Playwright David Mamet (here) recently had an interesting observation on the Book of Jonah. His synagogue’s congregation was meditating on the book during the recent Yom Kippur; his insight was triggered by remembering Rush Limbaugh’s observation once that, when you’re arguing with someone intransigent, it isn’t necessarily futile, because some third party might be listening:
We don’t know who is listening. Jonah’s sailors are Rush’s third party to the conversation; and Jonah was absolutely accurate in assessing the Ninevites’ spiritual capacity [about which he may have been skeptical] but inferior in his understanding of God, and God’s plan for the world. The sailors, being human, might have been defended against a preacher’s exhortations, but they were so moved by Jonah’s self-sacrifice that they adopted his religion.
That’s an interesting take on Jonah, and it teaches a larger lesson. We follow God, and often we may not immediately appreciate — and may even never know — the good that comes from it. What we think of as the goal of some action may actually not be what God is after.