THE BOOK OF JONAH: A PARABLE OF THE JEWS
USUALLY the mention of the name Jonah excites a laugh. We associate the word with but two incidents. In the first place, a “Jonah” is unlucky, like the number 13 or the day Friday or spilling salt or having a black cat cross your path or seeing the moon through a ladder over your left shoulder or meeting, inside of twenty-four hours, three colored gentlemen all cross-eyed, etc., etc. Then we remember also that Jonah was once swallowed by a whale, and we consider this the parent of all “fish-stories”. Jonah certainly was an ill-fated fellow to leave such a reputation behind; and though, as we shall discover, he deserved all he received, nevertheless there is more in the Book of Jonah than is usually supposed.
Jewish legend teaches us that the prophet Jonah, son of Amittai, born in the tribe of Zephulon at the village Gath-Hepher, near Nazareth, was that son of the widow of Sarepta whom Elijah restored to life; and that he also was the youth whom Elisha sent to ancient Jehu, King of Israel. There is likewise a reference to him in II Kings, 14:25, as the man who prophesied the victories of Jeroboam II..
The first point to remember, of course, is that the book of Jonah is in no sense to be accepted literally. We shall best comprehend the meaning of these verses if we regard them not as history, but as story—with a slight basis of fact: in other words, as a parable, like the parables of the trees and the bramble or Nathan's of the poor man and the rich man, beside innumerable other instances from the Talmud or that appendix to the Talmud, the New Testament. Jonah is a similar
tale; and just as we need not believe that the trees really talked in the story of Jotham, so we need not believe that the whale swallowed the prophet in the story of Jonah. The story then was employed for a particular purpose, as will be seen.
But before entering upon any investigation of the inner meaning of this parable, let us examine its characters and plot as it stands. For it is a characteristic of all good stories that they are interesting in themselves utterly aside from any moral object they may have, and can be enjoyed though we never discover this object. First, then, as to the character of Jonah. l think you have all met him and know him well; in fact, we are all of us Jonahs at some time or other. For Jonah is nothing but the chronic “kicker”, the grumbler, the “sore-head”, the man who is never satised with anything, who angrily rebukes even God, and is always wishing he were dead. He goes through life carrying with him a perpetual “grouch”: he despises himself, he hates mankind, he thinks even the Almighty doesn’t quite do his duty. He is always looking for, wishing for, and getting into trouble; but he isn’t even enntented when he has gotten all he looked for: that only makes matters worse. To be sure, he lets slip by some accident a hymn of joy when he’s delivered from the whale’s belly, but then. I suppose not even: the grouchiestt of grouches wouldn’t be rleased if he managed to escape from such a fleshy hell of darkness. Also the story tells us that “he was exceeding glad of, the gourd” which God had pre-