TheBook of Jonah is one of thetwelve minor prophets of theNevi'im ("Prophets") in theHebrew Bible, and an individual book in the Old Testament where it has four chapters.[1] The book tells of a Hebrew prophet namedJonah, son ofAmittai, who is sent by God to prophesy the destruction ofNineveh, but attempts to escape his divine mission.
The story has a long interpretive history and has become well known through popular children's stories. InJudaism, it is theHaftarah portion read during the afternoon ofYom Kippur to instill reflection on God's willingness to forgive those who repent,[2] and it remains a popular story amongChristians. The story is also retold in theQuran.
MainstreamBible scholars generally regard the story of the Book of Jonah asfictional,[3][4][5] and often at least partiallysatirical.[6][7] Most scholars consider the Book of Jonah to have been composed long after the events it describes due to its use of words and motifs exclusive to postexilicAramaic sources.[8][9]
The prophetJonah (Hebrew:יוֹנָה,Yonā) is mentioned in2 Kings 14:25, which places Jonah's life during the reign ofJeroboam II,King of Israel, (786–746 BC), but the book of Jonah itself does not name a king or give any other details that would give the story a firm date. Most scholars consider the Book of Jonah to have been composed long after the events it describes due to its use of words and motifs exclusive to postexilicAramaic sources.[10][11] A later date is sometimes proposed, with Katherine Dell arguing for theHellenistic period (332–167 BC).[12]
Evangelical AssyriologistDonald Wiseman takes issue with the idea that the story is late (or a parable). Among other arguments he mentions that the "Legends of Agade" (seeSargon of Akkad andRabisu) date to the time of theOld Babylonian Empire, though later versions "usually taken as a late composition, propagandistic fairy tale or historical romance can now, on the basis of new discoveries of earlier sources, be shown to be based on a serious and reliable historical record".[13]
Unlike the otherMinor Prophets, the book of Jonah is almost entirely narrative with the exception of the psalm in the second chapter.[14] The actual prophetic word against Nineveh is given only in passing through the narrative. The story of Jonah has a setting, characters, a plot, and themes; it also relies heavily on such literary devices as irony.
The original text was written inHebrew language.Chapters 1 and 2 are divided differently in the Hebrew and English versions:[15] verse 2:1 in the Hebrew version is equivalent to Jonah 1:17 in the English version.
Jonah Preaching to the Ninevites (1866) byGustave DoréJonah in four scenes: bottom left Jonah thrown into the sea by the crew of the boat which was to take him to Tarsis, bottom right, Jonah praying in the mouth of the whale, top left, Jonah preaching to the people of Nineveh outside the city gates, and top right, Jonah praying to God on a rock.Paris Psalter, f. 431v.
Jonah is the central character in the Book of Jonah, in which God ("the LORD") commands him to go to the city ofNineveh to prophesy against it for their great wickedness against God.[17] However, Jonah instead attempts to run from God by going toJaffa and sailing toTarshish.[18] A huge storm arises and the sailors, realizing that it is no ordinary storm,cast lots and discover that Jonah is to blame.[19] Jonah admits this and states that if he is thrown overboard, the storm will cease.[20] The sailors refuse to do this and continue rowing, but all their efforts fail and they are eventually forced to throw Jonah overboard.[21] As a result, the storm calms and the sailors then offer sacrifices to God.[22] Jonah is miraculously saved by being swallowed by a "great fish", in whose belly he spends three days and three nights.[23]
While inside the great fish, Jonah prays to God in thanksgiving and commits to paying what he hasvowed.[24] Jonah's prayer has been compared with some of thePsalms,[25] and with theSong of Hannah in 1 Samuel 2:1-10.[26]
God then commands the fish to vomit Jonah out.[27]
Inchapter 3, God once again commands Jonah to travel to Nineveh and to prophesy to its inhabitants.[28] This time he obeys God's command, and goes into the city, crying, "In forty days Nineveh shall be overthrown."[29] After Jonah has walked across Nineveh, the people of Nineveh begin to believe his word and proclaim a fast.[30] The king of Nineveh then puts onsackcloth and sits in ashes, making a proclamation which decrees fasting, the wearing of sackcloth, prayer, and repentance.[31] God sees their repentant hearts and spares the city at that time.[32] The entire city is humbled and broken, with the people (and even the animals)[33][34] in sackcloth and ashes.[35]
Inchapter 4, displeased by the Ninevites' repentance, Jonah refers to his earlier flight to Tarshish while asserting that, since God is merciful, it was inevitable that God would turn from the threatened calamities.[36] He then leaves the city on its eastern side,[37] and makes himself a shelter, waiting to see whether or not the city will be destroyed.[38] God causes a plant, in Hebrew akikayon, also called a gourd in theKing James Version,[a] to grow over Jonah's shelter to give him some shade from the sun.[42] Later, God causes a worm to bite the plant's root and it withers.[43] Jonah, now being exposed to the full force of the sun, becomes faint and pleads for God to kill him.[44] In response, God offers Jonah one final rebuke:
God said to Jonah, "Does your anger over thekikayon do any good?" And he said, "My anger does good, even to death!" The LORD said, "You had pity over thekikayon, for which you had not labored, nor made grow, which was in a night, and was lost in a night; and I should not have pity over the great city of Nineveh, within which are more than twelve myriads of man, whom do not know between their right and their left, and much livestock?"
Fragments of the book were found among theDead Sea Scrolls, most of which follow theMasoretic Text closely and with Mur XII reproducing a large portion of the text.[46] As for the non-canonical writings, the majority of references to biblical texts were made asappeals to authority. The Book of Jonah appears to have served less purpose in the Qumran community than other texts, as the writings make no references to it.[47]
The 18th century Lithuanian master scholar and kabbalist, Elijah of Vilna, known as theVilna Gaon, authored a commentary on the biblical Book of Jonah as an allegory ofreincarnation.
Christ rises from the tomb, alongside Jonah spit onto the beach, atypological allegory. From a 15th-centuryBiblia pauperum.
The earliest Christian interpretations of Jonah are found in theGospel of Matthew[48] and theGospel of Luke.[49] Both Matthew and Luke record a tradition of Jesus' interpretation of the Book of Jonah (notably, Matthew includes two very similar traditions in chapters 12 and 16).
As with most Old Testament interpretations found in the New Testament, the interpretation ascribed to Jesus is primarilytypological. Jonah becomes a "type" for Jesus. Jonah spent three days in the belly of the fish; Jesus will spend three days in the tomb. Here, Jesus plays on the imagery ofSheol found in Jonah's prayer. While Jonah metaphorically declared, "Out of the belly of Sheol I cried," Jesus will literally be in the belly of Sheol. Finally, Jesus compares his generation to the people of Nineveh. Jesus fulfills his role as a type of Jonah, however his generation fails to fulfill its role as a type of Nineveh. Nineveh repented, but Jesus' generation, which has seen and heard one even greater than Jonah, fails to repent. Through his typological interpretation of the Book of Jonah, Jesus has weighed his generation and found it wanting.[50]: 174–175, 180
The debate over the credibility of the miracle of Jonah is not simply a modern one. The credibility of a human being surviving in the belly of a great fish has long been questioned. Inc. 409 AD,Augustine of Hippo wrote to Deogratias concerning the challenge of some to the miracle recorded in the Book of Jonah. He writes:
The last question proposed is concerning Jonah, and it is put as if it were not from Porphyry, but as being a standing subject of ridicule among the Pagans; for his words are:"In the next place, what are we to believe concerning Jonah, who is said to have been three days in a whale's belly? The thing is utterly improbable and incredible, that a man swallowed with his clothes on should have existed in the inside of a fish. If, however, the story is figurative, be pleased to explain it. Again, what is meant by the story that a gourd sprang up above the head of Jonah after he was vomited by the fish? What was the cause of this gourd's growth?" Questions such as these I have seen discussed by Pagans amidst loud laughter, and with great scorn.
— (Letter CII, Section 30)
Augustine responds that if one is to question one miracle, then one should question all miracles as well (section 31). Nevertheless, despite his apologetic, Augustine views the story of Jonah as a figure for Christ. For example, he writes: "As, therefore, Jonah passed from the ship to the belly of thewhale, so Christ passed from the cross to the sepulchre, or into the abyss of death. And as Jonah suffered this for the sake of those who were endangered by the storm, so Christ suffered for the sake of those who are tossed on the waves of this world." Augustine credits his allegorical interpretation to the interpretation of Christ himself (Matthew 12:39–40), and he allows for other interpretations as long as they are in line with Christ's.
The relationship between Jonah and his fellow Jews is ambivalent, and complicated by the Gloss's tendency to read Jonah as an allegorical prefiguration of Jesus Christ. While some glosses in isolation seem crudelysupersessionist ("The foreskin believes while the circumcision remains unfaithful"), the prevailing allegorical tendency is to attribute Jonah's recalcitrance to his abiding love for his own people and his insistence that God's promises to Israel not be overridden by a lenient policy toward the Ninevites. For theglossator, Jonah's pro-Israel motivations correspond to Christ's demurral in the Garden of Gethsemane ("My Father, if it be possible, let this chalice pass from me")[53] and the Gospel of Matthew's and Paul's insistence that "salvation is from the Jews" (John 4:22). While in the Gloss the plot of Jonah prefigures how God will extend salvation to the nations, it also makes abundantly clear—as some medieval commentaries on the Gospel of John do not—that Jonah and Jesus are Jews, and that they make decisions of salvation-historical consequence as Jews.[opinion]
NCSY Director of EducationDavid Bashevkin sees Jonah as a thoughtful prophet who comes to religion out of a search for theological truth and is constantly disappointed by those who come to religion to provide mere comfort in the face of adversity inherent to the human condition. "If religion is only a blanket to provide warmth from the cold, harsh realities of life," Bashevkin imagines Jonah asking, "did concerns of theological truth and creed even matter?"[56] The lesson taught by the episode of the tree at the end of the book is that comfort is a deep human need that religion provides, but that this need not obscure the role of God.
The Hebrew text of Jonah[57] readsdag gadol (Hebrew:דג גדול,dāḡ gāḏōl), literally meaning "great fish". TheSeptuagint translated this into Greek askētos megas (κῆτος μέγας), "huge whale/sea monster"; and in Greek mythology the term was closely associated with sea monsters.[58]Saint Jerome later translated the Greek phrase aspiscis grandis in hisLatin Vulgate, and ascētus in Matthew.[59] At some point,cētus became synonymous with whale (cf.cetyl alcohol, which is alcohol derived from whales). In his 1534 translation,William Tyndale translated the phrase in Jonah 2:1 as "greate fyshe", and he translated the wordkētos (Greek) orcētus (Latin) in Matthew as "whale".[59] Tyndale's translation was later followed by the translators of theKing James Version of 1611 and has enjoyed general acceptance in English translations.
In the book of Jonah chapter 1 verse 17, the Hebrew bible refers to the fish asdag gadol, "great fish", in the masculine. However, in chapter 2 verse 1, the word which refers to fish is written asdagah, meaning female fish. The verses therefore read: "And the lord provided a great fish (dag gadol,דָּג גּדוֹל, masculine) for Jonah, and it swallowed him, and Jonah sat in the belly of the fish (still male) for three days and nights; then, from the belly of the (dagah,דָּגָה, female) fish, Jonah began to pray."[14]
The Book of Jonah closes abruptly,[45] with an epistolary warning[60] based on theemblematic trope of a fast-growing vine present in Persian narratives, and popularized in fables such asThe Gourd and the Palm-tree during the Renaissance, for example byAndrea Alciato.
Fragments of this book in Hebrew were found among theDead Sea Scrolls (cumulatively covering the whole book), including 4Q82 (4QXIIg; 25 BCE) with extant verses 1:1‑9, 2:3‑11, 3:1, 3:3, and 4:5‑11;[64][65][66] andWadi Murabba'at Minor Prophets (Mur88; MurXIIProph; 75–100 CE) with extant verses 1:14‑16, 2:1‑7; 3:2‑5, 3:7‑10; 4:1‑2, and 4:5.[65][67]
Fragments containing parts of this book in Greek were found among theDead Sea Scrolls, including 4Q76 (4QXIIa; 150–125 BCE) with extant verses 1:1–5, 1:7–10, 1:15–17 (1:17 = 2:1 in Hebrew Bible), 2:6 (verses 2:1,7 in Masoretic Text), and 3:2;[70][65][71] 4Q81 (4QXIIf; 175–50 BCE) with extant verses 1:6–8, 1:10–16;[65][66][72] 4Q82 (4QXIIg; 25 BCE) with extant verses 1:1–9, 2:2–10 (verses 2:3–11 in Masoretic Text), 3:1–3, and 4:5–11;[65][66][73] andWadi Murabba'at Minor Prophets (Mur88; MurXIIProph; 75–100 CE) with extant verses 1:1–17 (1:1–16, 2:1 in Hebrew Bible), 2:1–10 (verses 2:1–11 in Masoretic Text), 3:1–10, and 4:1–11.,[65][67] andNaḥal Ḥever (8ḤevXIIgr; 1st century CE) with extant verses 2:1–6 (verses 2:1–7 in Masoretic Text), 3:2–5, 3:7–10, 4:1–2, and 4:5.[65][74]
^Lovelace, Vanessa (2021). "Jonah". In O'Brien, Julia M. (ed.).The Oxford Handbook of the Minor Prophets. Oxford University Press. pp. 449–460.doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190673208.013.34.A majority of scholars regard the book's composition as considerably later than the events it describes. They point first and foremost to language. Jonah includes words and motifs that are found only in postexilic biblical and nonbiblical Aramaic sources (for further discussion, see Wolff 1986). This includes, for example, seafaring words such as "mariner" (mallah) and "ship" (sefina) (1:5), "sailor" (hovel) (1:6), the phrase "on whose account?" (1:7, 12), and the ascription "God of heaven" (1:9; cf. Gen 24:7) which appear rarely in the Hebrew Bible (Ps 107 and Ezek 27) but are common in postexilic biblical and Imperial Aramaic sources. Hans Walter Wolff suggests that infrequency of certain vocabulary and phrases in Jonah can be accounted for by their limited use in specific contexts (Wolff 1986, 76), but the late biblical verbal constructions that are unique to Jonah support the argument that the book is postexilic.
^ Wolff, Hans Walter. 1986. Obadiah and Jonah: A Commentary. Translated by Margaret Kohl. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg.
^Lovelace, Vanessa (2021). "Jonah". In O'Brien, Julia M. (ed.).The Oxford Handbook of the Minor Prophets. Oxford University Press. pp. 449–460.doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190673208.013.34.A majority of scholars regard the book's composition as considerably later than the events it describes. They point first and foremost to language. Jonah includes words and motifs that are found only in postexilic biblical and nonbiblical Aramaic sources (for further discussion, see Wolff 1986). This includes, for example, seafaring words such as "mariner" (mallah) and "ship" (sefina) (1:5), "sailor" (hovel) (1:6), the phrase "on whose account?" (1:7, 12), and the ascription "God of heaven" (1:9; cf. Gen 24:7) which appear rarely in the Hebrew Bible (Ps 107 and Ezek 27) but are common in postexilic biblical and Imperial Aramaic sources. Hans Walter Wolff suggests that infrequency of certain vocabulary and phrases in Jonah can be accounted for by their limited use in specific contexts (Wolff 1986, 76), but the late biblical verbal constructions that are unique to Jonah support the argument that the book is postexilic.
^ Wolff, Hans Walter. 1986. Obadiah and Jonah: A Commentary. Translated by Margaret Kohl. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg.
^Lecture "Archaeology and the Book of Jonah", delivered in January 1978, published asDonald Wiseman (1979)."Jonah's Nineveh"(PDF).Tyndale Bulletin.30:29–52. Archived from the original on 2012-01-12. Retrieved2023-09-20.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
^abJoseph S. Exell; Henry Donald Maurice Spence-Jones (editors),The Pulpit Commentary on Jonah 4, first published 1890, accessed on 20 June 2024 This article incorporates text from this source, which is in thepublic domain.
^David L. Washburn,A Catalog of Biblical Passages in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Brill, 2003), 146.
^James C. Vanderkam,The Dead Sea Scrolls Today (Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans, 1994), 151
^Anderson, Joel Edmund. "Jonah in Mark and Matthew: Creation, Covenant, Christ, and the Kingdom of God." Biblical theology bulletin 42.4 (2012): 172-186.
^Ryan McDermott, trans., "The Ordinary Gloss on Jonah," PMLA 128.2 (2013): 424–38.
^citing Peter W. Parshall, "Albrecht Dürer's Saint Jerome in his Study: A Philological Reference," from The Art Bulletin 53 (September 1971), pp. 303–5 athttp://www.oberlin.edu/amam/DurerSt.Jerome.htm
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