Jonah's Complexes and Our Own: Psychology and the Interpretation of the Book of Jonah

1. Introduction

‘For the last time psychology!’ This entry in Kafka's notebook has been characterized as a ‘battle cry’. ¹ The many biblical scholars who consider ‘psychologizing’ interpretations of biblical characters to be wrong-headed and naïve would certainly rally to this call. This attitude has resulted in what Joanna Collicutt recently described as ‘the strange absence of psychology from biblical studies’. She finds it to be ‘odd’ because sacred narratives ‘contain accounts of human behaviour and divine behaviour described in anthropomorphic terms that proceed according to certain rules’. In addition, ‘a sacred text may act as a stimulus that evokes a particular psychological response in a reader’ (2012: 1–3).

Collicutt believes that one cause for this scholarly attitude is the over-representation of psychoanalysis among scholars who have published psychological analyses of biblical figures (2012: 3–4; cf. Lasine 2013). Among the other, potentially more fruitful, ‘psychologies’ listed by Collicutt (2012: 30) is the branch of social psychology known as attribution theory. In Weighing Hearts (Lasine 2012), I argue that ‘psychologizing’ is a fact of life as well as a fact of reading. Any rigorous attempt to judge the behavior of biblical characters must take into account the ways in which people actually go about judging others, including our tendency to commit what is usually called the ‘fundamental attribution error’. ² This term refers to the tendency of modern Westerners to interpret behavior as a function of a subject's robust character traits rather than the situations in which that subject finds him-/herself. Any attribution errors we might make about others in ‘real life’ can also be made about characters in narrative, if we fail to acknowledge the situational constraints in which characters are placed by authors. When we encounter unexpected behavior by a biblical character such as Jonah, we must ask ourselves whether we have chosen to explain that character's behavior in the way that is most comforting and familiar (including methodologically familiar) to us, as opposed to the most accurate way of understanding the role of disposition and situational constraints in the character's reported actions. Since all character analysis involves making such psychological judgments, it behooves us to be aware of the perceptual biases which threaten to skew those judgments.

While the following study of Jonah's character is informed by attribution theory, I also attempt to go beyond this one psychological approach. The article begins by reviewing biblical commentators’ judgments on Jonah's character, asking whether these assessments are supported by the text of this uniquely allusive and elusive narrative. While some of these commentators have been influenced by psychoanalytic notions of the ‘Jonah complex’, others have adopted Maslow's ‘humanistic’ version. In the following section of this study I conclude that the biblical Jonah shows no more indication of having any version of the ‘Jonah complex’ than Sophocles’ Oedipus shows of having an Oedipus complex. ³

Nevertheless, these psychological readings can be helpful to the extent that they respond to the text's emphasis on metaphors of enclosure and exposure and the fundamental human fears and fantasies which stem from this dimension of human life. The final sections of the article show how this theoretical approach can help one to understand why both scholars and lay readers have had such dramatically different assessments of Jonah's character and his relationship with his God.

2. Judging Jonah

Many biblical scholars have analyzed Jonah's personality, with or without employing, or creating, a diagnostic label. In most cases, they have no difficulty making judgments about the prophet's defining traits. A literary character is usually thought to be ‘coherent’ if he or she seems to possess robust personality traits and is consistent—or consistently inconsistent—in behavior, although some literary theorists argue that the concept of a coherent character or self is obsolescent, illusory, or a tool of ideology (see Lasine 2012: 5–19). For some observers, Jonah is consistently presented as an ‘anti-hero’, ⁴ or, more specifically, as an ‘anti-Moses’, an ‘anti-Elijah’, ⁵ an ‘anti-Noah’ (Kim 2007: 503), or Jeremiah's ‘antitype’ (Wolff 1986: 120). Negative traits often attributed to Jonah include self-pity (Blank 1955: 29–31), self-centeredness, ⁶ petulance, ⁷ and ‘know-it-all hubris’ (Simon 1999: xxii). He has also been accused of arrogance (e.g. Bickerman 1967: 13) and ‘arrogant dogmatism’ (Zornberg 2008: 166), as well as ‘colossal egocentrism’ (Trible 1994: 202), excessive concern with his self-image (Robinson 1991: 533), hypocrisy, and self-love. ⁸ Kassel (2012: 414) views Jonah's behavior as resembling ‘that of a boy in the midst of puberty… recalcitrant, stubborn, egotistical, uncommunicative and lazy’. For Gaines, the Jonah of ch. 1 is even more immature: ‘like a two-year-old child, Jonah throws a temper tantrum’ (2003: 38). For others, Jonah shows signs of psychological disorders such as acute depression (Zornberg 2008: 275; McCarthy 1980: 62–63), a ‘paranoid-schizoid position of isolation’ (Salberg 2008: 327; cf. 320), and ‘craving narcissism’ (Capps 1992: 153). ⁹

A second group of commentators see Jonah's character flaws as simply human; in Ostriker's formulation, he is an ‘Everyman’ who exhibits ‘our stubborn fear of change, our rejection of connection and love, our secret death wish’ (2007: 117). ¹⁰ A third group observe a much more positive Jonah; here the prophet is at times presented as ‘a man of faith’ driven by ‘zeal for divine integrity’ (Ackerman 1987: 240), a ‘fundamental[ly] serious’ prophet who is characterized by ‘his utter fidelity to himself (Simon 1999: xxi, 35), or a victim who is forced to ‘defend his dignity’ in face of Yahweh's attempts to use him as a ‘robot’ or ‘guilt offering’ (Frolov 1999: 92–93, 97).

3. What We Are—and Are Not—Told about Jonah's Situation and Character

If we are to evaluate these remarkably diverse views of Jonah, and the theological and historical assumptions upon which they depend, we must first appreciate how little the narrator tells us about the prophet's personality, motivations and emotions. ¹¹ At the very start, readers are not told what Yahweh specifically wants Jonah to proclaim against Nineveh. ¹² Our only textual clues to God's intent are his statement that Nineveh's ‘evil’ has come up to him, the narrator's later report that Yahweh did not do ‘what he said he would do’ to the Ninevites, and the Ninevite king's reference to his people's ‘evil ways’ and the ‘violence that is in their palms’ (3.8). ¹³ However, in stark contrast to the furious and jealous Yahweh of Nah. 1.2–3, in Jonah we are not told that he was angry at the Ninevites, even though the Ninevites themselves later assume that this is the case (3.9). ¹⁴

Such gaps continue through the chapter. For example, we are not explicitly told why Jonah fled from Yahweh's presence by heading in the opposite direction. Some commentators take Jonah's flight as an indication that he foolishly thinks that he could escape Yahweh's ‘reach’. In Roth's formulation, ‘Jonah assumes that he can escape God by the normal human device of going away and leaving no address’ (1969: 71). ¹⁵ Limburg (1993: 89 n. 152) compares Jonah with Cain: ‘Cain, too, ran away “from the presence of the LORD”’. However, Cain is not ‘running away from’ God; Cain knows that he has been driven from the face of the earth and will be hidden from Yahweh's face. ¹⁶

When the captain implores Jonah to call to his god (Jonah 1.6), Jonah is not said to reply, let alone call to Yahweh. There is no mention of Jonah asking God for direction before he tells the sailors to heave him overboard (v. 12), and no evidence that he offered a sacrifice and performed what he vowed, even though he, as speaker of the psalm in ch. 2, claims to have done both. In addition, the narrator never attributes fear to the prophet ¹⁷ and Jonah never expresses or displays a fear of death, in spite of the circumstances, an absence highlighted by its contrast with the ‘great’ fear of the sailors (1.5, 10).

The prayer Jonah utters in the belly of the fish would seem to offer an ideal opportunity to learn about his character. Abela agrees, calling the prayer ‘the most important outpouring of Jonah's spirit’. However, the prophet could simply be reciting an existing psalm, or portions of different existing songs which come closest to fitting his unique and bizarre situation, and expressing typical expectations concerning God as protector and rescuer. ¹⁸ This would account for the ways in which the prayer clashes with that situation. Most strikingly, the psalm makes no mention of Jonah being in the fish! In addition, Jonah refers to the danger as already past, speaking as someone who has already been saved from Sheol. And while the rescued swimmer of the psalm was surrounded by the expanse and depth of the waters with his head wrapped in seaweed, nothing was said in ch. 1 about Jonah struggling in the boundless sea. In fact, the sea calmed when Jonah entered it.

Nor had ch. 1 given any indication that Jonah had been thinking about God's ‘holy temple’, ¹⁹ which figures prominently in his prayer. We were not even told where Jonah was located within his ‘own country’ (4.2) when God first commanded him to go to Nineveh, let alone that he had been in Jerusalem. In fact, the name ‘Israel’ never appears in the book, although Jonah does identify himself to the ship's captain as a ‘Hebrew’ (1.9). Finally, in the psalm Jonah claims that it was Yahweh who threw him into the heart of the seas (v. 4). If we assume that Jonah is speaking ‘after the fact’ in ch. 2, this statement implies that his call for the sailors to threw him overboard was a way of enacting what he perceived to be Yahweh's will. ²⁰

Jonah's role in ch. 3 is restricted to the first four verses. Jonah now obeys God's renewed order to proclaim against the great city of Nineveh, although why Jonah obeyed is left unclear. According to Ingram (2012: 148), Jonah then ‘blasted the Ninevites with a hell-and-damnation sermon, instead of following God's command to proclaim grace to them’. Yet this ‘sermon’ consists of only five words, and there is no clear evidence that God had told Jonah to proclaim grace to the Ninevites. ²¹ For readers conversant with other biblical confrontations between a prophet and a king, the fact that Jonah does not proceed to make his doom proclamation directly to the king is surprising, but not as surprising as the fact that the prophet disappears from the scene after this.

Chapter 4 begins with the narrator telling us that something (‘it’) ²² was greatly evil to Jonah and angered him. This verse immediately follows our being told that God ‘repented of the evil’ and did not do to Nineveh what he said he would do to them (3.10). This suggests that Jonah's reported feelings in v. 1 are a response to God's decision concerning Nineveh, even though we have heard nothing about the prophet's emotions since he was expelled by the fish (and little prior to that). Much is left unsaid here. Has Jonah already waited forty days and then realized that the destruction will not occur, or did Yahweh somehow make Jonah aware of his decision concerning Nineveh as soon as he had made it?

The next verse suggests that the two are already together in some sense, ready to converse. The prophet complains to Yahweh by quoting Yahweh's self-characterization as merciful in Exod. 34.6. If Jonah's oracle in 3.4 did express Yahweh's intention toward Nineveh, the prophet's objection in 4.2 would be that Yahweh had committed himself to destroying the city—with no possibility of remission of punishment—and then remitted punishment anyway. It is often noted that Jonah lists only Yahweh's merciful attributes, omitting mention of Yahweh's vengeance, jealousy, and punishment of the guilty, which accompany the attribute formula in Exod. 34.6–7, Nah. 1.3 and other passages. The formulation in Joel 2.12–14 is uniquely similar to Jonah 4.2 except in one crucial sense: ‘“Yet even now”, declares Yahweh, “turn to me with all your heart”… [H]e repents of the evil. Who knows whether he will not turn and repent?’ Joel ²³ seems to be assuring Israel that God will certainly ‘repent from the evil’ if they repent, and then suggesting only that Yahweh might repent. In contrast, Jonah's position is often taken to be that once an unconditional doom oracle has been given, Yahweh should not turn and repent, whether or not the guilty parties turn and repent after hearing that oracle. In this case, the guilty Ninevites have no covenant relationship to Yahweh and speak only of ‘Elohim’.

Readers must also decide what to make of Jonah's claim that he had made these objections to Yahweh when he was still in his own country. No such statement is mentioned in ch. 1. The question ‘was this not the/my word?’ appears only here and in the Israelites’ rhetorical question to Moses in Exod. 14.12. ²⁴ In both cases the question ends with a reference to the country in which the questioner claims to have been located when he/they made the alleged statement. Do these parallels imply that Jonah may not have made these objections at the start? In other words, is his question merely a way of saying ‘I told you so’, as some commentators have suggested? ²⁵ The wilderness wandering narrative in Exodus-Numbers tells us enough about the mentality of the murmuring Israelites for readers of the Tanakh to question strongly the people's veracity when they claim to have objected to leaving Egypt. Whether a given reader will suspect that Jonah is also offering a ‘revisionist history’ will largely depend upon that reader's prior judgments about Jonah's character. If the Israelites in Exodus 14 are merely saying ‘I told you so’, the likelihood increases that the function of this intertextual allusion is to prompt readers to consider the same possibility for Jonah.

Jonah then departs from the city and makes a sukkah (‘booth’ or ‘hut’) for himself there, so that he can observe what becomes of the city, while sitting ‘under/beneath it in the shade’ (v. 5). Next God ‘prepares’ a qiqayon plant to provide shade for the prophet. The narrator does not explain why extra shade would be needed; nothing had been said about Jonah's sukkah being inadequate to that task. Nor have we been told that Yahweh (or a phenomenon such as the later ‘cutting east wind’ ²⁶ ) destroyed Jonah's booth, making it necessary for the plant to come to the prophet's rescue. ²⁷

God ²⁸ then prompts Jonah to experience a series of emotional ups and downs. First, Jonah feels ‘evil’ from the sun and then faint (vv. 6, 8). Next, he feels greatly happy or glad (‭חמש‬) about the shade-giving plant, only to become so angry when the plant withers that he renews his death wish. Yahweh then characterizes Jonah's anger as being driven by ‘pity’. ²⁹ The book then concludes abruptly, without readers having a chance to hear Jonah's response—if any—to Yahweh's closing question (if it is a question ³⁰ ) concerning the appropriateness of Jonah's anger and God's implied pity towards Nineveh. ³¹ Thus, while we are allowed to hear Jonah's complaint about Yahweh's characteristic mercy, and the prophet's repeated wish to die, the book's final chapter does not supply a definite reason for Jonah finding divine mercy to be inappropriate here or the exact reasons for his initial request to die.

4. Does Jonah Have a ‘Jonah Complex’?

Clearly, the book's forty-eight verses do not furnish us with sufficient data to support any definitive psychological profile of the prophet, whether complex or simple. Of the many readers who do make definite statements about Jonah's personality, a good number base their conclusions on the book's many metaphors of enclosure. After sleeping in the recesses of the ship (‭הניפסה יתכרי‬), Jonah is encased in the innards (‭יעמ‬) of the fish. From this location he speaks of being in ‘the belly (‭ןטב‬) of Sheol’, ‘the heart of the seas’, the ‘deep’ (‭םוהת‬), the ‘pit’ (‭תחש‬) and longs for Yahweh's ‘holy temple’. And in ch. 4 Jonah himself builds the sheltering sukkah and receives temporary shelter from the qiqayon plant.

According to some commentators, this series of enclosures indicates that Jonah consistently chooses to be ‘embedded’, as a psychological defense against risk. For example, Gunn and Fewell (1993: 130) suggest that Jonah's flight from God ‘could be read as a retreat into the womb’. Following Ackerman, they ‘see Jonah seeking security in “enclosure”… to escape the challenges and…the contradictions of the…”outside” world’. ³²

Other scholars point to Maslow's version of the ‘Jonah complex’ to support a similar interpretation. Maslow bases his professedly ‘non-Freudian’ concept on Jonah's flight to Tarshish (1971: 35). Although the biblical narrator supplies no motivation for Jonah's action, Maslow knows what it is: ‘many of us evade our constitutionally suggested vocations… So often we run away from the responsibilities dictated (or rather suggested) by nature, by fate, even sometimes by accident, just as Jonah tried in vain to run away from his fate’ (1971: 35). While Jonah is not an Everyman in this interpretation, he is like ‘many of us’.

Whether they focus on Jonah's flight or his envelopment by the fish, ³³ these versions of the Jonah complex all focus on the topological dimension of human existence. This involves, among other things, our experiences of enclosure and exposure, as well as processes of exchange between inside and outside. The opposition between enclosure and exposure is also central to Maslow's Jonah complex. In practice, not risking change and growth is a form of what psychologist Ernest Schachtel calls ‘secondary embeddedness’, a preference for the seeming safety of enclosure over the risk of exposing oneself to the dangers inherent in change and exploration. The ‘danger of separation from embeddedness’ triggers anxiety (1959: 44, 185–212). According to Schachtel, long after passing through the intrauterine phase of life people continue to seek womblike shelter, first in the parental home and ultimately in the habitat they create for themselves through their habitual attitudes and behaviors (1959: 176, 185, 193).

Jung's version of the ‘Jonah-and-the-whale complex’ attempts to assimilate the biblical story to the pattern of the night-sea journey’ (Jung 1967: 210; cf. Steffen 1982: 20–27), which can express the process of individuation which a person may undergo during the second half of life. Being swallowed by a monster represents regression ‘back to the intrauterine, pre-natal condition’ (Jung 1967: 419; cf. Eliade 1960: 218–23). In fact, one travels further back beyond the mother ‘irrupt[ing] into the collective psyche where Jonah saw the “mysteries”…in the whale's belly’ (1967: 419–20). In ‘the parable of Jonah…a person sinks into his childhood memories and vanishes from the existing world…but then has unexpected visions of a world beyond’. For Jung, the ‘beyond’ is within: it is ‘the stock of primordial images which everybody brings with him as his human birthright’ (1967: 408).

However, in the book of Jonah itself there is no proof that the prophet even knew that he had been swallowed by a ‘monster’, let alone that he witnessed ‘mysteries’ when he was near death in ‘the belly of Sheol’ (2.3). ³⁴ More importantly, the biblical Jonah shows no sign of having been transformed by his experience in the fish, whether in terms of Jung's notion of the life-task of ‘bringing together “conscious” and “unconscious”’ (Jung 1967: 301) or Bettelheim's parabolic Freudian reading, in which ‘Jonah discovers his higher morality, his higher self, and is wondrously reborn, now ready to meet the rigorous demands of his superego’ (1989: 53). In fact, we cannot take for granted that Jonah has learned any kind of life-lesson—or even that he needed to learn such a lesson.

One might object that Jonah does obey Yahweh's renewed command after his emergence from the fish and goes to Nineveh. However, we are not told why he obeyed this time. We have no evidence that Jonah had been evading his vocation in Maslow's sense, let alone that his heeding Yahweh's call in ch. 3 represents an acceptance of this vocation. As I will discuss below, Jonah may now recognize the futility of trying to evade Yahweh's directives and accept his powerlessness to resist, just as Job's recantation (Job 42.6) may be an acknowledgment that it is futile to expect justice from the God of the whirlwind, to whom only power and unquestioned obedience seem to matter.

Any attempt to assimilate the plot of the book of Jonah to a heroic journey, involving separation, initiation and return, ³⁵ will meet with similar problems. We do not learn anything about Jonah's situation within the society from which he is ‘separated’. The three days in the fish give no indication that Jonah has become an enlightened ‘liminar’ and ‘human total’, ³⁶ even though the legendary claim that Jonah emerged from the fish naked and bald suggests a rebirth (see, e.g., Ginzberg 1968: 252). Nor is there any mention of a final phase of reintegration into his society; in fact, we are not told that Jonah returns to his ‘own country’, let alone that he returned with a boon for his unmentioned people, as is the case for heroes such as Gilgamesh and Moses. ³⁷

The defensive posture denoted by the terms ‘embeddedness’ and ‘Jonah complex’ are also characteristic of Norbert Elias's modern Western ‘closed’ individuals (‘homo clausus’). Here too self-enclosure functions as an illusory way of sealing oneself off from the perceived danger of being exposed to uncontrollable external forces. ³⁸ This pose allows one to regain the infantile feeling of residing in what Bowlby calls ‘a haven of safety’ (1982: 303) at the mother's breast. A pathological form of this strategy is Modell's patients, who feel themselves to be encased in a ‘plastic bubble’ or ‘behind a sheet of glass’, as though they were ‘not “really in the world”’ (1976: 294).

The biblical Jonah shows no evidence of being an ancient homo clausus. ³⁹ Nor do his actions suggest that he is attempting to avoid risk through embeddedness, let alone that his ‘fear of engulfment’ is ‘vividly, if ironically, depicted’ when ‘he is gulped in by a “whale”’ (Lacocque 2004: 90). In fact, Jonah consistently displays a readiness to expose himself to danger, rather than striving to avoid it. ⁴⁰ He chooses to flee onto the open sea, which naturally requires that he embark on a ship. ⁴¹ When he asks to be thrown overboard he shows no sign of expecting anything other than exposure in the unbounded waters. His later pronouncement in the great city of Nineveh also exposes Jonah to possible danger. Once outside the city again, he exposes himself to the heat of the sun, coping with this without God's help, by erecting the sukkah. The sukkah could merely be a prudent attempt to make tolerable his exposure on the landscape, rather than an attempt to seek safety in a womblike shelter. While the sailors and the Ninevites had achieved safety from God-caused danger by submitting their wills to him, once again making their ship and city into havens of safety, Jonah chooses to remain outside such ‘sacred canopies’, ⁴² even though this exposes him to divinely caused suffering.

5. The Plot of Jonah and the Crises of Childhood and Adulthood

If Jonah's reported actions do not conform to the psychological profiles presented by the theorists discussed above, and because so much is left unsaid about Jonah's thoughts, emotions, and intentions, how do we explain what George Orwell calls the ‘hold that the Jonah myth has upon our imaginations’ (1981: 244)? In light of all the versions of the tale transmitted over many centuries in words and images, and the continuing popularity of Jonah's story in children's literature and videos, it is difficult to deny that the story has indeed had a powerful effect on a wide variety of readers.

One part of the answer is immediately evident: the plot of the book evokes crucial challenges faced by children, and the continued relevance of these issues for adult life, especially when they have not been resolved successfully during one's early years. For a developing child, a threat to the integrity of one's self or identity can lead to (at least symbolic) flight, in order to avoid annihilation or self-dissolution at the hands of an ambivalent or hostile parent. Mahler notes that an ambivalent symbiotic mother-child relationship and inadequate parental protection can prompt a mortal fear of being swallowed and eaten up, and thereby ‘reengulfed’ (1952; 1979: 177–78). Some go further, asserting that children fear being killed by their parents (e.g. Ehrensaft 2008: 102–107). ⁴³

In some fairytales the threatening parent is represented by a monster. In others, the parental figure remains idealized, while the threatening qualities are displaced onto the monster. In the case of Pinocchio and some versions of the Little Red Cap/Little Red Riding Hood story, the ‘child’ who is swallowed or eaten by the monstrous shark or wolf is alive and conscious in the beast's belly, as is Jonah in the great fish. Similarly, Yahweh's favorite child Israel is still able to speak about the way in which Nebuchadrezzar has devoured her like a sea monster and vomited her out (Jer. 51.34, 44). In these cases, engulfment refers to living entombment rather than to annihilation or nurtured growth in the womb.

In this mode of engulfment the child is prevented from developing her self through interaction with other people and the world at large. The child remains in a state of eternally halted gestation, a condition for which Jeremiah actually yearns after he has been battered and enticed by his God, his close friends, and the citizens of Jerusalem (Jer. 20.14–18). Similarly, Job wishes that Yahweh would entomb him alive in Sheol until the storm of his parental rage has passed (Job 14.13). Jeremiah and Job are both adults who had once been sheltered and hedged in protectively by God, only to be exposed to horrible suffering by this same ambivalent parental figure. Even though Jonah expresses no desire to be sheltered in the big fish, and does not experience the fish's belly as a welcome shelter once he has been swallowed, it is still possible that readers of Jonah's story might find themselves reminded of the primal threat to selfhood ⁴⁴ evoked by being swallowed, even if that fear has long since sunk down into the depths of their psyche.

If one adopts the view that Jonah acts childishly in the book, whether at sea or on dry land, his actions can be interpreted as a struggle for power and control. Difficulties in the process of separation between mother and child can result in a relationship of dominance and submission, a struggle about who will control whom. A parent who demands submission and mirroring from the child might read the book of Jonah as teaching that a child must unquestioningly submit to the parent's demands, not least because resistance is futile. When ch. 4 of Jonah is viewed from this perspective, Yahweh resembles a father who is patiently leading his pouting child toward the recognition that the father's course of action was correct, and that the ‘child's’ anger and sense of moral outrage were inappropriate.

Control is also a key factor if one views Jonah as a mature adult who is attempting to keep his integrity in Yahweh's world. Dempsey notes that ‘with respect to power, God is the one who is in full control of Jonah’ (2000: 123; cf. Fretheim 2007: 127–28). Yet Jonah is able to flee his mission. Admittedly, this merely grants Jonah temporary and ultimately illusory control over his actions. But, as suggested earlier, his flight may also express a refusal to let God's command control his behavior, even if his refusal results in his annihilation or being entombed alive. On the ship, Jonah controls what the sailors do with him, once he has told them that he had fled from Yahweh (1.10, 12). Chapter 4 shows that Jonah's resistance to God's authority remains even after he has completed his mission. His words imply that his resistance stems from moral objections to the task, while his repeated request to die expresses both the futility of resistance and a desire to—at least—control when and how he will escape his untenable situation.

From this point of view, Jonah's death wish stems from a refusal to live on Yahweh's terms, rather than being an expression of wounded narcissism or a desire to protect himself from being viewed as a false prophet. In ch. 4 Jonah shows his awareness that Yahweh's sacred canopy is supported by covenantal loyalty and forgiveness. Readers of the entire Tanakh know that Yahweh's loyal followers cannot always rely on their divine sovereign, father, and king to be there for them when they need sheltering most (see Lasine 2016). They know that full submission to Yahweh's will does not always prevent them from being devastated and traumatized, as is illustrated by God's loyal flock being led like lambs to the slaughter in Psalm 44 and the God-fearing sailors of Ps. 107.23–30 who are terrorized by Yahweh's stormy winds. Readers must decide for themselves whether Jonah might also be aware of this possibility and be reacting to it in his conversation with God.

From this perspective, Yahweh is being patronizing to his prophet in ch. 4, rather than displaying paternal nurturance. God exposes Jonah to the elements as a way of showing him that he cannot make it through God's world on his own. In this scenario, God is talking down to Jonah and toying with his emotions in a way which makes Jonah appear (and perhaps feel?) infantile, so that his serious complaint and death wish do not have to be taken seriously by Yahweh—or by readers. ⁴⁵ Elsewhere I have argued that Yahweh is at times portrayed as a narcissistic parent in the Bible, a parent who does all he can to keep the ‘children of Israel’ from gaining the separation from parental control necessary for them to gain an adult sense of autonomy (2002; 2010). From this standpoint, readers who view Jonah as infantile may be viewing the prophet in the way that Yahweh views him—or would want us to view him—in ch. 4.

One additional factor must be considered before deciding which of these father-child scenarios is more in conformity with the book's presentation of Jonah and his God. Researchers have found that people sometimes ‘seek situations that will “push” them in the same direction as do their own dispositions’ (Gilbert and Malone 1995: 33). Therefore, ‘situations are largely of one's own making and are themselves describable as a characteristic of one's own personality’ (Wachtel 1973: 330). ⁴⁶ Within the world of the Hebrew Bible, this dynamic is complicated by the fact that God may choose to place his human subjects into situations of his own making, including no-win situations such as those into which he places characters such as the nation-founders Saul and Jeroboam. ⁴⁷

In the case of Jonah, God initially chooses to place the prophet into a potentially perilous situation in the great city of Nineveh. However, Jonah quickly puts himself into an even more difficult plight by fleeing his mission and boarding the ship. At this point God quickly takes over and manipulates the prophet's situation by ‘preparing’ the big fish and, later, the plant.

These bizarre situations go far beyond the political catch-22s faced by Saul and Jeroboam, because the situations in the book of Jonah confront readers with more fundamental—and disquieting—aspects of the human condition in Yahweh's world, including our lack of control over the course of our lives, the possible disintegration of our identity, and the ever-looming threat of personal death. Readers who respond to these textual cues are invited to assess Jonah's character in terms of their own attitude toward the most profound human vulnerabilities.

6. Conclusion

When all is said and done, should we regard Jonah a peevish child, a mature adult, or a bit of both? How readers answer that question, at any specific point during their lives, will depend upon a number of factors: how they have evaluated Jonah's personality, the specific elements of the plot and imagery which have most affected them, their assumptions about the book's author and social function for its original audience, and the ideological ‘givens’ prevalent in that reader's society or subgroup within that society (including disciplinary subgroups which share a governing interpretive paradigm). Finally, a theological factor may also play a crucial role, namely, the extent to which readers believe that they are guaranteed safety from the vulnerabilities of their existence if they remain within the shelter of Yahweh's compassionate character. ⁴⁸