“Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, Arise , go to Nineveh, that great City, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me.” The Bible.

Characters:-

-JONAH: A young man.

-AMITTAI: Jonah’s Father.

(In a kitchen. Early morning. JONAH enters, restless. He walks about. AMITTAI enters, limping, walking with the help of a cane. He stops and looks at JONAH. JONAH does not know AMITTAI is there, until AMITTAI speaks.)

AMITTAI: Jonah.

JONAH: Dad? It’s three in the morning!

AMITTAI: I know. I’m up because I recognize the signs in you.

JONAH: What signs, Dad?

AMITTAI: Our God Jehovah has visited you, has he not? (A long silence.) He visited me before you were born. He wants you to go to Nineveh, that dangerously wicked City, doesn’t he?

JONAH: Yes, Dad. You never told me he visited you.

AMITTAI: I told your Mom, before you were born. Among her last words were that our God would approach you, too, sooner or later. None of our Elders knows why that Ancient foreign City of Nineveh has such a strong fascination over our God Jehovah. There is not even one synagogue to him there. And, lately, to be safe walking on a road outside, nobody dares be unarmed.

JONAH: I don’t get it, Dad. There’s nothing special about us. Like most persons in this village, we struggle to make a decent living. Unlike most persons we are far from exemplary in our worship of Jehovah.

AMITTAI: There are two mysteries before that one, Son. Why does God bother with humans when he has Angels he can send to Nineveh? And, second, why does every human that Jehovah God condescends to speak to face-to-face, end up badly: Moses, Samuel, King David, Balaam, Jephthah, Solomon?

JONAH: Dad, you’re saying I’m on the right track for not caring to accept God’s offer I go to Nineveh?

AMITTAI: Yes, Son, you’re on the right track, but that won’t help you if God decides you are the one.

(A spot light focuses on AMITTAI while the rest of the stage and JONAH go dark. AMITTAI addresses the audience.)

It did not help Moses. When God told Moses to go back to Egypt, Moses asked God to send Aaron instead. God got his revenge on Moses eventually by making sure Moses did not enter the Promised Land which God had specifically promised Moses at the beginning: “I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt unto a land flowing with milk and honey.” Even worse, God has made sure that nobody knows where the grave of Moses is! Jehovah God made certain that Moses, in death, was never accorded even the simplest rituals of dignity of having family at his bedside during his last moments of life. Jehovah God insensitively and deliberately cruelly stood by to make certain Moses died lonely and alone, despite the praise some people accord Moses posthumously that, “There arose not a prophet since like unto Moses whom the Lord knew face to face.” (A silence of a few seconds.) Jehovah God did not speak face to face with Eli the High Priest. Nonetheless, after forty years of serving Jehovah God faithfully and flawlessly, Jehovah God let Eli die in indignity ‘by falling off his seat backward by the side of the gate and braking his neck, for he was an old man and heavy.’ (Silence for a few seconds.) Jehovah God treated Samuel worse than he treated faithful Moses and Eli. From when Samuel was a child, Jehovah God spoke face to face with Samuel. Samuel served Jehovah God flawlessly for over forty years, Jehovah’s longest serving High Priest ever. And yet, after Samuel died, Jehovah God condemned Samuel’s everlasting Spirit to an everlasting fate more undignified than that of Moses and Eli: “And Samuel died. And King Saul said unto his servants, Seek me a woman witch that hath a familiar spirit that I may go to her. Then said the woman witch to Saul, Whom shall I bring up to thee? And King Saul said, Bring me up Samuel. And dead Samuel’s familiar everlasting spirit that was conjured up in the woman witch’s cauldron, said to King Saul, Why hast thou disquieted me to bring me up?

(Silence for a few seconds as the stage lights come up on the whole stage and on JONAH.)

JONAH: (Softly and worried.) Dad, our whole village has always felt blessed through you because Jehovah God spoke face-to-face with you when he said you had to go to Nineveh. Are you saying, then Dad, that you are destined to end up badly, like all those others?

AMITTAI: I would be saying that had I gone to Nineveh by God’s command. I did not go to Nineveh, Jonah. (They look at each other in silence, a few long seconds.) Your Mom had something to do with that. We were in the middle of preparing to get married when Jehovah ordered me to go preach to sinners in Nineveh. Your Mom was a teacher of the science of electricity at the University of Joppa. She came up with a plan. It worked. Lightning struck. I could not go to Nineveh. Jehovah God was none the wiser about your Mom’s interfering role.

JONAH: Mom’s role?

AMITTAI: Mom’s dead a long while, Jonah. She cannot be hurt. I am the only one left who knows her role, and I am willing to suffer to no end for that secret to die with me. However, I will give you an account of what happened. I was hurrying walking home alone one day during a thunder storm. I was carrying a parcel Mom had asked me to pick up from the hardware shop for her which she had bought earlier on that day. Lightning struck me and a tree. Broke my leg. God let me off the hook; Mom and I got married right away. I never went to Nineveh. God never again asked me to go to Nineveh, because my blood that spilled all over me had tainted me against being chosen by Jehovah to be his messenger. Mom planted a branch of that tree in our back yard. We, secretly, worshipped that tree.

JONAH: God could have restored your leg immediately, Dad, and still sent you.

AMITTAI: He could have. Another mystery is why did God not protect me from that lightning strike? Mom said it was because Jehovah God did not care to interfere in the natural order of things. Had he suspected a woman had interfered, he would have intervened in anger. In Jehovah’s realty, women play no significant role. He carefully and deliberately planned Eden’s first woman to be inferior to Eden’s first man.

JONAH: Dad, I’m a long way from marrying, but I, too, do not want to go to Nineveh.

AMITTAI: (Mischievously.) You could try standing next to Mom’s tree in our backyard and hope lightning will come to our rescue, again, Jonah.

JONAH: Unfortunately, Dad, lightning never strikes a place twice.

AMITTAI: Mom was a scientist, Jonah. To her, that was merely folklore. The higher definitely pure scientific fact she would cite is that in the infinite universe, whatever happens once, will definitely happen again.

JONAH: Good, Dad. Let’s go sit under that tree in the backyard, Dad. 

(Outside, a rooster crows. Both exit, smiling mischievously.)