Jonah — The Prophet Who Fled from God
The Book of Jonah is the Hebrew Bible's most universal prophetic narrative — teaching that God's concern extends beyond Israel to all nations, and that divine mercy overwhelms divine justice.
The Book of Jonah is unique among the prophetic books: it is a story about a prophet rather than a collection of prophetic speeches, and its message is radically universal. Jonah flees from God's command to prophesy to Nineveh (the Assyrian capital — enemy of Israel), is swallowed by a great fish, prays from inside the fish, and is delivered to his mission. When Nineveh repents and God forgives them, Jonah is furious — he wanted them destroyed, not forgiven. God's response to Jonah's anger is one of the most universalist statements in the entire Hebrew Bible: 'Should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than 120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from their left — and also many animals?' (4:11). Jonah is read on the afternoon of Yom Kippur — the holiest day of the Jewish year — precisely because its theme (God's universal mercy and the inclusiveness of divine forgiveness) is the central theme of that day.
Should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than 120,000 people?
Philosopher Martha Nussbaum's work on compassion argues that genuine compassion requires imaginative identification with people very different from oneself — the ability to see the humanity in strangers and even enemies. The Book of Jonah encodes this teaching in narrative: God's compassion for Nineveh is the model of the compassion that Jonah — and the reader — is being invited to develop.
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- What Judaism says about forgiveness
Jonah gets his enemies' city forgiven and is furious about it; God's answer is about 120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from their left. The book is read on the afternoon of Yom Kippur, so the tradition hears its own resentment of mercy at the hour it is asking for mercy.