A fresh angle on the Bible’s fishiest
book
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| Vanity Fair is where it's all happening |
Mention Jonah,
and immediately you think of fish – the one that allegedly kept the drowning
prophet alive for three days. But that is a pity. It misses the point entirely
and provides an excuse not to take the book’s message seriously. The book of
Jonah is not about a fish (it gets only a brief mention). Instead, it is packed
with timeless challenges that have a special resonance with 21st
century western life. The fish can be left to thrash around in the intellectual
and theological shallows. (Or scroll to the end if you can’t wait to reel it in.)
The short story
is well known. The prophet Jonah is told to go to the Assyrian megacity of
Nineveh. He refuses, but instead of travelling cross-country north east from
Israel, he sets off westward on a ship to Tarshish, which was probably in
southern Spain. He survives going overboard in a storm at sea, and eventually does
go to the city whose inhabitants respond positively to his call to repentance.
The first
question any reader asks is “why did he refuse to go?” Here are six reasons. They
all relate to the nature of Nineveh itself. (This little book is packed with
insights and challenges; later we’ll see more mistakes, unforeseen
consequences, and stubborn refusals that crippled Jonah spiritually and that enlighten,
or challenge, readers in every generation.)
First excuse: he despises Vanity Fair
One commentator
pictures Jonah arriving in the city at last. “He feels small, one man against a
vast metropolis. Lost like a needle in a haystack inside this gigantic Vanity
Fair, this Sodom of a city, the tiny figure feels he can go no further. He
stops and shouts out the laconic message with which he has been entrusted.”1
The allusion is
apt, and topical. At times in Old Testament history Nineveh (in modern Iraq)
was the Vanity Fair of the ancient world. It
was rich, prosperous, cultured. A vibrant city of pleasure and wealth, it had
parks, rivers, canals, ornate buildings. And it was where morals were loose and
religion corrupt, where greed ruled and the poor were crushed. Rather like more
recent satirical portrayals of “Vanity Fair”.
The 2018 ITV
adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel Vanity Fair has Michael Palin, in the character of Thackeray, giving
a brief summary of the story so far at the beginning of each episode. And each
time, he ends it with the words: “For this is Vanity Fair, a world where
everyone is striving for what is not worth having.” The original book is a
700-page moralistic satire on early 19th century society, in which Thackeray
often interposes the story with personal reflections. In it he says that
“Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of
humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions”.2
Thackeray of
course got the idea from John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s
Progress in which Vanity Fair was an unavoidable hazard and potential
spiritual distraction or stumbling block on the way to the celestial city.
Bunyan says, “In Vanity Fair, wealth and fame, pleasure and position, and many
other follies, are for sale.”3 And Bunyan, no doubt, got the idea
from the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes, rarely read but full of wise
put-downs of what many consider to be important. The older translations include
the refrain, “Vanity of vanities, says the teacher, all is vanity”.
This image captured
the imagination of the 15th century Jesuit priest Savanarola. On
Shrove Tuesday 1497 – 200 years before Bunyan – there was a pre-Lent scourge,
pictured by several artists, of the bonfire of the vanities. Items considered
vain and potentially sinful were thrown on, such as mirrors, cosmetics, fine
dresses, playing cards, musical instruments, books that were deemed to be
immoral, manuscripts of secular songs, paintings and sculptures. It was a
radical Lenten sacrifice, an extreme form of downsizing or decluttering. (Today
we’d take the stuff to a car boot sale and use the proceeds to buy more stuff.)
It also
captured the imagination of the American novelist Tom Wolfe. In 1987, a week
before the Wall Street crash, he rather prophetically published his modern
classic The bonfire of the vanities. It is a caustic satire on modern financial
fever, social pretensions and discrimination, class divisions, excessive
consumption, and institutional corruption and injustice. Wolfe says that his
early model was Thackeray’s Vanity Fair,
and he describes his main character, Sherman McCoy, viewing Manhattan: “The
city of ambition, the dense magnetic rock, the irresistible destination of all
those who insist on being where things
are happening.”4
Vanity Fair is
anywhere, anytime, where people get the adrenalin rush of being where things
are happening, and striving for what is not worth having, and cannot last.
It’s therefore
no wonder that a good Jewish prophet would want to avoid venturing into this
den of iniquity to tell it to prepare for a bonfire of the vanities. Good
Jewish prophets kept themselves apart from the vanities of the world. In fact,
things were just as bad at home. Jonah’s contemporaries Isaiah and Amos were
shrilly condemning the Vanity Fairs that existed in Jerusalem and Samaria
where, as in Nineveh, people were trampling each other in the rush for wealth
and status, where injustice greed and corruption reigned (see, for example,
Amos 5:10-13, 6:1-7). So he’s turning his back on the Vanity Fair of Samaria
and he’s fleeing as far away as possible from the Vanity Fair of Nineveh. That
was pretty drastic but illustrates his desperation; given his viewpoint, it’s
almost understandable, although not excusable. But that’s just the start of his
refusal to go to Nineveh.
Five more excuses
First, Nineveh
was the enemy, the chief city of Assyria that was constantly harassing Israel. To
Jonah, if God wanted to zap Nineveh to kingdom come, he should just get on with
it. They deserved everything they’d get. Why send someone to warn them? With
Nineveh out of the way, Israel could rest in peace. Jonah wasn’t the only Old
Testament prophet to hate Nineveh – Nahum and Zephaniah also condemned it, and
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea and Micah all had strong words to say against
Assyria. It was a constant thorn in Israel’s side.
Secondly, Jonah
was being asked to be a pioneer minister to an alien culture and a hated
country. No-one had ever done such a thing before. Like all Jews at the time,
Jonah hated foreigners, especially those who had the temerity to try to impose
their rules, control Israel’s borders and tax its goods. Israel saw itself as a
spiritual conservation area. If foreigners wanted to find out about God, they
could come and ask, but Israelites did not go as missionaries to foreign lands.
So there had to be a mistake. God wouldn’t ask such a thing. Jonah must have
misheard.
Besides, thirdly,
if he did go there he assumned that he’d be arrested, jailed, and probably
executed as a spy. You don’t just walk into enemy territory and say “Hi guys,
God’s got a message for you.” They didn’t recognise his God. They’d just see
Jonah as some foreign agent blundering in on a crackpot mission to poison
someone or hack into the infrastructure.
And fourthly,
if Jonah went to Nineveh, he’d be considered a traitor to his own people. You
just did not fraternise with the enemy. The Jesus who tells us to “Love your enemies,
and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father
in heaven” (Matthew 5:44) wouldn’t be born for another seven centuries. If
Jonah went to Nineveh and lived to tell the tale, he’d have his Israelite
passport confiscated. Or he’d just be executed for treason when he returned. It
was a case of frying pan or fire? And he didn’t fancy either.
Finally, Jonah
knows what God is like: gracious and compassionate. He admits it in 4:2. He suspects
that God might want to forgive and reform the Assyrians. Theologically he can’t
cope with that. His faith is challenged. His traditional views are threatened.
Besides, where’s the justice in letting Assyria off? And wouldn’t their
friendship actually be another threat to Israel’s independence? Wouldn’t their
sheer size and power overwhelm the local economy? Wouldn’t Assyrian customs
clash with Israel’s traditional faith? Jonah can’t cope with the idea that, in
the words of the hymn, there’s a wideness in God’s mercy. Nor sadly, can some Christians.
Pause: am I doing a Jonah?
Jonah had at
least these six reasons to refuse to go. So don’t just use Jonah as a bad boy
example of disobedience. He may have been wrong, but he had his reasons. Now
pause there. What is God asking us to do, you to do, now? Something that seems
unlikely, perhaps? And what excuses do we come up with for watering down or
running away from the hugely demanding challenges of Jesus and the apostles?
Love your enemy, love your neighbour as yourself, give, don’t hoard, care,
support, don’t discriminate, don’t seek personal return, don’t judge, turn the
other cheek, seek justice, go into a confused world alienated from traditional
religion to live out the values of the kingdom.
Ponder
Tennyson’s words streaming from his agonising grief over the death of a friend,
and his searching faith:
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| "Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit God's grace" Jonah 2:8 |
“Ring out a
slowly dying case,
And
ancient forms of party strife;
Ring
in the nobler modes of life,
with sweeter
manners, purer laws.
Ring out false
pride in place and blood,
The
civic slander and the spite;
Ring
in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the
common love of good.
Ring out old
shapes of foul disease;
Ring
out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring
out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the
thousand years of peace.
Ring in the
valiant man and free,
The
larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring
out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the
Christ that is to be.5
The brutal fact
is that many of us prefer to hover around the fringes of Vanity Fair, like Thackeray’s
Becky Sharp scrounging stuff to maintain a certain lifestyle, and seeking
Instagram or Facebook status to maintain appearances. We like to be where it’s
all happening, striving for a way of life which according to Jesus, not just
Thackeray, is not worth having.
Two silly mistakes
Apart from not
listening to God, Jonah made two other mistakes. The first was to move. You
cannot get a car to change direction when it’s stationary. So with us. If you
want to avoid doing what God asks, stay still. Don’t move. Put your spiritual
earplugs in. Keep your head down. On no account start doing anything. (It won’t
do you any good, of course. You’ll just miss out on what is really worth having.) But once you move,
God can switch the points, turn the wheel, change the direction of the wind and
blow you back on course. Which is what happened to Jonah.
A tropical
storm blew up and threatened to swamp the ship. The sailors believed, like the mariners
in Shakespeare’s Tempest, that it had
a supernatural origin (“All lost! To prayers! To prayers!”6).
One of them had
angered the gods. Jonah bravely admitted it was him. And he accepted that to
save the ship he had to go overboard.
And then he
made them throw him in: his second mistake. He played the blame game. He laid
the responsibility for his death on them. So when he was missed by his family
and friends, the sailors would either have to lie – oh, he was swept overboard,
poor man – or admit to murder. Why didn’t he just jump in? Why shift the burden
of guilt on others? When you know how to correct a mistake, or deal with a sin,
just do it. Don’t try and save your face by making innocent people share the
responsibility.
Three unforeseen consequences
First, the crew
threw the cargo overboard to lighten the ship. That was a last resort. They
were throwing away their livelihood. They’d either been paid to transport it
and the owners would want their money back if it wasn’t delivered. Or, they’d
bought it themselves to sell in Tarshish. Without it, they were bankrupt.
Jonah’s refusal
to do what God wanted resulted in other people losing out. Don’t ever think
that no one but you will suffer if you avoid God’s call or disobey his
instructions. The results of your action or inaction will spread out like
ripples on a pond. Others will lose out, even if you never see how.
Secondly, the
sailors tried to save Jonah. They weren’t Jews. They were probably what we’d
call Syrians or Palestinians. More potential enemies of Israel. Jonah had paid
his fare and they’d got his money. So why bother trying to save him? The author
is making his orthodox readers gasp at the terrible thought that there are
good, decent, honest, law abiding, humane unbelievers. It’s a warning against
self-righteous religious pride and a call to personal humility. Paul said in
Ephesians 2:10, that Christians are created in Christ Jesus to do good works,
which God has prepared for us in advance. Don’t just leave them to other people
whose compassion may put us to shame.
Thirdly, the
sailors actually prayed to Jonah’s God to forgive them for their action. And
when the deed was done and the sea suddenly calmed they worshipped God. Unbelievers,
praying to God and being heard? This is radical theology. Jonah has disobeyed
God yet God actually brings good out of Jonah’s bad. That’s not a reason for casually
disobeying him – “It’ll be all right in the end; I’ll be saved” – but it reminds
us that God is never defeated by our folly or wrongdoing.
A stubborn
refusal to change
Jonah was
rescued and got to Nineveh. He couldn’t defeat God’s purposes. So he stood up,
preached the message he’d been given, and was listened to. There was a mass
repentance, a bonfire of the vanities. And Jonah was annoyed. He’d still not
come to terms with God’s compassion for all people, including those who
persecuted his faith and attacked his country.
Twice Jonah was
given the opportunity to soften his heart. First when the Assyrians repented,
and then when God gave him shelter from the sun. Yet he remained ungrateful and
critical of God. When the shelter was removed, he threw a petulant tantrum: as
if it was all about him, and not about God and thousands of other human beings.
He had lost the art of reflecting on circumstances and learning from them. He
remained set in his ways, fixed in his understanding and beliefs, focussed only
on himself. “Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for
them” (an older NIV version had “forfeit his grace”), as the author puts in
2:8.
There is no
happy ending here. His last words in the book are, “I’m so angry I wish I was
dead” (4:9); God’s attempt to point out that many people had been helped
spiritually has fallen on deaf ears. We have no idea what happened to him then;
did he continue as a prophet, speaking truth to power (2 Kings 14:25) or did
his intransigence marginalise him from God’s later activity? From the author’s
point of view, it was the latter. Jonah is a sad, bitter figure, a grumbler,
not a supporter.
It’s a sad fact
that even though “the angels rejoice over one sinner who repents” (Luke 15:10) and
the Holy Spirit renews a Christian community, resentment can remain in the
human heart over unwelcome changes in church life and thinking. We prefer our
old ways, our comfortable ideas and beliefs. We are not for turning. The angels’
joy over unbelievers’ repentance must turn to tears of sadness at believers’
obtuseness.
Postscript: the fish that got away
Which brings us
finally to the bit everyone gets hung up about: the fish. Which is a huge pity,
because the story isn’t about the fish. (It gets three brief mentions:
swallowing Jonah, the location of his prayer, and spitting him out, 1:17, 2:1
and 2:10.) The book is about God and his undying, unstoppable compassion to all
the world. And that’s it.
To catch the
point of the fish, we need to check the book’s likely background and the
purpose of the story. Jonah is a carefully constructed literary composition,
not a hack reporter’s interview as the bedraggled seaweed-covered castaway hauls
himself onto dry land. The prayer in chapter 2 seems to be a compilation of
what to the author would have been well-known psalms.
We don’t know
exactly when it was written. There’s a reference to Jonah the prophet in 2
Kings 14:25, about 780BC but the image
of Nineveh in the book reflects a period in the city’s history a century or so
later. The Assyrian king Sennacherib beautified and extended it in the late 8th
century when it really was where things were happening, and where everyone was
striving for what was not worth having. There had been an earthquake, a solar
eclipse, a flood and a famine around 763BC (within Jonah’s possible lifetime),
which could have predisposed the inhabitants to see such disasters as warnings
and thus listen to a prophet. However the city was not at that time as
extensive and prosperous as pictured in the book.
There is no
record in Assyrian annals of any city-wide “bonfire of the vanities”, although
newspapers of record didn’t exist and embarrassing events were often quietly
forgotten; news management by authorities is no new phenomenon. It is worth
noting that Assyria (and hence Nineveh) were destroyed in 612BC by the Babylonians.
But perhaps the point of Jonah is that God never delivers judgement before
giving people ample opportunity to repent.
So it could be
that a story around a genuine journey by Jonah circulated orally and was
written down much later. By which time no-one remembered exactly how the
prophet escaped the sea. He might not have remembered himself, having been severely
traumatised and almost drowned. People do survive such events. Near-death
experiences often include dream or nightmare-like visions that seem utterly
real. Being swallowed by a fish fits that possibility, or else is as good a
guess as any for a writer trying to explain the inexplicable. To the author,
the point is that God engineered a rescue. The mechanics of how it was done are
played right down; the survival is described in a matter-of-fact manner, and there
is no attempt at sensationalising a miracle.
Sitting loose
to the fish reference does no disservice to the doctrine of biblical
inspiration and authority. There are different forms of literature in
Scripture. Building moral lessons based on some half-forgotten incident is a
good story-teller’s technique. Many of Jesus’ parables are based on common
scenarios.
Time for a bonfire of our vanities?
Sadly, good,
devout Jonah has been harbouring the Vanity Fair mind-set all along: the mind-set
that looks out for number one, that absorbs the values and beliefs of its time
uncritically, and doggedly refuses to change. Jonah is the Old Testament’s
counterpoint, and preface, to the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus says, “It’s
the pagans who strive for what is not worth having. But you, seek first God’s
kingdom, and you’ll have more than enough” (as in Matthew 6:28-34).
It’s also the
preface to Jesus’ call to go fearlessly into the world where it’s all
happening, where everyone is striving for what’s not worth having (as in Matthew
28:19-20). But rather than absorbing its ethos, of blending in with the fairground
patrons, instead to demonstrate in its midst an alternative way of thinking and
living, another way of being community, a fresh source of meaning, and a focus
for prayer. Above all, it’s a call to take by word and deed good news to the
people we most despise or fear and try to ignore. In obeying that call, hard as
it is, we gain a divine friend and a purpose that’s really worth having. And
one which lasts.
Think and talk
1. Read the book of Jonah in a modern
translation. It’s only four short chapters.2. What is it that people in your circle, community or society are striving for that is not worth having? To what extent do you get sucked into that vortex of attitudes?
3. What ethnic or other minority groups, or cultural or age groups, do you avoid, dislike or even despise? How do you feel when told that God loves them as much as he loves you?
4. Look again at the paragraphs above headed “Pause: am I doing a Jonah?” Look at Tennyson’s prayer: can you make it your own? And where might you be watering down or avoiding the list of tough challenges to discipleship which Jesus and the apostles lay down?
5. Pray. “Dear Lord and Father of mankind, forgive our foolish ways; reclothe us in our rightful mind; in purer lives thy service find, in deeper reverence praise” (John Greenleaf Whittier).
6. Consider Isaac Watt’s hymn with its line “all the vain things that charm me most, I sacrifice them to His blood”. What might go on to your personal bonfire of vanities?
References
1. Leslie C.
Allen, The books of Joel, Obadiah, Jonah
and Micah, Hodder and Stoughton 1976, p.222.2. W.M. Thackeray, Vanity Fair, J.M. Dent, 1970, p.75.
3. John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress, retold in Modern English by Jean Watson, Scripture Union 1978, p.74.
4. Tom Wolfe, The bonfire of the vanities, Vintage Books 2010, p.81.
5. From “In Memoriam”, Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson, Collins 1954, pp. 356-7.
6. William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 1.
(c) Derek Williams 2018
