READING JONAH BACKWARDS: RECONSIDERING A PROPHET’S REPENTANCE

The portrait of the angry, bitter prophet that concludes the book of Jonah has long proved difficult to reconcile with the seemingly repentant and obedient prophet who earlier had praised God from the belly of the great fish before fulfilling his divine commission to bring the word of God to Nineveh. This article considers the rhetorical purpose of these disparate portraits by interpreting Jonah’s acts of piety through the lens of the concluding depiction of the prophet entrenched in his hardhearted rebellion. There is an irreducibly prophetic purpose to this ironic portrayal of a wayward Israelite prophet who gives praise to God with his lips only later to reveal that his heart is far from him.