And he (the King) had the word cried through Nineveh: "By decree of the
king and his nobles: Every man and beast - of flock or herd - shall not
taste anything. They shall not graze, and shall not drink water. Let them
be covered with sackcloth - man and beast, and call mightily to G-d (3:7-
9).
This public penance that joined together man and animal is quite
extraordinary for "if man sinned, animal how did it sin (Yoma 22b)?" We do
not usually think of animals as sentient beings that can sin, do penance,
or repent. What's more, animals' participation in the drama of sin,
punishment and repentance recurs in Hashem's final response to Yonah,
"And HaShem said: 'Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for which thou hast
not laboured, neither madest it grow, which came up in a night, and
perished in a night; and should not I have pity on Nineveh, that great
city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern
between their right hand and their left hand, and also much cattle (4,10-
11)?'
What is the significance of animals and humans sharing the stage.
The drawing together of man and beast before the divine decree of
destruction is not without a parallel elsewhere in Scriptures. We find,
for example, that "all flesh corrupted its way upon the earth (Genesis
6,12); accordingly, "I shall wipe the man who I created from the face of
the earth, from man to beast to crawling animal to bird of heaven (ibid
6,7). Similarly, both man and beast were preserved in Noah's ark - "G-d
remembered Noah and all the beast and all the cattle with him in the ark
(ibid 8,1)." In a certain manner it reflects the fact that when natural
disaster strikes a land, both man and animals share the same fate (Hosea
4,3); when a conqueror ravages a country, human and non-human inhabitants
suffer (Yirmiah 27,6). The bellowing of animals is seen as a kind of
prayer; hence, "the beast of the field cries out to you, watercress is
dried out (Yoel 1,20). It is, perhaps in that light that one may interpret
the covering of animals with sackcloth.
There was, of course, a degree of Assyrian cruelty in this maneuver, for
the truth is that animals do not sin and it is not proper to cause them
undeserved suffering. Instead of turning away from their abusive ways, the
people of Nineveh intensified their oppression of others, in this case,
their dependent cattle and beasts of burden. The Sages said: "The
repentance of Ninevites was fraudulent. What did they do? They put calves
on the inside and their mothers outside; foals on the inside and their
mothers outside. These ones bellowed from the inside and the others from
outside. They said: If You do not have mercy upon us, we will not have
mercy on them (J. Ta'anis 2,1)." Like little children, they threatened G-d
with the prospect of hurting His other creatures if He dares not let them
go.
A different perspective may be derived from the following verse and its
Rabbinic interpretation. "Man and beast deliver, O L-rd (Psalms 36,7)."
These are humans who are intelligent but make themselves be like an animal
(Chullin 5b).
I had recently come across comments of Mordechai Beck, an artist who
illustrated the book of Yonah (exhibition of "Maftir Yonah" was mounted at
Yeshiva University in 1993/94). One should never dismiss the words of
artists for, with their hearts, they can sometimes read and see better
than us, regular folk. This individual has assiduously applied himself to
understanding the book of Yonah and this is what he wrote:
"Apart from its size, Nineveh is characterized by its moral waywardness.
Its half-animal, half-human inhabitants are both highly civilized yet
simultaneously alienated from their psychic sources. They have, under the
influence of Jonah, turned to God. But just as easily they could have
turned to a stranger advocating some political ideology. These people lack
a basic sense of direction, "knowing neither left from right" … The
parallels between the Jonah story and our contemporary dilemmas are so
strong that during the three years I worked on this project I came to
sense that, to a generation which is searching for both independence and
meaning, the Book of Jonah is as relevant as was the Book of Job to the
generation that passed, in reality or vicariously, through the traumas of
the Holocaust. … we, the viewers, have become Jonah. We can flee or we can
stay. Emerging from the belly of the fish into the light of day, we are
forced to realize that the land of Tarshish is reached - if ever - only
through the gates of Nineveh."
