JONAH mourned over his withered gourd as over a departed friend. Was he angry? God inquired. Yes, said Jonah, angry to death. How strange, God replied softly, that the prophet would mourn one gourd in which he had invested neither time nor labour, but could not understand why God felt sorry for a city of sixscore thousand* helpless souls who could not tell wrong from right, and even felt sorry for their cattle.
And there the story abruptly breaks off.
The Book of Jonah is read right through in synagogues every year on the Day of Atonement, which is appropriate given the theme of repentance and of unconditional forgiveness. The tale teaches us that all the world belongs to God’s care,* even the wicked and animals, and that God will have mercy and compassion on whomever he pleases.* But most of all it teaches that when called upon to sound unwelcome truths in the ears of a wicked Nineveh, our good name must not mean more to us than goodness.*
That is 6 × 20 × 1000 or 120,000.
See Psalm 24:1: ‘The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.’
See Exodus 33:19, quoted by St Paul in Romans 9:15.
This faintly Dickensian turn of phrase comes from Herman Melville’s Fr Mapple in ‘Moby Dick’. Charles Dickens could hardly have bettered it, though. See also Ps 56:11 and Philippians 2:7-8.