Of all the prophetic books of the Bible, the book of Jonah is the most difficult for understanding and deep study. With its small volume, this work poses a huge number of problems for researchers, which complicate not only its interpretation, but even its classification. Thus, a number of experts on Old Testament biblical studies even deprive the book of Jonah of the status of prophetic writing, citing various arguments in defense of his thesis. For example, O. Kaiser remarks that the book of the prophet Jonah is not a prophetic text, but a story about the prophet, in connection with which he relates this work to the historical writings of Tanakh.
Jonah's Contents
The book of Jonah can be structurally divided into three parts. The first part begins with the command of God Jonah to go to Nineveh to report on the wrath of the Most High. Jonah's mission is to induce the Ninevites to repent, so that God cancels the harsh sentence. Jonah is trying to evade the divine command and flees by ship. But the Lord overtakes the ship with a terrible storm, to which the sailors react by casting lots to find out who caused this bad weather. The lot rightly points to the divine deviator (the prophet Jonah), he, forced to confess to his wrongdoing, asks the sailors to throw him overboard. The sailors follow the advice and throw Jonah into the sea, where he is swallowed by some huge creature, in Hebrew simply called “fish”, and in the Russian translation of the Bible it is designated by the word “whale”. According to the story, the prophet Jonah was inside this fish for three days and three nights. Then the fish, after Jonah's prayer, spat it out to the shore of the very same Nineveh where God had originally sent it. This event is known in the Christian tradition as a sign of the prophet Jonah, and is usually related to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The second part of the story tells how the prophet Jonah announced the sentence of God to the Ninevites - another 40 days and the city will be destroyed if its inhabitants do not repent. To the surprise of Jonah himself, the inhabitants took the sermon of the visiting prophet with all seriousness. The king declared nation-wide repentance, and all the inhabitants, even domestic animals, had to fast, clothed in sackcloth - penitential clothes.
The third part of the book describes the dispute between God and Jonah. The latter, when he saw that the Almighty, softened by the repentance of the Ninevites, reversed his sentence and had mercy on the city, was upset because of his tarnished reputation. To enlighten the prophet, God works a miracle: in one night a whole tree grows and in one night it dries up. The latter serves as a moral illustration for Jonah - he felt sorry for the plant, so he even cursed his life. If a tree is a pity, then how can one not pardon an entire city? - God asks Jonah. On this question, the story of the book ends.
The historicity of the book of Jonah
It is highly doubtful that the events described in this work took place. The fabulous components that pervade the entire outline of the narrative betray the fact of the literary influence of non-Jewish origin. Sea voyages, salvation with fish, etc. - all these are common motifs in ancient tales. Even the name of Jonah is not Jewish, but, most likely, Aegean. Nineveh at the expected time was not at all what it is presented in the book - a great city with a population of one hundred twenty thousand people (given that, according to the customs of the time, this did not include women and children, the number of inhabitants for the city of this era is just fantastic). Most likely, the plot of the book was composed of various fairy tales and folk fables for educational purposes.
Jonah's moral book
The fact that God’s attention was not characteristic of the Jewish religion to the pagan city (and Nineveh had nothing to do with the cult of the Jewish God Yahweh) speaks of circumstances in which the pagans played an important role. Perhaps this indicates a local coexistence of bearers of different traditions and the desire of the Jews to reconcile their religious world with a pagan environment. In this regard, the book of Jonah is sharply different from the Pentateuch of Moses, where the pagans are subjected to total cherem (curse) and are subject to destruction, or, at best, can be tolerated. The book of Jonah, on the contrary, preaches to God, who cares equally for all people, both Jews and Gentiles, so that he even sends his prophet to the last with a sermon. Note that in the Torah, God sent the prophets to the Gentiles not with the preaching of repentance, but immediately with the sword of retribution. Even in Sodom and Gomorrah, the Most High only seeks the righteous, but does not try to turn sinners to repentance.
The moral of the book of Jonah is contained in the last verse, the Lord’s question about how not to regret the great city, where one hundred and twenty thousand thoughtless people and many cattle.
Writing time
Based on the internal analysis of the text, the presence of late Hebrew words and characteristic Aramaic constructions, the researchers attribute this monument of literature to the 4th-3rd centuries. BC uh
Jonah's authorship
Of course, the author of the book could not be the prophet Jonah himself, whose historical prototype lived (if he lived at all) for half a millennium before writing this work. Most likely, it was composed by a Jew who lived in a place with strong pagan influence - for example, a port city. This explains the moral universalism of this work. More precisely establish the identity of the author is not possible.
The Prophet Jonah - Interpretation and Exegesis
Two traditions of the interpretation of the Old Testament - Jewish and Christian, interpret this text in different ways. If the Jews first of all see in the book of Jonah the assertion of the omnipotence of God Yahweh, who is above all other gods and whose jurisdiction covers all nations, like all creation in general, then Christians see a different meaning. Namely, for Christians, the episode with the ingestion of Jonah by a fish becomes central. Based on the words attributed by the Gospels to Jesus himself, the prophet Jonah in the womb of the whale represents Christ crucified, descended to hell and resurrected on the third day.