"We Are Jonah"

We overlayed this story with the parable of the prodigal son. In the first half of this narrative Jonah plays the part of the prodigal. He runs from God, he wants nothing to do with his mission. It becomes clear that Jonah does not love God for himself but for what he can get from him, namely, the success and prosperity of his nation and race. But in the latter half of this book, Jonah plays the part of the elder brother and that is what we see in chapter 4. The elder brother are those who also do not love God for himself but rather for his stuff, but they go about it in an opposite way of the younger brother. Instead of throwing away everything and pursuing fulfillment through radical individualism, the older brother stays home and seeks to control God through right doing. One flees the father by doing everything wrong, the other by staying home and doing everything right but neither is seeking after the father. Jonah’s elder brotherliness is shown in his response to a successful preaching career and its here, at the end of the book where we have a lot to learn from him.