On Titles and Jonah

Sunset

Jonah 4:2-4

He prayed to the LORD, “Isn’t this what I said, LORD, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”

But the LORD replied, “Is it right for you to be angry?”

And vine

Jonah 4:6

Then the LORD God provided a leafy plant and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the plant.

The LORD responds to Jonah- I'm imagining this happened as the sun goes down, if only for cinematic effect. The LORD God- on the topic of titles again- then is credited with making the plant. I am picturing this happening at midnight, a changing of the guard perhaps, in terms of how God interacts with Jonah. This is also reminding me of Balaam, and how strange it always seemed to me that he got different, emotional, responses from God and angels, nearly back to back. I am picturing this like a tipping of God's hand here regarding how God experiences time in relation to ours; an image is forming of running decision trees from the echad state, and then returning to interact again, once the outcome is seen, with a form fitting the discussion as it has evolved.

Jonah 4:7-8

When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, “It would be better for me to die than to live.”

But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?”

“It is,” he said. “And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.”

I will definitely admit to this being my own imagining, and not directly based off a scripture that I can think of, but I picture Elohim as an innocent, like a child in some senses. If this template is applied, this exchange feels quite different, like a misunderstanding in the aftermath of curiosity almost, though granted it is the curiosity of a naturally limitless being.

Regarding the image, I'm picturing God at God's core, beneath the titles, like a beam of light or energy here, bouncing from beginning to end of this timeline (then to echad), before reversing and heading back to the interaction with Jonah, making sure that the causality will make sense from Jonah's perspective when God returns. Regarding titles, at this juncture I'm inclined to think that it is the LORD that returns from the end, based on themes for how I can think of having seen titles used before. I am also now considering again how this is related to God resting on the 7th day and then, from that point on, the LORD God was God's title in Eden. This system cycles back to the beginning, at which point echad is reached again and God, Elohim in this case, returns, from what we would consider the past, returned to moving forward in the timeline. This would allow for final changes to be viewed and then additional steps to be taken from there. I could see how this would make a particular end easier to reach, as you could view remotely what would happen if you used trial and error to get closer to your aim (any number of times, it would seem, through use of dimensional logic), and instead select the next interaction point based on the map that you see. I could also see a timeline looping perpendicularly to ours, such that only a day, perhaps only one second or moment, is experienced here at a time, and then a beginning/end of that timeframe occurs, and echad state is reached so that planning and stitching through time can occur before the next.

As I write of the innocence of my image of Elohim, and the experience of the LORD, based on their directions of time, it feels as though a relationship could be seen that is analogous with pregnancy. Specifically here I am looking at the relationship between God and the LORD God, which is notably a combination of the two other titles used in these verses, which are more often used separately, but in the garden they were combined after The Sabbath, and in Jonah the LORD God creates the plant, and only does that in the entire exchange. This time I saw, in the shadow of my mind's eye, the plant as a kind of bursting from the earth that could not be contained within God, due to the joy behind the meaning of this form resurfacing- essentially a reproductive abundance. It feels as though God, Elohim, asking Jonah a question indicates that they too walk together after this interaction, as if Jonah is pregnant in spirit, and the innocence of God observes what Jonah does, and perhaps inquires from time to time, after the events of the book of Jonah is complete. I feel like this is a really hopeful image, in the end, albeit one that I don't feel I have fully done justice. Perhaps it will bloom in its time here, as my brain recompiles the records to analyze my experience with God, separated by title, and provides me with an impression.

"Separating the innocence of God from the search for love is the freedom to mature unburdened. It is this way for the children of mankind, and again for the children of God. It allows the search for more, only revealed in the light that love can produce, in these complex spaces now filled with soil of jubilee fertility. It allows for names to be forged, and disseminated, in a realm that is more kind than this one, because love has been forged, yet its familiarity is retained. This realm is still, still, more wonderful than you have guessed. 1,000 generations promised."