The Sign of Jonah

The focus on John the Baptist this Advent has renewed some reflections in me on prophets. Most especially, let’s talk about the prophet Jonah.

What is “the sign of Jonah” to which our Lord refers in the Gospels? On the one hand it appears that Jesus himself explains this “sign.” He says that “just as Jonah was 3 days and 3 nights in the belly of the whale, so the Son of Man will be 3 days and 3 nights in the earth.” So this seems very straightforward. Against the desire of the first century Jews to have some great sign – we know this means an impressive miracle – to prove that they should trust Jesus’s predictions about the Kingdom of God, Jesus only gave a parable about his death and resurrection. Jesus pointed to the story of Jonah. In essence he is here repudiating the hard-hearted questioners for their lack of faith. He says “you will later hear news of my resurrection from the dead, a feat more incredible than the survival of Jonah. But if you still do not believe, at that point heaven help you!” Jesus thought the book of Jonah was rather important. Let’s continue on with it.

Only recently it has dawned on me how stupid are the arguments between the Biblical literalists on the one side and the modernist skeptics on the other side who do not believe in miracles. In the case of Jonah I was greatly helped when I stumbled upon the interpretation that Jonah’s time in the belly of the fish had actually been interpreted by some people as his death. That is, the event of the fish spewing him upon the earth was exactly the miracle of his coming to life again. The ancient Jews did not need some 19th century zoologist to tell them of the great modern discoveries of biological decay. It is an insult to say the author of Jonah didn’t know of marine stomach anatomy and microscopic descriptions of carbohydrates and proteins with a well balanced meal. I am quite confident in stating that the Jews who wrote and promoted the book of Jonah held very firmly that they were asserting the power of Yahweh to work great signs and miracles beyond our normal order of this world. It is always a well founded assertion to claim that God can be God. Only recently have I conjured up the picture in my head of two sets of ancient Jews staring blankly at the modern agnostic when he tries to point out that there is no possibility of a man surviving 3 days in the belly of fish. They would certainly stare at him blankly, or perhaps with some annoyance. His useless interjection, i.e. about things impossible in the natural world, had likely interrupted their interesting argument, about which of the two impossibilities God was more likely to accomplish as his miracle of choice, preserve a man from death in the fish, or let his soul go to sheol and then bring him back to life at the right time.

I hope I have not been too brash in sharing this mental image, but I wish to drive home this point about the miraculous nature of the book of Jonah, and so highlight a problem that such considerations have brought to my mind. The problem I see is that I cannot so easily compare the miracle of Christ’s resurrection with the miracle of Jonah, because there was no evidence at all to properly name the miracle of Jonah as a “sign.” Yes, I know Jesus names it a sign, but let us take a moment to think about what a strange sign it is. You see, the signs that Jesus gave in his ministry all had witnesses. Jonah’s survival (or his resuscitation) had none. Jesus alludes to this reality in a way that I think is significant. Jesus says “Jonah BECAME a sign to the Ninevites.” Because of a lack of witnesses, Jonah’s story cannot be a sign to the Ninevites in the same way that raising of Lazarus or the multiplication of the loaves and fish were signs for the disciples. Jonah could not show any signs. He could only give a story – one that could only be accepted on faith. He had no proof that he had been in the belly of the great fish, or that he had been to sheol and was brought back.

I hope I can delve deeper into the meaning of this “sign of Jonah” in the future. I think this “sign” is still being presented to each generation. A vast multitude of people are presented with a call to repent. No grand miracles are shown to them on the spot… except the claim that “Jonah became a sign,” or that someone has indeed died and come back to life to deliver this message. For that claim there is no visual proof; but maybe we could say historical evidence. I think this really means that, at the foundation of the reality that men can and do heed the call of conscience to “repent and sin no more” stands the reality a miracle that could not be explained even when eyewitnesses saw the evidence. The Ninevites repented of their sins simply because some miraculous force worked on their consciences, not because they saw any miracle. They heard someone testify that a miracle was possible even from beyond the grave, and they changed their whole lives. I wonder if this is the real “sign of Jonah” – some people repent even without feeling the need for a great sign. That in and of itself ought to be a sign to us.