Jonah

The book of Jonah is a good story about a very bad prophet. Jonah is probably the worst prophet in the entire bible because he is so busy running away and being depressed that he has little time for his mission. Jonah is not like Isiaiah, who answers God’s call saying, “here I am, send me.” He’s not even like Moses who tried to beg off with the excuse that he was “slow of speech.” When God call Jonah, he doesn’t even bother to respond. He just runs away by hopping on the first departing ship he can find.

Where is he when a storm threatens to break up the ship and the sailors are in a state of terror? He is below in the hold, peacefully escaping through sleep. When the sailors learn that the storm is on account of him, Jonah makes the suicidal request that they throw him overboard.

When they do he doesn’t drown because he is swallowed up by a fish. There he spends two days doing, what? Sleeping? The text doesn’t tell us. On the third day he finally bestirs himself enough to pray and he is brought safely to land. But this miraculous redemption has not done much to alter his outlook. He is still grumpy about being a prophet. God commands him again to go to Nineveh and prophecize that the city will be destroyed. This time Jonah obeys -- what choice does he have? -- and when the people repent and God renounces their punishment, Jonah is beside himself. He tells God that he had been sent on a fool’s errand for which the outcome was preordained. He expresses his death wish a second time: “Please, Lord, take my life, for I would rather die than live.”

In this depression Jonah walks outside the city and builds a booth. God provides a plant to give him shade and Jonah’s mood lifts. But when the sun rises the next day and the plant withers, Jonah’s despair returns. For the final time, he begs God for death, repeating, “I would rather die than live.” When God asks if he’s grieved about the loss of the plant, Jonah answers, “so deeply that I want to die.” The book ends with God correcting Jonah, but no evidence that Jonah gets it.

Why do we read such a story, on the afternoon of Yom Kippur? In this morning’s torah portion we read, that God sets the choice of life and death before us and asks us to choose life. And now we read about Jonah, who says “I want to die.”

Perhaps Jonah is a warning -- delivered at the time of the day when we might be most susceptible -- against falling into the pit of despair. Yom Kippur is a marathon, and now, as the afternoon lengthens we may encounter the “wall,” spiritually, that marathoners describe hitting at about the 20th mile. We may feel as parched as Jonah under the hot sun. Before us looms the darkness of the Eyleh Ezkerah martyrology in which we recall the torture suffered by pious Jews over the ages. Further ahead on the path to the finish line is the yizkor service which reminds us of the death of loved ones and of our own inevitable deaths.

What can Jonah teach us? Is there a way out of this darkness?

Krishnamurti said that it is not reality that drives us into the pit, but, rather, our attempts to escape from it. Can this be the lesson of Jonah whose tale is one of flight, avoidance and the inability to be present to God? Jonah runs both from the role God asks him to play and from relationship to God. He is angry about change -- both the repentance of the people of Nineveh and the death of the plant that shaded him.

Jonah reminds us that the pit is the alternative to being present to the impermanence, suffering and complexity of life, and to the inexplicable nature of reality and God. Jonah is a cautionary tale that suggests that we can avoid the pit of spiritual despair only by embracing all of our existence, including that which we didn’t chose, expect, or want. Also, he shows us that even if our running and hiding lands us in the pit, if we call out we may be brought back safely to land.

©Steve Gelb
Yom Kippur 5763
September 16, 2002