Handout for Lecture on "Fruitful Flailings: Reading the Anger of the Prophet Jonah"

November 10, 2004
Distinguished Faculty Lecture
Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA

Barbara Green, O.P.
Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology
Professor of Biblical Studies

opportunity and challenge:
format:
text:
specific topic:
sharpened question:
reading sketch: Slides from Antioch, 3rd century

substance:
Entry point one: What did God say that was so fresh and galvanizing?
Thesis one: everything turns on relationship but not on entitlement and deservingness.
Slide: Ulrich Leive, 20th c;

Entry point two: Why is Jonah angry?
Thesis two: This plant is a serious thing to have briefly and then lose. To fail to hold the plant is to face death’s inevitability. Anger is justified.
Slide: Rembrandt, 17th c;

Entry point three: But if understandable, even justifiable, is Jonah’s anger productive? Can he do well with it?
Thesis # 3: The moment calls on Jonah to re-calibrate if he can, to get a fresh perspective if he is able to do so. What is to die for and what to live for? What causes anger and what brings joy?
Slide: Chagall, 20th c;

Entry point four: What does Jonah want, most fundamentally?
Thesis #4: The receivers of the Jonah tradition–represented by the character Jonah--have the opportunity to see how closely they resemble their opponents and to ponder their options, decide on what in fact, they want: to be destroyed, to be spared, to destroy, to spare.
Slides: anon, 5th c and 3rd c.;

Entry point five: But at this urgent moment of decision, does Jonah have a fulcrum- relationship with God to move him well?
Thesis # 5: Some fish! Some relationship!
Slide: 20th c. (still untracked); Amos Amit 20th c.; Rashid al_din 14th c.;

summing up, assessing: slide: R. Erberwein, 20th c.;
responses:
Professor Sandra Schneiders
Professor Gina Hens-Piazza
at large

Jonah 4 4:1 But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the LORD and said, "O LORD! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. 3 And now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live." 4 And the LORD said, "Is it right for you to be angry?" 5 Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city. 6 The LORD God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. 7 But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, "It is better for me to die than to live." 9 But God said to Jonah, "Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?" And he said, "Yes, angry enough to die." 10 Then the LORD said, "You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. 11 And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?"

Jonah 2:2-9 Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the belly of the fish, 2 saying, "I called to the LORD out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. 3 You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me. 4 Then I said, 'I am driven away from your sight; how shall I look again upon your holy temple?' 5 The waters closed in over me; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped around my head 6 at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the Pit, O LORD my God. 7 As my life was ebbing away, I remembered the LORD; and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. 8 Those who worship vain idols forsake their true loyalty. 9 But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Deliverance belongs to the LORD!"

Top of Page ^