Returning the Ticket: God and His Prophet in the Book of Jonah ∗

Abstract

The purpose of the paper is to demonstrate that the book of Jonah may be read as a story of a deity sacrificing its prophet in order to save evildoers from destruction and of the prophet that refuses to be sacrificed and tries to preserve his dignity. Interpreted in this way, the book proves to deal primarily with the question of the salvation of the wicked at the expense of the righteous, which was probably of major importance, both ideological and political, for the post-exilic Judaean community. Analysis of the book's composition indicates that the author wanted his/her intended audience to sympathize with Jonah, not with God; it means that the negative attitude to the prophet prevailing in the modern scholarly community and in communities of faith stems for the most part from uncritically assimilated stereotypes, not from unbiased interaction with the text.