Poster in an empty Tel Aviv storefront

I don’t remember the first time I heard about Jonah. But looking back, I can see how differently his short story has played out in my imagination over the course of a lifetime.

Early on, it was about a man who was swallowed by “a whale”.

At some point I learned that it was a story used by some to discount the “legendary, mythical, and unbelievable” nature of the Bible.

Then the impressions changed from time to time— as I learned that the Bible doesn’t say the fish was necessarily “a whale;” that Jesus used “the sign of Jonah” for skeptical people who came to him asking him to do “another miracle”; that Jonah involves locations of present day Israel and Iraq; that the story ends abruptly; that we don’t know if Jonah ever got over his beef with God; that his story is read every year on the most solemn holy day of the Jewish Calendar (Yom Kippur/the Day of Atonement); and that experts in the Jewish Scriptures give different answers for why Israel still tells Jonah’s story.

How about you? Have you too found over the years that Jonah has intrigued you for these or other reasons?

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