THE

so.

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE BOOK OF JONAH

HE Book of Jonah is cast throughout in the form of narrative-the only one of our Twelve which is This fact, combined with the extraordinary events which the narrative relates, starts questions not raised by any of the rest. Besides treating, therefore, of the book's origin, unity, division and other commonplaces of introduction, we must further seek in this chapter reasons for the appearance of such a narrative among a collection of prophetic discourses. We have to ask whether the narrative be intended as one of fact; and if not, why the author was directed to the choice of such a form to enforce the truth committed to him.

The appearance of a narrative among the Twelve Prophets is not, in itself, so exceptional as it seems to be. Parts of the Books of Amos and Hosea treat of the personal experience of their authors. The same is true of the Books of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, in which the prophet's call and his attitude to it are regarded as elements of his message to men. No: the peculiarity of the Book of Jonah is not the presence of narrative, but the apparent absence of all prophetic discourse.1

Yet even this might be explained by reference to the first part of the prophetic canon-Joshua to Second

Unless the Psalm were counted as such. See below, p. 511.

Kings.1 These Former Prophets, as they are called, are wholly narrative-narrative in the prophetic spirit and written to enforce a moral. Many of them begin as the Book of Jonah does: they contain stories, for instance, of Elijah and Elisha, who flourished immediately before Jonah and like him were sent with commissions to foreign lands. It might therefore be argued that the Book of Jonah, though narrative, is as much a prophetic book as they are, and that the only reason why it has found a place, not with these histories, but among the Later Prophets, is the exceedingly late date of its composition.3

This is a plausible, but not the real, answer to our question. Suppose we were to find the latter by discovering that the Book of Jonah, though in narrative form, is not real history at all, nor pretends to be; but, from beginning to end, is as much a prophetic sermon as any of the other Twelve Books, yet cast in the form of parable or allegory? This would certainly explain the adoption of the book among the Twelve; nor would its allegorical character appear without precedent to those (and they are among the most conservative of critics) who maintain (as the present writer does not) the allegorical character of the story of Hosea's wife.

It is, however, when we pass from the form to the substance of the book that we perceive the full justification of its reception among the prophets. The truth

1 Minus Ruth of course.

* Cf. with Jonah i. 1, ', Josh. i. 1, 1 Sam. i. 1, 2 Sam. i. I. The corrupt state of the text of Ezek. i. 1 does not permit us to adduce it also as a parallel.

See below, p. 496.

See above, Vol. I., p. 236.

which we find in the Book of Jonah is as full and fresh a revelation of God's will as prophecy anywhere achieves. That God has granted to the Gentiles also repentance unto life' is nowhere else in the Old Testament so vividly illustrated. It lifts the teaching of the Book of Jonah to equal rank with the second part of Isaiah, and nearest of all our Twelve to the New Testament. The very form in which this truth is insinuated into the prophet's reluctant mind, by contrasting God's pity for the dim population of Niniveh with Jonah's own pity for his perished gourd, suggests the methods of our Lord's teaching, and invests the book with the morning air of that high day which shines upon the most evangelic of His parables.

One other remark is necessary. In our effort to appreciate this lofty gospel we labour under a disadvantage. That is our sense of humour-our modern sense of humour. Some of the figures in which our author conveys his truth cannot but appear to us grotesque. How many have missed the sublime spirit of the book in amusement or offence at its curious details! Even in circles in which the acceptance of its literal interpretation has been demanded as a condition of belief in its inspiration, the story has too often served as a subject for humorous remarks. This is almost inevitable if we take it as history. But we shall find that one advantage of the theory, which treats the book as parable, is that the features, which appear so grotesque to many, are traced to the popular poetry of the writer's own time and shown to be natural. When we prove this, we shall be able to treat the scenery of the book as we do that of

Acts xi. 8.

some early Christian fresco, in which, however rude it be or untrue to nature, we discover an earnestness and a success in expressing the moral essence of a situation that are not always present in works of art more skilful or more correct.

1. THE DATE OF THE BOOK.

Jonah ben-Amittai, from Gath-hepher1 in Galilee, came forward in the beginning of the reign of Jeroboam II. to announce that the king would regain the lost territories of Israel from the Pass of Hamath to the Dead Sea." He flourished, therefore, about 780, and had this book been by himself we should have had to place it first of all the Twelve, and nearly a generation before that of Amos. But the book neither claims to be by Jonah, nor gives any proof of coming from an eye-witness of the adventures which it describes, nor even from a contemporary of the prophet. On the contrary, one verse implies that when it was written Niniveh had ceased to be a great city.1 Now Niniveh fell, and was practically destroyed, in 606 B.C. In all ancient history there was no collapse of an imperial city more sudden or so complete. We must therefore date the Book of Jonah some time after 606, when Niniveh's greatness had become what it was to the Greek writers, a matter of tradition.

1 Cf. Gittah-hepher, Josh. xix. 13, by some held to be El Meshhed, three miles north-east of Nazareth. The tomb of Jonah is pointed out there.

2 2 Kings xiv. 25.

Cf. Kuenen, Einl., II. 417, 418.

iii. 3, was.

See above, pp. 21 ff., 96 ff.

Cf. George Smith, Assyrian Discoveries, p. 94; Sayce, Ancient Empires of the East, p. 141. Cf. previous note

A late date is also proved by the language of the book. This not only contains Aramaic elements which have been cited to support the argument for a northern origin in the time of Jonah himself,1 but a number of words and grammatical constructions which we find in the Old Testament, some of them in the later and some only in the very latest writings.2 Scarcely less decisive are a number of apparent quotations and echoes of passages in the Old Testament, mostly later than the date of the historical Jonah, and

1 As, eg., by Volck, article "Jona" in Herzog's Real. Encycl2: the use of for, as, e.g., in the very early Song of Deborah. But the same occurs in many late passages: Eccles. i. 7, 11, ii. 21, 22, etc.; Psalms cxxii., cxxiv., cxxxv. 2, 8, cxxxvii. 8, cxlvi. 3.

2 A. Grammatical constructions:-i. 7, "; 12, : that has not altogether displaced König (Einl., 378) thinks a proof of the date of Jonah in the early Aramaic period. iv. 6, the use of i for the accusative, cf. Jer. xl. 2, Ezra viii. 24: seldom in earlier Hebrew, I Sam. xxiii. 10, 2 Sam. iii. 30, especially when the object stands before the verb, Isa. xi. 9 (this may be late), 1 Sam. xxii. 7, Job v. 2; but continually in Aramaic, Dan. ii. 10, 12, 14, 24, etc. The first personal pronoun 'N (five times) occurs oftener than DN (twice), just as in all exilic and post-exilic writings. The numerals ii. I, iii. 3, precede the noun, as in earlier Hebrew.

B. Words:- in Pi. is a favourite term of our author, ii. I, iv. 6, 8; is elsewhere in O.T. Hebrew found only in Dan. i. 5, 10, 18, 1 Chron. ix. 29, Psalm lxi. 8; but in O.T. Aramaic NID Pi.

occurs in Ezra vii. 25, Dan. ii. 24, 49, iii. 12, etc. M'DD, i. 5, is not elsewhere found in O.T., but is common in later Hebrew and in Aramaic. nwynn, i. 6, to think, for the Heb. n, cf. Psalm cxlvi. 4, but Aram. cf. Dan. vi. 4 and Targums. DVD in the sense to order or command, iii. 7, is found elsewhere in the O.T. only in the Aramaic passages Dan. iii. 10, Ezra vi. I, etc. 127, iv. 11, for the earlier 17 occurs only in later Hebrew, Ezra ii. 64, Neh. vii. 66, 72, 1 Chron. xxix. 7 (Hosea viii. 12, Kethibh is suspected). py, i. 11, 12, occurs only in Psalm cvii. 30, Prov. xxvi. 20. Dy, iv. 10, instead of the usual . The expression God of Heaven, i. 9, occurs only 2 Chron. xxxvi. 23, Psalm cxxxvi. 26, Dan. ii. 18, 19, 44, and frequently in Ezra and Nehemiah.

VOL. II.

32