Welcome to Bible Fiber where we are encountering the textures and shades of the prophetic tapestry in a year-long study of the twelve minor prophets, one prophet each month. I am Shelley Neese, president of The Jerusalem Connection, a Christian organization devoted to sharing the story of the people of Israel, both ancient and modern.
This week we are studying the second chapter of Jonah. Chapter 2 interrupts the narrative progress of the book with a three-stanza poem delivered by an undigested Jonah from inside the belly of the whale, making the book three-fourths prose and one-fourth poem.
The most historically famous sermon on Jonah’s prayer from the whale was delivered by the fictional character, Father Mapple, in chapter nine of Moby Dick. Moby Dick by Herman Melville is the story of Captain Ahab’s revenge on a white whale. Before Ahab sets out on his risky whaling mission, one of his sailors attends a church service with Father Mapple who preaches from a lectern in the shape of a ship’s prow. The former whaler turned preacher naturally was keen on the book of Jonah and the “weighty lesson” derived from Jonah’s supplication. Hear this excerpt from Father Mapple’s sermon:
For sinful as he is, Jonah does not weep and wail for direct deliverance. He feels that his dreadful punishment is just. He leaves all his deliverance to God, contenting himself with this, that spite of all his pains and pangs, he will still look towards His holy temple. And here, shipmates, is true and faithful repentance, not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment. And how pleasing to God was this conduct in Jonah, is shown in the eventual deliverance of him from the sea and the whale. Shipmates, I do not place Jonah before you to be copied for his sin but I do place him before you as a model for repentance. Sin not; but if you do, take heed to repent of it like Jonah.
By many accounts, Moby Dick was Melville’s retelling of the Book of Jonah, and an articulation of his own theological grappling with the attributes of God. Melville grew up in a family where his mother’s relatives were staunch Calvinists and his father’s relatives were liberal Unitarians. Melville had to reconcile God’s abundant mercy with His divine wrath. Jonah is the prophetic book that best gives human voice to the struggle over the mystery of God’s nature, His Will, and His system of justice.
