Messianic Politics (iii c):Jonah and Justice

On the matter of distinguishing between law and justice, and partially in response to the questions from Steve and Doug, we can look, in more detail, at Scholem's, “On Jonah and Justice”(1919).

Scholem’s very interesting – perhaps even idiosyncratic – reading of Jonah leads him to some striking conclusions on law and justice. He explains that the seemingly exceptional character of the book of Jonah among the prophetic books – its reluctant prophet, its conspicuous lack of prophecy (a single line, Jonah 3.4) – point to its status as a book not primarily of prophecy, but about prophecy: God teaches the prophet what justice is. Justice, on Scholem’s reading of this divine lesson, is precisely the deferment that I mentioned in the earlier post, but in this case, instead of the deferment between commandment and judgment – which, now that I come back to it, is better said to be a constitutive difference, not a provisional or temporal gap – it is the one between judgment and execution.

Scholem pursues the issue of law and justice in Jonah in terms of the two conflicting ways of interpreting the only properly prophetic speech of the book: "Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be [lit. “is being”] overthrown!" (3.4b). Scholem relies upon the literal translation and in this way speaks of Jonah’s interpretation of prophecy as “historiography.” According to the prophecy Ninevah is destroyed – its as though Jonah’s speech is transposed forty days into the future, thus he speaks in the present (participial) tense, as though he were bearing witness to an event under way: Ninevah is being destroyed. (It would be interesting to read Jonah’s “Ninevah is being overthrown” in light of Freud’s take on fantasy in his essay “A Child is Being Beaten” – written, interestingly, in the same year as Scholem’s essay.) Now, according to Jonah, it is simply a matter of history following suit, there is no gap between prophecy and historical fact. For God, on the other hand, prophecy qua prophecy is not historical fact, but warning. The difference between the historiographic and prophetic points of view correspond to the difference between law and justice. As Scholem claims,

Jonah takes the standpoint of the law, and from this side he is indeed in the right; God takes that of justice; God denies the (mythical) law in history. In the act of repentance, the law is overcome and the judgment is not carried out.(On this, compare Psalm 94:14-15, particularly the interconnection of the two verses.) This, and nothing else, is the meaning of justice in the deepest sense: that judgment is allowed, but the execution of it remains something tirely different. The unequivocal connection of the judge's decision to the executive power--a connection that defines the actual order of law--is suspended by the deferment on the part of the executive power. This is what God does with Nineveh. The conclusion of 4:10--he had passed a sentence in order to carry it out, and he did not (yet) do it--is a classic statement of the idea of justice. Where the court pronounces a verdict, justice raises a question. As Daniel says:"In the counsel of the guardians a decree and in the verdict of the holy ones a question"—this is justice (357).

A few of points on this to conclude: (1) justice is not constitutively different from law, but an adjustment of it. Justice, in Scholem’s telling is a disruption of the continuity of law, which is the necessary connection between judgment and execution. Without this connection law is toothless, impotent. Thus, Scholem says, “Justice and the law complement each other and coincide.” Justice relies upon the logic of law – as the continuity between judgment and execution – insofar as it is defined as the disruption of this logic and the breaking of this continuity, as “deferment.” (2) Justice is fundamentally a theological (perhaps, “Jewish”) concept. This is not to say that it harbours no historical or profane exigency –Scholem highlights this exigency when he says that “Justice is the idea of the historical annihilation of divine judgment, and just is that deed which neutralizes divine judgment upon it.” In this way Scholem’s justice, much like Benjamin’s divine violence, is opposed to and resists fate. (3) Justice is associated with the question, law with an answer. The question, as opposed to the verdict, is something like a Benjaminian “unalloyed means.” Subtracted from its relation with an answer, it is a means without and end or a mediality.

The question is an unending cycle; the symbol of this infinitude, in which the possibility of an empirical end is given, is the rhetorical question. This ("Jewish") question can be justly characterized as medial; it knows no answer,which means its answer must in essence be another question; in the innermost basis of Judaism the concept of an answer does not exist (356).