246 Ph. Guillaume to repent (19), being moved to tears over a mere plant as you were. I will not shed a tear when Nineveh is destroyed! Therefore, there is not a single rhetorical question in Jonah 4 to support reading its last verse as a rhetorical question in disguise. Reading a question where the context does not support it suggests that the interrogative rendering of Jon 4,11 is pure dogma. 2. Jonah 4,11 and the Overall Meaning of Jonah George Landes recognizes that the understanding of Jon 4,11 as a rhetorical question leaves many problems unresolved though he is not ready to embrace the affirmative reading which in his opinion offers “intriguing though not ultimately satisfying possibilities” (20). There is a growing awareness that the end of Jonah must make a point other than simply stating divine mercy since in Jon 4,2 Jonah is all too aware that God is merciful and repents of evil (21). Although he maintains that “the plot of Jonah collapses without the salvation of Nineveh” (22), Ehud Ben Zvi insists that the post- exilic readership of Jonah was influenced by the eventual destruction of Nineveh. The knowledge of the destruction constitutes a double ending which provides a more sophisticated discourse (23). Knowledge of the destruction of Nineveh is essential to the plot. Repentance is important but is not everything. God is merciful and just (24). “From this perspective, Jonah was absolutely wrong in imagining JHWH as a deity who cannot be expected to carry out a massive destruction of human (and animal) life” (25). Despite its support for the final rhetorical question, Ben Zvi’s detailed study supports the affirmative reading. The question is where the destruction is located, only in the reader’s awareness or it is already stated in Jon 4,11? The straight-forward reading of the end of Jonah solves several contentious points within the book. (19) See R.W.L. MOBERLY, “‘God is not Human that He Should Repent’ (Numbers 23:19 and 1 Samuel 15:29”, God in the Fray (eds. T. Linafelt – T.K. Beal) (Minneapolis 1998) 112-123. (20) LANDES, “Dissonances”, 291. Also KAMP, Inner Worlds, 109, once in the entire book notes that the last verse “opens up a sub-world in which he [JHWH] is not concerned with Nineveh’s people and animals”. Already T.E. FRETHEIM, “Jonah and Theodicy”, ZAW 90 (1978) 231 demonstrated the difficulties of the interpretation of the end of Jonah as implying an ‘oughtness’ or inevitability of God’s pitying action. (21) “The herd of brutish Ninevites and live cattle in the last verse requires a more ‘beefy’ interpretation”: Y. SHERWOOD, A Biblical Text and its Afterlives (Cambridge 2000) 270. (22) BEN ZVI, Signs, 14. (23) BEN ZVI, Signs, 28. “The logic of the narrative leads readers to an understanding of the question at the end of the book as a rhetorical question, in which case the communicative message of the text is that surely YHWH will never destroy the city for the deity will have pity on so many people who do not know their right from their left. But when the readers approach the text with the knowledge that YHWH did destroy the city, then the readers might approach the words of YHWH as meaning, “I will not have pity”. In sum, the readers are left with two endings of the book, according to one YHWH will not destroy the city, even if it is sinful, because he will have pity on the multitude of people who do not know their right from their left, but according to the other YHWH is certainly capable and has actually done so, and more than once” E. BEN ZVI, personal communication. (24) BEN ZVI, Signs, 27. (25) BEN ZVI, Signs, 21.