jayber crow

Ambiguity can be good.

Ambiguity in a story can make it richer, funnier, more provocative, more profound. And it nearly always gets lost in translation.

Take Jonah, for example. God told Jonah to go and speak against the city of Ninevah because he had become aware of its wickedness.

Or maybe God wanted Jonah to go and speak to the city because he had become aware of its misery. The Hebrew words are a little ambiguous. Was this a mission of judgment or of compassion? Of anger or of love?

I wonder if Jonah had been sure it was a judgment mission, would he have gone without argument? It’s pretty clear that he hated the Ninevites. And with good reason – they had a reputation for violence and cruelty and general nastiness. Surely Jonah would have been delighted to announce their impending doom?

But the ambiguity is enough to plant a seed of doubt. In the back of Jonah’s mind is a chorus, a refrain, a song that keeps rising in the stories of Israel.

Yahweh is gracious and compassionate

slow to anger, abounding in love

Jonah didn’t like even the vaguest hint of a whisper of a possibility that he might be asked to be the messenger of compassion to his enemies. So he ran away.

Whatever we make of the idea of God’s anger, it seems that we can’t separate it from his love. It’s not an opposite impulse, the flip side of his schizophrenic character, something in tension with his love. It’s an expression of his love. As CS Lewis says, anger is what love bleeds when we cut it.

God was angry with the Ninevites because of their stupidity and selfishness and violent cruelty. God had compassion on the Ninevites because of their self-inflicted misery and suffering. Maybe we don’t have to choose. Maybe the ambiguity is wiser than the clarity of our English translations.

So after a short interlude involving a ship to the edge of the world, some pagan sailors, a storm and a sea-monster, Jonah goes to Ninevah and preaches. “Forty days and the city will be destroyed.” At least, that’s probably what his words meant. Its just that there’s a little ambiguity again, and his words could be taken in a very different way. “Forty days and the city will be transformed.” Is this about destruction or renewal? Is it a threat or a promise?

There’s no doubt what Jonah meant it to mean. He was all about unambiguous destruction. But in the most ironic twist of the whole story, this is the moment at which Jonah speaks more prophetically than he realizes. The people have a change of heart. They change their lives. The city is transformed and renewed.

And we’re left with Jonah, grumpy and bitter and pathetic, wishing he was dead. Maybe that’s where too much clarity and definition always leaves you. Certainly that’s where we end up if we take delight in a message of anger and judgment and destruction which is not somehow part of a larger story of love and compassion and renewal.

At least in this case, clarity kills. And ambiguity brings life.