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The Problem with Herman Melville’s Reading of the Book of Jonah

July 21 2017

Toward the beginning of Moby Dick, the preacher Father Mapple delivers a sermon on the book of Jonah to a congregation of sailors. He poses the following question: in the long prayer offered by the prophet while in the belly of the fish, why does he never express remorse over his act of disobedience, or commitment to obeying God henceforth? And why does God answer this apparently inadequate prayer? Mapple concludes that it is admirable of Jonah “not [to] weep and wail for direct deliverance” but rather to accept that “his dreadful punishment is just.” While accepting the preacher’s question, Shalom Carmy finds his answer at best incomplete:

At no point does the Jonah whom Father Mapple holds up as the model of repentance say, “I am Your servant and wait upon Your command.” He still chafes at his mission [to convey the word of God to the people of Nineveh], and later, when God has accepted Nineveh’s repentance, he resents God’s mercifulness. Such a mentality seems less than ideal.

As the 12th-century Spanish author Abraham bar Ḥiyya put it, the book of Jonah is about people who turn to God. The righteous sailors with whom Jonah tries to escape respond to the storm with a heartfelt desire to do God’s will. The people of Nineveh repent under duress. But one man—the prophet—does not quite find his way to repentance. Jonah’s prayer is that of a man who is thankful that his life has apparently been spared, even if his home in the fish’s abdomen is a temporary prison. He is now willing to bend to God’s demands but not to thank Him for the opportunity. . . .

[Father Mapple is correct that] acceptance of punishment as deserved is an important step toward submission. Given the choice between, on the one hand, brooding or histrionic remorse that does not effect change of conduct and, on the other hand, a willingness to obey that lacks introspection, regret, and consternation, we should no doubt, in the short run, value action over sentiment. This is especially so in a culture like ours that often employs feigned regret and remorse as an appeal to pity and cheap mercifulness.

[However], real regret, real remorse, the heart broken in the painful recognition of what we have done ill in our relationships with other human beings and with God—these are essential to wholesome repentance. Hot tears of contrition and desperate pleas for forgiveness are not the same thing as [what Father Mapple derisively terms] “clamor . . . for pardon.” These themes are prominent throughout the book of Psalms; they are absent from Jonah’s incomplete submission in his prayer. And so, if we take a larger, biblical view of the matter, what Father Mapple holds up as ideal repentance, however productive in its context, is not beyond criticism.

Read more at First Things

More about: Hebrew Bible, Herman Melville, Jonah, Literature, Prayer, Religion & Holidays, Repentance

The Summary: 10/7/20

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.

Read more at Mosaic