I've never heard the term "reverse-theodicy," and certainly not in the context of Jonah. Thanks for that (it consecrates a slippery image).
Curiously, I've heard the book Jonah taught in sermons as the Lord frustrating Jonah's Israelite prejudice against Nineveh—prejudice based in culture and geography, rather than judgement against the Ninevites' unholy conduct before God. That God spares them, while perhaps ironic in the contained reading of the book and certainly to Jonah himself, accords with his promised plan for the descendants for of Ishmael (Genesis 21), who included the Ninevites and today include the Arabs in Palestine. In church discussions and teachings in recent weeks, there has been Jacob-level wrestling over the meaning of both of these "sons of Abraham" for applied theology (meaning love and prayer, rather than geopolitics no one should presume to solve from a distance).
Thanks for that context; I'm bad at those kinds of genealogical readings. I'm not sure I can detect Jonah's prejudice in the Book of Jonah itself, considering its extreme condensation and brevity, but as an interpretation of the over-arching narrative it makes sense. In the text, assuming the KJV can be trusted, his complaint seems to be that he always knew God and the Ninevites would or even should reconcile in the end, which is why he didn't want to get personally involved in the first place:
"And he prayed unto the LORD, and said, I pray thee, O LORD, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil."
Here the moral might be less against prejudice than against arrogant aloofness. Though the outcome was predictable, he was still required to serve as its instrument—providence having free will as its engine.
Great point. Jonah's is quite the complaint of the Lord: that he had never wanted to serve God's purpose of reconciliation in the first place. What a hard heart of arrogance, possibly even of hatred. It suggests his ill-fit for a prophet's work, which (for your irony tally) is likely why God selected him.
It's the inverse of the other prophets you've recounted, who (I think, based in their laments and trembling before God's judgement through their lips) sincerely wanted Israel and Judah to repent. That mournful hope for repentance, in tension with the wrath they must transmit (the one that teaches them their hope is doomed), is one way the text keeps its torrent of vengeful words from being only white noise in the end.
I've never heard the term "reverse-theodicy," and certainly not in the context of Jonah. Thanks for that (it consecrates a slippery image).
Curiously, I've heard the book Jonah taught in sermons as the Lord frustrating Jonah's Israelite prejudice against Nineveh—prejudice based in culture and geography, rather than judgement against the Ninevites' unholy conduct before God. That God spares them, while perhaps ironic in the contained reading of the book and certainly to Jonah himself, accords with his promised plan for the descendants for of Ishmael (Genesis 21), who included the Ninevites and today include the Arabs in Palestine. In church discussions and teachings in recent weeks, there has been Jacob-level wrestling over the meaning of both of these "sons of Abraham" for applied theology (meaning love and prayer, rather than geopolitics no one should presume to solve from a distance).
Thanks for that context; I'm bad at those kinds of genealogical readings. I'm not sure I can detect Jonah's prejudice in the Book of Jonah itself, considering its extreme condensation and brevity, but as an interpretation of the over-arching narrative it makes sense. In the text, assuming the KJV can be trusted, his complaint seems to be that he always knew God and the Ninevites would or even should reconcile in the end, which is why he didn't want to get personally involved in the first place:
"And he prayed unto the LORD, and said, I pray thee, O LORD, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil."
Here the moral might be less against prejudice than against arrogant aloofness. Though the outcome was predictable, he was still required to serve as its instrument—providence having free will as its engine.
Great point. Jonah's is quite the complaint of the Lord: that he had never wanted to serve God's purpose of reconciliation in the first place. What a hard heart of arrogance, possibly even of hatred. It suggests his ill-fit for a prophet's work, which (for your irony tally) is likely why God selected him.
It's the inverse of the other prophets you've recounted, who (I think, based in their laments and trembling before God's judgement through their lips) sincerely wanted Israel and Judah to repent. That mournful hope for repentance, in tension with the wrath they must transmit (the one that teaches them their hope is doomed), is one way the text keeps its torrent of vengeful words from being only white noise in the end.
I find your exasperation with the prophets interesting, but then I’ve also never marathoned them the way you are!
Yes, there are problems with the Bible-reading project qua project. But I also have a limited taste for didactic literature of all sorts!