Before you tag me as a heretic, let me state it for the record, I do not doubt even for a split second, on God's ability. Of course, all things are possible with God.
However, the issue here is not about God's ability but it's about the author's intention. What if the author did not write this book as a historical narrative but rather as a satire? So many people today think that the Bible is nothing more than a fairy tale and one of the main reason for that is us. Because we Christians have misunderstood the text and are stubborn to even consider that we could be wrong.
Reminds me of Paul when he said, “they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge"
Anyways, in this article, I want to suggest that the Book of Jonah is a satire, and I'll present some of the many clues from the text that suggests that this is satire and not history.
[Satire - the use of humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.]
The biggest challenge today to find the genre of the book is that we can't (at least most of us can't) read in Hebrew, otherwise I wouldn't have to write this article.
The simplest clue in the book is the recurring use of exaggerations and irony, which is very typical of satire. The author through this story wants to bring out the irony that the so-called people of the family of God are least bothered about His will, whereas those who are called gentiles (not belonging to the family of God) are pro-God.
Ok, let's start.
The first line of the book says "The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai". Amittai in Hebrew would mean "My truth", or "Faithfulness". To say in other words, "Jonah son of faithfulness" and guess what! the story will show how opposite of that he is. A witty start.
Now note, the author uses, as his main characters "Jonah - a prophet (representing the nation of Israel), who is supposed to be a spokesperson of God, the best among God's
people" and "Nineveh - the evilest nation in the ancient world, no one can be farther from God than a Ninevite" and then flips what's expected of them. What a cool paradox.
Let's continue; next, the author puts a beautiful contrast, the evil of Nineveh has come "up" to the face of the Lord, but Jonah went "down" to Tarshish and then "down" to Joppa,
then "down" into the Ship. And the downfall of Jonah wouldn't stop until he reaches the down most part, that is the "realm of the dead".
A pause here for general trivia. The people of the ancient world had a three-tire understanding of the universe.
Heaven - dwelling of gods,
Land - dwelling of the men living,
Netherworld - dwelling of the dead.
This may sound absurd to us but for them, this was real and a top-notch scientific understanding. It is very important to time travel, and understand the text from their perspective.
Fine, back to the story, so, our dear Jonah is on a trip to go down and down.
Now the next verse is hilarious. The literal translation will be something like, "now God sent a big (Hebrew "gadol gadol" an exaggeration) storm and the ship was contemplating to break itself into pieces." As if the ship had a mind of itself. But Jonah went "down" and was in deep sleep.
It is so funny yet so deep in meaning. A literal beauty! showing the utter hopelessness of people of God. They have fallen so low and become so insensitive to God that even a huge storm cannot wake them up although an inanimate object is thinking to break into pieces.
The latter part of the story only shows Jonah's further downward journey. There is much we can talk about but maybe not in this article.
The three days and three-nights journey is yet another interesting thing.
One more general trivia, how much time do the ancient people believed it take to travel from the dwelling of the living to the dwelling of the dead? You guessed it! 3 days and 3 nights.
Ok, back to the text, now comes the beautiful prayer of Jonah and God giving him a second chance.
And this time Jonah goes to Nineveh and says "40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown (Hebrew - haphak)". Jonah uses the word "Haphak" which is a very interesting word, it could mean "to overthrow" or it could mean "to transform" (like you haphak my sorrow into joy). Our Jonah is still not completely obedient, is he? He didn't mention repentance and used a confusing word to proclaim God's message. The author wants the reader to see how stubborn we can be, and this is right after that beautiful prayer in chapter 2..!!
Let's move on, Nineveh was gadol gadol (huge) and it takes 3 days to travel across the city. We know now from the archaeological surveys that no city in the ancient world was so big to take three days to travel across. And of course, more than us the author knew it better. And he uses this pure exaggeration device to enhance the beauty of his plot.
Now the paradox that we spoke about earlier, Jonah was running away err... down, from obeying God but look at Nineveh, they obeyed and repented promptly even when the message was quite cryptic. And not just the king and the people but even the cattle repented. Isn't that hilarious.
Come on now, the author very well knew that animals don't repent, what else can be a more persuasive argument that this is a satire!
Finally, the story ends with a beautiful message, Jonah was sad that God was merciful to gentiles but the author wanted the reader to know that God is a God of all creation and not just a selected few. He cares for everyone whom He created.
No wonder Jesus said "no sign will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah", was this reference to Jonah just about the 3 days and the 3 nights in the dwelling of the dead? Or was it a clever hint that God is now inviting gentiles too into his kingdom? The kingdom of Messiah!
This article is in no way comprehensive but I hope that after reading it, you no longer have to break your head studying the possibility of a man surviving in the belly of fish or fighting against the archaeological findings that there were big cities in the ancient world.
You see none of it was the author's intention. Amid our wrong understanding and the attempt to prove it right, we have lost the humorous yet beautiful message of the story.
God bless!
Edit:
This is not to suggest that Jonah was not a real person, Jonah was indeed a real person as documented in 2 Kings 14:25-27 (which is a historical document). When it comes to the book of Jonah; as it goes with most satires, the author uses real people, real places and real issues to create a literary work that can be potentially fiction.
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