From: Jonah As
Genuine History Return to Home
By Roland H. Worth,
Jr. © 2016
[Chapters In This Part:]
Chapter 4: Challenges about
* The Choice of
* The Size of the City
A.
Language Proverbial for Being a Large / Huge City?
B.
Language Indicating the Duration Required to Preach At Length in Each
Section of the City or At Each Gate?
C.
Language Used Not to Describe the Physical Size of the City but the
Duration Required Due to Jonah’s
Continued Aversion to Being There At
All?
D. Language
Explicitly covering
Surrounding
Dependent Areas?
E.
Language Equivalent to the Administrative District that Was
Headquartered in
F. Language Intended to Convey the Length of Time
to Walk Around the
City’s Walls Rather tham
Through the City Itself?
Chapter 5: Why did
* A Time of Heightened Religious Concern?
* A Time of Distress or Disaster?
* A Time of Self-Generated Religious Enthusiasm
Due to Mass Psychology
or Specific Events?
*
Other Possible Precipitating Encouragements?
* The Role of Jonah’s Own Experience?
* The Role of Jonah’s Message of Reform: Did He Directly Preach It Or Was
It Left Implicit?
* Did the People Become (Temporary or
Permanent) Monotheists Due to
Divine Judgment coming upon the City?
A. The Case Against Them Doing
So
B.
The Case in Favor of Them at Least Temporarily Embracing Monotheism
* Secondary Issues
A.
What Language did the Prophet Preach In?
B.
The Actions of the Animals in the City
[Chapters In Part 3:]
Chapter 6: Internal Evidence
that the Writer “Can’t” Have Been the Biblical Jonah or a Contemporary
* Linguistic Arguments
* The Use of Distancing Rhetoric: The
Use of “Was.”
* The Use of an “Unhistorical” Description of
the Ruler
* The Use of Fasting in Connection with
Repentance
* The Absence of Any Mention of the Journey in
Kings
Chapter 7: Understanding the
Nature of the Book Itself
* Misunderstanding Its Purpose
A.
Missionary Nation Interpretation
B. Recognition of God’s Love for
the Gentiles
C.
Condemnation of Jewish Parochialism as Exclusively God’s People
* Differences Between Jonah and Allegories
* Differences Between Jonah and Parbles
Chapter 8: Assorted Other
Matters
* Intentional Exaggeration Scenario to Explain
the Book
* Too Many Miracles in the Book?
* Was Jonah Dead While in the Whale?
A.
The Dead Scenario
B.
Half Dead by Drowning When Swallowed by the Sea Beast?
C.
Alive Throughout the Time Within the Monstrous Sea Creature?
* Jonah Outside the Book of Jonah (page 30)
[Chapters In Part 1:]
Chapter 1: Jesus on
Jonah: Matthew 12:38-42 and Luke 11:29-32
*
The Parable Hypothesis
* Jesus Used It As Illustrative
Truth Rather Than Historical Proof?
* The Kenosis Doctrine
* The Degree of Literalness
One Attributes to Jesus’ Resurrection Predisposes
How One Thinks About
Jonah’s Literalness
* Did Jesus Fraudulently
“Guilt Trip” His Listeners?
Chapter 2: The Narrative of
the Near Shipwreck Itself
* The Availability of the Ship Itself
* Jonah’s Ability to Sleep through the Severe
Storm
* The Sailors’ “Belief” in the God of
* The Sailors’ “Unlawful” Sacrifice
* Jonah’s Knowledge that the Sacrifice Happened
At All
* 7Jonah’s Attitude Toward the Mariners
Chapter 3: Challenges to the
Credibility of the “Fish” Element of the Story
* On the Meaning of “Fish” in the prophet and
Jesus.
*
Are Their Naturally Occurring “Fish” that Could Have Swallowed Him
Whole? (inc. ‘whale’ section?)
* Was It a Specially Adapted or Even Specially
Created Aquatic Creature?
* Could Jonah Have Survived Under the
Circumstances Described?
* Jonah’s Knowledge of the Duration He Spent in
the Creature
Chapter 4:
Challenges about
Jonah 2: 1 Now the word
of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, 2 “Arise, go
to
in extent. 4 And Jonah
began to enter the city on the first day's walk. Then he cried out and said, “Yet forty days,
and
5
So
the people of
his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd
nor flock, taste anything; do not let them eat, or drink water. 8 But let man
and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily to God; yes, let every
one turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. 9 Who can tell
if God will turn
and relent, and turn away from His fierce anger, so
that we may not perish?
*
The Choice of
It should be noted that Jonah never calls
Indeed there were good reasons why
It should also be noted that there is nothing in the text itself that
clearly puts the king as in
Furthermore, “he caused it
to be proclaimed and published throughout
They are quite convinced that the city is under Divine threat—and the
last thing he wants is for such a massive city to encounter a
disaster—and so he acts to assure that public displays of guilt and remorse be
undertaken in that community and, so far as we know from the text, nowhere
else. He partakes of the display in
so far as sackcloth and ashes to demonstrate his sense of union with and
responsibility for the giant town.
But does he think that this is a nation wide emergency? His actions do not have to bear the
connotation that he thought it was a strictly local matter, but the lack of any
specific action to make the displays of sorrow kingdom wide . . . well that
apparent omission argues for a serious consideration of the silence.
If this reconstruction is valid, then there may have been grounds of
prudence evolved in dictating the choice of city. How a king might react in his own capital
could be the proverbial “role of the dice.”
It could be taken not just as a religious challenge, but as a personal
confrontation that disputes the very legitimacy of his rule.
What happens to a subservient city—even if it is not that far
away--well, if a strange foreign prophet has predicted doom in less than a
month and a half and is calling on that city in particular—and the
kingdom as a whole is conspicuously not mentioned—well that ruler might
well order this kind of public display.
It does no harm. It calms
down the masses of people who might otherwise fly out of hand and require a
bloody and needless military suppression to handle. It’s far easier to exhibit your concern by
sharing in the sackcloth and ashes and making sure that the city does so to its
full extent.
Should he have deduced that what
could happen to
But if even
That they learned this could only be
hoped. That the odds were modest was a “given.” But at least the opportunity was
provided.
* The
Size of the City. The description of the city as a
“three days’ journey in breadth” (3:3) has sparked much discussion. It has been wondered how the actual size of
the city of
Donald F. Ackland
argues that such a town would be “some seventy-five miles across.” No ancient city—including
Taken from this standpoint, the challenge of Jonah’s accuracy is that
it is inherently and historically impossible for any ancient town to credibly
be described as that large.
The other side of the attack on
historicity comes from the fact that we can make a good estimate of the size
from archaeological excavations and that shows that the city is too small
to justify three day language rhetoric:
John D. W. Watts notes that the excavations have uncovered a city about
1-1/2 mile wide by 3 miles long. It
contained about 1,800 across of land.[4] Impressive, true, but nowhere near matching
the language of Jonah.
First the skeptics’
evaluations. The reference to side is
dismissed as myth and the “exaggeration” is introduced as proof that the book
was written many decades after the fall of
Of course contemporaries
might well have exaggerated the size of the city as well. But the mythological exaggeration scenario is
far from the only one available. To
uphold an alternative does not represent some pious attempt to “uphold the text
at any cost” but, rather, an attempt to better understand how real
people could use such an unexpected expression and—to their minds—convey both a
meaningful and accurate sense.
It may not be how you or I would most naturally write a size
description of the city, but we are seeking whether there was a way that
would have made full sense to them.
Furthermore, one that would make sense to us as well once we have
considered their own frame of interpretive reference.
A. Language Proverbial for Being a Large / Huge
City?
George L. Robinson considers the expression to refer to how long
“would be required to visit and see all its principal points of interest.” That may seem a bit strange, but he cites his
own experience to show that even in his day such usage could be found in that
part of the world. “Ask a native of
A variant of this ties in the
largeness of the city with the fact that its streets would have been winding
and slow going. Taken this way, three
days would have been the time required to make one’s way through its crowded, teeming
streets—not some theoretical (and non-existent) time it would take to cross if
they were empty or skimpy filled.[6]
B. Language Indicating the Duration Required to
Preach At Length in Each Section of the City or At Each Gate? Some see in
the language of “three days' journey in breadth” an allusion not to the width
or size of the city, but to how long it would take Jonah to preach his way
through the metropolis. Obviously this would
take much longer than the length of time required to just walk its’
width. Even if it might take only an
hour or two or so to walk through it doing nothing but moving along, it
could still require days to preach sufficiently to have given a cross-section
of the residents at least the opportunity to have heard his words.
C. von Orelli
argued that the city would have been considered by the people themselves as
divided into an unknown number of districts or areas. (Today a city has legislative districts or
self-recognized “neighborhoods” as well—each representing a distinctive “piece”
of the city.) In this approach—and it does
make considerable sense—then the three days represented the length of time
required to preach in each of these sub-communities.[7]
John Walton defines the targeted
preaching locations as more formal ones, ones that would be inherently
important to any ancient city and where de facto and de jure
leaders would mingle, talk, and discuss personal, business, and other local
matters.
Price and Nida,
however, caution that “the Hebrew text speaks of walking across the
breath of the city, and not around it. . . .”[10] As proof they cite 3:4, “and Jonah began to enter the city on the first
day’s walk” (our emphasis). This is an
interesting argument though not incompatible with the gate hypothesis.
How did Jonah get from one gate to another? Did he exit the city and go around the
outside wall each time? Or did he
continue through the city he was already in . . . “entering the city”
and making his way from one gate to another in the quickest feasible manner by
internal streets? Would this
not be an equally responsible way to understand the text? And fully consistent with Price and Nida’s reading of a “continued” presence in the city.
(This is based on the scenario that the gates would provide space for
the “congregating” crowds who used the locations for multiple purposes. People with a little time on their hands and
a place large enough to hold them—prerequisites if he were to say much beyond
the few words “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” [3:4].
(Why would it be? What needed to
be done to avert the tragedy? The gates
provided space to discuss such matters.
And the gates were the places where the people traditionally congregated
to discuss civic and other concerns anyway.)
C. Language Used Not to Describe the Physical
Size of the City but the Duration Required Due to Jonah’s Continued Aversion to
Being There At All?
We certainly know
from chapter four and Jonah’s anger at the city’s change, that he wasn’t all
that thrilled at his own success. Hence
the fact that the city was a three day’s journey for his preaching did not mean
that it, necessarily, was geographically that large. Simply that he made the work take that
long.
Price and Nida
translate 3:4 to mean that Jonah did not deliver his message until the end
of the first day’s walk, a view they reaffirm in their commentary-explanation.[11] If he did, indeed, do that and then left as
early in the afternoon as he could—lest night fall with him still within the
city and its moral taint penetrate him by his very presence—we would have a man
“eating up time” and going through the “required motions” but not with his
heart in it. A man obligated to
preach, but wishing to fail.
The next day he could pass through
the same area into a different one rather than taking a more direct route. Eating up more time with wasted motion. And doing the same thing the third day.
The least he could get away with
and still be obeying the Lord’s command.
Yes, Nineveh is going to be a “three day’s walk”—for a prophet
determined to obey the letter of the Lord’s command and do only the minimum
specifically demanded of him.
We can’t be sure he acted this way,
of course. But doesn’t it perfectly fit
his mind frame both before he went (causing him to be swallowed by the
giant fish) and afterwards (in pouting at the city’s vow to change)? In other words, it took three days to do the
necessary teaching not because of the city’s size, but due to Jonah’s
grim determination to spend no more time and effort than necessary—the place
being such an abomination to him.
Yet even my deep cynicism—fueled by
decades of political study—makes me hesitate to think that he could have been this
befuddled. Even so, I would be less than
candid not to admit that human prejudice and preferences can make a person act
in strange ways at time.
D. Language Explicitly Covering
Officially I live over the city line
in the county. And in
It would have been quite natural for
the people in nearby areas to have considered themselves as “part” of
Donald F. Ackland
first brought this possibility to my mind when he wrote words thoroughly
compatible with this approach but not actually stating it: “it may be that Jonah’s ministry was to a
larger area of which
Phillip Cary, who doesn’t think much of the possibility of the book
being historical, also is willing to grant some leeway on the matter. He speaks of the reference to “a three days’
walk” and how, “This makes for a mighty big city. Yet it is quite literally true of the great
city of
Price and Nida
reject this “suburb” interpretation on the ground that this would still
leave the city too small to require three days to cross. Khorsabad, which
“has the best claim to be considered a ‘suburb’ of
A more meaningful objection to the
“suburb” approach is probably found in making the opposite objection of Price
and Nida: they
argue that Khorsabad is the nearest community that
could be considered a genuine suburb.
But they object that its distance of “only a dozen miles” leaves it too
close to fit the travel time in Jonah.
I would suggest the opposite: it
makes it too far away to be included.
We are talking bout travel time on foot. By modern automobile twelve miles may well be
close; on foot it is a considerable distance!
In other words would any place that far away be considered as
“part” of
E. Language Equivalent to the Administrative
District that Was Headquartered in
Now that surely is adequate
to be a “three day’s journey,” is it not?
To return to our earlier point that all this is being done by foot
travel, don’t we run into the opposite potential problem: that you can cross it in that time—but do you
leave adequate time for any preaching?
Remember Jonah’s success is going to come by his public rebukes and not
by the mere act of physically walking across the region! Does this not push us back toward the earlier
option that the text is talking about how long it takes to “preach one’s way”
across or around Nineveh itself?
F.
Language Intended to Convey the Length of Time to Walk
Around the City’s Walls Rather tham Through the
City Itself? Some ancients
considered that
If the wall were as long as Diodorus Siculus claimed we can,
indeed, see the circuit as a three days’ journey. But assuming that the ancient somehow got the
figure wrong—rather than it being an error in manuscript transmission—that
still leaves us with the question of on what basis did he make his
error?
Now if a broader area was also counted as “
Chapter 5:
Why did
Jonah 3: 4 And Jonah
began to enter the city on the first day's walk. Then he cried out and said,
“Yet forty days, and
6
Then
word came to the king of
10
Then
God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented
from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do
it.
No change.
It didn’t happen. It couldn’t happen.
So we are informed living more than two thousand years later by those
who weren’t there and weren’t even born before more than two millenniums had
passed. But they are intellectuals, they
are scholarly, they are even ordained clergy.
Who are we—the “great unwashed” (to use a term from a earlier generation
to describe the masses)—to challenge the solemn verdict of our “betters.”
Yes, I am being hyperbolic, but is
it all that unjustified? Much of the
annoyance I feel probably arises from their mind frame in which they believe
they can more accurately establish what happened—or did not happen—than
the scripture writers do. Not to mention
Jesus of
Some of this is, of course,
inescapable. If we still argue in
the second decade of the 21st century, what really happened
at
But it can still get exasperating at
times. At least we can take considerable
comfort that efforts such as this will have some of them reaching for an
aspirin. A strong one. They do not have the floor just to
themselves. Both sides can still
be presented. For that we have much to
be thankful.
Having let out a little of my
personal frustration, in which many of my readers likely share, let us examine
the denial that the city repented and some of the explanations for them actually
doing so--attitudes and concerns that made them susceptible to Jonah’s
preaching. W. E. Orchard goes so far as
to insist that “if anything is certain in history it is that the people of
Nineveh never passed through so momentous a moral change as this book depicts.”[20] Presumably asserted because it produced only
a temporary rather that permanent alteration in behavior.
T. T. Perowne
properly points out that this is not the kind of event we would normally
expect to find mentioned or stressed in their records and inscriptions: “Wars and victories and material works
chiefly occupy them. Moral reformation
is foreign to their theme.”[21]
But fear of the future and
considerable respect for the power of predictions of the future is another
matter. And if the price for avoiding calamity
carried the implicit or explicit requirement of a change in behavioral
lifestyle, were they to let the catastrophe roll over them when they had the
option of accepting perhaps an unpleasant, but “doable,” price? (For change is almost never pleasant and
painless.)
And since it ties in with a matter
that doesn’t really fit elsewhere, it should be noted in the current
place: That the king should receive prompt
word of prophecies was considered a prudent measure in that part of the world,[22]
Various Mesopotamian
sources demonstrate that every method foretelling future events — divination,
oracles, and dreams — was fully validated socially, both on popular and
scholarly levels. . . . The faith of the
society in the legitimacy of signs was so strong that their utterance had the
authority of official statements. Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty states that
any improper word heard from the mouth of a prophet,
of an ecstatic, or of an inquirer of oracles should not be concealed from the
king. A prophecy against the king could
thus be interpreted as a plot by the people, as these prophets were seldom
uttering alone, but preferably in public places where
people would hear the prophecy. . . . Some officials
were supposed to report prophecies and signs to the palace.
And when he received word, was the king to
sit there and dismiss it all out of hand?
And here he certainly did have a “sign”—a strange prophet from a
far away land. Presumably preaching that
he had been swallowed by a giant fish rather than come in the first place. And rebuking them for their behavioral
excesses.
He did not have to endanger his
throne by a war. He did not have to
inflict a bloodbath on real or suspected enemies. It was not, basically, going to cost him the
modern proverbial “penny.” All he had to
do was to give public indication of his own sorrow over the condition of his
people and “lean” on the Ninevites to do so as
well.
To repeat ourselves: And he was
going to just sit there and do nothing—in a society that took signs and
prophecy quite seriously? I think not.
Furthermore sometimes things just happen—sometimes seriously weird
things. Even in our society of the 21st
century. Hundreds or a few thousands
through their modern electronic communication gadgets flock to a certain place
and proceed to do X—fill in the blank.
Anything from dancing to ongoing major political demonstrations.
As a historian, these things are annoying. We seek out clear-cut cause and effect and
when things “just happen” we want to pull our hair out. It “violates the rules.” But that doesn’t change the reality.
In the past also, if you hit the right combination of fear, concern,
guilt, charisma—strange cultural and religious events could occur also. Not as a regular pattern, but they still
happened upon occasion.
Want cultural ones? How about
the July 1518 dance craze that plagued Strasbourg where large numbers danced
for days on end—some literally till they died of heart attack or
exhaustion. The phenomena occasionally
popped up from the 600s to the 1600s.
Cause? Your guess is probably as
good as anyone’s.
Radical religious changes are more easily diagnosed as to cause—after
they have happened! Guilt over behavior,
catastrophes of one type or another in the surrounding world (disease, war,
fear of war, etc.), encouragement by some charismatic figure or another.
An illustration of how massively a people will at least temporarily support
a religious innovation can be demonstrated through a religious fraud of the
Middle Ages who was named Nicole Tavernier.
In the 1590s she claimed to have seen visions and to be miraculously
ordained by God to carry a message of repentance to the people. (At least her illusions of self-importance
did not blind her to the weaknesses of existing society!)
Jean Helle provides this fascinating account
of how she pulled off at least a public embracal of
her goals,[23]
From town to town,
organizing a religious demonstration in every little hamlet, Nicole gradually
made her way to
Nicole took no heed of
the townsfolk but went straight to the archbishop. She told him that death was hanging over him
and that he would die before three months were out if he did not hear her and
do as she told him.
He listened to the
conditions she laid down: a general
public procession around Notre Dame by the clergy and following them in order, members
of Parliament, of the law courts, the army, merchants, craftsmen,
laborers. The prelate complied with
her request, and on his recommendation a public holiday was proclaimed for the
procession to take place.
It must be admitted that
to arrive in Paris without friends, support, or protection of any kind,
preceded only by a somewhat doubtful reputation for sanctity and without more
ado to bring ordinary life in the capital to a standstill, to make the clergy,
the nobility, the commonality carry out her behests, demands even at a time of
crisis very much more than ordinary effrontery.
Nicole Tavernier had brought off a masterly stroke.
Of course none of this “could” have happened. After all—these kinds of things just don’t
happen—except when they do. As in the
case of Jonah, who was not sent by delusion but against his will and by Divine
commission.
* A Time of Heightened Religious Concern? Some have
found the thirty year reign of Adarinari IV (c.
810-782 B.C.) as one during which the right attitudes existed that would
encourage acceptance of a Jonah-type message.
He is said to have urged a monothesistic like
creed. One inscription implored the
people, “Put thy trust in Nebo; trust not another God.”[24]
Merrill F. Unger calls him Adarinari III but provides this same set of dates.[25] Geoffrey T. Bull accepts the same
identification but alters the date by one year to 783 B.C.[26] (Possibly a typographical error by one or the
other authors.)
Unger concurs in Robinson’s
interpretation by saying that under that monarch’s rule “there was an approach
to monotheism in the worship of the god Nabu (Nebo).”[27]
Under such a king, a plea for moral
reform by a monotheistic prophet might well enjoy a special degree of success
that it would not under other circumstances.
John E. Steinmuller
provides this detailed argument for the credibility of such a setting—dating Jonah’s
mission under a successor’s rule:[28]
During the brief rule of
the queen regent Semiramis and her son Ada-Nirari III (810-782), there was an approach to
monotheism under the worship of the God Nebo.
It was during the reign of Assurdan III
(771-754) that the prophet came to the capital of the Assyrians. During his rule there were two plagues, in
765 and 759. In addition to these
plagues there was a
total eclipse of the sun on
All of these catastrophes
or portents were considered as manifestations of the divine wrath. It is little wonder, therefore, that the
Prophet Jonas, even though of foreign origin, could preach the necessity of
repentance and obtain a favorable hearing and an attentive audience.
However is this the time period that Jonah did his work in the
city? George L. Robinson, for example,
upholds the historicity of Jonah’s journey and ministry and finds the theory
interesting but believes the events occurred during the decline in the empire
that set in after this time.[29]
Furthermore, there has been
considerable skepticism cast upon Adar-Nirari’s
alleged monotheistic leanings (note how different sources will vary the
spelling slightly): inscriptions from
his reign repeatedly invoke the names of various Assyrian and Babylonian gods.[30] This raises the question of whether these
come from a different period in the monarch’s rule and whether he was
expressing a temporary spiritual “fetish” or a permanent change of heart.
Not to mention whether he considered this a royal preference and
plea or a royal order. If a
Christian had managed to become emperor in the late first century, would we not
have a similar tension between the emperor’s preferences and the dominant
polytheistic order of the day?
Furthermore we should pay close
attention to the monarch’s order: “7 And
he caused it to be proclaimed
and published throughout Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles,
saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything; do not let
them eat, or drink water. 8 But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and
cry mightily to God; yes, let every one turn from his evil way and from the
violence that is in his hands.”
There are four or five elements
demanded of the people:
(1)
There was to be a period of fasting:
“Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything; do not let
them eat, or drink water” (verse 7).
(2)
Every one and every animal was to “be covered with sackcloth” (verse 8).
(3)
Every one was to pray passionately:
“cry mightily to God” (verse 8).
(4)
Every one was to change their behavior, positively, for the better: “let every one turn from his evil way and
from the violence that is in his hands” (verse 8). This could be sub-divided into two separate
commands: “turn from his evil way” and,
as well, turn “from the violence that is in his hands” (verse 8).
None of these required
monotheism. Indeed, even Jonah is never described in the book nor in the
teaching of Jesus as demanding monotheism.
Prayer did not require belief that the intended Listener is the only
god; it certainly didn’t in the Roman world or to any pagan. To pray to your god didn’t have to
imply that I believed it was the only one to exist.
Nor did my change in behavior require me to believe in only one
god: Has there every been a man or woman
in history so self-centered and blind not to recognize that he/she falls short
of the standards they themselves acknowledge should be followed?
Hold your hat at this point, for this is likely to be startling: In fact the book of Jonah doesn’t
mention repentance as being explicitly demanded. It only has him preaching doom and disaster: “Yet forty days, and
Now the need for repentance is a logical deduction from the
message: If doom is coming what two
alternatives--short of trying to flee, which would be impractical for most--do
you have available? Prayer, a change in
behavior, and outward acts to demonstrate sorrow (the sackcloth and
ashes). In Biblical terms, repentance.
Even though the text of Jonah does
not make it explicit, the New Testament does.
Jesus properly interprets this message as carrying the explicit or
implicit plea for a change in behavior, of repentance: “The men of
Finally we should recognize that the
king’s decree was not issued to the entire kingdom, but specifically and
only to the city being threatened with disaster: “And he caused it to be proclaimed and published throughout Nineveh by
the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd
nor flock, taste anything; do not let them eat, or drink water” (Jonah 3:7). This limitation makes it unlikely that he
embraced a policy like that of Adarinari, pleading
for the recognition of a single God for his entire realm. (And argues against the identification of the
two monarchs as the same?)
Of course one might think—and hope—that such a broader lesson sunk in
afterwards as he recalled what had happened and the disaster that was so
narrowly averted. But of that we really
have no data to work from and, alas, most monarchs tend to be terribly
short-sighted: If the immediate problem
seems resolved there appears no particular reason to return to it.
* A Time of Distress or Disaster? Shalmaneser III (ruled 858-824 B.C.) faced a major revolt
in 827 B.C. The disaffection of several
high officials and much of the lower echelon nobility in the countryside became
even more dangerous as open rebellion broke out in a number of towns. By the time he could crush it, over two dozen
cities had rejected his reign and had to be crushed by force. This required the final years of his reign,
until his death.[31]
If Jonah came to
For that matter, to the extent that the city was responsible for
embracing the unrest, it put the blame exactly where it belonged—in his
eyes. The displays of sorrow and regret
could only help “calm things down.” Thereby
it could help diffuse the tensions and even act as an emotional relief for
feelings that could have been targeted at the monarch.
During the power struggle during his
final years of rule, Shalmaneser stripped his eldest
son of the right to succession and passed the throne to his younger child, who
took over the kingdom under the name of Shamshi-Adad
V (823-811 B.C.). Gaining his position
while still rather young, he was first faced with the grim task of completing
the suppression of the revolt. Perhaps
due to these initial pressures, he soon developed into an effective leader who
was able to restore the prestige of the Assyrian empire after the prolonged
period of bloody internal divisions.[32]
If Jonah had arrived during the
earlier years of Shamshi-Adad’s reign, the tense
situation could well have proceeded along the lines of what we outlined
above. Or the socially tense situation
that had not, yet, exploded could still be a matter of considerable
concern. To put it in blunt self-serving
monarchical terms: a city suffering from
guilt at offending a deity was not likely to be in the mood to lash out at the
current ruler.
But let us assume that this man had
a degree of honest self-judgment and was willing to (privately at least) admit
his own mistakes and weaknesses. There
had been “genuine grievances and injustices which sparked off” the rebellion
which was going on when he gained power.[33]
While he might not be able to publicly admit for political reasons his
mistakes, the public displays of sorrow would permit him to admit moral
guilt without the rebellion itself being specifically in mind. It could function as a way of emotionally purging
himself of the sense of responsibility borne by his father and himself.
If Jonah arrived in the later
years of the reign, the grim memory of those difficult early days would
have remained. Could the people have
avoided worrying that they were about to face yet further danger, this time
from antagonizing a foreign deity? They
might not normally think much of that one way or another but if the societal
framework was shaky . . . with the bulk of the population emotionally “at the
throat” of the rest . . . and one all too able to observe the degradation of
general behavior toward each other—well that introduces a powerful new
factor.
The very fact that a foreign deity would go so far as to send a
messenger to them to change their lives had to be alarming. Guilt combined with legitimate rebuke would
fuel the power of the message from a prophet from a far-off land who had in no
way been involved in any of the political and governing shenanigans that had
perplexed the country.
We are not going to attempt to set a
specific date for Jonah’s preaching mission.
From these specific examples, we are simply trying to demonstrate that
there were multiple times when the political and emotional situation was such
that the people would have been potentially receptive to his message.
We can’t—from secular history—prove that it happened. We can, however, convincingly argue
that the events were within the range of reasonable probability . . . just as
we would want to do with any other contested historical event for which direct
evidence is either limited or non-existent.
* Closely Related to the Previous Option: A Time of Self-Generated Religious Enthusiasm
Due to Mass Psychology or Specific Events? Abrupt mass shifts in public opinion,
practice, or attitude are unusual but not unprecedented. Theodore Laetsch
points to how overcome millions of Americans were by the classic Orson Welles broadcast of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds (October
30, 1938).[34] Pure fiction, yet thousands were ready to
accept it as literal fact in spite of being introduced as a drama and
the inclusion of a commercial break midway through. (Back in those days you could, sometimes,
actually do an hour long program with only the one commercial break!)
Laetsch does not go into the supporting
reasons why it worked out this way, but they aren’t that hard to notice. First of all, it is an absorbing
tale. If you have never heard it, find a
quiet evening one day and find yourself a copy.
In its own strange way it drags you into the story even decades
later.
In other words, on its dramatic and literary merits alone it was high
quality entertainment for its day. And
if you missed the introduction at the program’s beginning or the break in the
middle, it could drag you all too easily into its narrative. The New York Times’ headline of
October 31st was, “Radio Listeners in Panic, Taking War Drama As
Fact / Many Flee Homes to Escape ‘Gas Raid from Mars’ –
The success, though, has more often
been attributed to the tense international situation and continued high
unemployment at home. A year or two
earlier—or later—and perhaps a significant number of
Just as the right set of national,
international, and even personal circumstances combined to create an incredible
emotional reaction, the right combination of internal and external stimuluses have been known to produce a dramatic spiritual
reaction in a given community or town at varied points in western history. (Consider the French 16th century
example we cited at the beginning of this chapter.)
A major earthquake or an eclipse could have created an atmosphere of
tension and fear that Jonah’s message linked up with and amplified into terror
of the future. John Walton notes that
Remember that only a comparatively little has survived of the details
of the ancient world. Enough to inform
you, but all too often not enough to brief you in as much detail as much as
you wish.
Jonah’s preaching could easily have been viewed as confirmation of
these earlier “omens.” Indeed, by
putting a specific time frame (forty days), the fear could easily have
been magnified. After all this was not a
vague “disaster is coming” but “disaster is coming and here’s the date!”
No one can fully answer why the same message can be preached in the
same community for years and it produces no real change either in the church
membership or the surrounding town. Yet
at a different point in time--not many years or decades later--and the converts
coming rolling in just as numerously as they used to seem to be “rolling” in
the opposite direction. Illogical, but
it has happened in the course of religious history repeatedly.
* Other Possible Precipitating Encouragements? Above and
beyond the political context, there
were at least two types of alarming events—one of which could easily have been interpreted by anxious ancient minds as
ominous and at least two cases of another phenomena that unquestionably was ominous in any age.
In the potentially psychologically alarming category
would come eclipses. Assurbanipal, for
example, reacted with great fear to an eclipse, a reaction preserved in the
records of two different ancient astrologers.[36]
Esarhaddon
received a prophecy that his kingship was endangered by a rival. But “Mar-Issar
tells the king he is confident since the apotropaic
rituals (namburbî) were appropriately performed. However, as Mar-Issar
writes, it would be preferable for the king not to go out until the threat
of the eclipse still ensues for 100 days,
and to have a substitute for the king’s cultic duties.”[37] (The
ritual envolved the appointment of a non-functioning
substitute king on whose head all predicted or possible calamities were
supposed to fall.)[38]
Sandstorms and meteors could also be
interpreted as meaning something ominous approaching.[39] And here we have a man reporting he had been
swallowed by a monster fish and had been ordered to warn the city that it would
soon fall. And they were to react to it
calmly and reject it out of hand? Hmmm.
As to ancient eclipses one is
recorded in 763 B.C., for example.[40] Whether this was the time of Jonah’s
preaching or not, any time that the two happened to coincide would
surely have been viewed by the locals as one sign confirming the other. Indeed, Jonah’s would have been looked upon
as of superior importance for it provided not only a prediction of
imminent disaster but the very reason for it. And when that is known, there is the
potential for dealing with it.
In the unquestionably psychologically alarming category
would come plague. In both 765 and 759 B.C. plague struck
the Assyrian people.[41] Due to it “striking out of nowhere” it was
natural to regard it as a supernatural judgment on those who lived through the
period. An arrival of Jonah shortly
after the end of such an event would have, at the least, brought alarming
memories to their head and the concern that an even worse disaster was about to
occur.
* The Role of Jonah’s Own Experience? If Jonah said
anything beyond the bare words of warning, what he said surely would have
included the peculiar circumstances leading to him being there. It would hardly be pushing the imagination to
think that he recounted the events with at least the tone of voice—perhaps even
the explicit words—“this wasn’t my idea,” disowning the very message he
was delivering. (Paradoxically, that
might even have given his words a greater impact on his listeners. He “wanted you dead”—and yet he was
still here!)
Perhaps his physical appearance
confirmed the claim. J. Vernon McGee
rightly remarks, “A man who has spent three days and three nights in a fish
simply cannot come out looking like he did when he went in!”[42]
James T. Draper, Jr., expresses a similar thought when he writes that
Jonah must have “looked rather ‘freakly.’ ”[43] He went on to note that “One [nineteenth
century] man who lived for several days in the stomach of a fish and was
rescued alive reportedly had skin bleached white from the acids in the stomach
of the fish. Jonah must have been
unusual in appearance at least.”[44]
Caution must be exercised here. As a very fervent “literalist” once wrote, it
makes sense that God would have “preserve[d] him by a miracle from the
destructive gastric juices which under natural conditions would have completely
digested the victim in less than eighteen hours.”[45] In other words, to protect Jonah at all would
seemingly require either the total elimination of the dangerous juices or a
major reduction in their strength.
The approach of McGee and Draper,
however, seems to require that the maximum amount possible compatible with retaining
life at all was Jonah’s fate. But if
God is going to protect him, wouldn’t it make greater sense to preserve him
with minimum rather than maximum damage—to prove to him that God
was fully capable of both casting him down into an inevitable death and raising
him up unharmed as well?
On the other hand, his mission was
the core goal of God. Jonah’s
discomfort—especially after his stunt of running away—would surely have been of
only secondary interest. Leaving him
with considerable physical damage would certainly have been a way to force
Jonah to talk about how it came about, for questions would inevitably
arise. Thereby enhancing the amazement
at his mission, his presence, and his survival.
Building up the credibility of his warning.
One other factor that would have
presumably reduced--though not necessarily eliminate--any physical damage he
had suffered. Depending upon whose
numbers you prefer to use,
There is nothing in the text to
suggest his location at the time of the mighty storm that nearly wrecked the
ship. Theoretically he could have been
on the coast of
(After all, he would rationalize it, of course, as “upon greater
reflection.” And, “if He really
meant it absolutely had to be done, surely I would have come ashore
somewhere far closer to my homeland!”)
We know that his journey originated
in Joppa (Jonah 1:3; the modern
Assuming that Jonah was cast ashore on the coast near Joppa, the
prophet would surely have required a few days or more to recuperate and prepare
himself for the hated mission he had agreed to undertake. Then would come the journey itself: If he made 20 miles a day you are speaking of
25 days or better, with a minimum duration of a month when one factors
in that “recuperation” time.
The reason we’ve gone into this
detail is this: After thirty days
would not the worst of any physical damage have been healed? Now that is a pure assumption, but it seems a
reasonable one. Now our God is not above
having a sense of humor. So He certainly
wasn’t above letting Noah’s recuperation be a very prolonged one while assuring
that he would still be up to the long distance journey that lay ahead. Personally I can see this happening either
way. I simply have no firm chain of
logic to offer that requires either approach in particular.
Assuming that he had visible
consequences of the watery confinement, questions were obviously
inevitable. But could he have escape
probing questions even if such conditions did not visibly exist?
For one thing such questions would have arisen even during the journey
to the city, among his traveling partners.
One could, of course, claim he traveled alone. But the distance, the troubled times, and
plain prudence and survival would argue he did not.
I can easily imagine him presenting the Divine judgment upon himself as
a warning of the more widespread judgment coming upon the entire city. On the other hand, let us assume he said
little or nothing. Word could still spread
like wildfire. “You heard that strange
man denouncing our city? Well did you
hear how he landed up here!? I just talked
to one of the men in his traveling party and would you believe . . .” and off
they would go into a repetition of what had happened.
Yet one finds it hard to believe that Jonah could have avoided being directly
challenged as well: “Why in the world are
you, of all people, here?” Does he have
much choice but to tell the tale of high adventure, near disaster, and
miraculous rescue? Upon hearing his
rescue from disaster by repentance, would they be able to avoid the conclusion
that that was also their best option to avoid the particular catastrophe
facing them?[46]
And that would be true whether they heard it directly from him or his
traveling companions. Most likely, in
fact, from both.
The Assyrians were omen-ridden.
What greater omen of destruction than the message of destruction from a
man who had himself been destroyed by “a” God—and then rescued from his
deserved fate?
* The Role of Jonah’s Message of Reform: Did He Directly Preach It Or Was It Left
Implicit?
We have already touched on how the locals made the leap from
looming calamity to a reformed lifestyle as the means of avoiding it. However some other matters need to be
introduced to complete that discussion and here seems an appropriate
place.
Jesus’ message was one of
conditional disaster, “Unless you repent you will all likewise perish”
(Luke 13:3, 5). In contrast, there is no
expressly indicated condition on Jonah’s threat, “Yet forty days, and
So far as the actual textual
evidence it was left up to them to make the deduction that change might alter
the situation. This can be seen in the
ruler’s decree to wear sackcloth, pray to God, and set one’s life right (3:8): “Who can tell if God will turn and
relent, and turn away from His fierce anger, so that we may not perish?” (verse
9).
Note the “if” and the conspicuous
absence of a modifying description such as, “as we have been promised.” Hence one can easily imagine that the real
situation was that Jonah delivered the warning he was instructed, but it was
left up to the people to make the necessary connection: If evil lives equals destruction, then
reformed lives equal (physical) salvation.
It should also be noted that Jonah
had every reason not to explicitly mention the repentance option. As can be seen in Jonah’s aggrieved pouting in
4:1-2, he was deeply annoyed that the city had been spared at all. His explicit order was to teach destruction.
Why would he—barring explicit Divine command, of which no record is
preserved—have done more? They might
escape destruction! Psychologically
speaking, this reaction fits far better a person who was doing his duty of
preaching and preaching only. He
fulfilled that duty completely . . . but carefully did not go one step
further as to how they might escape it.
Is this not the likely reason he did
his best to avoid the commission he was given? “Arise, go to
The closest we get to what could be
considered a direct instruction for Jonah to urge moral reform lies in those
words “cry out against it.” There is
some “wiggle room” in his second commission to go as well: “Arise, go to
But since we know that he preached “Yet forty days, and
And if he somehow summoned up the power to give such a
“repulsive” message, do you really think he put much passion in it? His behavior in chapter four could be read as
arguing strongly that he would not have.
Yet would not the question have been inevitable from the
locals: “What must we do to avoid this
fate?” Not just on one occasion, but on
many? And would he have dared not
mentioned repentance after all he had been through? (He surely desired to get back to
I have presented the cases for both preaching repentance and
stubbornly not doing so and forcing them to make the deduction solely on their
own initiative. Both cases seem credible,
but I would much prefer to believe that he made explicit the repentance
option. That he now had enough
dedication to the Lord that he was willingly to overcome his personal
prejudices. At least that much,
no matter how much he still resented them taking advantage of it.
History is full of oddities. One
of those is that, in a sense, the hard-hearted Jonah got the last laugh. (Whether he was still around to enjoy it
might be a different matter.) Jan Overduin notes that whatever “conversion” the city
underwent it could not have gone very deep or lasted very long because “after a
while Nahum and Zephaniah had to address
Jonah would have loved it—if he left out of mind the hard-heartedness
of his own people, who repeatedly failed to provide the example of moral
excellence that was expected of them. As
Overduin notes, “Was there ever a lasting and
continuous conversion in the history of
* Did the People Become (Temporary or
Permanent) Monotheists Due to Divine Judgment Coming Upon the City?
A. The Case Against Them Doing So. This may be startling to many, but it
at least should be given serious consideration:
Perhaps the reason repentance—at least not in its full, monotheistic
sense--was not explicitly demanded was that, in the inclusive and total
sense of the term, belief in Jehovah would have been demanded as the one, true,
and only God. Period. Rather than impose this almost insurmountable
obstacle upon an entire polytheistic society (rather than only on individual
converts), God demanded what was within their frame of
understanding—repentance in the sense of a changed and reformed lifestyle.
Paul speaks of how even the unbeliever of his day would have a
conscience condemning him because by nature he knew that there were
certain moral fundamentals and feel guilty because he has knowingly and
intentionally violated them (Romans 2:14-15).
Hence the pagan knows sin. That
he can repent of whether he becomes a Christian or not.
Hence the ruler urges the people—not to embrace Jewish monotheism but
to “let every one turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his
hands” (Jonah 3:8). This moral
transformation was acceptable to the Lord, “Then God saw their works
[their behavior change; not their embracement of monotheism], that they turned
from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He
would bring upon them, and He did not do it” (
We do not deny that they might have embraced the God of
Our point is that monotheism was not explicitly demanded of them. Therefore to argue—as many do--that we know
of no point where
Indeed there is no explicit mention of the God of
The Assyrians, however, did not have to have the name of a particular
deity attached to the prophecy. They
believed religiously and culturally that omens gave forewarning of
disaster. And Jonah’s unexpected
appearance—especially joined with any knowledge shared of his past—would surely
have been interpreted in such a manner.
Given their background, wouldn’t we have?
Furthermore, their very polytheism may have come back to haunt them and
discouraged them from even asking: it
was not without precedent for the act that would assuage one god would be such
as to anger another. Hence there was a
fatalism attached to their way of thinking that would not necessarily require
them to even ask the name of the God served by the prophet. The message would enjoy credibility either
due to the speaker himself and/or the surrounding national circumstances that
seemed to support or deny their pessimism.
So though the question of “which god” may have come up or even been
volunteered by Jonah, there is nothing in the text that actually requires this
to have been the case.[49]
B. The Case in Favor of Them at Least
Temporarily Embracing Monotheism. Those disagreeing with the previous
section would cite two passages. The
first is Jonah 3:5 and there we find two basic translations
“So the people of
Versus: “So the people of
It has been argued that a more
literal reading omits that word “in.”[50] The unneeded “in” easily (though not
necessarily has to) shifts the emphasis from believing God’s message
to a personal believe in God Himself, i.e., the God of
Yet, as we saw, the message Jonah is
recorded as preaching was temporal judgment rather than conversion to the God
of
In a sense, of course, they believed
“in” God for it was His message that warned them. If they believed the message, they had
to believe “in” Him at least that much.
But there is no degree of belief attributed to them that required
monotheism. (Jehovah would certainly
have liked it, but He doesn’t demand it of them so far as anything in the
text.)
In other words they believed “in”
Jehovah in the sense that they believed He was a genuine deity with the power
to act decisively against them. But from
that to being the God is a major step and nothing in the text requires
it.
Some both add the “in” while denying
that it requires a monotheistic interpretation. For example, A. J. Glaze confidently affirms
that “believed God” does not do the Hebrew justice because the Hebrew means
“literally, ‘they believed in God.’ ”[51] However he stresses that this translates into
“trust in God” and can provide no clear of evidence how deep their “faith” went
in either the Jewish or Christian sense.[52]
That leaves us with Jonah 3:9: “Who can tell if God will turn and relent, and turn away from His fierce
anger, so that we may not perish?” T. T.
Perowne notes that this is “literally, the God.”[53] He puts the interpretive “spin” on this that
it indicates they now believe in only one God.
I would argue that the more natural
reading of this would be an admission
(1)
Of Jehovah’s real existence—either under that name or of whatever
unnamed God Jonah represented;
(2)
Of God’s intent and ability to punish;
(3)
That the people must manifest behavior to convince Him that He should
not act on His warning—especially since the threat is short term (forty days)
and not one that can be inevitably avoided.
In what way does any of this
belief in “the” God who made the threat require a monotheistic framework? If the “God” was real, it was real—whether it
was the only one or one of many.
If a Jew were speaking the most
natural construct of intent would be a recognition that this God was the one
and only true God. In the context of
a polytheistic Gentile speaking, would it not be an admission that this God also
existed, however much He was not one of their own? (As manifested by the fact that the prophet
was a foreigner and not one of their own people.) In other words, worthy of honor and dignity
and high respect—in light of the looming threat if nothing else—and efforts
should be made to appease and remove His wrath.
For the monotheistic Jew this would
have been backsliding. For many
polytheists, it would have represented considerable progress: this foreign Jewish God (for His messenger
was Jewish) was real and needed to be honored and respected as well as
their own. To the “purist” who wishes
people to leap to full spiritual maturity in one bound this may sound slightly
horrifying. But isn’t it, instead, a
quite realistic evaluation? Don’t
expect more of them than was clearly demanded?
* Secondary Issues
A. What Language did the Prophet Preach In? J. Alberto Soggin
finds the success of Jonah’s preaching doubly difficult to believe: not merely because of the degree of success,
but also because of the language barrier:
“. . . [T]housands of inhabitants of the
Assyrian capital are converted after preaching which we cannot even be sure was
in Assyrian.”[54]
Based upon an analogy with Acts the
second chapter, it is certainly not impossible that Jonah was inspired to speak
their tongue—or the hearers were blessed with the capacity to hear it in their
own language. (The Acts text has been
interpreted both ways.)
There is, however, no obvious verse in Jonah that would automatically
make us suspect this happened—beyond the not insubstantial fact that . . . if
this really occurred at all . . . somehow they did grasp
the message of moral reform that was intended for them. Otherwise their change comes without any
encouragement at all and for no apparent reason.
Of course there would have been
traders in any major city such as
The short message of coming
destruction would, furthermore, surely not have been difficult to learn in
their language. Indeed if—as noted
earlier—his entire explicit message consisted of these words, the task
would have been even easier for him.
Teaching a fuller message would be the point of difficulty. But, in all fairness, if the audience had
gotten to the point of listening with interest, one of the traders we mentioned
would have been able to provide the core of the rest.
Now if I were writing this as fiction
rather than as history, I would find it inescapable to make Jonah chosen
for this very reason: He knew the
language. Perhaps I would even emphasize
that he was the only available Hebrew prophet who did have a
sufficient working knowledge of their language to send on the mission! In fact I would go out of my way to stress the
fact either way. (Do you not think that
Hebrew readers would have been just as capable of recognizing the potential
“language difficulty” in the narrative?)
Who knows . . . it might even be true.
But interpretive interpolations should be kept to a minimum and involve
the least stretches of probability. The
more one can do this, the greater the probability that one’s reconstruction
will turn out to be either the truth or close to it. Hence inspiration or local translation seem
the more likely means to explain the situation.
B.
The Actions of the Animals in the City. The covering of beasts
with sackcloth (3:8) once produced sarcasm from unbelievers. Not quite as much today perhaps as earlier
since more attention has been paid to how ancients used animals as mourning
symbols. Herodotus (IX. 24), for
example, notes an ancient Persian custom of cutting short the manes and tails
of horses as a sign of mourning for fallen leaders.[55]
It may seem strange to us, but even
we have our sorrowful state rituals:
Black is still the most “natural” color for hearses. Dark, especially black attire, still the most
“natural” for mourning. It was most
natural for the Ninevites to show their mourning
through the ceremonial decking of the animals with the attire symbolizing
sorrow.
Then there is always the option of
reading the text in a manner that the ancients themselves were hardly likely
to. Terence E. Fretheim
argues that it is “improbable that the beasts of
Furthermore does he quite “play
fair” with the scriptural text or bend it so it will sound ludicrous? Jonah 3: 8 states, “But let man and beast be
covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily to God; yes, let everyone turn from
his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands.”
There is a sense in which the
“cry mightily to God” could legitimately be applied to animals—not in the same
sense that it applies to humans but one which would be sufficiently
comparable to make the remark quite rational.
In Jonah 3:7 we read, “Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste
anything; do not let them eat, or drink water.” Let a day or two go by and you are going to hear the animals “cry mightily!” Not in repentance but hunger and thirst.
They aren’t going to be praying as Fretheim implies, but they are going to be loudly
protesting. They are going to be
making a mighty noise, so to speak, “to God.”
Although non-thinking animals (in human terms), it is certainly not
impossible for the ruler to have hoped that their discomfort would be taken by
God as if a prayer. A “prayer” to
the extent that they were capable of doing such. By analogy with human motives and behavior.
Nor is this incompatible with the
imagery of the other minor prophets. In
fact in Joel, the physical anguish of animals imposed by national calamity is
pictured in similar terms of crying out in noise to the Lord and of both human
and beast, each in their own way, begging of the Lord relief from disaster.
13
Gird yourselves and lament, you priests; wail, you who minister before
the altar; come, lie all night in sackcloth, you who minister to my God; for
the grain offering and the drink offering are withheld from the house of your
God. 14 Consecrate a fast, call a sacred assembly; gather the elders and
all the inhabitants of
the land into the house of the Lord your
God, and cry out to the Lord. 15 Alas
for the day! For the day of the Lord is at hand; it shall come as
destruction from the Almighty.
16
Is not the food cut off before our eyes, joy and gladness from the house
of our God? 17 The seed shrivels under the clods, storehouses are in shambles;
barns are broken down, for the grain has withered. 18 How the animals groan!
The herds of cattle are restless, because they have no pasture; even
the flocks of sheep suffer punishment.
19 O Lord, to You I cry
out; for
fire has devoured the open pastures, and a flame has burned all the trees of
the field.
20
The beasts of the field also cry out to You, for the
water brooks are dried up, and fire has devoured
the open pastures. (Joel 1).
If Joel is hardly likely to have
intended his rhetoric as intended literal prayer by the animals of
Its applicability to
Fretheim
mocks that the text refers to the animals “turning from their evil
ways.” Does he really believe that the
Hebrew prophets were such repositories of ignorance that they really . . .
literally . . . believed that animals could be guilty of immoral behavior and that
they were capable of consciously modifying their actions accordingly? Or that the king of
Before we move on, remember one last
thing: that the words quoted in verses 7
to 9 are those of the ruler and not of God Himself. If there is to be “ignorance” attributed to
anyone—and we have already seen it’s not all that easy to do so—let it be fully
on the back of the responsible party, the monarch, and not on Jehovah or
Jonah.
[1] Donald F. Ackland, “Jonah,” in The Teacher’s Bible Commentary,
edited by H. Franklin Paschall and Herschel H. Hobbs
(Nashville, Tennessee: Broadman Press, 1972), 557.
[2] John B.
Taylor, The Minor Prophets (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company, 1970), 48.
[3] Hanson,
19.
[4] John D.
W. Watts,
[5] George
L. Robinson, The Twelve Minor Prophets (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1926), 80.
[6] Cited by
Glaze, 173, though he does not embrace it.
[7] C. von. Orelli, The Twelve Minor Prophets, translated from
the German by J. S. Banks (Edinburgh: T.
& T. Clark, 1893), 178.
[8] For a
map, see John Walton, “Obadiah.” In John
Walton and Bryan Beyer. Obadiah, Jonah.
[9] John Walton, “Jonah,” 39.
[10] Brynmor F. Price and Eugene A. Nida,
A Translator’s Handbook on the Book of Jonah (London: United Bible Societies, 1978), 54.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ackland, 557.
[13] Craig,
214.
[14] Ibid., 229.
[15] Phillip Cary, Jonah, in the Brazos
Theological Commentary on the Bible series (
[16] Price
and Nida.
[17]
[18] Glaze,
173.
[19] James D. Nogalski, The
Book of the Twelve: Hosea-Jonah, in
the Smith & Helwys Bible Commentary series (
[20]
Orchard, 147.
[21] Perowne, 83.
[22] Cynthia
Jean, “Divination and Oracles at the Neo-Assyrian Palace: The Importance of Signs in Royal Ideology,” in
Divination and Interpretation of Signs in the Ancient World, edited by Amar Annus, University of Chicago
Oriental Seminars Number 6 (Chicago:
University of Chicago, 2010), 270-271.
At:
https://oi.uchicago.edu/pdf/ois6.pdf.
[Accessed February 2014.]
[23] Jean Helle, Miracles,
translated by Lancelot C. Sheppard (New York:
David McKay Company, Inc., 1952), 258-259. It was claimed that she was demon possessed
and that her ability to insightfully comment on spiritual matters disappeared
when there was a kind of instantaneous “spontaneous exorcism.” For a discussion of this see Sarah Ferber, Demonic Possession and Exorcism in Early Modern
France ([N.p.]:
Routledge, 2004), 118-119. Whatever her delusion may have been, it seems
rather incongruous that a demon possessed individual would preach—repentance?
[24]
Robinson, 117.
[25] Merrill
F. Unger, The New Unger’s Bible Handbook, revised by Gary N. Larson (Chicago: Moody Press, 1984), 324.
[26]
Geoffrey T. Bull, The City and the Sign: An Interpretation of the Book of Jonah (London: Hodden and
Stoughton, 1970), 117.
[27] Unger, 324.
[28]John E. Steinmueller, A
Companion to Scripture Studies, Volume 2, Revised and Enlarged Edition
(Houston, Texas: Lumen Christi Press,
1969), 289.
[29] Robinson, 76.
[30] Walton,
64.
[31] Bull,
117.
[32] Ibid.
[33] Ibid.
[34] Laetsch, 236.
[35] Walton,
45-46.
[36] Jean,
note 13, 270.
[37] Ibid., 271.
[38] Ibid., 273.
[39] Ibid., 273-274.
[40] Unger,
324.
[41] Ibid.
[42] McGee, Jonah
and Micah, 60.
[43] James
T. Draper, Jonah: Living in Rebellion
(Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale
House Publishers, Inc., 1980), 74.
[44] Ibid.
[45] DeHaan, 76.
[46] Hugh
Martin, The Prophet Jonah (London:
Alexander Strahan, Publisher, 1866), 345.
[47] Jan Overduin, Adventures of a Deserter, translated from
the Dutch by Harry Van Dyke (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company, 1965), 113.
[48] Ibid.
[49] Walton,
40-44 provides a useful discussion of this matter, though he would go further
than I do in ruling out any mention of
[50]
[51] Glaze,
174.
[52] Ibid.
[53] Perowne, 81.
[54] J.
Alberto Soggin, Introduction to the Old Testament,
Third English Edition, translated from the Fourth Italian Edition by John
Bowden (Louisville, Kentucky:
Westminster / John Knox Press, 1989), 416.
[55] Walton,
53.
[56] Terence
E. Fretheim, The Message of Jonah: A Theological Commentary (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1977), 63. I did not have the bibliographical
information on this book entered in the first draft of this work decades
ago. This appears to be the only work of
his that falls in the right time period and with “Jonah” in the title.
[57] Ibid., 71.