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“Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things.”
- Thomas Merton (1915–1968), American Trappist monk, scholar, mystic, theologian, social activist
The short book called ‘Jonah’ was probably written in the late 5th to early 4th century B.C. Its authorship may be open to question.
The Psalms were written centuries earlier by King David. Jonah no doubt was acquainted with them. We do not know whether his reading of the scrolls was cursory or diligent.
One of the grandest of the Psalms is Psalm 139. Verse 8 reads: “If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there.”
This speaks to the omnipresence of the Almighty.
Somehow Jonah may have forgotten this when he was asked to travel to Nineveh and deliver a message of impending destruction for the inhabitants of that wicked capital of Assyria (in present day Iraq).
Or maybe he didn’t forget. In one darker interpretation of his motive for shirking his task, he knew the Almighty was compassionate and might not destroy Nineveh, after all.
When I attended graduate school, there existed a church not too distant wherein the community was divided into two groups: ODP (our dear people) and NOP (not our people).
