Thanks, Brian. I very much enjoyed reading your OP. I noted that the vine would be a clear reference to Israel as well.
Jonah is great teaching story. It's concise. It combines memorable fantastic images with a credible main character. It draws on powerful archetypes. It falls into a satisfying ABA form with Jonah's prayer in the whale's belly representing the centre.
If the book of Jonah dates from during or just after the Assyrian period, its author and audience would have been keenly aware of two things:
1. Assyria was a grave threat to the very survival of Israel, and every other country and people with in its reach.
2. The events of the story are obviously fantastic.
The taxon of the sea beastie is a modern obsession. The giveaway for ancient listeners that this was a symbolic story would be the fantastic depiction of Nineveh. The real capital city of Assyria was no place to indulge itinerant foreign preachers or national self-doubt. The events described just wouldn't happen. (See Nahum for a more realistic treatment of Nineveh.)
The Assyrians sought not just conquest, but terrorizing and humiliation of every nation around them. Their armies tortured prisoners in cruelly inventive ways and displayed the bodies on roadsides. In real life, no Israelite could sanely entertain the notion of heading straight for the Assyrian capital and accusing its people in a public square. That would be asking for someone to cut out your tongue, put a chain link through your cheek, and fasten you to a millstone to live out the rest of your days as a slave.
Clearly, the teller of the story knew this and expected audiences to know.
Of course the main character flees to the opposite end of the world.
Of course the main character resents God letting these people off the hook. Try telling a story to an orthodox Jew or an American Baptist about the happy day Osama Bin Laden converts. How many smiles will you see?
The moral of the story is plainly stated at the end. Get over your provincialism and self-absorption. The source of all life is more than just a totem of one nation or clan. All human beings count.
But stating it just validates what you say in your OP about the power of story. Saying 'All human beings count' is easy. It's a platitude. But a story invites listeners to do more than merely repeat what they believe. It invites them to decide what they would do. Its symbols walk them through reality.
Reality: not every human being
asks for your tolerance. Not every human being intends to tolerate you or anyone you love. Now what?
____
Edited by Archer Opterix, : brev.