Jonah

Everyone I know is familiar with the story of Jonah. It's a world-wide favorite fable (a story with a built-in "lesson"). It tells of the wrong of racism, in a weird sort of way. It also has a few passages that I found of interest.

Jonah 1:7 - The sailors said, "Come, let us cast lots, so that we may know on whose account this calamity has come upon us." So they cast lots and the lot fell to Jonah.
Let's think about this for a moment. These guys are sailing at sea, and a huge storm blows up. As sailors normally do, they work to keep their boat from being damaged or sunk by the storm. The book also says that each prayed to his own god for assistance, but that didn't work - in other words, they tried a combination of work and religion. The interesting thing here is that after a while, they switched over to a completely religious response to their problem. With the world going crazy all around them, they decide to draw straws, thinking that whichever god it is that is doing this must be mad at one of the people on board. It apparently didn't occur to the writer that even given the magical thinking here, this would not have been a good method for deciding what to do - their problem could have been caused by anger at any subset of the people on board, including all of them. Also, the storm could have been a result of divine anger at some other nearby ship. The possibilities are endless.

As I see it, this story by its example is very harmful. Suppose a boat-full of people were to get into a similar situation, getting caught in the clutches of a hurricane today? Would they start casting lots and tossing people overboard one by one until everyone was gone? It makes me wonder how many ships have been lost at sea because of religious behavior by extremely superstitious sailors who thought to emulate the actions in this story and the extremely similar story in Acts?

Jonah 3:4,5 - Jonah began to go into the city, going for a day's walk. And he cried out, "Forty days more, and Nineveh will be overthrown!" And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.
This seems to be saying that all Jonah had to do was wander in, shout his message, and everyone immediately jumped on the bandwagon, not even bothering to figure out which God they were supposed to be worrying with. Interestingly enough, the book of Nahum also is that of a prophet preaching in Nineveh, while Zephaniah flat-out predicts the destruction of the city, no questions asked. Obviously, there's confusion as to what exactly God's intentions here were, and we can't figure it out from these books.

Jonah 3:10 - When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.
Beyond the fact that this tells of another instance of God changing his mind (a favorite pet peeve of mine), we see that the threatened supernatural destruction did not materialize, and Nineveh was not nuked. Was it because they got the right religion? Did the whole nation take up Judaism? I think that this whole story (meant to show the Jews that they weren't the only ones God was concerned with) is pretty far-fetched. And since it involved a populace being frightened into picking up a religion presumably different from what they were practicing before, I'd not give much credence to any sort of long-term conversion, even if it really happened, which is highly doubtful.

Jonah 4:6-9 - The LORD God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, "It is better for me to die than to live." But God said to Jonah, "Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?" And he said, "Yes, angry enough to die."
My first reaction when I read this was, "Is Jonah too stupid to be able to find shade for himself?" This, I think is yet another piece of evidence that this is just a story, and not actual history. After all, who could possibly be capable of preferring to die, rather than looking for a shady place to sit? I also found it quite interesting that the last chapter dealt with the subject of Jonah's feelings. Actually, twice, God tries to tell Jonah that his feelings of anger are wrong. I know from personal experience that this is not a good way of dealing with a person's negative emotions. Common, but not good.