Jonah
“Nonsense,” said God. “Remember that you are an air-breathing,
warm-blooded animal, and can only dive because of the reservoir of air
in your mouth. When this air becomes unfit to breathe, you must rise to
the surface for a fresh supply.
“While you have air to breathe, Jonah will have it also.
“So do not hesitate any longer, but do as you are told.”
The whale heaved a deep sigh; his breath groaned through the ocean,
causing many smaller fish, terrified, to flee with trembling fins.
“How horrid for me,” he exclaimed.
God replied soothingly, “It will assure you a place in history.”
So saying, the Lord blessed Leviathan, who sank sadly back to the
depths of the sea; and, turning from the shore, the Light of Israel
rolled like thunder across the valleys toward Golan.
The night came to meet Him from the east, pouring down over the hills
like smoke. In the cold night air God went to look for Jonah.
Poor Jonah, he had not found peace after all. The lonely desert, so
calm and quiet in the past, had given no rest to his thoughts. His
mind went back over and over again to those days at home; he felt the
wonder of the love-night, his heart shrank again with sickness for what
followed. And he asked himself for the thousandth time how such things
could be. Then he cried out against Judith for her cruelty; yet the
next moment he forgave her.
And these thoughts, climbing and falling wearily up and down through
his head, kept him awake until long after the desert was asleep. In the
morning, when he awoke, it was with regret; he tried to sleep a little
longer, to keep his eyes closed, to keep from thinking again ... why
wake at all? he wondered. There was nothing to wake to. Only the hot
sun over the desert, only his heavy heart, which grew no lighter as the
days went by.
Why wake at all?
God found him sitting wearily upon a rock, his head bowed between his
hands. The Lord spoke, and the desert was silent.
“Jonah,” said God in a voice like a great wave breaking, slowly, and
with the peace of the sea, “Jonah, you have wept enough.”
Jonah replied simply, “I have been waiting for You a long while, and I
am very tired.”
“I had not forgotten you,” said God; “I have been thinking.”
And He added, “Now I have something for you to do.”
Jonah remained seated without looking up. He seemed no longer to care
what God had for him to do.
“Arise, Jonah,” said God, “and go to Nineveh. Cry out against that
great city for its sins.”
But Jonah looked more dejected than ever. “What have I to do with
Nineveh?” he asked. “Am I prophet to the Assyrians? I am a Jew. Do not
mock me, Lord.”
“I do not mock you,” said God gravely. “Go, then, and do My bidding.”
And as Jonah did not reply, he added sadly, “Do you still doubt Me?”
Jonah rose slowly to his feet. His eyes blazed, and his hands were
tightly clenched. “Oh,” he cried bitterly, all the passion in his
heart storming out at last in a torrent of despair, “You ... what are
You God of? Were You God of Israel when a Tyrian stole my love? Was I
Your prophet then? Have You power over Tyre, that You let Your servant
suffer such anguish? Or are You God of the desert, where the demons
mock me night and day, where the very stones cry out against me, and
the whole night is noisy with laughter? Nineveh ... Nineveh ... in
whose name shall I cry out against Nineveh? Do the gods of Assur visit
their wrath upon Jerusalem? What power have You in Nineveh? For my
youth which I gave You, what have You given me? How have You returned
my love, with what sorrow? What have You done to me, Lord? I stand
in the darkness, weary, and with a heavy heart. What are You God of?
Answer: what are You God of?”
And God answered gently, “I am your God, Jonah, and where you go, there
you will find Me.”
Jonah sank down upon the rock again. His passion had exhausted him; but
he was not convinced. “Well,” he said in a whisper, “You are not God in
Nineveh, and I will not go.”
Then the wrath of the Lord, slow to start, flamed for a moment over the
desert, and Jonah cowered to earth while the heavens groaned and the
ground shook with fright. And in his hole by the pool in the Land of
Tob, the little fox said to himself, “Jonah is talking to God.”
But God’s anger passed, leaving Him sad and holy.
“Peace unto you, Jonah,” He said in tones of divine sweetness; “take up
your task, and doubt Me no more.”
And He returned to heaven in a cloud. Overcome with weariness, empty
of passion, Jonah fell asleep upon the ground.
No jackals laughed that night. Silence brooded over the desert. The
stars kept watch without a sound, and Jonah slept with a quiet heart.
XVII
But in the morning his doubts returned more strongly than ever.
“They will mock me in Nineveh,” he told himself. “I shall be made a
laughing-stock. What power has the Light of Israel in the land of
Marduk, of Dagon, of Istar, of the warrior Ashur? I should count myself
lucky if I escaped being stoned to death.
“For how can God destroy Nineveh? I might as well preach to the fish in
the sea.”
But now he had something to do, at least. He determined to flee from
God. “I shall go to Tarshish,” he thought, “and begin life over again.
There is nothing for me here any longer. The desert will be glad to be
rid of me.”
And without bothering even to return to his hut, he started south,
toward Joppa, where he expected to find a ship bound west for Tarshish.
He traveled swiftly, on other roads from those he had come. Late on the
afternoon of the second day he crossed the Brook Kanah, and saw in the
distance the white domed roofs of Joppa shining above the sea.
As he came down from the low hills, the sight of ocean rounded like a
bowl under the wide arch of the sky, the distant and titanic clouds
piled above the unseen shores of Africa, filled his heart for a moment
with beauty. But then he thought:
“This is like Tyre. It is by the shore of this same sea that Judith has
gone to live.”
And he cursed the beauty that hurt him.
It was late when he came to the shore, and night was already moving
upon the deep. In profound silence he leaned above the harbor wall and
regarded the shadowless water which with the sound of immemorial tides
passed under him in the darkness. It was the season when the mists
from the ocean blow landward in the evening. In the gray night fog the
masts of the vessels at anchor rocked toward one another on the long,
low waves; and the mist, salty with sea air, mingled along the quays
with the odors of the city.
It was the dark of the moon in the month of Nisan. The moon was gone,
and his youth with it. Other moons would rise, fall through the
branches of a tree, and cheat a bird to sing. But where would Jonah be?
And Judith, in her great house over the terraces of Tyre; she would
grow old, soon she would be like Deborah, looking backward over her
life.... What happened to youth, to beauty? Where did they go? They
hardly lasted at all.
Night hung black and silent over the sea. The wings of angels leaned
upon the wind which moved dark and vast between the earth and sky. The
stars paled, and the sun rose like a ball of fire in the east. Then the
ocean mist, cold as frost, melted away. The tide turned, and the waves,
breaking far out, spoke with their murmur like the sound of wind to the
sleeping city on the shore.
In the morning Jonah found a ship bound for Tarshish. The cargo was
already loaded; and when he had made his bargain, he went aboard.
Bearded and singing, the seamen hoisted the sails, yellow as a slice
of moon; with a sly, tranquil motion the ship moved out of the harbor,
over the blue sea, sparkling in the sun, past sails stained blue as the
sky, or brown as the sands. The white roofs of Joppa faded behind them
in the east, lost in the gradual fog; the seagulls cried above them;
and Jonah sat silent, dreaming, gazing at the sea.
He was tired, and listless. “Now,” he said to himself, “God has lost
me.”
And he thought of Deborah with sadness and peace. He remembered what
she had said to him, as she had held him, weeping bitterly, in her
arms, on her breast.
“Jonah,” she had said, “when you are dead, or perhaps very old and
ready to die, people will say of you, ‘There, he was a great prophet.’
And they will feel honored because they knew you, because their names
will be spoken of with yours. But now ...” she sighed; she wanted to
say, “now you are only a nuisance.”
What she finally said was, “Well, people are like that.”
But Jonah knew what she wanted to say. And as he sat quietly on the
deck of the ship under the yellow, curved sail, he thought,
“I shall not bother anybody now.”
The warmth of the sun, reflected from the sea, entered his mind and
lulled his limbs. Sea-quiet took hold of him; the peace of ocean bathed
his spirit. He grew drowsier and drowsier; he began to doze. And as he
fell asleep, his last thought was that he had got away from God.
All day the sails sang in the wind, under the sun. Jonah slept; his
dreams swept out like homing birds over the calm waters; and in his
sleep he wept.
But in the afternoon the wind died away; an ominous haze enveloped the
sky; and the sea grew oily. The sails were hastily drawn in; and the
oars were made ready. Huddled together on the deck, the seamen spoke in
low, anxious voices. All eyes were turned toward the east, which grew
darker and darker. All was still; the air did not stir. Moved by fear,
the men trembled; and as though herself frightened, the ship started
to creak in all her timbers. All at once the sky uttered a moan; high
above them the air began to sing; and the sea rolled in slow, unwilling
swells. And then it seemed as if the sky fell down upon the sea, for
the water rose like the hills, and the dark came down upon it. Unable
to move, the ship trembled from bow to stern, lifted dizzily upon the
waves, tilted in the wind, and dropped like a stone into the trough.
The gulls were flattened to the sea, and the air was filled with the
shout of the gale, and the crash of water falling upon itself. It was
God’s storm, but Satan also was enjoying it.
Pale with fear, the sailors rushed to lighten the ship by throwing the
cargo overboard. Then, as the tiny vessel dashed about in the water
like a cork, they fell upon their knees and prayed to their gods, to
Ramman, the thunderer, to Dagon, to Enlil, the old god of storms.
Seeing that Jonah still slept, sheltered by the deck which curved above
him, the captain ran to awaken him. “Here,” he said, “this is a storm.
Well, see for yourself. You should be more anxious, my friend. Have
you a god? Then pray to him, for we need all the help we can get.”
Dazed by the tumult, still half asleep, Jonah gazed in confusion at the
heaving waters. The wind lashed him to the deck; he stared in dismay at
the mighty waves rising above him on every side like mountains. “I will
not pray,” he said. And the captain shrank back at the sight of his
face.
But the seamen, clinging to the deck, looked anxiously at Jonah, and
at the great seas which broke over them without ceasing. “This is no
common storm,” they told each other; “some great god is angry.”
They were good and simple men. Had one of them sinned, to draw down
upon them all such wrath? No, it was Jonah, the stranger whose face
was like a demon’s, dark as the storm itself. They looked at him with
terror.
And Jonah looked back at them as frightened as they were. His mind
reeled; had he not got away from God after all? Had God come after
him--out there on the sea? Was there no way to flee from God?
Why had he tried to run away? What a fool.... God would never forgive
him for it.
And then, in the crash of wind and water, a feeling of disdain came