Six prophets in just under 500 pages of commentary, only forty of them on Jonah. But this is vintage Goldingay. It may be history told as a parable, or a parable linked with history and memory - either way for Goldingay it's the theological message that matters, and the freight that the narrative is created to carry.
The interactions between a violent city, a resistant prophet and a merciful God enable the storyteller to set up powerful tensions in the narrative and plot. The narrator then develops larger than life characters of city, prophet and God, and then pushes the story towards a conclusion which is intentionally inconclusive. Like a good post-modern novel the reader is left with unanswered questions about what happens to the protagonist Jonah.
Goldingay's take on Jonah is that of a conflicted prophet who expects mercy for himself, but punishment for Nineveh; Jonah who believes in a predictable God who brings judgement on evil and injustice, and shows mercy to the penitent; Jonah, whose expectations are conflicted when he encounters a city of pagans whose repentance forces a theological collision between who Jonah believes God to be (righteous punisher of sin), and who God chooses to be (gracious in mercy and pardon), and to a city overwhelmingly guilty of great evil.
All of this is worked out in a commentary that combines first class exegesis with sympathetic, even compassionate reflection on the inner psychological and theological worlds of Jonah. It's clear that Goldingay likes conflicted prophets! Yet on the other hand, as a commentator he refuses to jump to safe conclusions about who God is and what God is about. "God's election is not for the sake of the chosen, but for the sake of God's purpose." And that purpose is formed out of who God is - "a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity."
But what exactly is God's purpose in this frustratingly inconclusive story? It is justice...and mercy! It is to bring about repentance of the so far impenitent. It is to use Jonah to give the violent city a chance, but a chance Jonah doesn't want them to be offered. But which Nineveh takes and God honours.
Goldingay's commentary is readable and engaged with the text and its commentators. His tone is both playful and serious, as is the book of Jonah itself. His theological reflections are profound and uncomfortably searching for those who think they have God sussed. The commentary exploits the playfulness of the story, pointing out the ironies, the practical jokes and the serious questions posed throughout this intriguing text. His own comments are, as he believes the text to be, theologically subversive of the lazy certainties of those who have become complacent of grace, and grudging to the point of jealousy of God's abounding steadfast love. Jonah is, quite literally, a wake-up call to its readers, then and now, to see the world as God sees it - all those people, and many cattle.
Throughout Goldingay is in conversation with the best exegetical literature, and with other important conversation partners, including: Leslie Allen, Karl Barth, Jacques Ellul, Ann Lamott, Martin Luther, Elie Wiesel, and H W Wolff. The commentary is also strong on intertextual references, the exegesis constantly linked to the wider biblical witness either for comparison or contrast. The Subject Index and Scripture Index are thorough, user-friendly, and enable the reader to follow up such inter-connections within and beyond Jonah.
The commentary on Jonah represents only 10% of this volume. I bought it because I know Goldingay's work, and have profited constantly from his fresh, at times provocative, but always thorough and reverent treatment of the biblical text. I'm happy to have this composite volume. I think it's worth the investment, dealing as it does with three of the "major minor prophets", along with Joel, Obadiah and the recalcitrant Jonah.
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