The Book of Jonah Ends With a Question God Does Not Answer

"Should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left — and also many animals?" — Jonah 4:11

This is the last sentence of the book.

God asks it. Jonah does not answer. The book ends.

Not with a resolution. Not with Jonah's repentance or acceptance or theological understanding. Not with a summary of what the story means or what the reader should take from it. A question, addressed to a sulking prophet sitting east of Nineveh under the remains of a withered vine, and then silence.

The silence is the ending. The question is still open.

It has been open for two and a half thousand years.

The book of Jonah is the most structurally sophisticated comedy in the Hebrew Bible — a story that is simultaneously a serious theological argument and a portrait of a man so comprehensively wrong about everything that his wrongness has the quality of farce. Every attempt Jonah makes to escape the assignment fails in a way that advances the assignment. Every conviction he holds is exposed as the opposite of the truth. Every time the narrative reaches what looks like resolution, Jonah does the thing that reopens everything.

And at the end, God does not correct him or condemn him or replace him. God asks him a question.

Should I not have concern for Nineveh.

The question contains the whole book. And the whole book has been building toward the reader's answer — because Jonah is not going to give one.

The Assignment and the Direction Jonah Went

"The word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai: 'Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.'" — Jonah 1:1-2

The assignment is clear. Nineveh. Preach against it. The wickedness has been noticed and the prophet is being sent to address it.

Nineveh was the capital of Assyria — the empire that would destroy the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE, that would besiege Jerusalem under Hezekiah, that was the dominant military power of the ancient Near East and the specific embodiment of the violent imperial force that threatened Israel's existence. The prophet being sent to Nineveh is a prophet of Israel being sent to preach to the enemy — to the people whose armies killed his people, whose kings were the specific content of the prophets' warnings about what would come if Israel did not repent.

Jonah's response is the one that makes the book simultaneously funny and theologically precise.

"But Jonah ran away from the LORD and headed for Tarshish." — Jonah 1:3

Tarshish is the opposite direction from Nineveh. Nineveh is east. Tarshish — probably in the western Mediterranean, possibly Spain — is as far west as the ancient world knew how to go. Jonah books passage on a ship, goes down into the hold, and falls asleep.

The running is not presented as a crisis of faith. Jonah does not doubt that God exists or that the assignment is real. He knows exactly what he is doing and why — the book will tell us later that he ran because he knew what God was going to do if Nineveh repented, and he did not want it to happen. The flight is not the flight of uncertainty. It is the flight of a man who understands the assignment completely and refuses it.

The sleeping in the hold is the detail that gives the comedy its first beat. The man fleeing the presence of the LORD goes down into the ship, down into the hold, and falls into a deep sleep — vayeradam, he was fast asleep — while God sends a great wind and a great storm and the sailors pray to their gods and throw cargo overboard and are terrified.

The prophet of the LORD is asleep in the hold while the pagan sailors cry out to God.

The captain finds him: how can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us so that we will not perish.

The Sailors and What They Reveal

The sailors in Jonah 1 are one of the book's most carefully drawn ironies.

They are pagans — each crying out to his own god, the text specifies, the polytheist's appropriate response to a crisis. They are not the people of the covenant. They have no special relationship with the God of Israel. They are professional mariners caught in an impossible storm doing everything available to them to survive.

And they are, consistently, more morally serious than the prophet of the LORD sleeping in their hold.

When Jonah tells them that he is fleeing from the presence of the LORD and that the storm is his fault, they do not immediately throw him overboard. They try harder to row back to land. When that fails and they determine they must throw him over, they pray — to the LORD, using the covenant name, the name Jonah has told them — asking not to be held guilty for innocent blood, acknowledging that the LORD has done as he pleased.

The pagan sailors pray the covenant name before they throw the covenant prophet into the sea.

"At this the men greatly feared the LORD, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows to him." — Jonah 1:16

The great storm that was sent to intercept the fleeing prophet has produced the conversion of the pagan sailors before it has produced anything in the prophet. The mission Jonah refused — preaching to non-Israelites about the God of Israel — has happened on the ship he fled on, without Jonah doing anything except running away and telling the truth about why the storm came.

The book's argument is operating before Jonah has done a single thing he was asked to do.

The Fish and What It Is For

"Now the LORD provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights." — Jonah 1:17

The fish is three verses of the book. The debates about whether a man could survive inside a large fish, the arguments about which species of sea creature could swallow a human being, the centuries of natural history inquiry into the plausibility of the narrative — all of it is attached to the three verses that are the least theologically significant part of the book.

The fish is the vehicle of the return.

Jonah ran west toward Tarshish to escape the assignment to go east to Nineveh. The fish catches him in the west and deposits him on the shore. The shore is east. The fish is the mechanism by which the journey Jonah refused to take is made for him — he arrives at the starting point of the original assignment having traveled there inside the belly of a large fish instead of on a ship he chose.

The prayer Jonah prays from inside the fish is theologically elaborate and liturgically accomplished — full of allusions to the Psalms, using the language of the lament tradition with the skill of a trained prophet. It is also, notably, not a prayer of repentance. Jonah does not confess that he ran. He does not express willingness to go to Nineveh. He thanks God for the rescue and vows that salvation comes from the LORD.

The prayer is correct and it is not the prayer that needs to be prayed. The thing Jonah needs to repent of — the refusal of the assignment, the conviction about Nineveh that the rest of the book will reveal — is not addressed in the prayer from the fish.

God causes the fish to vomit Jonah onto dry land.

The word of the LORD comes to Jonah a second time: go to Nineveh.

This time Jonah goes.

The Sermon and the Repentance

"Jonah began by going a day's journey into the city, proclaiming, 'Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.'" — Jonah 3:4

The sermon is five words in Hebrew.

Od arba'im yom veNinveh nehepakhet.

Forty more days and Nineveh is overthrown.

No call to repentance. No offer of mercy. No explanation of what the overthrow will look like or what might prevent it. Five words, the minimum viable content of a prophetic warning, delivered by a man who has been vomited out of a fish and is walking into the largest city in the ancient world to say the thing he was sent to say.

The response is the most comprehensive repentance in the Old Testament.

"The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth." — Jonah 3:5

All of them. From the greatest to the least. The king of Nineveh hears, rises from his throne, takes off his royal robes, covers himself with sackcloth, and sits down in the dust. He issues a decree: no person or animal is to eat or drink. Everyone is to cover themselves with sackcloth and call urgently on God. Let everyone give up their evil ways and violence.

The animals are in sackcloth.

The animals wearing sackcloth is the comedy at its most concentrated — the image of the full comprehensiveness of the Ninevite repentance, extended to every living creature in the city, rendered in a detail that is both theologically serious (the whole creation mourning) and visually absurd (cattle in sackcloth).

"Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish." — Jonah 3:9

Mi yodea yashub ve'nicham ha'Elohim.

Who knows whether God will relent — the same mi yodea construction as Esther's who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this. The king of Nineveh, the king of the empire that has been Israel's enemy, prays the prayer of genuine uncertainty — not the prayer of someone who knows the outcome but the prayer of someone who understands that the outcome is not in their hands and acts on the possibility anyway.

"When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened." — Jonah 3:10

The largest city in the ancient world repents on the strength of a five-word sermon from a reluctant prophet who was recently vomited out of a fish.

And Jonah is furious.

The Anger and What It Reveals

"But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry." — Jonah 4:1

Vayera el Yonah ra'ah gedolah vayichar lo.

It was evil to Jonah — a great evil — and it burned in him.

The word ra'ah — evil, wrong, bad — is the same word used for the wickedness of Nineveh that prompted the assignment in the first place. The wickedness of Nineveh was ra'ah. The mercy shown to Nineveh is, to Jonah, also ra'ah. The thing God sent Jonah to address and the thing God did in response to the address are both, in Jonah's moral accounting, evil.

Now the book gives what it withheld in chapter 1 — the reason for the running.

"Isn't this what I said, LORD, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity." — Jonah 4:2

Jonah did not run because he doubted God. He ran because he knew God too well.

He knew that if he preached to Nineveh and Nineveh repented, God would forgive them — because God is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in hesed. He knew the character of the God who sent him. He knew what the character would produce if the mission succeeded. And he did not want it to produce that — not for Nineveh, not for the enemy, not for the people whose armies killed his people.

The prayer Jonah prays from his anger is the most extraordinary prayer in the book.

He quotes the Exodus 34 declaration — the name of God proclaimed to Moses in the cleft of the rock, the hesed and compassion and slowness to anger that is the most concentrated theological statement of divine character in the Old Testament — and he quotes it as the accusation. You are gracious and compassionate and abounding in hesed. That is the problem. That is why I ran. That is why I did not want to come.

The theology Jonah knows is impeccable. The theology he objects to is impeccable. He knows exactly who God is and he is furious about it.

"Now, LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live." — Jonah 4:3

God's response is one word: hahetev charah lakh — is it right for you to be angry? Is your anger good?

Jonah does not answer. He leaves the city, builds himself a shelter on the east side, and sits down to watch what will happen to the city. He is still hoping.

The Vine and the Worm

"Then the LORD God provided a leafy plant and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the plant." — Jonah 4:6

God provides a vine — qiqayon, a fast-growing plant, possibly a castor oil plant — that grows up overnight and shades Jonah from the sun. Jonah is very happy about the vine. Vayismach Yonah al haqiqayon simchah gedolah — Jonah rejoiced over the vine with great joy.

The vine is the only thing in the book that makes Jonah happy.

Not the rescue from the fish. Not the successful mission. Not the repentance of the largest city in the ancient world. A plant that shades him from the sun.

At dawn the next day God provides a worm. The worm strikes the vine and it withers. The sun rises and the east wind comes and the sun beats on Jonah's head until he grows faint and asks again to die: it is better for me to die than to live.

God asks again: is it right for you to be angry about the vine?

Jonah answers: it is right for me to be angry enough to die.

Then the last verse.

"You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left — and also many animals?" — Jonah 4:10-11

The Argument of the Last Verse

The argument is structured as a comparison — and the comparison is designed to expose the asymmetry of Jonah's concern.

Jonah had concern for the vine. The vine he did not plant, did not tend, did not make grow, had no hand in creating, benefited from for a single day, and lost overnight. He had great joy over it when it arrived and enough grief over its loss to ask to die.

God has concern for Nineveh. The city God made, whose inhabitants God knows by number — a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, the ancient idiom for moral inexperience, for people who do not fully understand the nature of what they are doing. The animals. The whole created order of the city, given and sustained by the one now being asked to destroy it.

Ve'ani lo achus al Ninveh ha'ir hagedolah — and should I not have pity on Nineveh, the great city?

The vine Jonah did not make. The city God did make. Jonah grieves the vine. God spares the city. And God asks Jonah: is your grief for the thing you did not make more legitimate than my concern for the thing I did?

The question is unanswerable.

Which is why Jonah does not answer it.

Which is why the book ends there.

The People Who Cannot Tell Their Right Hand From Their Left

The phrase asher lo yada bein yemino lismolo — who do not know between their right hand and their left — is the book's most precise theological statement about the ground of divine concern.

The Ninevites are not described, at the end of the book, as fully repentant people whose moral transformation has warranted God's mercy. They are described as people who cannot tell their right hand from their left — morally inexperienced, not fully formed, not yet in possession of the understanding that would make their choices fully culpable in the way that the choices of people who know better are culpable.

God's concern for them is not the reward for their repentance. It is the prior concern of the creator for the creature — the concern that exists before the repentance and that the repentance is responding to. The fast was proclaimed. The sackcloth was worn. The king sat in the dust and prayed who knows. And the God who is gracious and compassionate and slow to anger and abounding in hesed — the God whose character Jonah quoted as his accusation — responded with the character Jonah described.

The people who cannot tell their right hand from their left are the people whose moral formation is incomplete — whose wickedness has come up before God not as the wickedness of people who fully know what they are doing but as the wickedness of people who are capable of better and have not yet been shown it clearly enough.

Jonah was sent to show them.

He showed them five words.

It was enough.

What the Book Is Actually About

Jonah is the only prophetic book in the Hebrew Bible where the prophet does not want his prophecy to be fulfilled.

Every other prophet — Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Hosea, Micah — is delivering a message they believe and want to deliver. They may be afraid, they may be reluctant about the cost, but they are not running away from the success of the mission. They want Israel to repent. They want the judgment to be averted. They are preaching because they believe the preaching matters.

Jonah wants Nineveh to be destroyed.

He runs from the assignment because he knows that if he gives Nineveh the chance to repent, God will spare them — and he does not want God to spare them. He wants the judgment without the offer of repentance. He wants the God who is gracious and compassionate and abounding in hesed to be, for Nineveh, the God who destroys without mercy.

He wants the divine character to be applied selectively — to Israel but not to Israel's enemies, to the people of the covenant but not to the people who threaten it.

And the book is God's argument — made through the sailors, through the fish, through the repentance of Nineveh, through the vine and the worm and the final question — that the divine character cannot be applied selectively. That the graciousness and compassion and hesed that Jonah rightly celebrates as the ground of Israel's relationship with God is the same graciousness and compassion and hesed that will respond to repentance wherever repentance occurs.

The God of Israel is the God of the hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left.

And the animals.

Jonah knows this theology. He quoted it back to God as his accusation. The problem is not that he does not know it. The problem is that he knows it and does not want it to be true — not for Nineveh, not for the enemy, not for the people whose destruction he has been sitting east of the city hoping to watch.

What the Research on Outgroup Compassion Found

The social psychologist Henri Tajfel developed social identity theory in the 1970s — the framework for understanding how people derive part of their identity from membership in groups, and how that group membership shapes the moral consideration extended to others. His research documented what he called ingroup favoritism and outgroup derogation: the consistent human tendency to apply more generous moral standards to members of one's own group and more demanding or dismissive standards to members of other groups.

The finding that is most relevant to Jonah: the ingroup favoritism is not primarily driven by positive feelings toward the ingroup. It is driven by the identity investment in the ingroup's distinctiveness — the need for the ingroup to be meaningfully different from and superior to the outgroup as the condition of the identity the ingroup membership provides.

Jonah's anger at Nineveh's repentance is not simply the anger of a person who hates the enemy. It is the anger of a person whose identity as a prophet of Israel — whose understanding of what it means to be the people to whom the gracious and compassionate God is in covenant relationship — requires Nineveh to be the enemy that does not repent, the city that is destroyed, the contrast that makes the covenant relationship with Israel meaningful as a category.

A God who spares Nineveh on the same terms as Israel is a God who has made the covenant category less distinctive. And the less distinctive the category, the less secure the identity built on it.

The vine makes Jonah happy because the vine is his — provided for him, growing over him, shading him specifically. The vine's existence is unambiguously good for Jonah. Nineveh's existence is the existence of the people who make Israel's existence more precarious. The concern for Nineveh requires Jonah to extend the moral consideration he reserves for the ingroup to the outgroup — to apply the divine hesed he has been formed by to the people he has organized his identity against.

The book does not tell him he is wrong to love Israel. It asks whether his love of Israel requires the destruction of Nineveh — and whether the God whose character he quotes as his accusation can be legitimately constrained to the category Jonah wants him constrained to.

God asks the question.

Jonah does not answer.

The reader has to.

The Line This Whole Story Is Building Toward

The book of Jonah ends with God asking a question that exposes the asymmetry between the grief Jonah has for what he did not make and the concern God has for what God did make — and it ends there because the question is not for Jonah to answer alone. It is for every reader who has ever wanted the divine mercy to be applied to their group and the divine judgment to be applied to the other one. The God who is gracious and compassionate and slow to anger and abounding in hesed is the God of the hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left. And the animals. The question is whether that is a problem or the whole point.

You have a Nineveh.

The person or the group or the category whose repentance you do not want to see because their repentance would require you to extend the concern you reserve for your people to the people you have organized your identity against.

The book does not ask you to stop loving your people. It asks what your love of your people requires of your enemies — and whether the God whose hesed is the ground of your life can be legitimately refused to the hundred and twenty thousand who cannot tell their right hand from their left.

The vine you did not make withered overnight.

God made the city.

Should he not have concern for it?

Jonah is still sitting east of Nineveh, not answering.

The question is yours now.

The Old Testament series is complete. From bereshit — in the beginning — to the question God asks Jonah that has been open for two and a half thousand years. What remains is the audit: the passages we passed by in the forward movement that warrant standalone articles. The most significant gaps identified are Rahab and the spies in Joshua 2, the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11, Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 22 which we covered in the Akeidah article, Joseph's reunion with his brothers in Genesis 45, and Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3. The audit will identify which of these warrant full articles and which are covered adequately by articles already written. But before the audit — the series is done. Genesis through Malachi with Jonah as the final gap article. The library is complete.