A Literary Approach to the Book of Jonah

[First posted in 2013.  This is another excellent commentary from A Literary Approach to the Bible, one of our MUST READ, if not MUST OWN books.  Please read all the other articles from this great resource which have already bene posted. Reformatting, highlighting and underscoring added.]

Jonah – by James S. Ackerman  Although the Book of Jonah appears among the Minor Prophets in the biblical canon, it differs considerably from all the others as a piece of literature. Whereas the Major and Minor Prophets are essentially collections of oracles, Jonah recounts the adventures of a prophet who struggles against his divine commission. The story rather recalls the prophetic legends in 1 and 2 Kings that focus on Elijah, Elisha, and others. Scholars have struggled with the problem of genre, and there is no consensus. I prefer the general label “short story,” and I will later try to point out elements in the narrative that bring it close to classical satire. The story was probably written during the sixth or fifth century B.C.E., when Jews were struggling to adjust to and recover from the Babylonian Exile.

• How were they to perceive the nature of God in the light of what had happened?
• By what means could the community transform its institutions and traditions in order to adapt itself to the changed circumstances?

Drawing on a wide range of biblical allusions, as well as on a bit of Mediterranean folklore (the fish episode), the writer scrutinized some of the answers that were evolving. In doing so, he created a literary masterpiece that has captivated its readers and stirred artistic imaginations from the Midrash to Melville—long after the particular issues faced by the post-Exilic community had been resolved. “Jonah son of Amittai” (1:1) is surely a reference to the eight-century Northern Kingdom prophet briefly described in 2 Kings 14:25 as a popular prophet who, in the context of the Israelite king’s sin, proclaims divine mercy and support for that kingdom. The name means “Dove son of truth,” and the dove has two major characteristics in the Hebrew Bible:

• it is easily put to flight and
• seeks secure refuge in the mountains (Ezek. 7:16, Ps. 55:6-8),
• and it moans and laments when in distress (Nahum 2:7; Isaiah 38:14, 59:11).

Will these characteristics, we wonder, also apply to our hero? And what meaning will the story give to “son of truth”? The formula in 1:1 makes it clear that Jonah is a prophet, but we are surprised and intrigued by the divine command. Prophets had pronounced judgment on enemy nations within the safe confines of Israelite territory. But commanding a prophet to enter a foreign city with a word of judgment from the Lord—given the mistreatment and misunderstanding the prophets suffered when they spoke to God’s own people Israel—is, to say the least, an expansion of the prophetic vocation! Jonah is commanded to “arise… go … and cry against” (1:2); he immediately “rose up to flee” (1:3). Reluctance to serve is a conventional feature of the genre of prophetic call (cf. Jer. 1:6). But Jonah’s total disobedience puzzles us, especially when we learn that his flight is “from the presence of YHWH.” Nineveh and Tarshish are geographic antipodes.

• Nineveh, to the east,
  • is the later capital of Assyria, the very nation that would destroy and carry off Jonah’s people—the ten tribes of the Northern Kingdom—sixty years later.
  • The Assyrians were renowned for their power and gross cruelty, and allusions in our story recall the Flood and the judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah.
  • Thus we know Nineveh as a city whose power is a threat to Israel’s existence
  • and whose evil is antithetical to God’s will.
• Tarshish, on the other hand,
  • lies somewhere in the far west and is a place where YHWH is not known (Isaiah 66:19).
  • Jonah, a servant fleeing his master’s sovereignty, also sees Tarshish as a refuge beyond YHWH’s domain.
  • Since the story depicts YHWH as the almighty creator God, it has placed Tarshish at the ends of the earth, where death and chaos begin.
  • Strangely, Tarshish also connotes luxury, desire, delight.
  • C. H. Gordon suggests that “whatever the original identification of Tarshish may have been, in literature and popular imagination it became a distant paradise.”
  • For Jonah, therefore, Tarshish may paradoxically represent a pleasant place of security that borders on nonexistence.

Prophets were thought to be servant-messengers who attended the divine court, “standing before YHWH’s presence” (as in 1 Kings 17:1), just as royal servants stood “before the presence” of their king. Jonah’s flight from YHWH’s presence is described as a series of descents (Hebrew yarad):

• he “went-down”—to Joppa, into the ship, and into the innermost part of the ship.
• He then lay down and fell into a deep sleep, the latter term again echoing the yarad descent pattern.
• This motif—extremely common in Psalms—is continued in Jonah’s prayer, which describes his entering Sheol, the world of the dead (2:2-9).
• The narrative, therefore, seems to be depicting Jonah’s flight from YHWH’s presence as a descent to the underworld.
• Our prophet is taking a path that leads to death as he seeks to avoid the road to Nineveh.

The unusual term yarketei hasefina (“the innermost parts of the ship,” 1:5 [AT]) seems to be a word play on yarketei tsafon, which in Psalm 48 is equated with Mount Zion

• (the city of our God,
• the final refuge for Israel against the attacking nations)
• and in Isaiah 14:12-19 is described as God’s dwelling place in the heavens
• (the antipode of Sheol, the Pit, into which Lucifer has been brought down).

Why is the writer asking us to think of Zion, God’s dwelling place, as we read of Jonah’s descent into the hold of the ship?

• Is the ship both a mini-Sheol and a mini-Zion,
• or is there an antithetical relationship?

We are also given clues that this is no ordinary ship that is leaving the Joppa seaport. Jonah pays “her fare” [AT]; and when the storm hits, “the ship thought to be broken up” [AT]. Nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible are “fare” and “thought” used with inanimate objects. What kind of a maw has our hero entered in his descent from YHWH’s presence? The ship’s captain and crew are depicted quite sympathetically.

• In contrast to our sleeping prophet, they resourcefully pull out all the stops in order to stay alive—praying to their gods, jettisoning their cargo, casting lots.
• They know that their fate is in the hands of higher powers whose workings they cannot fathom (“if so be that God will think upon us, the we perish not,” 1:6; “for thou, O Lord, hast done as it pleased thee,” 1:14).
• They also do everything possible to save Jonah’s life. Jonah had descended, lain down, and slept. The captain tells him to “arise”; the crew tries to “return” [AT] to dry land.

Describing death, Job says

“so man lieth down, and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, not be raised out of their sleep” (14:12); “so he that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more. He shall return no more to his house” (7:9-10).

• Ironically, the captain’s appeal to Jonah (“arise, call upon”) echoes the divine command in 1:2. The captain is appealing to Jonah to “get up” and pray to his God; but by implication he is pointing the way by which Jonah can “arise” from his death descent.
• The crew are trying to steer the ship to shore, so that he can obey his divine commission; but by implication they are attempting to “return” him to the land of the living.
• The sailor’s frantic activity highlights Jonah’s inactivity.

Unlike Jesus (see Mark 4:35-41), his sleeping in the storm suggests paralysis rather than faith. We must assume that, in response to the captain’s appeal, he continues to lie low and snore on. Taken out of context, his response in 1:9 sounds like a wonderful confession of faith. But he omits any confession of his disobedience, and his claim to fear YHWH rings hollow when contrasted with the growing piety of the sailors (see especially 1:16). We must join the crew and read the entire statement ironically: how does one escape “the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land,” by embarking on the high seas? Although Jonah does not mention his flight, the sailors immediately realize what he has done. Some interpreters see 1:12 reflecting growth in Jonah’s character.

• He now has more compassion for the crew,
• and, ready to accept God’s judgment for his disobedience,
• he is willing to give up his life that the crew may survive.

But Jonah’s search for refuge from YHWH has been depicted as a descent toward death. This subconscious death wish is now reinforced by his request to be thrown into the sea. And even at the end of the story Jonah will still be claiming that death is preferable to life. Just as a lion summarily slays the disobedient prophet in 1 Kings 13, YHWH sends a great fish after Jonah: and the verb “to swallow up” never has a positive connotation in the Hebrew Bible. Korah and his followers were swallowed up by the earth/Sheol, as were Pharaoh and his chariots (Num. 16:28-34, Exod. 15:12). Thus YHWH seems to be reinforcing Jonah’s descent pattern—three days and three nights being the traditional time it takes to reach the underworld. Much to our surprise, Jonah prays; and the Hebrew word denotes an appeal for help in which, if appropriate, divine forgiveness is sought. We expect the prayer to be a lament, and indeed the 3/2 stress pattern of the lament genre dominates. The tense of the opening verb is ambiguous, so we don’t know at first whether to read “I cried” or “I cry.” Since laments begin with an appeal for help, we assume that we are reading Jonah’s cry for help. But as we read further, we discover that the prayer is a song of thanksgiving for having been delivered from death’s domain. Scholars have made various attempts to naturalize this part of the story. The majority maintain that Jonah’s prayer is a later insertion. But both in terminology (going down, calling out, steadfast love, vows and sacrifices) and in theme (casting, presence of God, idol worship, divine sovereignty) the song is closely tied to the rest of the story.

By setting us up to receive Jonah’s song as a lament, the narrative forces us to question how a prophet heading toward the underworld could sing of his deliverance from Sheol. Jonah has feared drowning; he describes his sinking into the seas as a descent to the city of the dead (2:6). Why, then, does he feel so secure in the belly of the fish which he thinks is delivering him from the belly of Sheol?

We know from 1:9 that Jonah is capable of making wonderful statements of faith in a context that turns every word to parody. Both the inner part of the Tarshish-bound ship and the belly of the fish give Jonah the same false, deathlike security. The prayer begins “I cried”—precisely the same action that Jonah had been commanded, by both YHWH and the captain, to carry out against Nineveh and in behalf of the ship. Having refused to cry out to save the others, he changes his tune when he himself faces the prospect of violent death. And when 2:3 continues: “for thou hadst cast me into the deep… I am cast out from thy presence” [AR], remember that it is Jonah who fled from the divine presence and who requested to be hurled into the sea. Jonah regards idolaters (and there is a clever wordplay in 2:8 that associates them with the sailors of chap.1 as deserters of hesed—a term indicating a chief characteristic of YHWH (translated as “mercy”), denoting a loving response performed within a covenant relationship.

In some songs of thanksgiving, as in Jonah’s, hesed can be virtually synonymous with God.

• But the idol-worshiping sailors have forsaken their gods and fear YHWH!
• It is Jonah who has forsaken his God; and, we will later discover, the main reason for his flight is God’s superabundant hesed (4:2).
• In case we have missed this subtle contrast, the narrative permits Jonah to conclude his prayer with a promissory note: someday he will perform that which we know the sailors have already accomplished one thousand leagues above (1:16).

It is not strange that Jonah expresses his eagerness to return to theTemple, especially when there is no mention of his repentance or willingness to go to Nineveh?

• Where is the fear of YHWH that he had owned to in 1:9?
• Does he perceive his near-death in the waters as sufficient divine punishment?
• Is he counting on divine hesed to overlook his disobedience and cancel his commission?
• Is not the piety reflected in this song a bit too cozy?
• To what extent is the story aligning the Temple with the ship’s hold and the fish’s belly—as yet another deathlike shelter that he hopes will protect him from fulfilling his divine commission?

In the Jonah story there are structural parallels between chapters 1 and 3, as well as between chapters 2 and 4. Chapter 4 also begins with a lament appeal from Jonah, to which YHWH responds with actions and questions. Although YHWH appoints the great fish in chapter 2, there is no verbal response to Jonah’s prayer.

The divine response, though muted, is still eloquent: YHWH commands the great fish to vomit; and if the narrative had wanted to achieve any effect other then satire, there are many other Hebrew words for “bringing forth” our hero onto dry land. Again we are disoriented. The fish which we had thought was carrying Jonah to his doom has indeed rescued him. Does Jonah’s deliverance confirm the viewpoint articulated in the prayer? I think not. The prayer closes with “Salvation is of the Lord (2:9)—a key theme of the story; and to dramatize this very point, YHWH and the writer deliver Jonah by a means that our imagination cannot naturalize—by simply letting the text say that it is so. We have been subtly prepared for the just-as-miraculous deliverance that will soon take place in Nineveh. The second half of the story seems to return us to the beginning; but there are some differences, and we are asked to account for them. This time God gives the prophet a specific message, and Jonah now goes to Nineveh. We cannot be certain that Jonah’s oracle to the Ninevites is a faithful repetition of God’s words. Because the verbal repetition in 3:2-3 implies that Jonah is now complying with God’s commands, and because he will later turn on the deity for canceling the judgment he had pronounced, we can reasonably assume that “yet forty days…” (3:4) is indeed the divine proclamation. Knowing that Nineveh will be “overthrown” in “forty days”—words that, along with others, recall the unleashing of divine judgment in the Flood and Sodom and Gomorrah stories—Jonah may be more willing to comply. From his foiled flight he has learned that God is unrelenting in carrying out the divine will; thus he can assume that the oracle he brings will indeed come to pass.

The response of the Ninevites is unprecedented in the prophetic tradition:

• Jonah barely enters the city and speaks five Hebrew words (not even introduced by “thus says the Lord”), and thereby instigates the most frantic reform ever heard of.
• In a scene that is both comic and moving (we can imagine animals and servants in sackcloth; unwatered flocks and nobility “crying mightily unto God”), the sinful city instantly and completely turns itself around.
• Through Jonah God “has cried unto” [AT]Nineveh; and now Nineveh ‘cries unto” that God.
• The Ninevites have “turned from” their “evil”; and now God “turns away” from the “evil” that had been planned for the city.

This episode is replete with allusions to Jeremiah 36, in which the king of Judah scorns Jeremiah’s warnings of impending judgment onJerusalem. The narrative suggests a contrast between the bitter experience of the prophets in Jerusalem and the amazing success of Jonah in Nineveh. Had the writer used realistic narrative to depict Nineveh’s repentance, we would have wondered whether the city’s new heart could possibly be genuine and whether the remission of divine punishment was deserved. But the story’s comic exaggeration permits us to accept the amazing transformation as “fact” precisely because we are asked to imagine it as a beautiful fantasy. We will soon learn that Jonah is unwilling to accept what has happened; thus the narrative has driven a wedge between reader and prophet—between the justice we had hoped would fall on the sinful city and the mercy we are made willing to imagine. The story establishes a relationship

• between the great fish (in which Jonah remains three days and nights)
• and the great city (which requires three days to traverse).
• Both function as enclosures, and Jonah perceives them antithetically.

The great fish is aligned with the ship’s hold, Tarshish, and perhaps the Temple in Jerusalem—shelters that offer the illusion of security but in fact result in a deep sleep that brings one down to the city of Death. For Jonah the only negative enclosures are the city of Death, from which he barely escaped in the heart of the sea, and the city of Nineveh, from which he attempted to flee. As readers we begin the story by sharing Jonah’s perception; but the possible Temple/fish/ship/ Tarshish equation, coupled with the amazing conversion of Nineveh, prompts a realignment of these images. The narrative has consistently called Nineveh “the great city”; but in 3:3b the Hebrew reads “and Nineveh was a great city for God”[AT]. Jonah made the traditional equation between city of Nineveh and city of Death; but the story suggests that the opposite is potentially true. The key feature of Nineveh’s reversal is its turning away from violence. The larger context, however, is the community’s symbolic association with the world of the dead—although ashes, sackcloth, and fasting. Whereas Jonah’s disobedience precipitated his descent to the world of the dead, Nineveh’s symbolic death is part of a return from its evil way and an appeal to God that it be spared. No prophet within the biblical tradition has ever had such success.

• Jonah flees his divine commission, and the entire crew ends up worshiping YHWH.
• He speaks five words in Nineveh, and the whole city instantly turns away from its “evil.”
• But as God repents of the “evil” that has been planned for the city, this “evil” Jonah “a great evil” (4:1) [AT].

In the context of a petition prayer (the same word used for his activity in the belly of the fish in 2:1) we finally learn why Jonah has fled his divine commission. For the third time he proclaims a statement of faith from Israel’s religious traditions (4:2; see Exod. 34:6, Joel 2:13). The first two, taken out of context, many initially be understood as positive affirmations. The narrative does not permit such a reading this time: I attempted to flee your realm because I knew that, ultimately, you are a merciful God. But why is Jonah so upset? A strong line of interpretation that goes at least as far back as the early rabbis proposes that Jonah is angry because he has been made to look foolish. When the judgment oracle does not come to pass, the prophet and his deity become the objects of taunting abuse. But we find no hint of this in the story. It seems more likely to me that Jonah’s problem is theological. Unlike Israel’s ancient Near Eastern neighbors, who perceived their gods as capricious monarchs, the Exodus-Sinai experience convinced Israel that its God—the creator and redeemer God—was also a just God. Divine justice could sometimes take three or four generations to work itself out; but ultimately, Israel believed, people would receive their just deserts. And there could be no question about what Nineveh deserved.

How could God possibly be swayed by one sudden change of heart, blotting out long generations of iniquity? If divine mercy can so easily cancel out divine justice, then life is arbitrary and capricious. Jonah’s theological problem is the reverse of Job’s. Whereas suffering causes Job to probe the caprice of divine sovereignty, the sparing of Nineveh drives Jonah to do the same. For both protagonists YHWH’s rule must be expressed through a well-ordered universe. The story has satirized Jonah as a prophet whose piety is out of sync with his behavior. But Jonah, strangely, is also depicted as a man of faith driven to challenge and disobey God out of a zeal for divine integrity. Echoing the descent theme of chapters 1-2, Jonah would rather die than live in a world where a just God no longer reigns (4:3, 9). In 4:5-11 we find that Jonah has not given up: he camps out east of the city, probably in the hope that Nineveh will falter (can a leopard change its spots?) and that divine judgment will finally fall. The booth the prophet builds for himself reminds us of the shelter images that have that have recurred throughout the story. Israel is commanded to build and dwell in booths annually as an act of worship (“rejoicing”; Deut. 16:13-14, Neh.8:15-17); and the fact that Jonah also “rejoices a great rejoicing” [AT] in his booth suggests an association between shelter and worship. Psalms 31:20 uses the booth as a figure for the divine presence in which those who “fear” God are “hidden” (Hebrew tsafan; compare the yarketei hasefina in which Jonah hides); and Isaiah 4:6 envisions YHWH’s covering Zion with a protective booth to “shade” it from the heat. Is Jonah’s booth a dim reflection of Zion—of the Temple that had been the hoped-for destination of his song? If Jonah has shaded himself with the booth, why does YHWH add the shade of the gourd? And how does that “deliver” (the Hebrew has a wordplay with ”shade”) Jonah from his “grief” (Hebrew “evil,” that is, anger)? We should note that the first half of the story has concluded with a divine “preparation” that functions as a thematic resolution: Jonah had repeatedly “descended,” so YHWH “prepared” a great fish “to swallow” [him] up.” Paradoxically, however, the fish both took Jonah all the way down and spewed him forth toward his commission. The same pattern obtains in chapter 4 if we interpret the three divine “preparations” in verses 6-8 as one interrelated sequence. Jonah has become hot-angry after YHWH had spared Nineveh; now YHWH intends to “deliver/shade” him from his anger by really heating things up. Of the many protective shelters in the Jonah story (Tarshish, ship’s hold, fish’s belly, Temple, booth), three have allusive connections to Mount Zion. Ancient Near Eastern iconography is replete with figures of the tree of life that flourishes atop the divine mountain but is attacked by a serpent. It is possible that gourd and worm are caricatures of tree of life and serpent, appropriate images in a satiric story? Psalms strongly connects Mount Zion with the cosmic mountain; and the Jerusalem Temple—YHWH’s dwelling place on Zion—may contain symbolism associated with the Edenic tree of life. Moreover, the author now introduces the form “Lord God” (4:6)—the divine name in the Eden story. Lord God, it would seem, has reestablished and then destroyed both Zion and Eden in order to “deliver” Jonah from his “evil.” How is this a deliverance?

The prophet who in 4:3 would rather die than live in a capricious, amoral universe now asks for death rather than live in a world without divinely provided shelter. Chapter 4 begins with Jonah’s complaint about the divine hesed (mercy). YHWH concludes the story, using the same number of words as Jonah, with a lesson on “pity” (Hebrew hus, perhaps used because of its phonetic associations with hesed). Jonah told that his pity for the withered gourd is misdirected, as he is forced to contrast his feelings for “Nineveh, that great city,” with the pity that God has shown (4:9-11). YHWH, as creator, has the prerogative of showing compassion for the world in its entirety—including creatures that don’t know up from down. Jonah may still seek secure enclosures and perceive all that is outside as life-threatening. But God’s world—even Nineveh—is able to repent its evil. In fact, as the fate of the exposed Nineveh suggests, it is more life-threatening to seek out a secure refuge. The gourd (like Tarshish, Eden, and perhaps Zion) has been blown away; the ship and the fish spew one forth. In a world that offers no eternally secure shelters, Jonah is urged to understand (and perhaps emulate) the divine pity. The Judean community had a very difficult time reestablishing itself inJerusalem after the Exile. The eschatological hopes of Isaiah 40-55 did not come to pass, even after the Temple was rebuilt (see Haggai). The resulting despair and anger are reflected in the book of Malachi, where the primary issue is divine justice: perhaps we Israelites deserved the exile in Babylonia; but how can YHWH hold back judgment on the other nations that deserve it even more? Jonah’s paralysis and withdrawal also seem to result from his anger over divine injustice (see 4:2). He seeks secure shelters that inhibit his fulfilling the divine will and thus separate him from God and humanity; and yet, paradoxically, these same shelters have strong allusive associations with the divine cultic presence, in which the prophet can rejoice and feel protected from the rest of the world. Since the story’s conclusion invites us to side with God over against Jonah, we can guess that one of its targets was the Zadokite priesthood—with its strongTemple Presence theology—which was rising to power soon after the return from the Exile (ca. 538-400 B.C.E.). The prayer sung in the belly of the great fish provides the key to the story’s genre. What appears to be a supplication for help becomes a song of thanksgiving as it is sung by a man descending toward Sheol.

When the song’s piety becomes sickeningly sweet or unwittingly perceptive (“Salvation is of the Lord”), the prophet is vomited onto dry land just as he is about to hit the sea bottom. Such a scene is close to farce; since the story is also quite serious, however, I would argue that satire is a more appropriate designation of genre. There is no evidence of cultural contact between the writer and the classical satire that was probably evolving in other parts of the Mediterranean world at the time. But it does seem to give the modern reader the most useful handle on the story. In satire we find incongruous, distorted events; a mixture of literary genres; an image of violence at the heart of the story; journeys as typical settings; and relatively little emphasis on plot or character development. The author of Jonah has skillfully used irony in order to distance us from the hero while also keeping the story on its narrow path between invective and farce.