Jonah

JONAH was let out of the whale in the North, near Arvad, and not far from Kadesh as a crow might fly, which is to say, over the coastal hills and then in a straight line across the jungles and the desert. This was the route he took as being the shortest way to Nineveh. He was in a hurry; he was impatient to begin his mission. He was filled with enthusiasm.

How different from his flight to sea, this vigorous return across the land dry with the sun of midsummer. Now he marched with a firm and hurried step, his face darkly radiant with divine purpose, with pious anger. Yes, he would speak; Nineveh would hear him. Let them stone him if they liked, God would amply repay them for it. What glory.

And this was all his, not hers, not for her sake; let her be proud of him if she liked; what did it matter any more? She would hear enough of it in Tyre; Jonah here, and Jonah there....

Yes, they would speak of it in Tyre.

As he passed the wayside altars of the baalim with their pillars surmounted by horns of sacrifices, he smiled at them in derision.

“You,” he said scornfully, “you ... what are you gods of, anyway?”

At Kadesh he saw statues of the river deities, Chrysonhoa and Pegai. He spat in the dust before them; fortunately, no one was looking. In the sun of late afternoon their shadows pointed like great spears toward Nineveh.

“Israel will hear my name again,” he thought proudly.

The evergreen oaks of the hills gave way to the tamarisks of the Syrian jungles, and the palms and scrub of the desert. He slept the first night in the wilderness between Kadesh and Rehoboth. The jackals were silent, awed by the presence of lions among the rocks. Padding to and fro, the great beasts watched Jonah from afar, with eyes like flames. And Jonah dreamed of Deborah; when he awoke, he remembered her gentle smile.

In the fresh light of early morning a mother goat divided her milk between the prophet and her ewe. “These are stirring times, Jonah,” she said; “angels are abroad in great numbers.” Recognizing a minor deity, Jonah blessed her and resumed his journey.

At the end of the second day he began to pass the boundary stones of Assyria, set up to warn trespassers upon private property. Thinking them altars, Jonah cursed each one as he went by. The next day he passed kilns in which colored bricks were being baked. As far as he could see, the blue, green, and yellow bricks stood in rows on the red earth.

That night he slept outside the gates of Nineveh. The city rose above him in the dark; he heard the sentries challenge on the walls.

In the morning he entered the city with some farmers on their way to the markets. The sun was rising, gleaming upon the great winged bulls before the temples, the green and yellow lions upon the walls. Under the clear upland sky the city shone with color like a fair. The markets opened; the streets filled with men and women in their colored shawls and clashing ornaments. And Jonah, looking and looking, was astonished. “Why,” he thought, “this is strange; there is something bright and bold about all this. This is fine, after all.” And he felt a gayety of heart take hold of him. How vigorous these mountain people looked with their insolent faces and their swaggering air. There was nothing old or sad in Nineveh. He forgot why he had come; he was excited, and happy. It was not at all what he had expected; and he forgot himself.

But not for long. As the hours passed, he grew weary; and as the brightness wore off, and he began to think of his own life again, he began to hate Nineveh, to hate the bold colors all around him, the youth that carried itself so proudly and carelessly in the streets. “Yes,” he thought, “that is all very well for you; but you know nothing about life.” And, lifting his arms, he cried aloud with gloomy satisfaction, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”

The success of this remark astonished him. Without waiting to find out any more about it, the Assyrians hurried home and put ashes on their heads. Nineveh repented like a child of its sins; in an orgy of humility the city gave up its business, and dressed itself in sackcloth. The king, even, left his throne, and sat down in some ashes.

Jonah was vexed. This, also, was not what he had expected. He had looked for a wind of fury, for stones, and curses, and a final effect of glory. And when he learned that because of its repentance Nineveh was to be spared, his courage gave way in a flood of disappointment.

“I knew it,” he said bitterly to God; “I knew You’d never do it.”

And with an angry countenance he retired to an open field on the east side of the city, to see what would happen. His heart was very sore.

“Where is my glory now?” he thought.

Then God, who was anxiously watching, spoke to Jonah from the sky. “Why are you angry?” said the Holy One. “Have I done you a wrong?”

Jonah replied, sighing, “Who will ever believe me now, Lord?”

And for the rest of the day he maintained a silence, full of reproach.

Then because the sun was very hot, and because where Jonah was sitting there was no shade of any sort, God made a vine grow up, overnight, to shelter Jonah.

“There,” said God, “there is a vine for you. Rest awhile and see.”

That day Jonah sat in comfort beneath his shelter. The wind was in the west, full of agreeable odors; at noon a farmer brought him meal, salt, and oil; he ate, was refreshed, and dozed beneath his vine. The sun went down over the desert; and the evening star grew brighter in the sky, which shone with a peaceful light. The dews descended; and Jonah, wrapped in his cloak, dreamed of home.

But in the morning worms had eaten the leaves of the vine; gorged and comfortable, they regarded Jonah from the ground with pious looks. As the day progressed, the sun beat down upon him without pity, a strong wind blew up from the east, out of the desert, and the prophet grew faint with misery. Too hot even to sweat, he nevertheless refused to move.

“No,” he said, “I shall sit here.”

An obstinate rage kept him out in the sun, although he half expected to die of it. “Well,” he said to himself, “what if I do?”

It seemed to him that he had nothing more to live for.

Then God said to Jonah, “Do you do well to be angry, My son?”

Jonah did not wish to reply. But he was sure of one thing: that he had every right to be angry. “Why did You wither my vine, Lord?” he asked bitterly. “Was that also necessary?”

God, looking down on His prophet, smiled sadly. “What is a vine?” He said gently. “Was it your vine, Jonah? You neither planted it nor cared for it. It came up in a night, and it perished in a night. And now you think I should have spared the vine for your sake. Yes ... but what of Nineveh, that great city, where there are so many people who cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand? Shall I not spare them, too, for My sake, Jonah?”

Jonah rose wearily to his feet. “Well,” he said, “I may as well go home again.”

And with bowed head he passed through the city, and out of the western gate. In the streets the citizens made way for him with pious murmurs and anxious looks, but Jonah did not notice them. All his courage was gone, his pride, his hope of glory, all gone down in the dust of God’s mercy to others, to all but him. To him alone God had been merciless and exacting. One by one the warm hopes of the youth, the ardors of the man, had been denied him; peace, love, pride, everything had been taken from him. What was there left? Only the desert, stony as life itself ... only the empty heart, the deliberate mind, the bare and patient spirit. Well, Jonah ... what a fool to think of anything else. Glory ... yes, but the glory is God’s, not yours.

But he had not learned even that. He was not a good prophet. The flowers of his hope, the bitter blossoms of his grief, sprang up everywhere, where there should have been only waste brown earth. No, he was not a prophet; he was a man, like anybody else, whose love had been false, whose God had been unkind....

And as he trudged dejectedly along, his heart, bare now of pride, filled with loneliness and longing. He thought of Judith, of the happiness that would never be his; and he wept.

High among the clouds, God turned sadly to Moses. “You Jews,” He said wearily, “you do not understand beauty. With you it is either glory or despair.”

And with a sigh He looked westward to the blue Ægean. Warm and gold the sunlight lay over Greece.

THE END