A Commentary in Simple English on Jonah

Notes

[0.1] Jeroboam II was co-regent with Jehoash from 793-781BC. The troubles after his death may have been because he did not appoint a co-regent to follow him. This was usual in the Jewish kingdoms, but especially in Judah.

See Biblical Archaeology Review, July 2005, page 51. The whole discussion need not concern us, but William W. Hallo describes the way in which Egypt and the empires of Mesopotamia became strong and crushed the small states of Syria and Palestine. Then the empires had periods of weakness and the states of Syria and Palestine expanded to fill the power vacuum, until the empires recovered. The Book of Jonah belongs in a phase when Assyria was weakened by civil war.

[0.2] 2 Chronicles 33:11 presents the ugly picture of Manasseh being made to go from Jerusalem to Babylon with a metal spike through his tongue. But he was a king and a hostage. What must the long lines of ordinary prisoners have suffered!

[0.3] Herodotus, p 283 in the Penguin edition.

[0.4] First advanced in the 16th Century by Spain for political reasons. (‘Centuries of Darkness’ p 50)

[0.5] ‘Centuries of Darkness’ argues for a later date about 720BC. The name ‘Carthage’ may have been that of a ‘new city’ in Cyprus before Carthage was built. Dr. Gill mentions Carthage as a candidate, along with Tarsus in Cilicia!

[1.1] (1:3) Person follows Sasson in translating: ‘a ship which had just come from Tarshish’. (compare 2 Chron.9:21) Would a ship from the new daughter city sail to Joppa rather than Tyre or Sidon? Then they understand that he chartered the ship for the voyage to Tarshish. This opens the curious prospect of Jonah, the prosperous merchant and lay preacher, putting his stock on the ship, and sleeping while it is taken from the hold and thrown overboard! ‘There is a great future for Israel in trade with Tarshish, rather then with Assyria’! If Jonah chartered the ship, he was really in charge when the ‘master of the ropes’ spoke to him! Keil agrees that the words mean ‘the hire of the ship’ but interprets this as ‘the fare for the passage’.

[1.2] (1:5) Of course, if you are really sea sick, your misery is such that lying down and trying to sleep is the only thing you can do .

The captain, it seems, found Jonah in the hold by his snores! They must have been pretty noisy to be heard above the storm and the creaking of the wooden ship.

[1.3] (1:10) Barclay, amongst others, quotes the strange Jewish saying from the Mishnah: ‘Sailors are most of them saintly folk’.

[1.4] (1:17) The Jewish scholar, Jacob Neusner, asks what else did the fish have for lunch that day. There are other cases where it is claimed that men have been swallowed by a whale, but in those cases the whale was killed and they were cut out - in one case, I think, badly burnt and hopelessly deranged. See also Keil p 398 on the sharks in the Mediterranean. It is claimed that a dead horse has been found inside a shark!

[2.1] (2:4) It is interesting that no one seems to ask what Temple Jonah speaks of here. Is it Jerusalem? Perhaps, although he came from the northern kingdom of Israel he did not respect the shrines of the north. Probably as in verse 7, it is not an earthly temple, but the heavenly dwelling of God.

[2.2] (2:10) Whales do seem to lose their sense of direction sometimes and beach themselves. All efforts to save them by getting them out to sea again are in vain. Presumably Jonah would have lost track of time in the fish, so he must have met up with the sailors. He would not have known otherwise that it was three days and three nights. He would find out about the sailors’ vows and sacrifice. (But when he asked the travel agent for a refund he would be told: ‘It was an act of God’.)

[3.1] (3:2) It may just be that just as Jonah had travelled in the sea for three days in darkness in the whale so he experiences three days in the darkness of Nineveh.

[3.2] (3:5) This verse could be read as a short summary of verses 6-10. In Chapter 4, verses 1-4 could be read as a short statement of what follows in verses 5-11. Calvin takes this view. (p 101). There is something similar in Chapter 1, where verse7 again can be read as an introductory summary of the scene on the deck of the ship. If this is the way the story is told, we cannot explain why this is.
[4.1] (4:1) So Calvin. Some writers think, however, that Jonah knew his God so well that when the people repented, he knew God would not destroy the city. So he left after a few days to sulk.

[4.2] (4:11) My instinct was always to place the reference to Jonah in Kings before the Book of Jonah. There is nothing wrong in placing it after and it yields one benefit. Jonah’s optimistic message to Israel was unusual! Indeed, some people have dismissed him as a false prophet just because he did not preach doom. But if his message to Israel had been given before his experience of God’s dealings at Nineveh, it might have been jingoistic and brash. Having learnt of God’s care for Nineveh and the heathen, one would hope that his message would have been: ‘Israel is going to expand. God loves the heathen too! Look after them’.

However, Keil (p.379) says: ‘This mission to Nineveh evidently falls later than the prophecy in favour of Jeroboam’.

[5.1] Keil (p.380) sets out the facts.

[5.2] But Keil (p.380) argues that the book would not have been placed among the Minor Prophets unless Jonah himself wrote it.