The Lord's question in Jonah 4:11 remains unanswered and ambiguous. Jonah does not reply. This leaves the reader wondering what the Lord's message was. This article proposes that the Lord's rhetorical question in Jonah 4:11 may imply Jonah's mission. This article will offer a new perspective to the literary reading of the book of Jonah by using Mary Douglas' "Ring Composition" format, which is a kind of chiasmus. The chiasmus is usually applied to short pieces of writing, while Ring Composition is used for much longer texts. It is a construction of parallelism. It opens a theme, develops it, and rounds it off by bringing the conclusion back to the beginning. As a result of this ringformation reading Douglas concludes that "the meaning is in the middle of the text. Since the book of Jonah offers a construction of parallelism, in order to explore the meaning of the Lord's question, this article will consider whether the Book of Jonah is an example of the Ring Composition pattern.
Etsuko Tsutsumi (Thu,) studied this question.