Jonah defended the honor of the child (Israel) rather than the honor of the Father (God) (Mechilta, Pesikta 28).
He entered the mouth of the fish like a man entering a large synagogue, and he was able to stand up. The two eyes of the fish were like clear windows which gave light to Jonah and enabled him to see all that was in the ocean’s depths... (Pirke d’Rabbi Eliezer 10).

“And the Lord prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah” (Jonah 2:1). This is the verse Father Mapple employs as the text of his sermon to the ill-fated shipmates of the Pequod. Father Mapple, assisted by Herman Melville, is a brilliant if fearsome expositor. He recognizes the great complexity and anguish simmering within Jonah, this most reluctant of all Israel’s typically reluctant prophets, who, faced with delivering a message of repentance to Israel’s enemy, the Ninevites, flees instead, taking a ship to the foreign port of Tarshish.
The Lord can be abandoned, but not in the case of a prophet. The Almighty is used to recalcitrance - indeed, it seems a salient characteristic of his “chosen” instruments of the Word. Yet Jonah goes too far. Or does he? In a stunning midrashic “re-creation” of the narrative, Jonah is seen as Israel’s defender, rather than as a coward who avoids his mission. This is less extraordinary than it first appears. Israel’s prophets, beginning with Abraham, received righteousness “points” for coming to the aid of the nation. Defending the “son” against the “Father” was always an acceptable modus operandi in an argument with the Heavenly Court.
But first, Jonah needs time to cool off. Dunked in the ocean by his rightfully fearful co-mariners, he is swallowed, “belly-up,” by the underwater Leviathan for three days and three nights. The rabbis perceive the fish’s enormous inner chamber as a ‘synagogue’ in which Jonah internalizes the purpose of his mission.
Eventually, the Ninevites do repent, but Jonah, faithful to his people despite their frowardness, is inconsolable. Building a succah on the east side of the city, wretched and sweltering under a relentless sun, he curses his existence. The Lord prepares a gourd to give Jonah shade, and then causes it to wither in the heat. As Jonah writhes in misery, He asks the prophet the extent of his anger. Jonah replies unhesitatingly: “I am greatly angry, even unto death.” Whereupon God rejoins: “Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for which thou hast not labored ... 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?” (Jonah 4:9-11)
It was a rhetorical question. But Jonah would have been wise to take it personally because, like the Ninevites, he was having considerable trouble telling his “right hand from the left.”