Imaginary dialogue between Ésaïe (Isaïe) and Jonas
by Charactorium · Jonas (822 av. J.-C. — 719 av. J.-C.) · Mythology · 6 min read
On a hill in Gath-Hepher, in Galilee, Isaiah meets the old Jonah in this year 745 BC. The wind carries the scent of the open sea, and the prophet of Israel, returned from Nineveh for years now, is pruning a fig tree in the courtyard of his stone house. Both men bear the same burden—the word of the Lord on their lips—but Isaiah, younger and born in Judah, has never left his land nor known such a journey. He has come, his heart full of questions, to listen to the one whom God sent to the enemy.
—Jonah, you who heard the call as I hear it now, tell me: why did you go down to Joppa to set sail, instead of marching eastward?
You know this weight, Isaiah, since the Lord has seized you as well. His word came to me clearly: arise, go to Nineveh. And I did the opposite. I went down to the sea, found a Phoenician ship bound for Tarshish, paid my fare, and went down into the hold. I wanted to put the entire sea between His voice and me. You will ask me why a prophet flees his Master—I myself did not yet know. I thought one could distance oneself from Him as one distances oneself from a city. I did not know that the whole sea was in His hand, and that the ship carrying me was only delivering me more surely to Him.
I wanted to put the entire sea between His voice and me.
—And when the storm rose on the waves, did the sailors accuse you? How did you know the sea swelled because of your flight?
The storm was such that the ship threatened to break apart. The sailors each cried to their god and threw the cargo overboard, while I slept in the hold. The captain came and shook me. They cast lots to find out who caused this calamity, and the lot fell on me. I did not lie, Isaiah: I told them who I was, a Hebrew, a servant of the Lord who made the sea and the dry land, and that I was fleeing from His presence. Then I asked them to throw me into the water. They hesitated, these pagans, they rowed with all their might to reach the shore. But the sea did not calm. When they finally threw me in, the flood immediately subsided, and these men feared my God more than I had feared Him myself.
These pagans feared my God more than I had feared Him myself.
—Throughout Israel it is told that you were swallowed by a great fish. You who lived it, what did you experience in those depths, my elder?
People say a whale, a monster, a Leviathan—but the text says only one thing: the Lord provided a great fish, a dag gadol, to swallow me. I went down to the roots of the mountains, the seaweed wrapped around my head, the water enveloped me to my soul. It was the pit, Isaiah, the abode of the dead. And there, in that dark belly, I did what I had not done on the deck: I prayed. From the depths of distress I cried to Him, and He heard me. Understand this well, you who bear His word: it was not the fish that saved me, but my prayer rediscovered in the depths. The belly of the beast was my house of prayer when the open sea had been my flight.
The belly of the beast was my house of prayer.
—Three days and three nights, it is said, before the fish vomited you onto the shore. How did you understand what God wanted to teach you through this ordeal?
Three days and three nights, yes, like a man laid in the tomb and coming out alive. When the fish vomited me onto dry land, I was another than the one who had paid his fare at Joppa. The word of the Lord came to me a second time, exactly the same: arise, go to Nineveh. See the patience of my Master, Isaiah: He did not replace me with a more docile prophet. He fished me out of the depths of the abyss to give me again the mission I had refused. I learned this in the fish: one does not evade a call, one only delays the hour and makes the path harder. This time, I arose and went eastward without arguing.
He did not replace me with a more docile prophet; He fished me out of the abyss.
—Here is what troubles me: we prophesy to Israel and Judah. Why did the Lord send you to Nineveh, capital of Assyria, which hates us?
That is precisely what revolted me, and you put your finger on my wound. Nineveh, the great Assyrian city, the enemy that dreams of swallowing our kingdoms as the fish swallowed me. What prophet of Israel has ever been sent to cry out outside his land, among the pagan? We speak to our people, you in Judah, I in Galilee. And then the Master orders me to go warn those whose armies threaten our walls. I walked toward that immense city with its vast walls, my heart heavy. Understand, Isaiah: I was not fleeing only out of cowardice. I fled because I feared that my God was not only the God of Israel—that He also cared about the lives of our enemies. And that thought was unbearable to me.
I feared that my God was not only the God of Israel.
—And what did you proclaim in that immense city? It is said that only a few words were enough to shake an entire capital.
Few words, indeed—eight in our language. I walked one day into the city and cried: yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. Nothing more. No promise, no expressed condition, not even the name of the Lord. I cast my threat and fell silent. You know, Isaiah, how many words we use to bend our kings who close their ears. I had said almost nothing, and the city trembled. Truly, I think I wanted my message to be brief and dry, to fall like an irrevocable sentence. I did not desire their salvation. I wanted to see fire fall upon them. But God uses even prophets who preach reluctantly.
I cast my threat and fell silent. I did not desire their salvation.
—And the people listened to you? Among us, kings stone prophets. What did the people of Nineveh do in response to your word?
What I feared happened. The people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least. The king himself came down from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. He proclaimed that men and even beasts should be covered with sackcloth and cry out to God. Imagine, Isaiah: an entire pagan city in penitence, while our people, who know the Covenant, remain deaf to our warnings. Eight words sufficed where our long prophecies fail at home. And God, seeing that they turned from their evil way, relented from the disaster He had said He would bring upon them. He did not do it. The city was spared.
An entire pagan city in penitence, while our people remain deaf.
—That is a success any prophet would dream of. Yet it is whispered that you became angry after this. How can you be angry at such forgiveness?
You ask the question any sensible person would ask, and yet my anger was great and bitter. When God spared Nineveh, I was deeply irritated. I told Him to His face: was this not my word when I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish. For I knew that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. I knew it! I would rather die than live. Understand me, Isaiah: I had announced destruction, and destruction did not come. How did I look? But above all, my heart could not accept that the enemy of my people should receive the same grace as we. My anger was not that of a disappointed prophet. It was that of a man jealous of his God's forgiveness.
It was the anger of a man jealous of his God's forgiveness.
—And how did the Lord respond to your anger, my elder? Did He rebuke you, or did He teach you otherwise?
He did not strike me down. He taught me as one teaches a stubborn child. I had gone out of the city, to the east, to see what would become of it—I still hoped for fire, no doubt. God made a castor oil plant grow over me to shade my head, and I was greatly glad. Then, at dawn, He sent a worm that attacked the plant: it withered. The sun and a scorching wind struck me, and again I asked to die. Then He said to me: you are concerned about this plant that grew in a night and perished in a night, which you neither planted nor made grow—and should I not have pity on Nineveh, that great city where there are more than one hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and also many animals? There, Isaiah, He fell silent. And the question remained hanging, unanswered—it is mine to bear.
You are concerned about this plant you did not plant—and should I not have pity on Nineveh?
—So you returned changed. You who carried His word to the enemy, what would you say to a young prophet who has known only his own land?
I would tell you this, and keep it well: do not think to confine the Lord within the borders of Israel. I wanted to reduce Him to the God of my own people alone, and He sent me to the walls of Nineveh to show me that He also rules over those we call our enemies. His word has no port where it cannot land. I fled by sea, I prayed in the abyss, I preached reluctantly, I became angry at His pity—and at every step He was greater than my resistance. You who will speak long after my voice has fallen silent, do not forget that the mercy of our God always overflows our calculations. It is the hardest lesson I received, and the most liberating. Bear it better than I did.
Do not think to confine the Lord within the borders of Israel.
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This imaginary interview was generated by artificial intelligence from sources documented in Jonas's profile. It dramatises what the figure might have said based on what we know about them, but does not constitute attested historical testimony. For primary sources and factual documentation, refer to the full profile.