On the surface, the tale of Jonah is one of the Bible’s most familiar stories. In fact, despite its many echoes in Western literature (Moby Dick, Pinocchio, and others), what is familiar is mostly a vague impression from the book itself: for example, everyone remembers that the prophet was swallowed by a whale, but very few know that the book does not mention a whale, but a fish (dag, 2:1, 11 or daga 2:2).
In Jewish tradition, the entire Book of Jonah is read annually in the synagogue on Yom Kippur. And the reason is seemingly clear: this book focuses entirely on the subject of repentance. But in effect, Jonah himself does not repent his reservations about the Divine mission and to the end, he does not want God to change His decision to destroy the city of Nineveh and its inhabitants. Basically, one may conclude that Jonah does not accept the principle of repentance.
For that and other reasons, Jonah himself, despite being a prophet and therefore revered, is not always seen positively by various commentators. For example, Abraham Ibn Ezra writes in the introduction to his commentary on the Book of Jonah:
And now, I will allude to a secret teaching: Some know to make
rhymes naturally, without study and others need to learn; but
even if one studies, one might not be capable and this last case
is more common than the first….And the enlightened will
understand.
Ibn Ezra apparently means to say that like poets, there are prophets born with a talent for the profession (such as the prophet Jeremiah, who was chosen for the job even before he was born – Jeremiah 1:5), and others learn on the job – but only a few of the apprentices/learners will truly become prophets. In this complex manner, Ibn Ezra criticizes Jonah and in effect determines that Jonah did not understand his mission. Ibn Ezra was influenced by the characterization of Jonah’s prophecy in the early midrash halakha, Mekhilta DeRabbi Ishmael (Parashat Bo, introduction), which states:
Jonah insisted upon the honor due the son but did not insist
upon the honor due the Father, as it is said, But Jonah rose up
to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord (Jonah
1:3). What is written about him? And the word of the Lord
came to Jonah the second time, saying (ibid. 3:1). He spoke
with him a second time, but did not speak with him a third
time.
This midrash implies that Jonah’s prophesying stopped after the story in the Book of Jonah, because “he suppressed his prophecy” and tried to evade the command to save the people of Nineveh, because he knew that they (the Assyrians) would later on destroy the Kingdom of Israel. Because of his affection for the Jewish people (the son), Jonah did not want to save its enemies, despite the word of God (the father).
Thus, Jonah the prophet is a problematic character. And his story prompted numerous interpretations that attempt to deal with the difficulties inherent in it: Why was he chosen? Why was he sent to save a gentile city? Why did he flee? What is the significance of his stay in the belly of the fish (dag)? What is a fish (daga)? Why did the people of Nineveh believe Jonah’s words and repent? Why did Jonah get angry and still want God to destroy Nineveh?
In order to understand artists’ answers to some of these questions, we will now review the course of the story.
Flight
In the beginning of the book, Jonah is called upon to go east to Nineveh, the capital of the kingdom of Assyria and to prophesy about it (“aleha”), but he does not want the mission and runs away, to the west. He descends from his home in Gat Hefer in the kingdom of Israel and heads to Jaffa, and continues heading down to a boat that is sailing out to sea and eventually descends to the bowels of the ship and falls asleep.
In this picture by the American artist Bo Bartlett, Jonah lies below the waves apparently on the seabed. His chest is wrapped in a cloth, his eyes are open and it is unclear if the scene depicts his stay in the fish or his sleep in the bowels of the ship. But this indistinctness points to a recurring pattern in Jonah’s behavior – he runs away, he descends, he falls asleep, he is swallowed.
But God chases after him with the help of a storm at sea.
Mordechai Beck, Jonah
From the Ship to the Fish
When the ship is on the verge of sinking, the sailors pray, each to their own god, and for some reason decide to draw lots to find out who is the cause of the storm – and of course, the lot falls on Jonah. Left with no other choice, the sailors agree to Jonah’s pleas and throw him into the sea, seemingly to his death – but God saves him via another emissary, the famous fish.
The Bible describes the sailors positively as compassionate and God-fearing men:
Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice
to the Lord and made vows. (Jonah 1:16)
In contrast, a tradition in Pirke deRabbi Eliezer refers to the sailors as idol worshipers:
Rabbi Hanina said, Men of the seventy languages were there on
the ship, and each one had his god in his hand.
For the most part, artists portray the sailors quite favorably, even though in the standard Christian iconography they feed Jonah to the fish instead of tossing him into the sea as is written. The impression formed is that the sailors are also God’s unknowing emissaries.
Duke of Alba Bible, Bible moralisee,
Jonah Thrown into the Sea (detail) Jonah Thrown into the Sea,
circa 1465
In these two pictures, the terrible act of the forsaking of a person’s life is beautified with calming images: flowers, round lines, pious looks, a ship’s mast reminiscent of a carousel at a village fair. In the picture on the right, this impression is achieved via the contrast between the gay and flowery upper portion and the lower portion full of sharp angles.
Handmade Midrash, Jonah
In this Handmade Midrash, God’s powerful hand replaces the fish that saves Jonah’s life in order to bring him back to carrying out his mission. It seems the wedding band is an ironic symbol of Jonah’s dedication to the role of prophet and his recoiling from this burden.
Amazingly, there is a great similarity between this contemporary treatment of Jonah's fish and a fifth century portrayal of Jonah's story, discovered at Huqoq, Israel in 2012.
Below the ship, Jonah's legs protrude from the mouth of a fish, that is being swallowed by a larger fish, which is being swallowed by a third fish. Midrash Jonah refers to just such a feeding frenzy, but the version found in the Qisas al Anbiya of Thalabi is even closer.
Rarely is Jonah portrayed drowning in the sea, as described in the Bible.
In this painting, God himself appears above, with His two hands representing his sovereignty and his mercifulness. The ship appears to be on the brink of breaking up and the wise and programmed fish is approaching to carry out its task. In this painting, the sea is endangering Jonah’s life, whereas the fish represents the compassion of God, who saves the prophet from certain death.
Usually, the depiction of the fish in the Christian faith actually highlights its fearsome nature, even though this is not at all reflected in the biblical story, where the fish is dispatched by God to save Jonah.
diagram for an anemometer
This apparently stems from the Christian interpretation, which saw the fish as actually being a symbol of death itself. Therefore in the above sketch, neither a fish nor a whale, but rather a shark, catches Jonah. It is no coincidence that the life and death struggle with God is depicted in the form of a weather vane, which symbolizes the axis mundi (axis of the earth) that connects the earth and the heavens. It seems that the word, dag (fish) in the Bible comes to emphasize that this is not a sea monster, called, for example, leviathan (not the marine mammal, but rather a kind of snake) or Sea or even Death, in ancient Canaanite literature. The fish is God’s messenger, like Balaam’s ass, or Jonah’s castor oil plant or worm.
In effect, the Christian interpretation of the Book of Jonah focuses, as its wont, on what appears to be a prefiguration of Jesus: in this case, of his death.
For example, in this page from the Christian commentary known as the Bible of the Poor, Jonah’s being swallowed up by the great fish is compared to Joseph’s descent into the pit and both of these are compared to Jesus’ burial (in the center).
In the Fish's Belly and Out
Jonah is trapped in the belly of the fish for three days and utters a prayer expressing his distress and yearning for God.
For You did cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas and
the floods encompassed me and all Your billows and waves passed
over me.
Then I said, I am cast out of Your sight, yet I will look again to
Your holy Temple.
According to these words, Jonah “sees” the Temple while still in the depths, in the sea. In the painting below, the fish, positioned with its red head at the bottom, spits Jonah out straight into the red gate of the tower of Nineveh.
Yet this building, which soars upward and serves as a gateway, also represents (like Manship’s anemometer above) the axis mundi (the point of contact between the earth and the heavens, between the human and the divine), just at the Temple is also an axis of the world. Therefore it is possible to see here a reflection of the two elements of Jonah’s prayer: distress and the Temple.
Michael Sgan-Cohen, interprets the scene in a unique, personal and perhaps even a subversive fashion. He sees the stay inside the belly of the fish like a stay in a summer house – a timeout from the day-to-day frenzy, a place for soul-searching and study.
Michael Sgan-Cohen, Leviathan, 1983
Even Jonah’s emergence from the belly of the fish symbolizes for the Christian interpretation a prefiguration: of the resurrection of Jesus after three days (!) in the grave.
Robert Eberwein, Early Christian Sarcophagus,
Jonah as Christ Resurrected Church of Santa Prassede,
Rome
As far back as the early years of Christianity, artists used Jonah’s emergence from the fish as a metaphor for the resurrection of the dead, whoever they may be, as in this Roman coffin. And in the 20th century, the Christian artist, Robert Eberwein depicted this event using the visual images of Jesus’ rise from the grave.
Islam also deals with the life of Jonah who is referred to in Arabic as Yunis, and after whom a chapter of the Koran is named. In this chapter, Jonah actually represents the penitent – even though, according to the biblical story, he maintained his opposition to God’s compassion.
In the Islamic faith, Jonah is depicted mainly in relation to the great fish. Among others, there are paintings that show him after the fish spat him out, sitting naked on the land beneath some kind of plant and looking at the fish, while an angel approaches and gives him fresh clothing.
Basically, Jonah is portrayed as a newborn (note the fetal position of his legs), or in essence as being reborn after a traumatic experience, an important image in Islam, whose believers wear white clothes, like the diapers swaddling an infant, when making the pilgrimage (the Hajj) to Mecca. This image is not the exclusive domain of Islam.
Jonah at Nineveh
Jonah surrenders to the Divine command and reaches Nineveh, and we have now moved from a maritime context to an urban context:
And Jonah began to enter the city a day’s journey and he cried
and said, another forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
Jonah 3:4
Tortured and afflicted, yet fervent, his skeletal body reflects the sharp angles of the city of sins. And the people of Nineveh repent (at least ostensibly):
So the people of Nineveh believed in God and proclaimed a fast
and donned sackcloth from the greatest of them to the least.
(ibid, 5)
The actions of the people of Nineveh are discussed at length in the Jewish commentaries. The late Midrash Yonah describes in great detail the actions of the king, who is identified here as Osnappar, also known as Assarhadon (?) the king of Assyria.
So the people of Nineveh believed in God - the word reached Osnappar, the king of Nineveh, who descended from his throne, removed his crown, strewed ashes on his head, took off his purple garments, and rolled about in the dust of the highways. And he and all the people of his household and all his ministers and servants and all the great people of the kingdom agreed to a fast of three days, for all the inhabitants of the city of Nineveh.
This Midrash is based on earlier Midrashim, found in the Babylonian and in the Jerusalem Talmuds.
Babylonian Talmud Ta’anit 16a Jerusalem Talmud Ta'anit 8b
Based on a comparison of the two sources, it is possible to see that the Babylonian Talmud had a positive view of the people of Nineveh, whereas the Midrashim from Eretz Yisrael, using similar imagery, claim that the people of Nineveh tried to mislead God via emotional blackmail. According to a study by E. Urbach, this negative and strained assessment was a reaction of the rabbis in Eretz Yisrael to the Christian commentary that maintained that the gentile people of Nineveh were preferable in their actions to the Jews, who claim to be the chosen people, due only to descent from Abraham the patriarch.
In Christian and in Islamic art there is little treatment of this group, but the picture in the illustrated Bible of the Duke of Alba, which was made on the eve of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, in consultation with a learned rabbi, is most interesting, given the considerable influence of the Midrashim we cited above.
Bible of the Duke of Alba, Jonah in Nineveh (detail), 1430
On the right, there are separate groups of men and women standing at the edge of the picture, while to the left of the men, the king bows before the throne on which his crown rests. At the women’s feet, a group of naked children stretch out their hands, asking for food. On the left, parallel groups of colts and kids, cows and calves, look longingly at each other. This is an exact depiction of the text of our Midrashim.
Gustav Dore’s painting is well-known because of the great notoriety his illustrated Bible gained.
Gustav Dore, Jonah and the People of Nineveh, 1865
Dore took pains to depict different reactions among the crowd to Jonah’s sermon/warning/threat.
Jonah and the Castor Plant
After the people of Nineveh repent, Jonah goes out of the city to observe what will happen, in the hope that God will indeed destroy the city. God prepares a lesson in kindness for him by arranging a shaded place with a castor oil plant.
And the Lord appointed a castor oil plant and made it come up
over Jonah that it might be a shade over his head, to deliver him
from his distress. And Jonah was exceedingly glad of the plant.
Jonah 4:6
But Jonah’s happiness is cut short:
But God appointed a worm when the dawn came up the next day
and it attacked the plant so that it withered.
And it came to pass, when the sun arose, that God prepared a
vehement east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah’s head, so that
he fainted
So he asked that he might die, and he said it is better for me to die
than to live.
There are few artistic treatments of this part of the story of Jonah, compared to the great emphasis on the fish. And perhaps this is no wonder, given that the story of the castor oil plant seems like a strange turn of events. This episode also ends oddly with a rhetorical question from God (Jonah 4:10-11).
Then the Lord said, you are concerned about the castor oil plant,
for which you did not labor, and which you did not rear, which
came up in a night and perished in a night.
And should I not be concerned for Nineveh, that great city, where
there are over one hundred and twenty thousand people, who
cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand, also a
lot of cattle.
The two paintings below describe two aspects of the castor oil plant.
Jacob Steinhardt, Matthaeus Merian the Elder,
Jacob and the Gourd, Jonah and the Vine,
1625-30
In the depiction of the end of the story by the Swiss artist, Matthaeus Merian, Jonah waits anxiously in the shade of the vine prepared by God and hopes for the destruction of the city. The city itself, however, is basking in the light of divine loving-kindness.
On the other side, the Israeli artist, Jacob Steinhardt, depicts the tragic irony of this passage by showing Jonah suffering from the ravages of God’s emissaries: the worm that struck the castor oil plant, and the burning sun and the sultry desert wind.
It seems that this scene is the essence of the story of Jonah: the prophet does not understand the principle of divine loving-kindness, does not understand the principle of repentance, and does not understand the role of the prophet. He is angry to the point of wanting to die over his personal situation and his travails and does not consider the fate of men. He is sent specifically to save gentiles, just as the most important biblical discussion of the subject of reward and punishment is uttered by Job, who is not an Israelite: these basic subjects are universal and are not limited to the Jewish people. Therefore, the reading of the Book of Jonah on Yom Kippur is significant for all of mankind, not just on a national level.
For additional images on this subject see TALI Visual Midrash