In the Belly of the Fish

JONAH WAS a vindictive man who cared more about a plant than he did for the 120,000 people of Nineveh. Reading the short Book of Jonah aloud makes it clear that the story is as much about Jonah’s desire for the destruction of Nineveh as it is about God’s mercy and desire that all people would repent and return to Him. Not only did Jonah try to run away from God, but when he finally did proclaim God’s imminent judgment on the great city (reluctantly), he was so upset that God spared the city that Jonah asked God to kill him! This is one of those sections of the Bible that would surely have been rewritten to show Jonah in a better light if the text had been changed over the years—although we note that the time given the Ninevites to repent was changed from three days to forty between the time of the Septuagint translation (around 200 BC) and the Masoretic text on which our English Old Testament is based (about 900 AD). This week’s question: What do we make of Jeremiah 30:6 and the description of men of Israel in such distress they’re like women in childbirth?