Jonah 3:10–4:11
Today’s (late and abbreviated) Abolition Lectionary points us to the prophet Jonah. This excellent post by Rabbi Dr. Liz Shayne points out the possibilities of reading Jonah as neurodivergent, and in particular how that sheds light on his particularly dogged devotion to justice.
I love the idea of Jonah’s anger with God, at the end of the book, being a form of his insistence upon justice. Shayne concludes that God’s commitment to justice and God’s duty of care for the citizens of Nineveh are in tension at the end of the text; that God does not bring consequences upon Nineveh (as Jonah, according to Shayne, rightly calls justice) because of God’s commitment to care.
I wonder if we can see in that tension God’s gently changing Jonah’s notion of what justice is, as well. With abolitionist eyes, we can insist on the necessity of disentangling accountability from punishment, and of looking for forms of accountability which begin from a place of care and healing. I might go further than Rabbi Shayne’s conclusion to suggest that God is presenting to Jonah a different form of justice to be as fiercely committed to: a justice that relies on “reciprocal care” rather than punishment or consequences; a justice that provokes change in ways that do not necessarily satisfy our punitive impulses. In any case, Jonah’s commitment to justice helps reflect God’s own such commitment.
Hannah Bowman is the founder and director of Christians for the Abolition of Prisons.