Jonah — who's who

Mentioned once in 2 Kings 14:25 as a prophet from Gath-hepher in the northern kingdom who had announced, under Jeroboam II, the restoration of Israel's borders. The book uses that historical figure as the protagonist of a parable. He hears the call — go to Nineveh, call out against it — and books a ship to Tarshish. He sleeps through the storm while the pagan sailors pray. He tells them to throw him over. He prays a careful Psalter pastiche from inside the fish. He obeys the second commission, delivers eight words, watches the city repent in sackcloth (cattle included), and walks out of the city furious — not because the mission failed but because it succeeded. He asks to die twice. He does not answer the question. He is the Hebrew Bible's most exposed comic figure.

Phoenician merchants whose ship Jonah boards at Joppa. The book's first surprise: when the storm comes they pray each to his own god, throw the cargo, cast lots. When they find the guilty party they are appalled — what is this you have done? They try to row back to shore before throwing him over. They pray the LORD's forgiveness. When the sea calms they fear the LORD greatly, sacrifice, and make vows. They are more pious in their response to the crisis than the prophet of the LORD on board with them. Their conduct is the book's first and quietest correction of the assumption that the foreigners are the enemies of God.

The book gives him no name, only his title. He hears the five-word Hebrew announcement and rises from his throne, removes his royal robe, sits in ashes, and issues the most comprehensive repentance decree in the Hebrew Bible: man and beast, herd and flock, in sackcloth; everyone to turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. The decree adds the moral content the sermon lacked. He is the king of the empire that had destroyed the northern kingdom in 722, and his repentance is total. The book records his response with the same deadpan it records everything else, as if nothing could be more natural than Assyria in sackcloth.

More than a hundred and twenty thousand people who do not know their right hand from their left — often read as a description of moral innocents, small children, or simply the general population who have not been counted among the guilty. They believe God before the king's decree is issued, which the narrator records as if the response is organic rather than top-down. They are the most successful audience any prophet has ever addressed. The book leaves them at the moment of their turning. The cattle, in their own sackcloth, are part of them.

Appointed by the LORD to swallow Jonah after the sailors throw him over. The Hebrew dag gadol simply means great fish; the word whale belongs to later translation. Three days and three nights in the belly, during which Jonah prays. Then vomited onto dry land at the LORD's command. The book introduces it with the same matter-of-fact verb it uses for the plant, the worm, and the wind: the LORD appointed. It is not punishment. It is transport. The fish carries the prophet to where the prophet was supposed to go in the first place.

Three things the LORD appoints in chapter 4, in sequence, to make the closing argument. The plant — qiqayon, often translated castor-oil plant or gourd — grows over Jonah in a single night, gives shade; he is exceedingly glad of it. The worm is appointed at dawn and attacks the plant; it withers. Then the LORD appoints a sultry east wind; the sun beats on Jonah's head; he asks to die. The sequence is the book's most compressed argument: Jonah pities the plant for which he did not labour; God pities the great city for which he did. The argument is left as a question: Should I not pity Nineveh, and also much cattle? Jonah does not answer.