Something’s Fishy: God’s Pursuit of the Readers of the Book of Jonah
“I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”
”… for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.” Jonah 1:9b and 4:2b
Jonah 2:1–10 – The Pursuits of God in the Book of Jonah
Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost – September 20, 2020 (am)
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Heavenly Father, through the reading and hearing of your word, work by your Spirit to open eyes, to soften hearts, and to shape our life in to the image of your Son, in whose name we pray. Amen.
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This morning’s sermon text is Jonah 2, in which the prophet sings a song of thanks to God, inside the belly of a fish of all places. Jonah, ch. 2. Hear the word of God:
Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the belly of the fish, saying, “I called out to the LORD, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me. Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight; yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.’ The waters closed in over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the pit, O LORD my God. When my life was fainting away, I remembered the LORD, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the LORD!” And the LORD spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.
The word of the Lord. The story of Jonah opens with a man clearly opposed to God’s way, though we’re less told this and more shown this. The narrator pictures it for us by the purposeful use of directional verbs as ch. 1 begins: God tells Jonah in 1:2 to arise to go to Nineveh, but Jonah in vv. 3–5 goes down to Joppa, goes down into a boat, goes down into the heart of the boat. The direction of his life and heart is away from God and God’s word.
This verb indicating the direction of Jonah’s life, “to go down,” is used just one more time in the rest of the book. Did you catch it in what we read in ch. 2? It’s there in v. 6,[1] where Jonah says, “I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever.”[2] In ch. 1, Jonah goes down, down, down to get away from God’s call. And in ch. 2, Jonah goes down still further. In fact, in ch. 2 Jonah describes a progressive sinking down.[3] First in v. 3, he is submerged under the waves. In v. 5, he sinks down further below the waters of the deep. In v. 6, he descends to the “roots of the mountains” (which, like the roots of trees in the ancient outlook, go down deep into the earth[4]). Finally, at the end of v. 6, he’s all the way down “to the land whose bars closed on me forever,” or as the NIV has it, “to the earth beneath”; or as we might put it, “to rock bottom.” Progressively and purposefully,[5] Jonah has sunk down below the mountains’ roots, about as far away from God’s abode in the heavens as one could possibly be.
I say this is a purposeful sinking down, but it’s important to clarify whose purpose is at work here. In ch. 1, clearly Jonah’s purpose is to go down away from the call of God. He went down in ch. 1. But in ch. 2 he was sent down. Jonah’s sinking down to the bottom of the sea is not his purpose at work. Rather, it was God’s purpose. As v. 3 suggests, God “cast” Jonah down. God thrust him to the bottom of a watery pit. Why would God do that to his prophet? I think God was giving Jonah a taste of his own medicine.[6] Jonah craved to “go down” away from God, so God allowed Jonah to taste the fruits of that way: this is what it is like to abandon God, to find a place seemingly far from him and his way.[7] But God’s purpose was ultimately redemptive.[8] In sinking down, the prophet was being pursued by his God for his good. God brought Jonah to the point of despairing of life itself so that he would rely not on himself but on the God who raises the dead.[9] Jonah 2 is the prophet’s song of thanks to God for this deliverance. In it Jonah looks back on where he used to be, and gives thanks to God for where he has been brought.[10]
Jonah used to be far from God, not geographically but spiritually. Look in v. 4 at Jonah’s initial response to God casting him in the sea: “Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight; yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.” That might at first sound like a commendable statement of trust. But from what we know of Jonah’s character in the surrounding narrative, I think it’s more fitting to discern some self-confident presumption there. Indeed, some crucial things are missing from the statement. Jonah doesn’t say who, if anyone, will deliver him; he just asserts, “I shall again look upon your holy temple.”[11] He doesn’t profess reliance on God alone in his plight. Perhaps most importantly, Jonah doesn’t mention how he got into this mess in the first place. He says he was “driven away” from God, but he conveniently omits that he was trying to flee from God, and he doesn’t voice anything like repentance for it.[12] In v. 4, Jonah has yet to confess his wrong and repent of his rebellion, has yet to have his self-reliance broken.[13]
So God sends him down lower, below the deep, the roots of the mountains, to the point of land shutting up like a prison door over him.[14] Jonah is brought to the end of his false hopes. There at last he comes to his senses. As he confesses at the end of v. 6, “You, O LORD my God, brought up my life from the pit.”[15] Forsaking self-reliance, Jonah was free, as he says in v. 7, to remember the LORD as his only deliverer. And God heard from his holy temple.[16] Like the pagan sailors before him in ch. 1, Jonah receives God’s merciful work of deliverance; and like the sailors before him, Jonah is freed, v. 9 says, for the proper response of sacrificial worship.
There is, of course, still a lot more growth in repentance and humility and God-reliance that Jonah needs to undergo. The song itself gives evidence of this. For example, in v. 8, Jonah makes a surprising, seemingly out of place statement about idolaters. I wonder if this might not be a slight indication about Jonah disposition now that he is set back on the path toward obedience. It’s as if he’s saying in his heart, “Yes, I will now heed God’s call to go proclaim in Nineveh, to those pagan idolaters, but I’ll bet those idolaters, if they do repent, will end up forsaking their hope of steadfast love.”[17] Jonah might not be fully on board with God’s heart.[18] And what’s the end result of Jonah’s time in the fish’s belly? In v. 10, how is Jonah deposited back onto shore? The fish, the agent of God’s deliverance, “vomits” Jonah onto dry land. As you might imagine, the verb “to vomit” doesn’t have good connotations in Scripture. It’s used, for example, in the Mosaic Law of God’s response to unclean covenant breakers.[19] The quality of Jonah’s offering and the state of his soul after his sojourn through the sea may be less than palatable.[20] And, certainly in the remaining chapters, we see that Jonah’s sanctification is an ongoing project. As we considered briefly in ch. 4 last Sunday, Jonah is still by story’s end quite preoccupied with himself and reliant on his own lights. But here in ch. 2 he has at least made a start. Or better, here in ch. 2, God’s pursuit of his prophet has made a beginning on that way.
Now we all probably sense that the book has bigger fish to fry than the prophet himself. This book’s horizon of concerns extends beyond the isolated historical experience of one individual before God. What might the broader concerns of Jonah be?
One clue pointing to an answer has to do with how we categorize Jonah among the sacred writings.[21] Jonah is considered prophetic literature. It’s not Torah (one of the books of the Law); it’s not wisdom literature (like Proverbs or Ecclesiastes). It is a prophetic book. It’s included in a collection of prophetic books that we sometimes call “The Minor Prophets.” These books of the Minor Prophets, together with all the other prophetic writings in the Bible, were first and foremost words of address to the people of Israel from Yahweh their covenant Lord.
The prophets were God’s mouthpieces, speaking words of exhortation and comfort and warning and judgment based on Israel’s covenant with God. So their writings, the prophetic books, are mostly in the form of direct address to the nation: “Thus says the Lord, O Israel! Return to your covenant Lord, O Israel!” The prophetic writings are mainly filled with what the prophets themselves said in direct address to Israel, in sermons or oracles or visions or poems.
That’s the stuff prophetic books trade in, with one major exception—the book of Jonah.[22] This prophetic book gives just one verse of Jonah’s preached words (3:4: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”). That single, terse sentence[23] is all we get of Jonah’s proclamation; everything else in the book is about Jonah’s life. This prophetic book must work a little differently than the rest of the prophetic writings. Jonah is not a collection of sermons but a story. It’s not a record of Jonah’s words but a record of Jonah’s ways. It has less to do with what he said and more to do with what he did and experienced.[24] But make no mistake, as prophetic literature, the narrative of what Jonah did and experienced is a covenantal word for Israel.[25] Jonah’s categorization as prophetic literature is one clue to its larger interests/aims.
The oddness of today’s text is a second clue to the broader concerns in the book.[26] What’s odd about Jonah 2? What’s odd is it’s literary form—it’s a little buoy of poetry in a sea of narrative prose.[27] It the full lyrics of a praise song plopped into the middle of a very short story. That’s a little weird. It’s weird that this fast paced narrative, which zooms through rebellious flights and life-threatening storms and conversions of whole cities in the span of 10 verses or less in chs. 1 and 3, here in ch. 2 slows down to a crawl to show us in 10 verses one man singing one song in real time.[28] Another oddity: in ch. 2 we have “pious” Jonah in contrast to what is everywhere else Jonah being at least a little rebellious or begrudging.[29] This odd chapter sticks out like a sore thumb,[30] which I think signals that it’s an interpretive key to the story.
Chapter 2 is thanksgiving to the God who appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah (for God is mighty Creator), in order to deliver undeserving Jonah from a watery grave (for God is merciful Redeemer). Remember Jonah’s two confessions of faith in the story? “I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land” in 1:9; and “I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love” in 4:2. Those aren’t empty words; it’s not so-called “head knowledge” merely. That God is sovereign Creator and compassionate Redeemer is the truth of Jonah’s lived experience.
And it’s not Jonah’s experience only. In ch. 2, there are several connections to another dramatic, well-known event in Scripture. I think this is the most substantial connection: at the beginning of ch. 2, in v. 3, Jonah is plunged into the “heart of the sea,” and he winds up in v. 10 on “dry land.” Those terms come together in close connection in only one other place in the Bible: it’s in Exod 15, recounting the Lord’s deliverance of Israel through “the heart of the sea” on “dry land.”[31] In ch. 2, Jonah passes through the sea in a mini-exodus, like the exodus from Egypt.[32] Jonah the Hebrew (the only one in the story[33]) undergoes a replay of the founding moment for the Hebrew nation. Extending beyond Jonah 2, I suggest that the whole of Jonah’s story is meant as a parallel to the story and character of the nation of Israel.[34]
Jonah is God’s prophetic word to Israel, but it’s unlike other prophetic writings which are collections of overt exhortations, rebukes, and promises. In Jonah, God gives Israel not a preached message or a step-by-step manual for how to live, but a mirror.[35] Looking into the mirror of this word, Israel is to see themselves reflected and revealed. They are to discern the parallel between Jonah’s identity and their corporate identity as the people whom the Creator and Redeemer rescued through the sea. They are to hear in Jonah’s confessions of faith an echo of their own regular practice of confessing the one true faith. They can see in Jonah what it looks like to turn our back on God, while being self-deceived or perverted in our perceptions that that’s what we’re doing. Apparently, God’s covenant people are susceptible to that, so they need to learn how pitiable that looks from, we might say, the perspective of heaven. Most of all, they are to see anew in this mirror that they, too, have been, are, and ever will be the needy objects of God’s mighty and merciful pursuit. It turns out that God not only pursues the prophet in the story of Jonah, but also pursues the readers of the story of Jonah. The giving of this story to ancient Israel, the first readers of it, is the form of God’s pursuit of them.[36]
Through the pages of Jonah, God would warn and rebuke Israel of a pitfall that often accompanies what we might call “possession” of the right confession. Israel confessed the true faith of the Creator of all things and the Redeemer full of lovingkindness and faithfulness. But too often in Israel’s history, the rest of their practiced life was wrongly fitted to, was in tension with, or was in direct contradiction to their confession. Israel was in the habit of bearing the name of the Lord in vain, of claiming to be ambassadors for God but telling a lie about God with their corporate life. This lived contradiction of their confession had a number of roots, many of which overlap and intertwine into a complex ball of covenantal unfaithfulness. I think we can discern in Jonah at least three overlapping roots to Israel contradicting with their lived lives what they rightly confessed with their lips.[37] Let’s spend some time pointing them out.
The first is operating with a kind of exceptionalism, wherein we think to ourselves, “Yeah, this is true for others, but my situation is unique. No one else is faced with my trial, or has my skill and knowledge, or is as devoted to this or that as me. The normal rules don’t apply to me.” I think something like this had to have been going on at the beginning of Jonah. Think about it: the prophet tries to flee by land and sea from the Maker of the sea and dry land. Jonah well knows that God is the Creator, sovereign over every inch of creation. He confesses his fear of this one and only Creator to the sailors on the boat. And yet, somehow in his mind and in his heart and in his will, the possibility exists that he just might be able to escape this God.[38] Jonah must think he’s the exception to the rule; some kind of exceptionalism has to be going on here.
Or differently, at the end of the story, Jonah knows that God is free and overflowing in his mercy. Jonah doesn’t object to that general truth. Or better, Jonah doesn’t object to God’s mercy bestowed on him and his people. But should God not also pity the great city Nineveh? “Yeah, but …” (I call exceptionalism the “yeah, but” syndrome. In listening to God’s word, or really anyone’s word is who is not called “you” or “us,” if your first impulse is “yeah, but …,” there’s likely some exceptionalism at work.) Should not God show mercy to whom he will show mercy? Yeah, but we fit the criteria, Nineveh doesn’t. Yeah, but we’re different from them. Yeah, but we deserve God’s mercy, they don’t. What a profound contradiction of terms: deserving God’s mercy. If that’s how Jonah is operating,[39] he’s blind to the contradiction. But God would have Israel reading this story to see it, and to see more generally that exceptionalism of various kinds is often at the root of lived contradiction of our confession of faith.
Another source for lived contradiction of true confession of faith is nostalgia. Let’s turn our attention again to the very important Jon 4:2. As the verse begins, Jonah asks God, “Is this not what I said when I was yet in my country?” Now what specifically did Jonah say? And when exactly did he say it? You’ll be hard-pressed to find an answer. Go back to opening couple of verses in ch. 1, which narrate Jonah’s time back in Israel; there’s no hint in there that Jonah said anything to God at that time. That’s not to say it never happened. It is to say that whatever Jonah actually said is unimportant for us to know in ch. 1. What the author thinks is important for us to know is Jonah’s question in ch. 4 making reference to what he said earlier in his life.[40]
Why must we hear Jonah’s question? I think it’s because it sounds a lot like another question from earlier in Scripture.[41] Recall the story of God bringing Israel out of Egypt. He led them into the wilderness, but Pharaoh, in hot pursuit, had Israel pinned against the Red Sea. What did Israel do? They complained to Moses in Exod 14:12: “Is this not what we said to you when we were in Egypt?” That’s basically the same question Jonah asks, the same heart of complaint. Jonah’s experience replays facets of Israel’s; it’s a mirror of their life with God. In Exodus, Israel pines for the good old days in Egypt, which ironically were anything but good. But nostalgia has a way of doing that—it has a way of distorting our perceptions of what we think we’ve lost; it has a way of stirring up distrust in or inattentiveness to God’s promises about what lies ahead for his people. The way into goodness for God’s people is never to try to go back to some supposedly pristine age; that way idolatry lies. The way into goodness for God’s people is always forward into God’s promises, always forward into the changes God will bring about (which we can never fully predict). The best for the people of God always lies ahead.
But Jonah isn’t persuaded. Wasn’t it fine the way it was, God, when it was just you and me comfortable, safe, unthreatened by “outsiders” in Israel? Why did you have to burst in and tell me to go elsewhere? Why did you have to change a good thing? Oh that we could just go back to the good old days, to “normal life,” because you leading us into the wide unknown cannot possibly be better. Now we today probably don’t know personally what that feels like, but we can at least begin to have a theoretical understanding of how nostalgia might be the root of all sorts of contradictions of Israel’s confession.[42]
A third possible source of lived contradiction of the confession of faith is confidence in one’s own sincerity and zeal for God and the good. Jonah’s experience of God’s redemption in ch. 2 was intense. His expression of gratitude for and loving commitment to God in his song, even if it’s imperfect, is at least sincere. And the argument can be made, when we get to ch. 4, that there is some goodness in his impulses.[43] Maybe his desire for Nineveh’s destruction is tied to a zeal for God’s justice to be met. Maybe he wants God’s word shown to be sure and true: he had proclaimed, “Yet forty days and Nineveh will be destroyed!,” as the word of the Lord. What might it imply if that word does not come about? Maybe Jonah longs for Israel’s well-being, which sparing the godless Assyrians apparently threatens. In themselves, those are all good things, all things God himself cares about. Jonah may be sincerely zealous for the things of God. We might say, in line with other Scripture, that Jonah has a zeal for God but not according to knowledge. He’s sincere about God, but he’s ignorant or disordered in his understanding of God’s character and priorities. His own zeal for the good is what blinds him to the fact that, in the name of God, he opposes God. Or differently, confidence in the God he confesses has subtly mutated into confidence in his own zeal for God, confidence in his own sincerity, confidence in his own way of seeking God’s glory. That’s also a continual danger for Israel, the readers of this book, which is why God, in pursuit after them for their good, has given them this story.[44]
Of course, ancient Israel aren’t the only readers of this story. We, the church of Christ today, are also its readers. I believe God intends to pursue us through this story as well. And in closing I want to highlight one important strategy of God’s pursuit that comes to light in Jonah.
As we noted last Sunday, the book can be divided into loosely parallel halves. Each half begins with God commanding Jonah to go to Nineveh, then relates a remarkable interaction between Jonah and Gentiles, and culminates in Jonah addressing words to God. It’s that twofold end-point in chs. 2 and 4 that interests us here. The two halves of Jonah climax in conversation with God.[45] There’s a repeated movement into covenantal dialogue. The end of God’s pursuit of Jonah is, in a word, worship. Worship is nothing if not words addressed to God, dialogue between God and his people. That’s the structure our Lord’s Day services here at Grace: God calls us to worship, we respond with praise; God speaks his holy word, we confess how far short we’ve fallen of his way; God declares good news, we sing to God in joy; and so on. Worship involves addressing God in a dialogue with him. And that’s where things end up not once but twice in Jonah. God’s pursuit of Jonah involves a repeated return to a worship engagement.
I think there’s an important lesson here about the strategy of God’s pursuit, the method of God’s gracious work to convict and renew and grow not just Jonah the prophet, and not just ancient Israel, but also us the church of God today. The chief means whereby God grows and renews and shapes and strengthens his people is worship.
In a manner, God’s pursuit of Jonah through worship is at the beginning, middle, and end of the story. We’ve spent a lot of time underlining the importance of Jonah’s confession of faith, voiced in 1:9 (“I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and dry land”), and in 4:2 (“I knew that you are a God gracious and merciful, slow to anger,” and so on ). Where did Jonah discover that about God’s identity? Where did these forms of professing faith in God come from? Jonah most assuredly didn’t come up with them himself as the “spontaneous” regurgitations of his own creative heart. Rather, he received them. Long before Jonah, these confessions had been uttered for generation after generation. Their basic substance is repeated over and over in Scripture, and especially throughout the Psalms, Israel’s hymnbook.[46]
The same point can be made about Jonah’s song in ch. 2. As commentators often point out, most of the language Jonah uses echoes the Psalms; sometimes he seems to lift whole lines directly from the Psalms.[47] Apparently, Jonah has learned to address God, has learned to sing to God, has learned to respond to God’s pursuit of him, and has learned who this God is in the first place in the cradle of Israel’s worship. Apparently, Jonah has learned all this very well, since we can be pretty sure he didn’t have access to Psalms scrolls inside the fish. Jonah must have already experienced a significant formation by his engagements with God in worship. God must have been pursuing Jonah in worship meetings before this story even began.
Of course, there’s still a lot of room for growth in Jonah’s knowledge, his obedience, his understanding of the confession he has received, his gratefulness. We’ve seen that his song in ch. 2 still has a good deal too much of self-confidence, and a good deal too little of humble repentance. But God doesn’t, for that reason, tell Jonah to be quiet until he shapes up his theology and hymnody. Rather, God welcomes Jonah even with his less than commendable words, receives those words, and would seek to mature those words and sanctify Jonah through continued worship engagements. Still at story’s end in ch. 4, Jonah is in need of growth. So God again, in faithful persistence, welcomes Jonah’s words and enters into covenantal dialogue with him, for it is through meeting in worship that God grows his people.
I think that’s part of the point of including the lyrics of Jonah’s song in full at the center of this book. I mean, why slow all the way down to give every line of Jonah’s song? Wouldn’t it have been simpler and more efficient to simply to summarize: “Jonah thanked God for deliverance in the belly of the fish”? That might have been simpler. But it wouldn’t have hit the mark of the narrator’s aim: it wouldn’t have shown Jonah to still be needing much growth; it wouldn’t have shown God’s welcome of Jonah’s imperfect words of praise;[48] it wouldn’t have contributed to the theme of God growing Jonah through continued engagements of worship.[49]
And so it is still today. God pursues us for our good especially in and through the worship gathering. How does this work? Well one way it works, among many, is that when we enter into covenantal meeting and dialogue with God, we have the opportunity not just to voice our words to him but most importantly to hear his word to us.[50] We get to learn anew the truth of who he is by hearing again God’s own explanations of who he is, of what’s in his heart, of what he’s up to in the world. We also have an opportunity to practice taking on our own lips what God invites us to say to him aright. That’s what the Psalms are—they are God-inspired words of address to God, given to us to help us learn how to talk with him aright. One reason we recite Psalms together in worship is because we need to grow in our speech skills with God, we need to grow in naming our emotional life aright, we need to grow in what we pay attention to and bring before God in prayer, we need to grow in naming and knowing God aright. As we’ve noted, Jonah had already learned and practiced some of this through his engagements with the Psalms and through regularly confessing the faith in the context of Israel’s worship. He had, of course, still a long way to go. But I am persuaded that that way was not a path away from his confession and from the Psalms, but more deeply into them, not just in words alone but also, by the Spirit’s power, in deed and disposition and direction of life.
And when all is said and done, what remains? What remains is, of course, to worship God, now not with rightly ordered words but no heart, as it were; and not with all zeal but little truthful, covenantal knowledge; rather, with a maturing wholeness of head and heart and hands and feet and lives, for the work in us that God has done, is doing, and will most assuredly complete. God’s pursuit of us today begins and is maintained and ends in worship. Therefore, let us worship our God.
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Lord God, give us strength to respond to your word aright with faith in Christ, with love for neighbor, and with hope in your precious and very great promises. You are the mighty Creator, and thus able to do this. And you are the merciful Redeemer, and thus delight to this. So we lift up this prayer with great confidence, through Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, belong all glory and honor and praise, now and forever. Amen.
Notes:
[1]. The versification of our English Bibles differs from that of the Hebrew text (the Masoretic Text [MT]). In our English Bibles, mention of the Lord’s appointment of the great fish to swallow Jonah and of Jonah’s three day journey is mentioned at the end of ch. 1. But in the versification of the MT, this appears as the first verse of ch. 2 (with all of the remaining verses in ch. 2 being one verse off from the English numbering). In general, my references will be in accord with the English system, but, as necessary, I will cite both verse systems in the notes below.
[2]. See Magonet, Form and Meaning, 17.
[3]. Ibid., 40–41; see also 17.
[4]. For the ancient cosmology, see Sasson, Jonah, 187.
[5]. Magonet notes that there is a cosmological precision (from the ancient outlook) to the progression, which would appear intentional, and it also distinguishes Jonah’s psalm from typical (and generally historically vague/context-less) thanksgiving psalms from the Psalter (Form and Meaning, 40–41).
[6]. More generally, as Magonet puts it, “God allows Jonah’s choice of action to dictate His method of reply” (Form and Meaning, 58). God giving Jonah a taste of his own medicine with restorative purposes is arguably a key theme in the book.
[7]. I say “seemingly” far from him not only out of a classical conviction of God’s omnipresence, but also because of the express biblical testimony of another who would complain to God that there’s no getting away from him, that even in the depths of Sheol, “You are there!” (Ps 139:8). (Incidentally, interpreters often try to link Ps 139 as a source or influence to the book of Jonah.)
[8]. In terms of the details, Sasson notes that חבשׁ in 2:5 [MT 2:6] is ambiguous in its connotation, being used elsewhere in both punitive and healing contexts. He comments, “The amphibolous application of this verb is intriguing, for it makes it possible to think of Jonah’s punishment as also potentially redemptive” (Jonah, 184).
[9]. The thought, first articulated in this way by the Apostle Paul in 2 Cor 1:8–9, is also what John Donne committed to proclaiming to himself: “And as to others’ souls I preached Thy word, / Be this my text, my sermon to my own, Therefore that He may raise, the Lord throws down” (“Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness”). Jonah’s being literally lifted from a watery pit corresponds to the raising of his attention and heart to God. As Jonah descends physically, he is raised, as it were, in his attention and in his heart (Magonet, Form and Meaning, 40–43). Intriguingly, Magonet also notes that Jonah describes his experience in the fish as one of functional “disembodiment,” inasmuch as in 2:8 MT the speaker places his “soul” as the subject of the action, an action that is specifically one of “fainting” (ibid., 41, 48). Jonah experiences descent to the pit, the fainting of the spirit/disembodiment, and then reconstitution by way of God’s work of raising up (indeed, Magonet even speaks of Jonah’s need to be “reconstituted,” to become a renewed “I”). Here we can also note three curiosities about the prose frame around the poem in 2:1 (MT 2:2) and 2:10 (MT 2:11). (1) As is commonly observed (and endlessly discussed), the feminine דָּגָה (“fish”) is used in 2:1 (MT 2:2) in contrast to the masculine דָּג (“fish”) in 1:17; 2:10 (MT 2:1, 2:11). While it is reasonable to suppose that the variation may have been insignificant to, or may have gone largely unnoticed by, ancient Hebrew readers (see the discussion in Sasson, Jonah, 155–57), Sweeney may be on to something when he suggests that the feminine form opens up the possibility of “the imagery of pregnancy for the fish and new birth or new creation for Jonah” (The Twelve Prophets, 317; cf. also Trible cited by Jenson, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, 62). To this we can add (2) that in 2:1 (MT 2:2), Jonah is said to sing from the “belly” (מֵעֶה) of the fish, a term that elsewhere can refer to “that part of the body through which people come into existence” (HALOT, in loc.; see, e.g., Gen 15:4). And (3) in 2:10 (MT 2:11), Jonah is transported to “dry land” (יַבָּשָׁה), a term that has creational connections both within Jonah itself (Jon 1:9) and clearly at the outset of Scripture (Gen 1:9–10; see also Ps 95:5). There may be a subtle new creational theology at work in Jonah.
[10]. More precisely, I am reading v. 2 as a summary statement introducing the Lord’s work, and the rest of the psalm as Jonah’s rehearsal of the details beginning in v. 3 with the initial casting of him into the waters (cf. Sasson, Jonah, 168, who notes that in 2:2 [MT 2:3] the references to God “answering” and God “hearing” appear out of the expected sequence, and wonders whether “some sort of transition … was achieved by the inversion: the first line assuring us that all will be well with Jonah, coaxing us away from unnecessary fixation with fish and their bellies”; but Stuart seems to take the verbs as mere synonyms [see Hosea–Jonah, 476]). Reading the bulk of the psalm as an ordered retrospect leading to the “present” is not dependent on any tracing of the tense forms used. There are many “past tense” constructions (perfect, wayyiqtol) used, though there are also imperfect forms used as well (Sasson, Jonah, 170n10, comments, “Although it is a brief poem, Jonah is a remarkable smorgasbord of verbal sequences”). Furthermore, in a poetic context, tense forms should not be pressed too far (see rightly ibid., 163–64). It is better to note that the psalm shares the structure of thanksgiving psalms, beginning with an introductory summary word of God’s work and then backtracking to trace the experience from beginning to end (Stuart, Hosea–Jonah, 472). In my reading, the psalm is gratitude offered from within the fish’s belly for the deliverance which the fish itself represents (differently, medieval interpreters think that a prayer inside the belly would better be indicated by the preposition בְּ than the מִ which appears in 2:1 [MT 2:2]; thus, like me, they read the prayer to be retrospective, but in contrast to my reading they viewed it as offered after Jonah was deposited safe on shore [see Sasson, Jonah, 154]). Ellul is among those who think that the fish is first a means of destruction, indeed the very “climax of the condemnation, the seal on the act of death … damnation” (The Judgment of Jonah, 43–44, quotation at 44). Yet elsewhere, in a characteristically paradoxical move, Ellul can offer a general semiotic principle for Scripture and all of reality, which applies equally to the significance of the fish in Jonah’s experience: “in God’s revelation no sign is ever purely negative because God’s own action is never negative” (ibid., 41).
[11]. At the center of the interpretation of this clause is the hotly contested introductory adverb אַךְ. I am taking it as an adversative (with, e.g., the Targum), emphasizing Jonah’s defiance against his circumstances (differently, the particle may be understood as an adversative, but the statement it introduces may be a rhetorical question or an expression of longing). But the adverb is also commonly used for emphasis (examples provided in HALOT), and in a context such as Jon 2 it might simply indicate a longing that Jonah expresses. For discussion, see Sasson, Jonah, 179–81, who notes that the situation is complicated further by Theodotion who takes the clause as a question (using the conjunction πῶς), which is at times taken to be evidence of a different Hebrew Vorlage (cf. NRSV, LEB; the CEV is likely more directly influenced by the LXX; see similarly the footnote in the HCSB).
[12]. The point is especially emphasized by Magonet, Form and Meaning, 52, 93.
[13]. Additionally, Magonet entertains the possibility that there is an ironic allusion to Ps 31:22 (MT 31:23) at Jon 2:4 (MT 2:5a) meant to underline Jonah’s self-assertion (as the subject of the “yet” clause) in contrast to the psalmist’s confidence in Yahweh (the subject of the “yet” clause in Ps 31:22). See Magonet, Form and Meaning, 45.
[14]. The climactic midpoint of the psalm, the pivot on which Jonah’s spirit turns, comes in vv. 5–6, a point that is underlined by way of terminology. Whereas most of the rest of the psalm is packed with allusions and/or traditional language of prayer from the Psalms (as we will note below), in vv. 5–6 the language is all “original.” In vv. 5–6, the language becomes, in a sense, unfamiliar, reflecting the climax of disorientation, the unfamiliarity, and the fearfulness of Jonah’s experience (see Magonet, Form and Meaning, 50, for a table breaking down the traditional/allusive language in the psalm, and 51 for discussion of the function of vv. 5–6). Similarly, though by a different route, Sasson locates 2:5–6 (MT 2:6–7) as the “focal center” of the psalm (Jonah, 166).
[15]. Magonet observes how the “I” moves from a position of grammatical and conceptual emphasis (fronted in the clause) in v. 4 (MT 2:5) to the background of v. 7 (MT 2:8). In the latter, not only has Jonah’s self-reference become third person (“my soul/life” [rightly in ESV; obscured by NASB]), but also it is included in a circumstantial noun clause (“while …,” בְּ), and the key actor, whom Jonah is led to remember, is emphasized by the fronted “YHWH” in the main clause (Magonet, Form and Meaning, 41). Additionally, we can note that in the key turning point at v. 6b (MT 2:7b), “you” (the LORD) becomes the grammatical subject. For Magonet, the situation is reversed again, however, in v. 9 [MT 2:10] as Jonah’s “I” resumes it place center stage (see ibid., 48).
[16]. As in Solomon’s prayer in 1 Kgs 8, there is something about the place of the Temple, and its liturgy (see also, e.g., Dan 9:20–21), that would seem to be effective for all times and places. I don’t know fully what to do with that except to point it out. Indeed, the broader cultic concern in the book of Jonah is as enigmatic to me as it is evident (note also the cultic background of fleeing “from the presence of Yahweh” in 1:3, 10 [Blenkinsopp, A History of Prophecy in Israel, 244]; the repetition of sacrifice and vow in 1:16 and 2:9; and the repeated emphasis on “going down” in light of the well-known fact that the Temple was up on Mt. Zion [Sweeney, The Twelve Prophets, 311]). It is something worthy of further reflection.
[17]. This may relate to the interpretive question raised at 4:5, where Jonah sits outside Nineveh to “see what would happen in the city.” Was he, as has been suggested by interpreters (e.g., Magonet, Form and Meaning, 133n24, emphasizing the preposition “in” not “to”), perhaps anticipating the Ninevites reverting to their former wicked ways? Unfortunately, 4:5 is ambiguous (ibid., 91), and 2:8 remains problematic. On the strange statement in 2:8, dealing with the almost certain allusion or literary connection to Ps 31:6, see ibid., 45–46. Differently, though harmonious with how I take the verse, medieval interpreters could see Jonah’s statement in 2:8 as a criticism of the abiding ignorance of the pagan sailors of ch. 1 (see Sasson, Jonah, 195).
[18]. Additionally, we might note that in v. 9 (MT 2:10), וַאֲנִי returns in fronted position, as in 2:4 (MT 2:5; cf. Sweeney, The Twelve Prophets, 319). Jonah’s grammatically emphatic “I” returns: he (in a noble contrast to the idolaters of the preceding verse?) will make good on sacrifice and vow.
[19]. More precisely, “vomiting” (קיא) is the response of the land (another non-human part of the creation, like the fish of Jon 2) to transgressors who defile it in Lev 18:25, 28; 20:22. The verb appears elsewhere in Jer 25:27; Job 20:15; Prov 23:8; 25:16, none of which suggests pleasant or good connotations to the activity. See similarly Magonet, Form and Meaning, 52–53, 131n56; cf. Sasson, Jonah, 220.
[20]. In any case, the confession of sin we were looking for above in v. 4 still does not appear in the rest of the psalm (Jenson, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, 58). For a helpful discussion, with cautions worth taking into consideration both against viewing Jonah in general as strict “satire” and against an “exceedingly negative” reading of the psalm (and the prophet) in Jon 2 in particular, see Amanda W. Benckhuysen, “Revisiting the Psalm of Jonah,” CTJ 47 (2012): 5–31 (quotation at 31); also Jenson, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, 59.
[21]. This matter overlaps with, but is distinct from, the thorny question of the genre of Jonah. VanGemeren comments, “The book’s purpose cannot be understood without defining the literary genre of Jonah” (Interpreting the Prophetic Word, 146–47). Unfortunately, as VanGemeren notes, there are wildly varying views on the generic qualities of Jonah (on which, see Sasson, Jonah, 321–51; T. Desmond Alexander, “Jonah and Genre,” TynBul 36 [1985]: 35–59).
[22]. See also Stuart, “Jonah,” 456. It must be admitted that there are sections of narrative/biography in other prophetic books (e.g., Isa 6; Hos 1–2; Amos 7; large portions of Jeremiah; Daniel is, in my opinion, not an example in this regard, being categorized in Hebrew orderings as part of the Writings). Additionally, what we in the English tradition tend to call the Historical Books were in the Hebrew mindset considered Former Prophets, and these Former Prophets are mostly narrative in genre, like Jonah. But Jonah is unique among the Later Prophets in being pervasively narrative in form, and distinct from the Former Prophets in being biographical in focus. The book of Haggai has the trappings of a continuous narrative/short story, but in terms of content it is clearly focused on Haggai’s proclamations for the people given to him from the Lord in a way that fits right in with the content of the rest of the prophetic literature while also in a way that Jonah doesn’t come close to matching.
Several other features set Jonah apart from the other prophetic writings: unlike the surrounding prophetic literature, Jonah has no title/superscription (Blenkinsopp, A History of Prophecy in Israel, 240); Jonah provides one of the only examples in the prophetic writings where a prophetic message is actually delivered to Gentiles (the so-called oracles against the nations in other prophetic books [e.g., Isa 13ff.; Amos 1–2] are literarily addressed to the nations but actually intended for and delivered to Israel; cf. Ellul, The Judgment of Jonah, 12); in Jonah “the word of the Lord came to” the prophet for the prophet’s own hearing whereas elsewhere it almost always is a word to a prophet for the people/others (Sasson, Jonah, 68); Jonah is not about a suffering faithful prophet among an evil nation (a common theme in the prophetic literature), but uniquely about a suffering unfaithful prophet among the “pious” nations (Magonet, Form and Meaning, 94).
[23]. Blenkinsopp describes Jonah’s recorded proclamation as “contemptuously brief” (A History of Prophecy in Israel, 242).
[24]. See also Stuart, Hosea–Jonah, 431.
[25]. It is difficult to specify much more about the original audience, in part because it is extremely difficult to specify the date and provenance of its composition; see Stuart, Hosea–Jonah, 432–33, who gives a 500 year span as the window in which Jonah could have been composed (ca. 750–250 BC)! But common sense (and eventual canonical context) indicates that this work of Israelite prophetic literature was intended to be read by an Israelite audience.
[26]. On the incongruity and difficulty of the psalm of Jon 2 within the larger narrative, see esp. Benckhuysen, “Revisiting the Psalm of Jonah,” 5.
[27]. This is easy to recognize in our printed English Bibles, though the formatted versification of Hebrew poetry in English translations represents the judgments of modern scholars. The situation is much harder (though not impossible) to discern and articulate when considering the Hebrew, since poetic texts were likely undifferentiated from prose texts in the earliest manuscripts (see Sasson, Jonah, 161–66).
[28]. Cf. Stuart, Hosea–Jonah, 435. To use the fancy terminology of literary studies, the “narrative time” or “narrative pacing” slows way down in this chapter. My treatment of Jonah in this series is decidedly narrative critical in method (though, at the same time, I feel no constraint to one methodological school). For an introduction to the history and nature of the discipline of narrative criticism, see Daniel J. Brendsel, “Narrative Criticism of the New Testament,” in Literary Approaches to the Bible, ed. Douglas Mangam and Douglas Estes; Lexham Methods Series 4 (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2017), 143–78.
[29]. Cf. Sweeney, The Twelve Prophets, 317–18.
[30]. So much so that not infrequently has it been proposed/assumed that it must be foreign to the original composition of the story, being added at some later point in the book’s history; for discussion and defense of the poem’s authenticity, see Stuart, Hosea–Jonah, 438–40.
[31]. See Exod 15:8, 19. In scientifically imprecise but nevertheless sufficiently clear terms, the only chapters of the Hebrew Bible in which בִּלְבַב יַמִּים/בְּלֶב־יָם and יַבָּשָׁה appear together in a single context is Exod 15 and Jon 2 (Magonet hints at an Exodus connection for “heart of the seas” [Form and Meaning, 80], and for “dry land” [ibid., 66], but does not discuss the significance of the terms in conjunction). The individual terms themselves are relatively rare, “heart of the sea” being used only 9 times outside of Jonah (including its appearance in Exod 15:8), and “dry land” being used only 11 times outside of Jonah (it is used 3 times[!] in Jonah itself). Of the 11 times outside of the book of Jonah that the term “dry land” (יַבָּשָׁה) appears in the MT, six of them are with reference to the crossing of the Red Sea (see Exod 14:16, 22, 29; 15:19; Ps 66:6; Neh 9:11).
[32]. It is perhaps significant that early Jewish listings of God’s “deliverances” of his people linked God’s deliverance of Israel at the Red Sea with God’s deliverance of Jonah (see 3 Macc 6:1–15; m. Ta’anit 2:4-5; for discussion, see Bruce Neil Beck, “ ‘You Lifted Me Up from the Pit Alive’: Exegetical and Theological Trajectories from the Book of Jonah in Jewish and Christian Sources” [Ph.D. diss., Harvard Divinity School, 2000], 10n22, 27, 102; differently and remarkably, the Targum translates 2:5b as, “The Red Sea was wrapped around my head,” obviously influenced into this creative flight by the occurrences elsewhere in Scripture of סוּף [see below in this note]). In a related matter, Benckhuysen has argued that in a number of ways Jonah’s psalm in ch. 2 “picks up on the larger covenant renewal narrative of Exodus 33–34” (“Revisiting the Psalm of Jonah,” 25). In addition to the verbal connections of “the heart of the sea” and “the dry land,” we can note the use of “deep” (מְצוֹלָה) in 2:4 (cf. Exod 15:5; Neh 9:11; the parallel is noted by Beck, “‘You Lifted Me Up from the Pit Alive,’” 26). Alistair Hunter argues, beyond this, for several other parallels to Exod 15 (or other biblical passages that are reflecting on or rooted in the exodus traditions). Here I will note only the Exod 15 connections that Hunter proposes/discusses: “reed” (סוּף) in 2:5 (MT 2:6), on which see Exod 15:4, 22 (i.e., “Reed [Red] Sea”); “deep” (מְצוֹלָה) in 2:4 (MT 2:5), on which see Exod 15:5; “deep” (תְּהוֹם) in 2:5 (MT 2:6), on which see Exod 15:5, 8 (Sasson, Jonah, 185, makes the interesting observation that these terms appear in Jonah in roughly inverted order from their appearances in Exodus). This is just the tip of the iceberg in Hunter’s argument, which leads him to conclude, that “at the heart of Jonah lies a commentary—albeit a very off-beat one—on the cherished exodus myth which lies at the heart of Israel’s belief in itself as a people specially covenanted to God” (“Jonah from the Whale: Exodus Motifs in Jonah 2,” in The Elusive Prophet: The Prophet as a Historical Person, Literary Character and Anonymous Artist, ed. J. C. de Moor; OtSt 45 [Leiden: Brill, 2001], 142–58, at 150; see 144–50 for discussion of the overlaps between Jon 2 and the exodus event).
To all these, we can add one further intriguing proposal: Jonah’s three-day sojourn through the waters in the belly of the fish corresponds to the three-day journey out of Egypt and through the sea. The narrative in Exod 12–14 highlights three encampments after their exit from Egypt and before their sea-passage (in Succoth at 12:37; in Etham at 13:20; and in Pi-hahiroth at 14:2, 9). Assuming a day’s journey for each encampment, we can say that in the great exodus from Egypt, there was a passing through the sea on the third day (i.e., a “resurrection” through the waters of death), which corresponds to Jonah’s experience of being delivered to dry land after three days. Alternatively, Sweeney points to express mentions of a “three-day journey” in Exod 3:18; 5:3; 15:22 (The Twelve Prophets, 317; he also cites 5:8, 23, though it is not clear why).
[33]. The term “Hebrew” comes from Jonah’s own self-identification in his first recorded words in the story (Jon 1:9). The term is archaic (see Magonet, Form and Meaning, 100–101), used in the early historical writings (and by Israelites in discourse with non-Israelites). It has connotations of the historic origins of the Israelite people (Abraham, exodus). (The point would be particularly sharp if, as many suspect, Jonah originated in a post-exilic context.)
[34]. In the book of Hosea (the first of the Minor Prophets), we read, “Ephraim is like a dove, silly and without sense, calling to Egypt, going to Assyria” (Hos 7:11). The book of Jonah, about a prophet named Jonah (= dove) makes Hosea’s point that “Israel is a silly dove” in narrative form. I think Hos 7:11 is a canonical cue intended to help us, when we arrive at Jonah after reading Hosea, to read the latter aright (cf. Sweeney, The Twelve Prophets, 304, 309; contra Stuart, Hosea–Jonah, 431). Though we don’t have time develop it in the present series on Jonah, I am persuaded that Jonah’s canonical context, particularly as one among the Book of the Twelve (or the Minor Prophets), also bears on its proper interpretation. This assumes at least some level of meaningful ordering to the canon. We can posit this at one of two levels (or both). Either we can posit divine intention in the providential work of canonization. Or (and) we can posit it at the level of editing/compilation (Stuart, “Jonah,” 457, is representative of those who would minimize or flatly reject the literary significance of a Book of the Twelve; on the editorial concerns discernible in the Book of the Twelve, see Blenkinsopp, A History of Prophecy in Israel, 240; for discussion of verbal interconnections and the use of [editorially shaped] hook words in the collection, see various entries in James D. Nogalski, The Book of the Twelve and Beyond: Collected Essays of James D. Nogalski, AIL 29 [Atlanta: SBL Press, 2017]; cf. Paul House, Old Testament Theology [Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1998], 346–47; in my opinion, one of the most compelling attempts to argue that the Book of the Twelve is a meaningfully collected “book” is that of Francis Watson, Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith [London: T&T Clark, 2004], 78–163). The latter situation would produce something like what we have in the Psalms. The Psalms are 150 different individual poems, but there are clear signs here and there (e.g., Pss 1–2 go together, Pss 42–43 go together, the Hallel Psalms and the Psalms of Ascent go together, the Psalms are divided into five “books”) of purposeful compilation and meaningful relationships among them. By the time of Ben Sira, the Twelve were considered a collection (see Sir 49:10 where the “twelve prophets” are mentioned after descriptions of the individuals Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel). There is good reason, moreover, to believe that early Christians read the Book of the Twelve as a kind of literary unity (see esp. Watson, Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith, chs. 2–3).
[35]. Not only is the language of “mirror” influenced by the Letter of James and thus serves here as a connecting point to our last sermon series, but “mirror” is likely less offensive to some ears than “symbol” (and certainly more palatable than the scary term “allegory”). Personally, I am comfortable with calling Jonah a “symbol” of Israel, whose person and story “represents” Israel in the narrator’s/author’s intentions. Similarly, VanGemeren can assert simply, and without apparent trouble, that “the prophet represents the people of God who in their disobedience to the Lord fail to receive God’s blessings” (Interpreting the Prophetic Word, 147; see also, though in a much more qualified way, Magonet, Form and Meaning, 98–99, and see further 148–49n85 for a survey of various arguments that could be identified along these lines [i.e., Jonah “represents” Israel] with an acknowledgement that many of these arguments are often not tightly tied to the text). The trouble is, of course, moving with confidence from saying that Jonah is meant as a “symbol” to a specifying of the symbolism truthfully is no easy matter. Indeed, several different symbolisms have been proposed (e.g., Edwin M. Good, Irony in the Old Testament, 2nd ed.; Bible and Literature Series 3 [Sheffield: Almond, 1981], 54, argues that Jonah symbolizes a post-exilic nationalistic party; Peter R. Ackroyd, Exile and Restoration: A Study of Hebrew Thought of the Sixth Century B.C., OTL [Philadelphia: Wesminster, 1968], 244–45, thinks Jonah’s passage in the belly of the fish represents the exile in Babylon; Blenkinsopp, A History of Prophecy in Israel, 242–43, leans toward seeing Jonah as a figure for traditional prophetism which is being critiqued by sapiential movements). Most of the symbolisms proffered are read against highly specified historical reconstructions of the supposed date and provenance from which the book of Jonah arose. I am taking my cues more from direct verbal and thematic connections with earlier Scriptures and biblically discernible traditions.
[36]. In Ellul’s words, by the Spirit’s work in the process of canonization whereby Jonah was included in Hebrew Bible, “they [Israel] were led to bear witness precisely against themselves, though in the last resort this was good news for them too” (The Judgment of Jonah, 15). This touches on an important theological locus: the work of canonization of the books of the Old and New Testaments is God’s redemptive activity, is part of the history of salvation not just a witness to it. See esp. Herman N. Ridderbos, Redemptive History and the New Testament Scriptures, trans. H. De Jonste; rev. R. B. Gaffin Jr. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1988).
[37]. That Jonah engages in a lived contradiction of his true confession is evident at several points, many of which we will touch upon below. One way in which the author highlights Jonah’s lived contradictions not touched on below (though I hope to return to it in the remainder of the series) comes by way of ironic contrast with the pagans who do not know the true confession yet behave surprisingly in keeping with it (see esp. Magonet, Form and Meaning, 70).
[38]. Magonet highlights the irony of Jonah’s ability to “anticipate” what God would do with regard to the Ninevites (see 4:2) coexisting with his apparent obliviousness to what God was doing and about to do during the storm at sea in ch. 1 (Form and Meaning, 88).
[39]. Stuart is very confident that Jonah was thinking along these lines and that the book’s main purpose is to address the same impulses among ancient Israel: “The main purpose of the book is to teach Israelites that God loves other nations than their own; or, in fact, to teach us that he loves other nations than our own” (Hosea–Jonah, 479, emphasis original). But, as we emphasized last week, we should probably speak in terms of plausibilities since the narrative, in fact, does not spell out the specific thought processes tied to Jonah’s exceptionalism.
[40]. At work here are at least two crucial levels of narrative critical observation. First, there is the disconnect between the story time and the discourse time. In the order of narration (discourse time), we are told at the end of the book about something that happened in the beginning of Jonah’s experience (story time). Second, we are pressing the matter of selectivity. The narrator has chosen to include Jonah’s question referring to an un-narrated event. The narrator could have omitted it, had the narrator wanted to. Lots of speeches and more generally lots of actions that must have happened are omitted in the narrative (e.g., the dialogue of Jonah and the ship crew when paying for the voyage, much of the dialogue during the storm [to which reference is made, e.g., in 1:10], the details of Jonah’s travel to Nineveh after being vomited on land by the fish). Narrative criticism operates on the assumption that what the narrator chooses to include, to report, to narrate is purposeful and significant.
[41]. See Magonet, Form and Meaning, 74–75, who notes the narrative aporia of Jonah’s question referring to something previously un-narrated, and suggest an allusion to Exod 14:12 as the interpretive solution.
[42]. Additionally, if our current (and really the perennial) blitz on “throw back” consumer goods and ads (e.g., a Dunkaroos reboot; new “old” Nike sneakers; Honda commercials featuring toys from the 80s) and entertainment (the Kobra Kai series on Netflix; the dozen+ film remakes of 2020 alone; the abundance of “throwback” alternative jerseys for sports teams) is any indication, nostalgia also sells. Nostalgia a prime marketing strategy. Take it as a fairly reliable rule: today’s marketers and advertisers, as good priests of our culture, know which gods best drive our idolatrous hearts. Forces of idolatrous culture and personal privilege converge at this point, for it is also the case that nostalgia is frequently strong among the affluent, being something afforded by and cultivated in a leisure-gone-wrong. In this light, the speculations in rabbinic literature about Jonah’s great wealth (he was apparently able to hire out a whole ship for his special trip) are intriguing to recall (see Sasson, Jonah, 83–84).
[43]. As Jenson comments, “dismissing Jonah’s behaviour is too simplistic” (Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, 47). We took time in the first message especially to establish the point that Jonah is a complex and realistic character not a caricature.
[44]. Interestingly, ancient Jewish liturgical practice, testified to in the Babylonian Talmud, involved reading Jonah as the haftarah on Yom Kippur (b. Meg. 31a, cited in Sasson, Jonah, 28). Perhaps their liturgical sensibilities were exactly on target: Jonah is a book intended to soften Israel to recognize its need for Yahweh’s continual mercy and atoning work (Sasson takes this in a different direction: as the sinful Ninevites received mercy, so may sinful worshipers today).
[45]. In fact, not just the two broad panels but also each of the individual scenes climaxes in prayer to God: the sailors’ prayer, Jonah’s prayer, the Ninevites’ prayer, and Jonah’s prayer (Sasson, Jonah, 19).
[46]. For the substance of the confession that Israel’s God is Creator of the land and sea and all things, see, e.g., Gen 1; Isa 40:26, 28; Jer 10:16. For explicit confessional statements about God as Creator from the Psalms for use in the liturgical contexts, see, e.g., Pss 95:5; 146:6, reflecting Jon 1:9 very closely, and more generally Pss 104; 115:15; 124:8; 148:5 (cf. Neh 9:6, also in a liturgical context). For the substance of the confession that Israel’s God is a God of covenant mercy, see esp. the foundational text of Exod 34:6, and also, e.g., Num 14:18; Joel 2:13 (which in coming weeks we will see is particularly significant for the book of Jonah). For explicit confessional statements about God’s covenant mercy from the Psalms, see, e.g., Pss 86:5, 15; 103:8; 145:8.
[47]. Two of the most important treatments are Magonet, Form and Meaning, esp. 44–49; and Sasson, Jonah, throughout his commentary notes on ch. 2.
[48]. We also would be bereft of crucial insight on the prophet’s “inner life” and the sincerity therein (cf. Magonet, Form and Meaning, 53–54).
[49]. In other words, I don’t think Stuart goes far enough in claiming that the poem is included for the “benefits of variety and a ring of archaic authenticity generated by the inclusion of such poetic materials.” And he begs the question when he says that the poem also and more importantly “increases the effectiveness of the narrative’s message by including a poem that ‘says it all’” (Hosea–Jonah, 470). What is the “all” that is being said? And why does this “increase the effectiveness of the narrative”?
[50]. For briefer and pointed statements to the same effect, see Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Psalms: The Prayerbook of the Bible, trans. J. H. Burtness (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1970), 9–10, 14–15; Peter J. Leithart, Against Christianity (Moscow, ID: Canon, 2003), 74; and more generally on the point that prayer begins in the corporate liturgical gathering and not in one’s private pursuit, see Eugene H. Peterson, The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction (Dallas: Word, 1989), 15–16. For more extended reflections and much useful counsel, see John D. Witvliet, The Biblical Psalms in Christian Worship: A Brief Introduction and Guide to Resources (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007). In general, the point being made here is that worship is not only expressive of what we bring, as it were, “in our hearts” into the sanctuary; it is also and especially (and perhaps primarily) formative, shaping us so that we are not left with just what we bring “in our hearts” into the sanctuary. (Also assumed here is that worship is not so much an inner, private experience [something an individual “feels,” and thus something an individual can do in isolation without a thought to the assembly of God’s people], but more a public engagement, a liturgical enactment, a covenantal practice of the gathered people of God.)
Next Sunday: If the Sackcloth Fits: God’s Pursuit of the Nations in the Book of Jonah,
Jonah 3:1–10, Dan Brendsel