If you know me well, you will not be surprised to hear me say that I love stories. For some years, I was a custodian by trade. As such, I had the luxury of listening to whatever I wanted to while on the job. Given this opportunity, I was always on the hunt for a good story. You name it—podcasts, books, or any other medium—if it had a good story, I was likely to listen. Of the books that I listened to, one of my favorites was Victor Hugo’s classic Les Misérables. It was very long—over sixty hours of audiobook. One of the greatest features of this book is how it would take its time to deeply probe the psyche of the main charters. Page after page of exploring their motives. Hour upon hour of listening to these characters’ backstories. Whenever a character made a decision, there was no doubt in my mind as to why they had made that decision. The very length of the novel was a contribution to its greatness.
Now the biblical authors are also master storytellers. But I have come to discover that they do not write the same way that modern Western writers do (authors like Victor Hugo). The beauty of ancient Hebrew storytelling is not found in long backstories or deep plunges into the psyche of characters. Rather, the beauty of their storytelling is in the in the pregnancy of their words. For example, rather than offering a huge excursus that fills in a backstory, they might leave a little hint that implies, “You need to think of this story in light of that story.” Or, rather than telling us outright a character’s motives, they might show the character acting in a way that begs the question, “Why is this character behaving that way? Are there other characters that would act differently? What would I be doing, and why would I be doing it?” In short, it is meditation literature. The very brevity of the stories is a contribution to their greatness.
Your second skill for reading Scripture as an interconnected narrative is noticing how Scripture uses repeated words. Scripture texts constantly leave us a bread-crumb trail into other passages. The technical term for this is intertextuality, but it’s basically Scripture quoting itself. Tim Mackie likes to think of this practice as surfing a web-page which is hyperlinked to other web pages. Another way to think about it is like movies that drop Easter Eggs or cameos. It’s not only fun for Disney movies to have references to other Disney movies—when done well, it can actually enhance the storytelling: “This story is like this other story.” Before there was media, the stories within the Hebrew Bible were the stories that captivated Israel’s imagination. Often, they can reference an entire story with just a few words. We can try to approximate that effect with certain modern movies. If I said, “Luke, I am your father,” an entire story would come to your mind. Similarly, the writers of Scripture often briefly quote something that is meant to activate an entire network of stories and ideas. When you start seeing how the Scriptures do this, it’s obvious that the individual stories are not just historical artifacts, but meditations upon a larger story.
Jonah and Moses
Let’s look at an example from the book of Jonah.
When God saw what they [the Ninevites] did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the disaster he had threatened. But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.” But the Lord replied, “Is it right for you to be angry?” (Jonah 4:1-5)
After insulting God for being merciful on his enemies, and confessing that he ran away from preaching at Nineveh because he was afraid God would be kind to them in the end, there are three quotations from Exodus. All three quotations help us make sense of Jonah’s story.
First, notice the quotation from Exodus 32.
- “… a God who relents from sending disaster.” (Jonah 4:2; cf. 3:8-10)
- “Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.” (Exodus 32:14)
The reference to Exodus 32 recalls the whole story of Exodus 32 in its broader literary context (32-34), namely, Israel’s quintessential rebellion moment—the incident with the golden calf. In that story, do you remember who is angry? Is it the prophet? No. It’s God, and understandably so: “‘I have seen these people,’ the Lord said to Moses, ‘and they are a stiff-necked people. Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation’” (Exodus 32:9-10). It’s in this moment that the prophet Moses intercedes for his people so that Lord relents of the disaster he threatened: “But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. ‘Lord,’ he said, ‘Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people’” (Exodus 32:11). In this story, it is not God entreating the prophet to turn from his anger; it is the prophet who is entreating God to turn from his anger. Welcome to upside down world!
Second, from this same story, notice how the appointed prophet asks God to take his life. Surely the Jonah story is playing off of the Moses story, albeit in a surprising way.
- Jonah prays, “So now, Lord, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life.” (Jonah 4:3; cf. 4:8)
- Moses prays, “Oh, what a great sin these people have committed! They have made themselves gods of gold. But now, please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written.” (Exodus 32:31-32)
Once again, we’re in upside-down world. Behold the prophet Jonah: asking for death because he would rather die than see God’s compassion come to those awful people. Behold the prophet Moses: asking for death because he would rather die than see God’s anger come upon the people he loves.
Third, notice another quotation from the same section in Exodus.
- “I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love.” (Jonah 4:2)
- “And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, ‘The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.’” (Exodus 34:6-7)
In the Exodus context, as God reveals himself to Moses, God prepares Moses by saying that “all my goodness” will pass before him (Exodus 33:19). Then, this is what God reveals about himself: he is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in love (Exodus 34:6-7). That’s his goodness. But watch this upside down take on God’s goodness: Jonah is angry about it. He insults God for who he is as compassionate and gracious, and he sees God’s compassion as “very wrong” (4:1). Has Jonah forgotten his own story? Has he forgotten that his people exist because of God’s great compassion? Has he forgotten that he—as God’s chosen prophet—is slated to fill the role of Moses, the one who intercedes for the people even to the point of offering his own life?
When God desires to show compassion to a people, he already has a plan in place, a pattern that he follows. It’s of a chosen servant who brings God’s ministry of compassion through an act of self-giving intersession. Against all his best efforts to the contrary, Jonah fit that pattern. By way of contrasting God’s heart with Jonah’s heart, we are invited into self-examination. Will we join God on the mission he’s already on? Or will we like Jonah resist and become the comedic parodies of God’s design?
Jonah and Jesus
Finally, notice the way in which the New Testament explores the Jonah story in light of the Jesus story. Jesus himself quotes the Jonah story as a reflection of his own ministry—a ministry marked by a brush with death so that on the other side of it forgiveness can come to a people (Luke 11:29-32). Listen to his words:
As the crowds increased, Jesus said, “This is a wicked generation. It asks for a sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so also will the Son of Man be to this generation. … The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and now something greater than Jonah is here.” (Luke 11:29-32)
Jesus’s words plug into the deep meaning of the Jonah story.
First, when Jesus rebukes the religious leaders for demanding a sign that he was sent from God, Jesus calls it wicked. In other words, it is a symptom that they already recognize that he is sent from God, but hate it (Luke 7:34; cf. 10:29). (Sound like a prophet we know?) They don’t like the fact that God coming into their midst looks like Jesus—spending time with the poor, the sick, the swindlers, prostitutes, and the foreigner.
Second, by referencing the “sign of Jonah” Jesus recalls Jonah’s brush with death and new life occasioned by the famous fish and thereby points to his own Jonah-like brush with death and new life. This moment of death and new life is the road upon which God’s compassion comes to every people.
Third, by reference to the response given to Jonah’s preaching, Jesus really gets in our faces. To religious folks like us he says that the unbelieving world may be more ready to receive Jesus’s ministry of compassion than we are. Recall how Jonah ended up looking worse than the violent and idolatrous Ninevites because they were more eager to receive God’s ministry of compassion than Jonah was. Similarly, the people we can least tolerate now may be—by their eagerness to receive Jesus—the very people who condemn us at the last day.
Fourth, by calling himself something greater than Jonah, Jesus is saying that he is the fulfillment of what the Jonah story is all about. Unlike Jonah, Jesus is not on a mission of sabotage when it comes to God’s compassion for the nations; he is the embodiment of God’s compassion for rebellious nations. He is what the Jonah story was anticipating.
Finally, it is also worth noticing that the gospel of John quotes the same Exodus passage that Jonah quotes, but in connection with Jesus (John 1:1-18): “We have seen his glory … full of steadfast love and faithfulness.” It’s worth taking a long walk to ponder how God reveals his heart of compassion through Jesus. How is Jesus like Moses? How is he greater? Does he reveal God’s compassion by offering his life? Does he bring forgiveness to a people? Does he reveal God’s heart? Does all of this reveal God’s goodness and glory, like it did for Moses? Is it that much of a stretch to see the comedic parody of Jonah after pondering all of this?
How Jesus Summarizes the OT
If we circle back to the shape of the Tanakh, it’s not surprising that the intertextual links tell us about a chosen prophet who would have a brush with death so that repentance for the forgiveness of sins could be proclaimed to all nations. That’s where Jesus gets this idea from. It’s a unified story about how God is at work for the world through Israel. He is carrying that story forward par excellence. My encouragement to you is this: You can read the whole Bible this way. Every page is packed with Easter Egg references. With a good study Bible, you can begin to trace these connections, and even begin spotting them for yourself without help. Over time, you’ll start to see how the Bible itself invites us to ponder story on top of story in a way that always leads us to meditate on how Jesus is part of that story. And all of that came through masterful storytelling.