then there’s no need to punish them. The writer of Jonah is pointing out that humans often have a hard time with this. We want vengeance. We want to win.
This reminds me of a thought experiment I heard from Charles Eisenstein. Imagine you could have the perfect society. No homelessness, hunger, violence, or injustice. Everything runs smoothly and people are happy. But, to get this society, you have to admit that you were wrong. The people you thought were evil, the ones you thought were actively preventing this good society from emerging, will not be punished. In fact, everyone will think they are the good guys. Instead, you will have to apologize to everyone. Everyone will think you were the one preventing the good society from emerging. If God presented you with this deal, would you take it?
We can make it more personal. Imagine you could have the perfect marriage. Everything you’ve ever wanted. However, every time an argument comes up, you’d have to admit you were wrong, and your partner was right. Every time, no exceptions. Could you do it?
This is what God asks of Jonah. Jonah wants a world without violence. For him, that means a world without Ninevites. When the Ninevites repent, they aren’t violent anymore. So Jonah got what he wanted, right? But he hates it, because he really wanted vengeance. He wanted to be right.