In his classic study of the Hebrew Prophets, Abraham Joshua Heschel deals with Jonah in less than two pages. But they are a clear lens through which to read the story of Jonah. His comments occur in his analysis of divine anger, (pp. 279-298) and in particular the contrast between God's anger which is but for a moment, and God's love which is from everlasting to everlasting.
Here are several passages from Heschel which shed important rays of theological illumination on the dilemma of Jonah as he encounters the God who loves in freedom. The man who wrote this book, and this chapter on divine wrath, himself fled Nazi Germany, lost many of his family in the Holocaust, walked with Martin Luther King, and became an incendiary prophet whose outspokenness and passion for truth at times seemed to channel Amos, Micah, Isaiah and Jeremiah. No wonder his book is a classic treatment of those prophets whose words were as fire in their bones, and who heard the word of the Lord and could not be silent.
"This is the mysterious paradox of Hebrew faith: The All-Wise and Almighty may change a word that he proclaims. Man has the power to modify his design. Jeremiah had to be taught that God is greater than his decisions. The anger of the Lord is instrumental, hypothetical, conditional and subject to His will. Let the people modify their line of conduct and anger will disappear. Far from being an expression of 'petulant vindictiveness,' the message of anger includes a call to return and to be saved. The call of anger is a call to cancel anger. It is not an expression of irrational, sudden and instinctive excitement. , but a free and deliberate reaction of God's justice to what is wrong and evil. For all its intensity it may be averted by prayer. There is no divine anger for anger's sake. Its meaning is…instrumental:: to bring about repentance its purpose and consummation is its own disappearance." (Page 286)
"The contingency of anger is dramatized in the story of the prophet Jonah…God's change of mind displeased Jonah exceedingly. He had proclaimed the doom of Nineveh with a certainty, to the point of fixing the time, as an inexorable decree without qualification. But what transpired only proved the word of God was neither firm nor reliable…God's answer to Jonah stressing the supremacy of compassion, upsets the possibility of looking for a rational coherence of God's ways with the world. History would be more intelligible if God's word were the last word, final and unambiguous like a dogma or an unconditional decree. It would be easier if God's anger became effectively automatically: once wickedness had reached its full measure, punishment would destroy it. Yet, beyond justice and anger lies the mystery of compassion." (Page 286-7)
"God's anger is not a fundamental attribute, but a transient and reactive condition. It is a means of achieving 'the intents of His mind'. Inscrutable though it seems to the people in the end of days they will understand it clearly (Jer. 23.20)…The ancient conception that the gods are spiteful seems to linger on in the mind of modern man, and inevitably the words of the Hebrerw Bible are seen in the image of this conception. In gods who are spiteful, anger is a habit or a disposition. The prophets never speak of an angry God as if anger were his disposition. Even those who dwell more on His anger than on his mercy explicitly or implicitly accentuate the contrast. His anger passes, His love goers on for ever. "I have loved you with an everlasting love." (Jer. 31.3) Again and again we are told that God's love or kindness (hesed) goes on forever; we are never told that his anger goes on forever." (Page 288-9)
This is not Heschel going soft on justice, holiness and God's righteous anger. The entire discussion of anger is theologically charged by Heschel's conception of God as righteous love, patient mercy, and slowness to anger, but whose anger is the divine recoil from evil.
"No single attribute can convey the nature of God's relationship to man. Since justice is His nature, love, which would disregard the evil deeds of man, would contradict his nature. Because of His concern for man, His justice is tempered with mercy. Divine anger is not the antithesis of love, but its counterpart, a help to justice as demanded by true love. The end of sentimentality is the enfeeblement of truth and justice. It is divine anger that gives strength to God's truth and justice. There are moments in history when anger alone can conquer evil. It is after mildness and kindness have failed that anger is proclaimed." (Page 297)
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