de enero al 31 de diciembre 2010 Auditoría de gestión

3.7.1 The Message as History

The book of Jonah finds its place in the OT as the work of an unknown writer of the fourth century B.C. who, in a little tale of the lesson which YHWH taught to a harsh and intolerant Jew, protested against this travesty of the message of 2 Isaiah, and sought to persuade his countrymen that God's love is wide enough and deep enough to include the hated Gentile. Israel, like Jonah, must learn by bitter experience that Jewry has no prescriptive right to be called God's people. Several centuries later the rigorists in the Jewish-Christian section of the church had likewise to be taught that "to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance unto life" (Acts 11: 18).

SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISE

1. What is the historical reality that the book of Jonah sets out to address?

2. Can the book of Jonah have any historical and prophetic voice in the present Nigeria‘s democratic dispensation?

3.7.2 The Message as Story

i. Allegorically, it is at this point of history that the author stands. In depicting the immediate conversion of the Ninevites, he suggests the readiness of Israel's neighbours to respond to the message, and in the picture of the prophet sulking in his flimsy shelter he depicts the Nehemiahs,

163 Ezras, Joels, and Obadiahs of his day, sheltering under the precarious protection of their recently rebuilt temple, uncompromising in their hatred of the Gentiles, hoping for the apocalyptic judgment of God to fall upon them, and still unwilling to recognize the purpose of God to save the whole world and not only the Jews (cf. Ezek. 38-39, etc.)

ii. Parabolically, if Jonah is intended to be no more specific a character than the "certain man" of Jesus' parable, he still remains unmistakably a portrait of the narrow and intolerant Hebrew of Ezra's day, or the narrow, intolerant Christian of our own day, who refuses to face the universalistic implications of the divine revelation and its call to world mission. Moved neither by the words nor by the works of God, he peers out upon the world from his tiny sanctuary, a forlorn, self-centred figure, clutching his faith to his bosom, while ordinary humanity, with its many likable qualities, waits ready to respond to the message of God's salvation, which his religious dogmatism makes him unwilling to share.

SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISE

What is the difference between the allegorical and parabolic understanding of the message of Jonah?

3.7.3 The Message as Prophetic

We have already seen that the importance of the work lies neither in the "miracle" of the 72-hour sojourn in the belly of a fish nor in Jesus' reference to the "sign of Jonah" in his preaching.

Responding to the particular situation of the Israel of his day, the author gives us insight into developments in the role that prophecy came to have after-the monarchical period and dares to deal with the very mystery of God.

i. Prophetically, the oracle of Jonah is a brief and blunt announcement of imminent destruction (3:4). But the book as a whole emphasizes the possibility and desirability of repentance as well as the merciful and forgiving nature of God. Some have seen these emphases as evidence of a shift in the role that prophecy began to play from the 6th cent. on; a shift from simply the announcement of what God was about to do, usually judgment and punishment, to the call to." repentance. The theme of' repentance is also prominent in other literature of this period, e.g., Dtr, Jer, and Ezek.

Others have seen in this caricature of a prophet (Jonah at first flees from his mission and then sees his prophecy proved inaccurate) "a mild parody of prophecy;' written not only to counter a rigid deuteronomistic doctrine of retribution but also to give voice to "doubt, perplexity, and unease over simple solutions and glib orthodoxy.

It is also important for us to note the satire implicit in the inconsistency between Jonah's confessions of faith in 1:9and 4:2 and his accompanying actions. But this critique comes not from outside but from within the prophetic tradition and thus represents that "prophetic proclivity for self-questioning" which is "one of the best aspects of its spirit."

ii In the world of theodicy, Jonah, the central human character in the book, the author draws not a stick figure nor a cardboard character but a real human being who, despite his obvious failings, manages to evoke a certain sympathy in his struggle to understand the God in whose service he finds himself. At the root of Jonah's sometimes inexplicable actions and acerbic disposition, one can begin to recognize a sincere striving to reconcile the concept of a just God with the reality of God's mercy. In inviting us to view the problem through the eyes of this reluctant prophet, the author brings us close to the mystery of God.

Not only is it the mercy of God which the author highlights in his parable story; it is a particular quality of that mercy. That mercy is free and unmerited, and, above all, God is free to bestow it on such as the Ninevites.

164 SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISE

Do you think that God‘s forgiveness in the book of Jonah depends on human repentance?

Do you think that the action of God in the book of Jonah is a challenge for theologian to reconcile God‘s justice and God‘s mercy?

4.0 CONCLUSION

We observed this unit the struggle in Jonah and his Israelite folk to understand this God called YHWH. Israel could not understand being the victim of the oppression of Babylon, Persia, and the Hellenistic kingdoms successively would set out for a mission to save her arch-enemies. Thus the legendary city of Nineveh would represent all that is hateful, repugnant, and cruel in such oppressors, and the notion of a God who is willing to show compassion to such as these became a challenging one indeed, but no less challenging than the God who Jesus preached (cf Matt 5:45, and the story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19:1-10).

We may conclude, without fear of contradiction, that the issue with which Jonah deals primarily is the mercy and justice of God. The book is designed as a counterblast to that policy that made Israel an enclave unto herself. The message of the book is that the real vocation of Israel as the people of God is to spread the good news of God's love among the Gentiles, and not to hoard its religious legacy. The book of Jonah is thus to be reckoned among those OT writings which come closest to the spirit of the Christian gospel. It ends with a question mark, because the author does not know whether the Jewish community of his day will respond to the challenge of the book. The question mark still stands today in the Christian history and challenges all individuals, Churches, ecclesia bodies and Christian communities alike.

5.0 SUMMARY

The course is so designed that Jonah should form the last part of the discussion because of its direct relevance to us both as individuals and as a nation. It is a teaching that challenges us as Nigerians to come out from our various ethnic and religious enclaves to appreciate the fact that the God we profess is greater than any religion or ethnic group. Such conclusion is not a simply assertion but as a result of some critical analytic approach adopted in the course of the discussion.

i. We saw that the book of Jonah from outstart was unique compared with other prophetic tradition.

It was only book that was less interested about prophetic utterances but concentrated more on the figure and personality of the prophet, whose title it bears. The identity of the prophet himself was equally controversial.

ii. We discovered that the date of composition of the book and its authorship were engulfed with contentions. But our conclusion was that Jonah the son of Amittai could not have been the author, so also that the book could not have been written during the time of Jonah the son of Amittai.

iii. We identified the major characters in the story - YHWH himself, Jonah, the Ninevites, the sailors and the fish. The narrator allowed each of these characters some significant role in the plot.

iv. Besides literary techniques such as symmetry and balance, irony, satire, we strongly noted the literary structure of the book posed an interest passage for our discussion. We identified a defined structure and literary device in the book that warranted us to speak of a 'parallel of two accounts'.

The author parallelised God's command (1:1-3 and 3:1-4), the pagan nations (1 and 3) and Jonah (2 and 4); Jonah praise God for life (2) and Jonah wishes to die (4), etc. Again, the place of the Psalm and its function in the literature was made an issue. We concluded that the Psalm could as well have