木人形の英語版
Chapter III
God said to Jonah again, "Go to Nineveh and caution the people that unless they repent and stop piling up sins, their city shall perish in forty days from the moment you enter it."
Jonah did not disobey this time, and hit the road straight to Nineveh.
As I said earlier, according to Book of Jonah, Nineveh was an exceeding city of three days’ journey.
It is well to parenthesize here that I do not know any city in the world which takes a walker no less than three days to cross through, except for the old-time Berlin, which had the deadly barrier extending across the city. Modern archeology has determined that the size of Nineveh in Jonah’s days was about 12.9 kilometers in circumference, from which the average diameter of the city becomes 4.1 kilometers, and this is not very much longer than my Sunday morning walk. So it is my speculation that the author of the Old Testament provided the readers with the practical information rather than the actual span of the city, that is, he advised the would-be travelers that if they wanted to cross the city Nineveh, they should normally be prepared for at least three days’ journey on account of barriers. And if my speculation is correct, Nineveh’s number-one barrier must have been her citizens themselves because God said her evil eyes were glaring at him.
Once upon a time in old-time Kyoto, when it was the capital of Japan, a warrior monk posted himself on a bridge and did not allow people to pass unless they gave up a sword voluntarily or otherwise, and it is told that eventually he collected 999 swords. Likewise, probably, the citizens of Nineveh would bar the traveling strangers at many convenient points such as bridge, narrow passage, tunnel or privately made gate and extorted unlawful private tolls in money or kind. They probably kept watch dogs at such barriers to make it harder for travelers to pass free. Thus equipped, the Ninevites might have raised the tolls higher, or even robbed the travelers, if the latter had, for example, a fine mule with treasure boxes hung on it, or anyway if they were not well equipped with weapons. The citizens might even have demanded sex if the travelers could not pay the lifted tolls. They might have kidnapped children from them for ransom. Now, this is a rough speculation of the present author but if the situation was not as bad as this or worse, God would not ever think of annihilating the total inhabitants of any city.
So it is assumed that such was the city of Nineveh at best when Jonah arrived at one of its gates, where very likely he was squeezed to pay a large sum for admittance, becoming almost penniless. It is also likely that any incoming foreigner without some sort of authorization letter was suspected as a spy that came to look for the weak points in the defences of the city, and thus Jonah could have been under surveillance by secret police.
If it took three days to go from one end of the city to the other anyhow, to preach throughout the city would have been an extraordinary task, and it might well take no less than forty days to complete it.
Jonah started prophesying with courage and determination. However, he was traumatically afraid of Ninevites due to his childhood experience, and, in spite of his determination, he would freeze when a Ninevite man would approach him, and could not make an eye contact even with women during the first several days in the city. He kept encouraging himself by saying to himself that he was closely watched by God and would be protected so long as he did His will.
He had composed and learned by heart the following words in Aramaic (a language spoken by Assyrians) and recited them all day long:
"Good citizens of Nineveh, listen;
And hear the Almighty God caution!
Fear Him and drop wrongdoings.
Repent of sins and stop evildoings.
For if you ever continue your sinful ways,
He shall exterminate the city in forty days!"
Of course the number forty was decreased by one each day; so he had also learned how to count down from forty to one in Aramaic. Jonah picked up forty pebbles and put them in his shoulder bag, and threw away a pebble a day so as not to make miscounting. Thus started the countdown for the destruction or survival of Nineveh.
Rain or shine he kept prophesying. However, his voice betrayed his cowardice toward Ninevites. He was despised. Even children mocked him. Curious about the manner in which he pronounced their language, juveniles came and mimicked his speech and gesture. But this helped Jonah, for he could learn from their pronunciation the correct way of saying his prophecy in Ninevite dialect. He also learnt some basic expressions from them, and the young ones loved to hear him speak their dialect much after a fashion, and marveled as he counted from one to forty and then backward too. Gradually he got used to the Ninevites and, as he did so, learnt that they were not much different from Hebrews, and that not every Ninevite was bad.
So, slowly but steadily he became able to speak with authority in voice and gesture, as he used to do when in Israel. However, nobody took him seriously. He was mocked and jeered at as he prophesied. One would shout: "You stink! Go away!" Some would spit on him and some others, including children, even threw things at him. Of course no one invited him to his house, so Jonah always spent night outdoors. Nevertheless, Jonah kept his preaching work unflinchingly as ordered by God. Fortunately his fishy smell confused watch dogs at various barriers to mistake him for a dog’s meat man; so he could relatively freely pass the barriers.
He prophesied wherever and whenever he found a person, adult or child. He entered every street he could find and prophesied at every household on the street. The city had many public squares and he visited all and revisited many for the propagation of God’s words. The city was surrounded by huge thick walls connected by fifteen gates, and he encircled the city walking along the inside of the walls clockwise, all the way reciting the prophecy. (Where the canal passed across the city boundary line, either the wall there functioned as a bridge or there was a ferry to cross the canal.) He went up the walls where possible and cried repentance. By the time he completed the circuit, his words had a melody, which began to attract some citizens.
Nor did he pass over the famous hanging garden, which was one of the architectures constructed by the Ninevites, resembling pyramid tiered with five terraces, each carrying artfully planted orchards of various leafy trees and flowers of seasons. In all seasons the plants grew so thick that the garden looked like a real hill when seen from afar, and in fact it was even greener than natural mountains and hills in the area, for rain was rather rare there. So it has been wondered how the hanging garden could remain so thick in green throughout the year. The only clue we have is the king’s euphony:
From above,
the canal water runs
into my pleasure garden;
fragrance in every walkway…
Like a squirrel I pick fruit of delights…
Historians and archeologists contemplated how it was done. A most recently proposed theory is that Ninevites had invented the Archimedean helical screw pump far earlier than Archimedes did, and that the pump was used to transport the canal water to the top of the garden. However it may have been done, the evergreen hanging garden must no doubt have convinced enemy nations that the city was invincible against sieges.
In the afternoon of a day, when it was open to the citizens, Jonah entered the garden. The day was sunny but the air was cool and nice. Birds chirped in the trees and squirrels went up and down the trees. He chanted his prophecy as he walked about the garden, wakening many who were taking siesta in the shades. Children were playing – some climbing trees and others on swings. Several young men were running up the slope competing who would reach the summit first. A man was playing the flute, for which Ninevites were famous too.
Jonah sat to rest on the lawn in the shadow of one of the piers of an aqueduct to listen to the music. Although in shadow, the ground was unusually warm, even warmer than the air. He wondered where this warmth came from.
As the wind turned, a sprinkle of water fell over him. He looked up and heard from above a quiet sound of water running in the conduit. The aqueduct was made of red bricks. Ivies climbed the piers, even up to the conduit layer of the aqueduct. The small green leaves of the ivies were flickering the sunlight as the winds vibrated them. Water was dripping from small wooden pipes inserted vertically and at regular intervals into the upper most part of the conduit.
He, with his water bag empty, opened his mouth to drink from the sprinkling water, but a brisk wind fetched and sprayed the water far and wide and a rainbow stood. He stared at it and marveled that however swiftly the spray flew and danced, the thin transparent rainbow stayed fixed in the air.
“Ah, Rainbow!” he sighed. “You come like a phantom and fade out likewise – so faint are you! Yet you never allow anything to budge, vibrate or discolor you! How I wish I were as steadfast as you are!”
Curious to know where the water was coming from, Jonah went up along the aqueduct, which encircled the garden spirally, and he reached the summit terrace. Standing high in the middle was a handsome white statue of the queen, for whom the king built the garden.
The queen was a daughter of a king in a country far away and full of natural beauty, and was married to the king of Nineveh for the sake of convenience between the kings. She disliked Nineveh and one day broke wind in the presence of the king, her husband, who asked her what she had meant by that. She replied, “I want a favor from you. You have taken me to live in this dry Nineveh. I desire you to give me a pool in a garden where I can swim without being seen by anybody, and at night only exposed to the moonlight. The water of the pool must be as clean as spring water.” Hence the hanging garden with a secret pool was built.
A path paved with bricks went round the statue, and this path together with the statue formed a sundial. The circular path branched radially into four directions equiangularly, and that path which branched from behind the statue led to a wooden door made in a high brick wall . There were two aqueducts, including the one Jonah had walked along, and they penetrated the wall and were seen no more from the terrace.
As he approached the wooden door, whose edges were overlaid with copper plate, he could hear a sound of water splashing. Jonah tried to open the door, but it was locked. But immediately he heard dogs barking and whining happily and scratching the door from the other side. Then the door opened and an officer ushered him in. There were two watch dogs and their keen noses had not failed to catch the appetizing smell from Jonah, and they had thought that a dog’s meat man had at last arrived, and thus urged the officer to open the wooden door. Jonah’s horrible smell then urged the officer back to his position.
Jonah saw a large copper basin steadied on a raised mound, which was actually the top of the garden, unless you count the statue of queen as the top of it. The basin was round in shape, the diameter being about six meters, and the height about three meters. It reminded him of the Sea of bronze in the holy temple in Jerusalem, which was supported on the backs of twelve bronze oxen facing outward and which was for the priests to wash in. But this basin here was steadied by being partly embedded in the raised mound, and had two lips which were diametrically opposed to each other and from which water was continuously streaming into the upper ends of the two aqueducts, respectively. Four male slaves at the top of a flight of stone stairways made to the mound were busy pouring water from wooden buckets into the basin; they were receiving laden buckets from the ends of four rows of male slaves, who were standing sideways and passing the buckets up the stairways. The emptied buckets were passed backward through another four rows, which consisted of women, old men, and children. They were all sweating heavily. Somehow the area was even hotter than other areas of the garden. Several overseers, including the one Jonah had already met, with a whip were watching the slaves lest they neglect the work.
Jonah, followed by the dogs, walked up the steps formed integrally to the wall and stood on top of the wall. From there he could see an upper part of a chimney of bricks, from which thick dark smoke was puffing out, and he sensed a smell of burnt coal. He also found that the rows of the slaves extended down into a slanted tunnel with steps. Occasionally steam vapor puffed out from the gape of the tunnel. It was now apparent that huge amount of water was being boiled at the bottom of the tunnel in the garden, from which the steam was coming. “No wonder,” he thought, “the earth is warm everywhere. The garden must be quite hollow inside with tunnels, and the earth must be being watered with the steam from inside!”
He moved to a position from which he could see deeper into the tunnel, in which the overseers were holding torches for illumination. Then, he saw, through the vapor, a round white pool, entirely lined with white tiles. It was not large, but not too small to do some swimming. Into the pool water was gathering from all directions, some flowing from the walls around and some streaming from a conical stalactite-like formation hanging from the middle of the unseen ceiling, and the other raining from the said ceiling. The wall beyond the pool, which was the only wall he actually could see, was sloped such that it indicated that the room was shaped fairly like a funnel with the constricted bottom being the pool. Four large slaves standing knee-deep in the pool were scooping the distilled water with buckets and passing them upward through the four rows of the other slaves to the two-lipped basin for irrigation of the surface of the garden. It was apparent that the tunnel was unbearably hot inside, for overseers came out occasionally, wiping their face and necks with cloth. Then, an old man was carried out and left lying on the ground in the sun.
Jonah went down the wall and stood by him such that his shadow shaded the man’s pale face from the sun. To his surprise, he knew him: he was a dove-raiser who lived in his hometown. Jonah had loved to see the man’s birds released from the cages and an aviary form a flock and circle the sky of his town. One day young Jonah was showed in his yard and was taught about the difference between turtle-dove and pigeon. The dove-raiser was taken prisoner by the Ninevites on that same day his parents were murdered by them. He called him by his name, but he was unconscious.
Then, Jonah heard a sound of a wooden bucket crash and clatter in the tunnel followed by a crack of a sharp whipping; and a high-pitched scream of a girl echoed in the tunnel. Jonah ran and wanted to go into the tunnel but was stopped by the overseers. The prophet shouted angrily his prophecy into the tunnel, and his voice echoed and quieted the whipping and the girl’s cry.
Upon this and upon the arrival of the true dog’s meat man, Jonah was expelled from the backyard, and went down the hanging garden along the aqueduct which was not the one he had followed up previously. As he descended the hill, he forgot to prophesy but was absorbed in a thought about the slaves. He wondered, “Is slavery not a sin? If it is, is it one of the sins of Ninevites that God required me to help them repent and drop? If not…would it not be better rather for the miserable hopeless slaves if the entire Nineveh is demolished including themselves than that all the Ninevites are saved and continue maltreating them with renewed confidence? For what does it profit the slaves if they are preserved alive but tormented until the day of their death?”
The aqueduct led him down to the ground level, where it poured the remnant of water into an artificial waterway. There were several boats going up or down the waterway, whose width was barely large enough to allow two boats to pass each other. The upstream of the waterway entered into a tunnel made in the foot of the garden. The boats going toward the tunnel were full of coal, and the others coming out of it were full of cinder.
Jonah walked alongside the waterway. It entered a forest, and he overtook a row of many female slaves carrying a jar on their heads. Strong smell of hot coal tar attacked his nose.
Coming out of the forest, he found the waterway branched from the huge canal, in which many people were bathing and/or washing clothes. He reached the bank. From there he could see dark gray smoke puffing from the thick chimney of red bricks rising high from the forest at the foot of the hanging garden.
Jonah started prophesying to the people there; however, they were busy washing and bathing and did not give attention to him. Some washerwomen were talking to each other loudly and they were complaining about the smoke and the soot of the burnt coal, which came occasionally toward the canal bringing with it the smell of sulfur, and made them feel sick and stained the laundry. He learnt from their talk that the coal was burnt only on the days the garden was open to the public. He also heard them say that there was a secret white pool in the garden and it was used by the royal family and their guests for bathing, and that on certain special nights when the moon shed its light on the pool, only the queen was allowed to be there.
A group of men and women were praying to the westering sun standing in the water of the canal knee-deep. When Jonah was nearby, one of the men overheard his prophecy and asked him who the Almighty God was. He replied that he was the god who created the earth, heaven and the sea. “Did he create the sun too?” the man asked. “Yes, everything in the sky, day or night. Everything on earth and everything in the sea too.” “Where can we go to see him?” “You cannot see him. He lives and is omnipresent, that is, he is everywhere at the same time; so you cannot capture his busy body in any particular substance, not in a statue or in a picture, nor in the sun – not even in universe, for universe was created by him, and not vice versa. …It might even be possible that you cannot capture the Almighty in any particular religion.” “If he is everywhere at the same time, he is in Nineveh too. How is it then that he will destroy himself by destroying Nineveh?” “That, my friend, is why he sent me here to rescue Nineveh. He created every person in his likeness, and thus every person is his physical part. So, every punishment he inflicts upon a man he feels it upon himself, too. As the old saying goes, ‘if your tongue sins, pull it off,’ but the pain is yours too.”
By now several men and women and children had gathered and formed a crowd listening to Jonah, some in the water and others on the bank. “Each one of you is an irreplaceable part of Him. So treat each other as you would treat the Most High God.”
Then the crowd began to move on the bank or in the water so as to make space for a row of half a dozen male slaves and a long boat, that were approaching. The slaves were walking on the bank pulling upstream the boat laden with coal and a man, who held the handle of the stem rudder. The boat was sunk almost to its gunwale. The bodies of the slaves, tied to the boat with long tensed ropes, were aslant forward and sweating profusely. The thick ropes ground into their callous skin. An overseer with a whip followed the slaves on the bank.
Jonah did not make way for them but chanted his prophecy and then shouted, “God Almighty forbids all slavery! It’s a sin!” The overseer came and gave Jonah a whipping and threatened to give another. But two of the slaves passed between the overseer and the prophet so that their tight ropes pushed the two away from each other. Then the prophet continued, “All men are created by God equally in the likeness of him; so, disgracing any man or woman is an act of disgrace to God!” The overseer called out for help to another overseer who was in charge of the boat following this one.
Jonah, now capable of swimming after his brine experiences, crossed the canal by wading and with some swimming, and rested on the opposite bank. The overseers did not pursue him. He continued to prophesy there in wet clothing.
When his clothes were only half dry, loud sounds of cymbals and drums began to echo all round, and people began hurrying to public squares and temples for the afternoon prayers. Jonah stayed on the bank, but two temple policemen came and whipped him to a temple. He chanted his song in the temple, and alarmed the priests and laymen by overturning the tables of corruption.
Thus he preached God’s words wherever he went. He visited a hamlet inhabited by people with skin diseases, where he prophesied and left a pebble. He spent a cold night in straws in a stable, and early in the following morning he went out to the farms and chanted to the slaves, who were reaping to harvest, as well as to animal herders, who were on their way to pastures with the animals. Tax collectors were busy visiting the houses of the villagers’. No one stopped to give ear to Jonah. Then he joined the poor who came to glean the fallen ears on the harvested farms.
He came across an area where were houses of prostitutes, and he chanted the warning news to them as well as their customers, male and female. Many bandits lived there and threatened to kill him unless he went away.
Thus he departed and came to a graveyard, where he met an outcast man suffering from a mental disease, and they prophesied to each other. In response to Jonah’s chanting of the prophecy the man cried, “Alas, what a melody! Woe to me! It makes me feel like being a cymbal ready to clamor! And what do you want with me?! I know who you are - a man of god, for I felt all the dead lying underground roll over in response to your preaching. As such, what choice have I got but to repent and drop wrongdoings? But, alas! man, for all my eagerness to repent and drop wrongdoings, I cannot do so, for I am not alone. I am only one of many. I am merely one of us, of whom some are good and others are not. I cannot control us and sooner or later some other self of us will come up to replace me and may start doing evil. So, leave me alone and do not torture me with your preaching!” At this Jonah held the man’s hands and said, “I know God would never punish you so long as you, even yourself alone, would repent and drop wrongdoings...for evilness was also created by Him.” A gravedigger came and took the man to let him help digging for a burial of a wealthy person. As they went, the man started chanting Jonah’s prophecy over and over again.
Joining the funeral ceremony, Jonah met them again and chanted the prophecy, but the outcast man did not chant it anymore.
Then, he arrived at a marketplace where many street performers were at work, and, joining them, he sang his warning song. By and by people gathered to listen. He earned some money and with that he bought a new pair of sandals.
He would chant the prophecy whenever he found a listener, and when none, he would even preach to animals, birds, insects and fish. And he stopped eating meat.
Thirty pebbles had returned to the earth; yet no one had repented. Jonah became known to almost all the citizens of Nineveh, but people kept being unafraid of God and repeated fraudulence, theft and violence. Every day Jonah saw slaves maltreated at various places and children trafficked in the market places. He condemned the slave owners and traders at the cost of being whipped, prophesying that so long as Ninevites continued to treat slaves as non-humans there should come no salvation to them.
He also condemned the execution of prisoners of war. He condemned bandits who sacked foreign communities and brought home captives, cattle and spoils. He condemned those who abused animals.
Then he began to condemn self-professed prophets who were telling the citizens that there should be no destruction of the city but that their gods would give them lasting prosperity; he said their gods were false and hence their prophecies too. Jonah also condemned other self-professed prophets who were foretelling the destruction of the city like himself; he said their gods were loathsome idols unable to do anything but decay, and that only the Almighty God could destroy the city and all in it. He said, “Stop worshipping idols which can neither breathe nor move, because they are false.”
Day by day he got more irritable. He condemned everybody who blasphemed God whose words he prophesied, and threatened them with fist. He condemned even those who practiced magic or told fortunes in the markets or on the streets. Eventually, he condemned everyone, Ninevite or Israelite, that did not agree with him and repent.
He condemned idols and said that all of them together with their altars should be destroyed and burnt. He condemned the human idols too for allowing themselves to be worshipped and misguiding the ignorant citizens, and demanded that they should be banished. He condemned the militants who worshipped weapons as their idols, which, he said, deceived them and led them into error. He said word of God is stronger than weapons. Likewise, he condemned the merchants who worshiped idols cast on the coins. He condemned the lawyers and officials who worshipped laws made by men as their idols. He condemned anyone who was worshipping an idol. He further condemned those who made idols and those who traded in them.
However, this last condemnation caused people to gradually stop giving him alms, for idol worshipping was the basis of the religions of Ninevites and, moreover, idol-related trades constituted a huge guild profiting a large part of the citizens. From engraving a charm to building a statue, many citizens from children to elderly, were involved in the guild somehow for their living. In short, to the Ninevites, from top to bottom, religion was more of a business than anything else.
Hence Jonah was virtually ostracized and became penniless, and was left to nearly starve. He continued to repeat his prophecy but got so hungry that he even could not concentrate on the meaning of what he was reciting. Yet he was able to say the prophecy correctly, for he had repeated it so many times that he had become able to say it even without thinking.
He came to a fruit tree, but condemned it, for it was barren. Then, he condemned himself as a fruitless tree, a useless prophet, and swore that it would have been better if the womb of his mother had not born him.
He would, then, often fall into absent-mindedness, and he forgot to throw away a pebble on the thirty-second day.
In the afternoon of the next day he went into a marketplace. He had thought he would sing his prophecy at a corner where street performers did jobs, for then he might earn some little money to appease his hunger a little. Street performers invited him to do his singing, for they loved it; but he was so hungry he could not. The stomachache due to hunger had become so unbearable. Faint with hunger, he strayed away, and passed close by a juggler who was throwing shining daggers in the air, then right underneath an acrobat who was balancing himself on a tightrope with a long pole, and then by a snake charmer playing a double-reed pipe with his cobra swinging its head according to the music, all the while Jonah not noticing them at all, for his eyes were glued on a plateful of figs laid on a table of a fruit merchant. When he was close enough to them his hands reached the ripened fruits and put them into his mouth without peeling the rind. He then started eating any food his hands could reach: he swallowed a banana, strawberries, an orange, a bunch of grapes, a peach, a pomegranate, a lemon, and when he bit an apricot, he was stopped by the merchant. He was brought to the palace police, where he was scourged as many times as the number of kinds of the food he took, and was deprived of his cloak to compensate the merchant.
Released, he strayed to the gate of the royal palace, and started prophesying again; but he could not help stopping short frequently due to the surging pains from the scourging. Then, suddenly he was seized by the Spirit of God and, thus ecstasized, became another man and started shouting glossolalic speech fluently. Some were scared at this sudden change in him and said he was invoking his god to exterminate the city; others said he was simply demented.
The palace police came and took Jonah to a nearby temple, where the monks locked him up inside the tall, huge, hollow statue of fish-god Dagon so his strange shouting was muffled. The statue had a human head and chest but fish elsewhere, was brass outside but clay inside and was stood on a flat bedrock. It was customary to isolate any dangerous persons there without feeding them.
Recovering from the ecstasy in the darkness, Jonah felt something creeping on his skin here and there. He picked one which was trying to enter his right nostril, and was panicked to find it a maggot. He quickly shook and brushed them off his body and clothes. Then he realized he was lying on something fragile, for as he moved, the things beneath him made crushing sound. He soon knew what they were, for the round thing on which he had comfortably laid his head for a pillow had rich hair. He shrieked and could not stop trembling. He was on a tremendous amount of dry bones, skulls and clothes, which were remnants of those who had perished there before him. He shouted for help. He hit the statue with his fists. But he could hear nothing except the echoes of the sounds he made. He then prayed desperately for mercy to God:
“Oh, my Lord, please pardon this weakest of your servants just one more time and help me out of here! Once You abandoned me to the sea, and waves and breakers rushed over me. But it was the whale fish that swallowed me, feeding me with mellow seaweed. In my distress, from the belly of that deep fish, I called for help to You. And You answered me, for it spit me onto dry earth harmlessly.
“Now, I have been cast out of Your sight again. I am locked and barred in the abyss of the dead alive and unfed. Now, I cry for help from within the foul belly of the fish-idol Dagon. And I look again toward Your holy temple in want of thy glorious light. For salvation comes from You alone!”
Then Jonah heard a noise, a rattling sound. At first he thought it was a rat or two gnawing the bones. But he felt some bones start moving about him on their own. He even felt a skull roll over his legs, and heard another grinding its teeth in the darkness. He was scared and crawled away from the bones. When he reached the wall, he stood up and pressed his back to the wall. Now the sound of the bones moving was everywhere. As they collided and grazed against each other, the scratched parts started dimly fluorescing white. It appeared the scattered bones were trying to meet their old mates for a reunion. One after another they seemed made whole and, standing up as skeletons of various sizes, they started walking as if to try and see if the bones were correctly assembled. One after another, they started skipping with light dry steps in a circle. By the time no bone was left lying on the floor, a circle dance had begun and they did not forget to invite Jonah to join. He was dumfounded and his knees failed him and he slowly slid down keeping his back on the wall. It was when they started singing that Jonah shrieked and swooned, and this was what he heard them - some being high-pitched female - sing in harmony as he collapsed to lie on the floor:
“Let us collect ourselves upright, and hear Jonah preach,
For we are sinners and have no hope, save it were through repentance!
Let us compose ourselves aright, and hear Jonah teach,
For we lost our flesh and have no life, save it were through penitence!
Let us renew ourselves outright and hear his speech,
For there’s no peace in our scattered bones, save it were through innocence! ”
Chapter IV
A bodily urgency awoke Jonah. He yawned a lot. He was tired and a little dizzy. It took some time in the darkness before he could recall where he was, for unlike that whale of many words, Dagon did not speak to him in his sleep. The scene of skeletons dismembered and scattered all over reminded him of where he was. “Oh, what happened to them? Did they fight and destroy each other? “Or,” wondered Jonah, “was it only a bad dream I had on these bones?” Then he remembered that the dying florescence from the bones had been caused by friction between them. “So,” he thought, “it was not a dream.”
Then he started breathing short and heavily as if he had been exercising. He panted helplessly, and realized that the dead there had perished not from starvation but from suffocation. He despaired and began a farewell prayer to God, for he was sure he was a failure and would not be in touch with Him any more. He sought forgiveness for his failure. But in the midst of the breathless desperate agonizing prayer he heard the door unlocked and saw it open quietly, and he saw a thin tall young black man with a lantern in his hand inviting him to come out. He quickly grabbed a few breaths of cool air smelling burnt oil, and steeled himself against the visitor. The man said something politely in a language Jonah could not understand. He took a deep breath, rose to his feet and went out, staggering and cracking the bones underneath.
The man hastily fell on his knees and, putting the lantern on the floor, said with suppressed tone, this time in Aramaic, which Jonah understood more or less: “My master, if I have found favor in your sight, please allow me to escort you out of this temple safely. I am a servant of the king, a eunuch from Ethiopia. And the other day, to my great surprise, I heard you prophesy in none other than my own mother tongue about the destruction of Nineveh but for the citizens’ repentance over and over again; and thus I knew you were not demented but were possessed by …Yahweh, your god!”
Jonah quickly put his fingers to the eunuch’s lips to silence him and said, “Do not pronounce that name yet. If I used that word then, it was only because God’s spirit was speaking using my tongue.” And he raised him to his feet, and continued, “I did not know in what language I was speaking then, for I was in ecstasy, nor do I know any Ethiopian word. So, it’s God’s plan that you should hear it and be enlightened. Well, then, please guide me out…but tell me how long I’ve been locked here?”
“My master, you have been here for three days and three nights including this one.”
Upon this Jonah threw three pebbles into the deadly statue. The eunuch closed and locked the door of the statue and, taking off his mantle, he said, “Please wear this and you will be taken for one of my colleagues, just in case a guard suspects us.”
Then, carrying the lantern, he led the prophet through the labyrinth of the temple. They passed a few guard monks, who had fallen fast asleep, for the eunuch had put on the altar of the fish-god a skin bottle filled with strong wine. On their way the eunuch said that he had now repented and believed in Jonah’s god, that he had reported to the queen about the phenomenon (glossolalia) he had witnessed and where the prophet had been locked up, in the hope of obtaining the king’s permission to rescue him, and that only that evening did the queen hand him the key to the statue confidentially – lest king’s enemy should know this. “Hence,” continued the eunuch, “I came to free you secretly. This way the temple men shall not know that you are away.”
When they got outside the temple, it was midnight with the new moon glowing in the color of cheese. Cold wind was blowing and fanning a fire being burnt by a group of moon worshippers in the nearby plaza. A leader was chanting a song in an extremely deep and resounding voice and others repeated the verses. The women were kneading and baking bread in the shape of the new moon, and children were gathering fallen leaves and twigs for fuel. The wind brought the appetizing smell toward the two. Having eaten nothing for three days, Jonah was suffering from the painful hunger again.
The eunuch said, “My master, please keep the mantle, for winter is coming, and take care not to catch a cold.” Jonah kissed his hands and wished him God’s blessing. After seeing him disappear in the darkness, Jonah put hands into the sleeves of the mantle to warm them, but found a silver coin in one of the sleeves. He thought to return it to the eunuch, and called, “My son, come back! I found this!” But no response came from the darkness except the sound of the wind and the chanting of the moon-worshippers. Jonah staggered, and picked up a fallen branch of a tree to use as a walking stick. But as he walked toward the fire of the moon worshippers, he started prophesying.
It so happened on the yet-six-pebble-in-the-bag day, that the lumber merchant who had boarded the same ship with Jonah that nearly wrecked came to Nineveh as he had been invited by the king to negotiate a sale of Lebanon cedar. On that day he went to the palace to report his arrival, and on his way to an inn assigned for royal guests, he encountered a flow of a mob and joining it he entered a shrine, where a ritual of child sacrifice was about to be performed in honor of a god named Nis’roch.
Then, he recalled vividly the ocean storm and how the runaway prophet Jonah was swallowed by the whale after neglecting his mission of denouncing the wickedness of Ninevites, and he remembered that the prophet had said his god was going to eradicate Nineveh. Then he heard a keen piteous shrieking of a boy, followed immediately by threatening sounds of cymbal, trumpets and drum, which got so loud that the weak boy’s wailing was made inaudible. Then, the merchant saw the bloody ritual perpetrated by masked priests, and the mob roared crazily. The smell of the wholly burnt body sickened the merchant, and when he saw some worshippers eating the cuts from the body he was terrified lest the God should annihilate the city any moment. Then, his eyes caught a man standing on a wall of the shrine, which was across the plaza from him; the man was incessantly beating his breast hard with his fists, shouting something hoarsely in tears. The merchant soon recognized him as none other than Jonah the prophet, who he had thought had long been expired in the great fish. He was astounded, and thought with great fear, “Surely God is going to annihilate this city now, for he lifted Jonah’s ghost from Sheol to let it at last prophesy the judgment! Alas, alas! am I cursed, for twice have I fallen into the same powerful palm of the same God!” He called the prophet’s name but the roar of the mob was too loud. He tried to reach him, but the mob started to depart preventing him from approaching the wall, from which the prophet disappeared.
The merchant inquired some who had stayed in the shrine plaza about the man in a mantle who had been shouting on the wall like a demented man, pretending he did not know him. They said to the well-attired foreign merchant that the man was one of those many self-professed prophets – there were no less a hundred of them in Nineveh - who hawk about chanting hymns on the streets and at the doors of houses to earn food and drink, that he had been in the city about a month already, and that he was especially known for his fishy smell and never worshipping an idol, unlike others.
Then a Dagon worshipper said, “I saw him thrown into the statue of the great fish-god Dagon a few days ago; but I found him today walking in the South street wearing eunuch’s mantle to my great surprise, for no one locked in the statue has ever come out of it. So I suspect some conspiracy is taking place and thus followed him up to this shrine.” And he added that he had now come to know to which eunuch the mantle used to belong.
This talk of Jonah’s miraculous escape from the statue triggered the lumber merchant to confess. He said that in fact he was an acquaintance of the prophet, and told them the truth about Jonah – everything he remembered about him including his being a true prophet of some Hebrew god and his eventually being eaten by a godlike whale, which, he added, was white, and declared that if he could come out of the whale in the ocean alive, it would have been a piece of cake for him to come out of a sealed statue of any god, if his almighty god in heaven had so desired.
This last remark caused the lumber merchant to be nearly arrested by plain-clothed temple policemen, who were among the listeners, on account of his blasphemy to the fish-god Dagon. He barely escaped imprisonment after showing the letter from the king and bribing them sizably.
That evening the lumber merchant searched Jonah, asking people whereabouts of the prophet that smelt fishy. Everyone with a knowing look directed him in wrong directions, and eventually a night watch, after taking much money from him, took him in outskirts of the city, and the prophet was found praying in a cave hewn out in a rock to be used as a tomb for a wealthy man. The merchant urged him to escape from Nineveh with him before it was destroyed. Jonah disagreed. So, the merchant quitted the city alone at dawn, without settling what could have been lucrative business with the king.
This incident did not fail to bring about a consequence. Although people did not believe what the foreign merchant had said, they had to believe what the Dagon worshipper had said, and they loved to gossip the stories, especially those who hated the fish-god Dagon; and the rumor of Jonah's miracles rose like an early spring wind the next day. The fact that he smelled so fishy was well-explained by the whale-related rumor, and they added that the strangeness of his face color was caused by the bleaching effect of the whale's gastric juice. Soon Jonah was a hero. But this did not mean that people started to repent.
However, no sooner had the citizens learnt that the lumber merchant, the source of the whale rumor, was no longer found in the city and probably left it in secrecy without receiving a leave from the king, than the Ninevites at last began to feel uncomfortable and suspect what the merchant had said was not entirely untrue including Jonah’s being actually a true prophet of some “living” god.
A shabby man walking throughout the city, every day unflinchingly intoning the same prophecy of Nineveh’s destruction but for Ninevites’ repentance, at the door of every house and to everyone he met on the street, and meaningfully dropping a pebble each day from his bag, began to scare the people, who knew they were over bad.
Jonah's sandals were worn-out and his toe nails had dark reddish color owing to internal bleeding. On earlier days, Jonah chanted with a loud strong voice with forceful gesture, but now he got weaker and his gesture disappeared, and slowly his voice got husky and finally was hard to hear unless one was close enough to him to experience the unbearable smell. He now had to use a stick for walking. The fewer were the pebbles in his bag each day, the heavier did he feel it nonetheless.
But it was when Jonah's voice at last lost sound that people began to repent their sins. On the morning of the yet-three-pebble day, as Jonah was prophesying, suddenly his voice stopped coming out, but he kept moving his lips, and a man who had been listening to Jonah began pronouncing what Jonah had been repeating. It was as if this man were a ventriloquist and Jonah a puppet chanting the prophecy:
"Fellow citizens of Nineveh, listen;
And hear the Almighty God caution!
Fear Him and drop wrongdoings.
Repent of sins and stop evildoings.
For if we ever continue our sinful ways,
He shall exterminate our city in three days!"
Thereafter, repenters came to Jonah one after another, and as they walked with him, Jonah did not lack ventriloquists who gave voices to his voiceless lips.
By the noon of the yet-two-pebble day, the chanting group was divided into increasing number of sub-groups. Then an inventive citizen made a wooden placard on which he wrote Jonah’s prophecy, and each group made a few placards after it, and they carried them throughout the city. The placards attracted many because of their novelty although most citizens were unable to read. The whole city was in confusion. Crowds thronged main streets and gathered at each public plaza, though most of them yet did not know what they had come for. Some were shouting one thing and others another.
Gradually, the words on the placards were put in the mouths of the people, and the city was echoed with the chants of Jonah’s prophecy. Some started fasting, others whitened their bodies with ashes and put on sackcloth, and prayed for pardon.
Those who were seen in the middle of wrongdoing were soon surrounded by a crowd who condemned them and demanded repentance. Idols together with their altars were destroyed and burnt at every major plaza and shrine, and some human idols hid themselves underground and others declared they were not gods; and the ritual of child sacrifice was interrupted by people, who threatened to sacrifice instead the priests that conducted the ritual, and thus the priests including the Chief Priest fled from Nineveh.
This revolution in the city caused by Jonah was soon reported to the king. To the royal family, it was a welcome change that people repented and stopped sinning, and lived more like lambs than wolves. However, the people did not live like lambs but surged to the palace and wanted the king to repent too. They brought the placards to the gate of the palace and chanted Jonah’s prophecy. The excited crowd seemed to keep staying until and unless the king in person should appear and declare his repentance in front of them.
The king of Nineveh was not slow to anticipate the impending riot, and declared that he too would repent. As the crowd watched, the king took off his royal robe and changed into dark sackcloth and poured ashes from a pot over his head, as he shouted, "I repent! I hereby repent and shall fear the god of Jonah!" The crowd raised a roar of approval.
The ministers and members of the royal family and servants of all the ranks followed the king, repenting loudly, burning their coats and pouring the ashes of the coats over their heads, and praying to the god of Jonah for pardon and mercy.
On the morning of the yet-one-pebble day, the king of Nineveh proclaimed that all the citizens and their animals should fast and should not even drink water. Then, at the sunset of that day, the king ordered that people should pour ashes over their heads and wear sackcloth and pray all night aloud to the god of Jonah for mercy, swearing they would never do unrighteous things. People obeyed the orders from the palace. On that day, the fishy smell left Jonah’s body and his face skin began to recover radiance, although he could not yet recover his voice.
Then, the not-a-pebble day heard many prayers for forgiveness and songs blessing the god of Jonah, and passed peacefully without taking any mortal’s life with it. Hence the song sung by Ninevites those days:
Not a person to the earth fell, oh Jonah,
When not a pebble from your finger fell.
Not an animal to the ground fell, oh Jonah,
When not a pebble from your finger fell.
So, Jonah was successful and fulfilled his mission assigned by God.
The Ninevites, knowing that they were not punished on the fixed day, came to Jonah and worshipped him from a distance. They wished him well, and said “You rescued us. You are our hero, the great pride of us, and the high honor of Nineveh. May you be forever blessed by the heavenly God!”
Then, some, finding that he was no longer smelling, came close to him and bowed at his feet; a barber came with a basin filled with water and washed and trimmed his hair, and another washed his feet with perfumed oil. A skilled cobbler gave him a new pair of sandals he made for him, and a rich family gave him clothes to change in including a fine robe with hood.
At sunset, the order for fasting was lifted, and people gathered round Jonah with wine and food for celebration, and Jonah was given wine and food of choice and was crowned with a laurel. Some women performed a dance for him.
A herald came from the palace, and said that the king wanted Jonah to come to the palace so that he could express his gratitude toward the prophet. The herald let Jonah ride on a donkey he had brought from the palace. Soon a procession was formed with people marching before and behind Jonah, many carrying torches and more shouting, "Jonah, the reviver from a whale! Jonah, the true servant of the true God!"
When someone proposed that they should ask the king to appoint Jonah as the new Chief Priest, the chorus was changed to "Long live Jonah, the new Chief Priest, a prophet begotten by a whale!" People played musical instruments and many danced as the procession went on toward the palace.
However, Jonah was unhappy, and unwilling to do anything, let alone meeting the king.
Jonah thought:
"Did I really desire this? - that the people of Nineveh should be saved from God's punishment? No, I can't say I did. What I desired was to please God. I feared my God and tried to be loyal to Him, and that only because I had realized I could not escape from Him anyhow. Do I love this people of Nineveh? No, I don't. I can’t. I can never do so. I can scarcely forget the day when my parents were murdered by the plunderers from this same Nineveh. I thought it lucky that I had bad smell, because the detestable Ninevites did not come too close to me. Without passion for saving the Ninevites, I only tried to methodically carry out God's order on each one of the forty days – and not a single day more. As it were, I was nothing more than a puppet manipulated by God. It did not matter to me whether the people of Nineveh were annihilated or saved. I was only interested in becoming a perfect puppet that dances and chants exactly as God willed.
"There is no doubt about my loving God, for I thank Him for answering my desperate prayers that I uttered from the depths, writhing in that slippery stomach of the whale, with eerie animals swirling about me; and when I was saved, I decided to offer everything left of me to God. And I now have accomplished my mission with a perfect result. But what is this emptiness, dissatisfaction...this loneliness? Being unable to partake of the joy these men and women are expressing so cheerfully, I certainly have come to have a wooden heart of a puppet. Yes, I am like a puppet that politely bows on the stage at the end of a show toward the cheering, applauding audience; the polite bow however is a mere heartless dipping of the head caused by slackening of a string. A puppet cannot be expected to have a feeling. Thus it is with me too that the joyous cheering of the Ninevites does not excite me, does not warm me at all. Oh, my Lord, Jonah on the run from you was yet a man, but Jonah in Nineveh has been a puppet. Yeah, exactly like that wooden puppet that was swallowed by the whale with me. How he danced nonstop merrily, tossed and twisted by that tumultuous pool of sea animals, without ever relinquishing that beaming smile!
"Oh, my God, you have saved the crooked Ninevites using me! And you gave them no less than forty days to repent. But you did not even try to warn my father and mother when the plunderers from Nineveh attacked my town and killed my parents with a baby in my mother’s womb, while I was watching! Nevertheless, you used me to save the very same Ninevites!…the born villains, rotten to the core! I cannot make head or tail of what you will. Oh, how would I have been proud of myself only if it were some other people that I helped survive!”
By now Jonah’s procession had come in view of the palace and as it got nearer to it the louder the people got. Their chorus lost unison and became a meaningless clamor, their music lost harmony and their dancing became rhythm-less, and with that Jonah's loneliness turned to anger.
"Ah, what an irritating din they are making. Oh, God, why are these people making such a hideous noise? Certainly they could thank you in a more peaceful manner...Oh, yes! This is it! The same craziness! I remember they were making exactly the same uproar as this in triumph when they sacked and plundered the town of my birth in Galilee!”
“Oh, you should have done away with this people, as I often have pleaded with you. This people you just saved today will sooner or later relapse into the habit of wrong-doings and barbaric rituals. They’ll continue treating the slaves like animals. They will continue executing war prisoners. These people are no longer thinking of you, they are thinking only of themselves. Who knows they might set me up as a new god? Ah, I might as well have gone away with that lumber merchant rather than see this!
“These people are advancing to the palace to have me appointed as the new Chief Priest. But, you will see, my Lord, as soon as the procession is inside the palace, they will cast me aside and start looting the treasures. Look! Some are already at the palace gate and are scrambling for the ornaments hanging from it!
“Oh my God, what a waste of time and labor! It is not yet too late! Do, please, do away with this hateful people soon. I will have gone outside the city by the sunrise. Or else, please do away with me... Ah, what a terrible thing am I gibbering out! A slip of tongue again, my Lord! Pardon me, for I am delirious.
“…Did you hear that, my Lord? This man just asked me to make him a priest when I am assigned as the new Chief Priest. Their repentance is a mere makeshift. …Oh, but only the ones who first repented and walked with me saying the words I could no longer utter are truthful ones…and that young eunuch. But where are they now? If I saw them joyous, even I might have been able to share their joy and be happy and... Can it be that they were...your…?”
Then he saw a row of slaves pass by on the dark side of the street. They moved like ghosts, not at all influenced by the joyous atmosphere of the people. And he saw a cross in the rearmost of the row. And as it approached he found, to his great fright, that it was the Ethiopian eunuch bearing on his shoulders a wooden yoke to which his hands were tied. He was staggering and his half naked body showed that he had received many floggings.
"Oh my God, why?! Why did you allow this? What’s the point? Do you have to put him through this tribulation? Did he try to escape from you like I did? He is an innocent man – as innocent as a lamb. He is so skinny he cannot survive this. If you will let him die, then please do so by executing your judgement - by annihilating all the mortals in Nineveh!”
Jonah tried to get off the donkey, but was stopped by the herald, who had been drawing the donkey. Then, he heard a voice of God: "Jonah, is your anger just?"
"…My Lord, …maybe not.” Jonah replied, quivering his voiceless lips. “But my anger is beyond my control. It’s beyond just or unjust to me. After all, I cannot forgive the Ninevites who were the deaths of my father and mother…and my sibling whom I never see. And I am well aware that as a servant of Yours this is the greatest of all my misfortunes."
[Verses 5 - 11, Chapter 4, Book of Jonah, follow]:
Thereafter, Jonah went outside the city, to the east thereof, and rested. He then set up a shelter to live in. He sat in its half shade and waited to see how the city would be dealt with.
Then, Lord God created a gourd, which quickly climbed the shelter and whose green leaves provided a pleasant shadow over him, to the greatest jubilance of the prophet.
But at dawn the next day God had a worm chew all the leaves off the gourd so that it became leafless.
At sunrise God brought forth a scorching wind from the east. The sun shot Jonah's head till he grew nearly faint. He felt so wretched that he wished he were dead, and whined to God, "I would be better off dead than alive."
But God said to Jonah, "Do you really want to be dead because of your anger about the gourd?"
"I do," said Jonah. "I am so angry that I can die!"
Then, God said, "What a moving thing it is for you to mortally miss a gourd which you did not even plant or grow, but grew up on its own over a night and withered over the next! If so, indeed you should be able to appreciate at least a modicum of my feeling! Look at the huge city of Nineveh. There are no less than a hundred and twenty thousand people living here who cannot even tell right from wrong, and there are a huge number of cattle, too. Would I make myself a laughing stock if I, the creator of them all, cherish them sometimes?”
The End
p.s. “It was not to judge the world that God sent his Son into the world, but that through him the world might be saved.” John 3:17
For Japanese version, please view（日本語版は下記にて掲載しています）：
https://ncode.syosetu.com/n0920gj/
For a version based on Qur'an “Adventures of Yunus, a Prophet of Allah,” please go to:
amazon.com/author/nagamitz-kazuhiro
