{"id":8434,"date":"2024-12-17T06:31:26","date_gmt":"2024-12-17T12:31:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theway.davisinterests.com\/wp\/?page_id=8434"},"modified":"2025-11-19T10:45:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T16:45:08","slug":"jonah-the-book","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/theway.davisinterests.com\/wp\/the-bible\/hebrew-bible\/neviim-prophets\/jonah-the-book\/","title":{"rendered":"Jonah the Book"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

See the post on<\/a> this site titled Jonah’s Poetic Prayer Inserted in Chapter 2<\/a>. Plus, see the extract below by Christine Elizabeth Hayes about the prayer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Did God Play a Dirty Trick on Jonah at the End?<\/a> by David Noel Freedman<\/a>. Published by BAS August 1990<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Freedman presents alternative insights to the story that are very interesting and are predicated on his statement that in the 8th Century BCE the concept of repentance was evolving instead of punishment. Extracts that summarize his insights are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  1. The turning point of the story, as far as Jonah is concerned, is the casting of the lots. When the lots are cast on the ship to find out who is responsible for the terrible storm, Jonah is identified. Whatever the sailors may think, Jonah knows that God has caught up with him.<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Jonah had some very fixed ideas about God; that\u2019s where the quarrel really is. That he didn\u2019t want to go to Nineveh has nothing to do with the fact that the Ninevites were gentiles. Jonah\u2019s problem was with a new eighth-century B.C.E. doctrine about God. It is the doctrine of \u201cthe God who repents about the evil\u201d (niham \u2018al hara \u2018a)2<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0he says he\u2019s going to do that concerns Jonah. … Previously, there had to be punishment or retribution for wrong doing. The new idea was that repentance is equivalent to, or has equal value with, punishment or retribution. In short, you can substitute repentance for retribution\u2014and come out even.<\/mark><\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. The Book of Jonah is designed to explain and to support this new view of reciprocal repentance: If you repent, God will repent; it doesn\u2019t matter who: Repentance is open to everyone, even the Ninevites. If they repent, they have as much right to God\u2019s repentance as anyone else. Jonah does not accept this.<\/mark> He is emotionally, psychologically and theologically opposed. It\u2019s a particular problem for him, because the doctrine is being propounded not by a fellow theologian, but by God Himself. What is he to do? That\u2019s why he runs away. There is nobody to appeal to.<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. What led the Ninevites to believe this stranger\u2014and therefore to repent? I believe it was the miracle of the fish. Now we begin to see why the fish is so important, so critical to the story.<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. God replies very briefly\u2014a mere two verses\u2014and with that the book ends. \u201cYou\u2019re sorry for the plant,\u201d God says. \u201cYou didn\u2019t labor for it, you didn\u2019t make it grow; it is a child of the night and perished in a night\u201d (Jonah 4:10). In short, God says, \u201cthe plant has no significant value, yet you, Jonah, are ready to die about it. If you had the power, Jonah, you would surely have spared the plant. How do you think I feel?\u201d God asks: \u201cShould I not feel sorry for Nineveh that great city of more than 120,000 people who do not know their right hand from their left?\u201d (Jonah 4:11<\/em>).<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  6. God is telling Jonah that that is what\u2019s behind the whole thing\u2014pity, compassion for his children. This whole repentance business was just a charade. That was for Jonah\u2019s benefit, to give Jonah some anchor to hold onto, to say, well, you know, they did repent, so Jonah has to say, yes, that\u2019s right, God acted according to the rules, even if this repentance business is a new one. But God is now saying that regardless of the repentance, he would have saved them. \u201cThey\u2019re human beings,\u201d God is saying. \u201cDon\u2019t I have the right to be sorry for these people who don\u2019t know their right hand from their left? And if I\u2019m sorry for them, they\u2019re not going to be destroyed.\u201d There is no answer from Jonah! I think he must have been shocked out of his mind!<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n
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    Bart Ehrman<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

    Bart Ehrman has a great post The Bible\u2019s Best Known Short Story: Jonah<\/a>, December 28, 2021. A paragraph was extracted and is below in italics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    There are numerous lessons that an ancient reader might take away from this terrific little story. Here again we have a prophetic emphasis that God is not the God only of Israel but of all nations, and that he has power over all, even over that mighty world empire, Assyria. Moreover, God is portrayed as a God of mercy who really prefers not to enter into judgment but to extend his mercy to all who repent, even if they are the worst of enemies.<\/mark> This message no doubt rankled not only Jonah but his Judean hearers, who knew full well that Israel and Judah were destroyed and who believed that it was by an act of God, who was angry with his people for sinning and\u00a0not\u00a0repenting.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    Extracts from the SBL Intro by John Kaltner<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

    Evidence from within the book indicates that Jonah was not written until long after the reign of Jeroboam II, so the relatively obscure eighth-century prophet plays the central role in a narrative that is meant to address the concerns of a much later time and context than his own. Some evidence that the book addresses later concerns is historical in nature. For example, the description of the city of Nineveh, to which Jonah is sent, reflects a time much later than that of Jeroboam II. Nineveh was not a large city from which royal proclamations were issued (3.6\u20139) until it became the capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the century after Jeroboam\u2019s reign. The linguistic evidence points in the same direction. The book contains grammatical forms, words, and phrases characteristic of a later point in the history of Biblical Hebrew. The book adopts a universalist perspective with its positive assessment of the people of Nineveh and its description of God being concerned about the fate of non-Israelites (4.11). This tolerant and accepting attitude toward foreigners is typical of later literature in the biblical canon.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Society of Biblical Literature. The SBL Study Bible (pp. 3712-3713). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Related to the question of genre is the presence of Jonah\u2019s poetic prayer from inside the fish in chapter 2, which breaks up the prose of the rest of the book. If it were deleted, the flow of the story would improve. In addition, the words Jonah utters from his piscine prison do not fit the narrative context of the previous chapter. It is therefore likely that Jonah\u2019s psalm-like prayer was a later addition to the entertaining story of the reluctant prophet. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Society of Biblical Literature. The SBL Study Bible (pp. 3715-3716). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    Extracts from Elizabeth Hayes, Christine. Introduction to the Bible (The Open Yale Courses Series). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
    Chapter 2:<\/h6>\n\n\n\n