Abstract
This article examines the exilic theme of many inner-biblical allusions in the book of Jonah. Although there are few allusions to the Babylonian exile itself, allusions to the primeval and exodus narratives focus upon and draw out the exilic motifs in those texts. The allusions characterize the prophet Jonah, accentuating his wrongdoing and dissatisfaction while also indicating a more hopeful outcome for him than the ending of the book would otherwise suggest. Furthermore, the allusions illustrate the literary approach of the author in using biblical narratives to enrich his own story while simultaneously influencing the reader’s interpretation of the texts that he evokes. This insight into the author’s techniques is informative for exploring other instances of inner-biblical allusion in the book.
The book of Jonah is a text rich with inner-biblical allusions. The narrative weaves together phrases, plot-lines, and themes from many other scriptural texts in such a way that the reflection upon scripture emerges as one of the central focuses of the book. This article investigates the appearance of an exilic theme in the book of Jonah. While there are few allusions to the exile narrative proper, there are allusions to the exilic motifs of the primeval narrative, in which exile from Eden and its environs is punishment for sin. Similarly, the book draws on exilic aspects of the exodus narrative, namely, the Israelites’ initial perception of the exodus as the loss of the (enslaved) security of Egypt for the sake of an uncertain and potentially threatening future. Jonah’s experiences through the book are repeatedly mapped onto those of Adam and Eve, Cain, and the exodus generation. The allusions characterize the prophet and accentuate his dissatisfaction, as well as indicating a direction of interpretation beyond the famously inconclusive end of the book. Moreover, the allusions to exilic motifs in the book illustrate the literary techniques of the author. The book evokes the primeval and exodus narratives to enrich and elucidate its own story; simultaneously, the way the narratives are used within the book of Jonah influences how one subsequently interprets the evoked texts. The exilic allusions therefore provide an illustration of the author’s literary techniques that is informative when exploring other inner-biblical allusions within the book of Jonah. The allusions to the primeval and exodus narratives are first examined in detail, and the insights that these allusions provide are then discussed. 1
1. The primeval narrative
For obvious reasons, Exile is a theme most strongly associated with the latter half of biblical history. However, the pattern of sin and exile flavours other biblical narratives, including the primeval narrative of Genesis 1–4. The book of Jonah contains various hints of creation imagery that are reminiscent of the psalms as well as the early chapters of Genesis, leading to discussion of the ‘creation theme’ of the book. 2 The more concrete allusions, however, are to specific elements of Gen. 1–4 that involve the themes of sin and exile.
In the first chapter of the book of Jonah, God hurls a wind on the sea. The image of God throwing wind over the water evokes creation traditions, some of which depict Yhwh as storm god defeating the primeval sea. The tradition is found mainly in the psalms, and Jonah’s psalm-like prayer in chapter 2 contains a high concentration of words associated with such a tradition. 3 The imagery of wind and sea is rather more muted in Genesis, but in Gen. 1.2, a רוח from God hovers over the מים (which is gathered into ים, Gen. 1.10), followed in Gen. 1.9–10 by the emergence of dry land or יבשׁה. In Jon. 1.4, God sends a רוח on the ים, and Jonah admits to the sailors that he worships the God of ים and יבשׁה who has done this (Jon. 1.9). Subsequently, he is spewed onto the same יבשׁה (Jon. 2.11). 4 Thus far, the texts share nothing but a couple of words and a loose synonym. Nevertheless, the arrangement of those words, namely a רוח from God over ים/מים, closely followed by the appearance of the rare word יבשׁה is less common. 5 The effect is to nudge the reader’s attention in the direction of the creation narrative.
Another nudge towards the early chapters of Genesis is supplied by the use of the uncommon root רדם to describe Jonah’s sleep (Jon. 1.5, 6). From this root, the noun תרדמה is derived, the word used for the divinely induced sleep of Adam when God formed Eve from his rib (Gen. 2.21). 6 The verbal gestures to Genesis, though small in themselves, help to lay the groundwork for the weightier allusions that come shortly afterwards. 7
One such weightier allusion appears in Jon. 1.10, when the sailors ask Jonah מה־זאת עשׂית ‘What is this you have done?’ The question appears only around a dozen times in the entire Bible. It tends to be used in situations of broken trust. 8 This suits Jon. 1, in which the sailors find that their situation is Jonah’s fault. The phrase is used in the creation narratives in Gen. 3.13. After Adam and Eve have eaten from the tree, God asks Eve, ‘What have you done?’ The identical wording of the questions addressed to Jonah and Eve is highlighted due to the existing connections to the creation narrative. Moreover, as Berger points out, only in these two places in the Hebrew Bible is this the entire challenge, without further specification regarding the ‘this’ that the person has done. 9 Disobedience of a divine command provokes the question put to Adam and Eve. As a result of their disobedience, they are exiled from the garden (Gen. 3.23–24). In Jon. 1, the similarity to Gen. 3.13 emphasizes Jonah’s disobedience to God in fleeing his divine commission. 10
A variant of the question מה זאת עשׂית appears in the next chapter of Genesis. In Gen. 4:10, God asks Cain מה עשׂית, ‘What have you done?’ As with the fuller form of the question, this is not a particularly common phrase in the Hebrew Bible. Again, the breach of a divine command gives rise to two further instances of the shorter question (Josh. 7.19, 1 Sam. 13.11). 11 It is unlikely to be a coincidence that Cain and his parents are asked virtually the same question after their respective transgressions. The actions of the first two generations of the primeval family are drawn together in illustration of the emerging pattern of repeated human disobedience and transgression. By putting the same words into Jonah’s mouth, the author has cast Jonah’s flight from his commission, and Jonah himself, into a rather more negative light by associating it and him with the primeval sins.
The comparison between Jonah and Cain continues through the book of Jonah. God asked Cain what he had done after Cain had spilled the blood of his innocent brother, and the blood cried out to God from the ground. The sailors, who ask Jonah what he has done, plead with God not to make them guilty of innocent blood, דם נקיא, because of their treatment of Jonah (Jon. 1.14). Lexically, blood is the only word shared between the two texts. Notably, however, the phrase in Jonah is particularly reminiscent of Deut. 21.1–9. 12 Both are direct addresses to God which combine the phrase דם נקי with the verb נתן, a combination which occurs in only these two passages and Jer. 26.15. The Deuteronomy passage deals precisely with a murder victim being found in open country, as was Abel.
Berger has drawn further parallels between Cain and Jonah that appear in the fourth chapter of the book of Jonah. The success of Jonah’s mission and God’s rejection of Cain’s offering make both men angry (ויחר, Gen. 4.5 and Jon. 4.1). In each case, this prompts God to question the man. God asks Cain . . . אם־תיטיב . . . למה חרה לך (‘Why are you angry . . .? If you do well . . .’ Gen. 4.6–7) and asks Jonah ההיטב חרה לך (‘Do you do well to be angry?’ Jon. 4.4). 13 In fact, the construction חרה לך appears only in these two narratives and 2 Sam. 19.43. 14 Subsequently, both men go out and dwell east of Eden, in Cain’s case, and east of Nineveh, in Jonah’s case (ויצא . . . וישׁב . . . קדמת־עדן in Gen. 4.16 and ויצא . . . וישׁב . . . מקדם לעיר in Jon. 4.5). 15
Adam, Eve, and Cain all experienced a version of exile because of their wrongdoing. Adam and Eve were banished from the garden, and Cain was sent away from the presence of the Lord. The theme of exile has already left its mark on the first generations of humanity. The same sense of exile permeates the book of Jonah. At the beginning of the book, Jonah fled מלפני יהוה (‘from before the Lord’, Jon. 1.3, 1.10). Genesis records that Cain ויצא קין מלפני יהוה (‘went out from before the face of the Lord’, Gen. 4.16). These are the only instances in the Hebrew Bible that this phrase is used to describe fleeing God’s presence. 16 Ibn Ezra noted that while ברח + מפני is common, the additional lamed is not. He proposed that as Cain had just been conversing with God, and Jonah had just heard God speaking, the lamed indicates intimate contact with God, and it is this that Cain and Jonah flee. 17
Furthermore, Berger suggests that the qîqāyôn (קיקיון) under which Jonah sits is not only a play on the words קיא (to vomit) and יונה (Jonah), as has previously been noted in the literature, 18 but also a play on the name קין, Cain. Thus, Jonah is ‘vomited’ from his shade just as Cain was ejected from Eden. 19 This would also create a neat parallel to his earlier experience of being vomited from the fish, which also uses קיא. For that matter, Berger suggests a further parallel: to Jonah being thrown off the ship. The sailors’ plea not to be held guilty of ‘innocent blood’ adds an aleph to the root נקי/נקה, spelling it as נקיא, thus creating another play on the word קיא and portraying Jonah as the ‘vomited one’. Elsewhere in the Bible, the rare word קיא is used in three of its six appearances to describe the threat of the land vomiting out Israel in to exile (Lev. 18.25, 18.28, 20.22). 20
When Adam is driven out of the garden, the root גרשׁ is used (Gen. 3.24). His son Cain complains to God that גרשת אתי היום מעל פני האדמה ומפניך אסתר (‘You have driven me today from the face of the earth and I shall be hidden from your face’, Gen. 4.14), again with גרשׁ. Jonah too blames God for his deprivation of divine presence, again with the key word גרשׁ. In his psalm, Jonah prays נגרשתי מנגד עיניך (‘You have driven me from before your eyes’, Jon. 2.5). From neither Cain nor Jonah is there any acknowledgement of wrongdoing; each man apparently regards the punishment as unjust (if the fish is indeed a punishment in Jonah). However, in each case, a protective action of God follows it: the mark of Cain protects that man from being killed, and Jonah is sent once more to dry land. God’s provision of clothing for Adam and Eve in Gen. 3.21 could be regarded in the same way. Similarly, in the fourth chapter of the book, when Cain’s exile is again evoked through Jonah’s movement ‘to the east’, Jonah experiences the unexpected, albeit brief, protection of the qîqāyôn. Despite the impression of exile, God had not in fact abandoned either man—though Jonah at least seems to have mixed feelings about that.
In sum, the book of Jonah uses and adapts various phrases and constructions from the primeval narrative. These include the question מה (זאת) עשׂית; the construction חרה לך with the hiphil of טוב; going east ויצא . . . וישׁב . . . מקדם/קדמת; and a description of flight from God unique to the two texts, מלפני יהוה. There are various additional shared words and images. The strongest allusions to Gen. 1–4 relate to the theme of transgression and consequent exile. Notably, it is Jonah, not the Ninevites, whose behaviour resembles that of Adam and Eve and especially Cain. If the book of Jonah is about sin, forgiveness, and divine favour, such themes are explored through the experiences of Jonah far more than the experiences of the Ninevites. It is Jonah’s conduct that is questioned and he who experiences a sense of exile. It is his anger which, like Cain’s anger, is left unresolved, or at least not resolved with any clarity, at the end of the book. The continued presence and protection of God belies the perceived exile of both men, though in Jonah’s case this has a sting in the tail.
2. The exodus narrative
The exodus narrative is in many ways a creation story, as it involves the creation of the people or nation of Israel. There are well-established connections between creation stories and the exodus narrative, especially those creation stories which concern the defeat of water or sea. 21 It is therefore unsurprising that many of the words and images shared between the book of Jonah and the primeval narrative also appear in the exodus narrative. Yet, there are also connections specific to the book of Jonah and the exodus narrative. These connections tend to utilize a little-emphasized theme in the exodus narrative, namely the extent to which it was initially experienced as exile rather than redemption.
The high concentration of words in Jonah’s poem that are associated with creation mythology is matched by a high concentration of words associated with the exodus story. 22 Several of them are in fact the same words. The combination of ים + יבשׁה, sea and dry land, appears eight times in the Bible when referring to the exodus. 23 Apart from the appearance in Jonah, there is only one other appearance of the pairing, in the creation account (Gen. 1.10; recall also ים + יבשׁת in Ps. 95.5 which describes creation). The word יבשׁה itself appears only 11 times in biblical literature outside Jonah—twice in Gen. 1.9–10 and eight of the nine remaining times regarding the exodus. 24 Moreover, the image of a divinely sent רוח across water appears in two variations in Exod. 14.21 and 15.8 (see also 15.10). The combination of רוח + מים/ים + יבשׁה is therefore common to creation, exodus, and Jonah.
Jonah’s anger in the fourth chapter of the book is described in terms reminiscent of Cain’s anger, with negative consequences for the characterization of Jonah. By contrast, the Ninevites and the sailors in the book of Jonah are associated with the positive behaviour of the Israelites in the exodus story. Berger points out that when the Israelites flee Egypt and see the Egyptians pursuing them, they fear and cry out to God (וייראו and ויצעקו, Exod. 14.10). They are then saved when the waters swallow the Egyptians. This results in them fearing (or revering) the Lord, again וייראו, in Exod. 14.31. In Jonah, the situation is inverted. When the storm threatens the ship, the non-Yahwist sailors fear (וייראו) and cry out to (ויצעקו) their gods (Jon. 1.5). They are saved when the Israelite Jonah is thrown into the sea, and therefore fear the Lord (וייראו, Jon. 1.16). Moreover, just as the Israelites believe in God following their deliverance from the Egyptians, so the equally non-Yahwist Ninevites believe in God later in the book. In both cases, this is recounted with the verb ויאמינו, which in this form appears only in Exod. 14.31, Ps. 106.12 (also describing the exodus), and Jon. 3.5. 25
The Israelites’ fear, reliance on, and belief in God in the exodus story are thereby ascribed to the sailors and Ninevites in the book of Jonah. However, in parts of the exodus story, the Israelites are decidedly displeased at leaving Egypt. In Exod. 14.11–12, they ask Moses, מה־זאת עשית לנו ‘What have you done to us?’ The now-familiar question מה־זאת עשית again carries the sense of betrayed trust seen in other uses of the phrase. 26 The context of Exod. 14.11–12 is a fitting background to the use of the question in Jon. 1. In both situations, a prophet has apparently endangered the people with him, and they are appalled when the consequences of his actions loom before them. In ironic contrast to the exodus story, it is God’s wind over water that causes the peril in the book of Jonah, rather than being the means by which the people will be spared. Jonah is a rather poor substitute for Moses in this regard.
Furthermore, after accusing Moses of betraying them, the Israelites go on to say (Exod. 14.12), הלא־זה הדבר אשר דברנו אליך במצרים . . . כי טוב לנו עבד את־מצרים ממתנו במדבר ‘Is this not the word which we said to you in Egypt? . . . For it would be better for us to serve Egypt than to die in the wilderness’.
This is strongly reminiscent of Jonah outside Nineveh in 4.2–3: הלוא־זה דברי עד־היותי על־אדמתי . . . ועתה יהוה קח־נא את־נפשׁי ממני כי טוב מותי מחיי ‘Was this not my word when I was yet in my own land? . . . And now, Lord, take my life, for my death is better than my life’.
Just as the Israelites express regret at leaving Egypt, Jonah wishes he had never left his land. Both refer to a complaint they made (or claim to have made) when in the former land. Both express preference for, respectively, slavery or death, declaring it would be better than their current situation. 27
Moreover, in each case, the place that they have left is one of perceived safety; a place from which they have been driven out at the instigation of God. The same root גרשׁ, used when Adam and Eve were driven out from Eden and Cain from God’s presence, is repeatedly used in Exodus to describe Israel being driven from Egypt (Exod. 6.1, 11.1, 12.39). 28 As has been noted, Jonah also chooses that verb in his psalm when he feels he has been driven from God’s sight. Jonah appears to blame God for his situation, accusing God directly of casting him into the sea and using the evocative verb גרשׁ in describing his exile from his safe land (and indeed, Jonah later sits griping in the wilderness outside the city bounds). The Israelites blame Moses, God’s messenger, for the Egyptians having driven them out from what in hindsight seems preferable to the wilderness. Thus, the exodus event, while later much celebrated, was initially perceived by the people of Israel as a kind of enforced exile. 29 Despite the impression, the Israelites did of course experience God’s ongoing protection, though it did not completely quell their complaints and an ongoing sense of exile (see, for example, Exod. 16.3).
The connections between the book of Jonah and the exodus narrative contribute to the characterization of the characters in the book of Jonah. The sailors and the Ninevites, that is, the non-Yahwist characters of the story, are described in terms of the pious response of the Israelites. They fear and cry out to God, and, when God responds to spare them, they believe. By contrast, the exodus associations do not improve the reader’s impression of Jonah. There is a brief contrast between Jonah and Moses as both stand accused of endangering the people around them. However, while Moses finds himself in that position through following God’s command, Jonah is there precisely through his avoidance of God’s commission. Moreover, the divine wind over water, which God uses to rescue the Israelites in the exodus narrative, is the cause of the sailors’ jeopardy as it was sent in pursuit of Jonah. Finally, Jonah’s wish for death in the fourth chapter of the book is expressed in the same language used by the Israelites when they regret leaving Egypt. Both lament leaving a land of relative safety, Jonah to the point that he hyperbolically demands death.
3. Conclusion
There are two results arising from our examination of the use of the primeval and exodus narratives in the book of Jonah. The first concerns the themes drawn into the story by means of its inner-biblical relationships and the effect the relationships have on the portrayal of various characters, including especially Jonah. The second is what the reader learns about the author’s method of using earlier texts and stories.
3.1. The theme of exile
The inner-biblical allusions to the primeval and exodus narratives are not very flattering to the character of Jonah. Moreover, if the effects of all the above allusions are drawn together, the book of Jonah reads as a tale of repeated self- or forced exile. When Jonah first hears God’s voice, he flees from it, using the same construction מלפני יהוה that Cain uses to describe his loss of divine presence. Because of Jonah’s flight, God sends a wind after him, described in language that echoes both the creation and the exodus stories. When the sailors learn of the reason for the storm, they ask Jonah מה זאת עשׂית. On the one hand, this highlights Jonah’s breach of the divine command, setting his actions alongside the transgressions of Adam, Eve, and Cain, who were punished by banishment further and further from God’s presence. On the other hand, it recalls the confrontation between the Israelites and Moses at the shore of the sea. In the book of Jonah, however, the breach of trust of which the Israelites only accused Moses is indeed true of Jonah. It is on his account that the divine רוח pursued the sailors, whereas Moses used it to save the Israelites. Meanwhile, the sailors emulate the Israelites in calling to God and rid themselves of their un-Moses-like prophet.
In the belly of the fish, an unrepentant Jonah laments to God that once again he is experiencing exile, driven away (גרשׁ) like Adam and Eve and Cain from Eden, or Israel from Egypt. Despite the audacity of the misrepresentation, God finally ends Jonah’s wind- and sea-swept ordeal and orders him to be spewed out (קיא itself being reminiscent of exile) onto יבשׁה like that which brought Israel through the sea. For a while, the prophet ceases grumbling and completes his mission to Nineveh. Like the sailors, the inhabitants fear and cry out to God and even come to believe. Jonah, however, is far from pleased. Imitating the anger and route of Cain, he exiles himself to the east. He also repeats the complaint of the Israelites, going even further in his claim that even death is better than his current situation. Throughout, Jonah has emulated only the negative traits of the exodus generation, while their positive moments (crying out to God and believing in him) are instead imitated by the gentiles of the story. As with the angry Cain and fearful Israelites, God extends protection despite Jonah’s behaviour. Jonah is provided with shade in the form of the qîqāyôn—only to have the rug pulled from under his feet and the plant from over his head the next morning, in his final experience of exile.
What this means is that quite independently of the focus of the book, the mission to, and fate of Nineveh, there is a careful development of the experience of the prophet Jonah. The inner-biblical allusions cluster around the themes of expulsion and loss of God’s favour or presence, mapping Jonah’s experiences onto those of others who found themselves driven out from a place of (perceived) safety and patronage into an uncertain and dangerous future. Despite this, a consistent characteristic of the texts is the ongoing presence and protection of God. Even after the death of the qîqāyôn, Jonah’s final mini-exile, God continues to speak with him. The ending of the book of Jonah is famously inconclusive, breaking off with a question. It is in this regard that the parallels to the primeval and exodus narratives are instructive. In neither of these narratives is the exile of the characters the end of the story, but rather, both are creations, beginnings of stories, the continuation of which is well known. Humanity survived and even thrived on the earth after leaving Eden, and the exodus was in hindsight recognized as the start of the nation of Israel. The book of Jonah is typically seen as ending with a redeemed Nineveh but a dissatisfied prophet. The allusions to the primeval and exodus narrative are not generous to the character of Jonah, but they do allow for more hope for his future beyond the text than the reader would otherwise expect. What Jonah experiences as exile within the story might later in time be understood as exodus.
3.2. The dynamics of inner-biblical allusion in the book of Jonah
Magonet described two features of the use of quotation in the book of Jonah: the separation and the fusion of texts. 30 Both are illustrated in the allusions to the primeval and exodus narrative. A short biblical passage, such as Cain’s sin and expulsion to the east, is used to seed allusions across the book of Jonah, especially in chapters 1 and 4. Conversely, a short sentence or two in the book of Jonah can blend together quotes and contexts from two separate biblical texts. ‘The effect is to set up a series of very powerful “echoes” in which each text interacts with the other, and both react within the “Jonah” context itself’. 31 Magonet’s examples include Jon. 3.10, which uses the wording of Exod. 32.14 but with the theological understanding of Jer. 18.8; the ‘innocent blood’ of Jon. 1.14 which uses wording closer to Deuteronomy but in a context drawn from Jer. 26; and Jonah’s anger in chapter 4 which draws on both Exod. 14.12 and 1 Kgs. 19.4. Magonet notes that the joining of these passages in the book of Jonah could illuminate 1 Kgs. 19.4. It suggests that when Elijah said ‘I am not better than my fathers’, he was comparing himself to the exodus generation and their fear in the face of an uncertain future. Magonet adds, however, that ‘it is difficult to see how far the author of “Jonah” intended the ripples of his associations to spread’. 32
Considering the allusions outlined above, the ripples may spread far indeed. Several of Magonet’s examples of blended allusions consist of precise phrasing drawn from one text but set within a context drawn from another text. The allusions to the primeval and exodus narratives, however, borrow specific phrases and contexts from both. Moreover, the allusions described in this chapter are to narratives with a significant common theme, namely the sense of exile. The careful synthesis of these texts in the book of Jonah certainly shapes one’s understanding of the book. The prophet Jonah’s experience is cast in terms of perceived exile, the seriousness of his fault in fleeing God’s commission is magnified by the comparison to the primeval sins, and the ending of the book is made more hopeful by the comparison between Jonah’s annoyance at that moment and the initial dismay of the exodus generation. As such, the allusions import meaning into the text that employs them. Yet by drawing on the common theme between the primeval and exodus narratives, the book of Jonah also highlights a pattern that might otherwise go unnoticed. The exodus narrative is not normally understood as exile, but by using those parts of the narrative that hint at such a sense, and placing them side by side with similar elements in the primeval narrative, the book of Jonah influences how the exodus narrative is subsequently read. As such, the ripples of associations do indeed spread into the cited texts.
The same technique is frequently used in the book of Jonah, as I have suggested previously. 33 The allusions in the text are rarely isolated references to a single passage, but rather sets of allusions that take up and highlight patterns within biblical literature. The most substantial allusions in the book of Jonah highlight biblical patterns concerning the role of prophets, the character of God, and the implications of the divine character for cities and peoples that find themselves on the wrong side of God’s judgement. These patterns are imitated, varied, and often inverted within the book. Thus, the implications of the traditional patterns are explored, especially when applied to new situations which do not otherwise occur in the biblical literature. This in turn influences how one returns to and understands the earlier biblical literature.
Footnotes
1.
There have been numerous definitions of allusion in literary theory and biblical studies. Many of these share certain elements: intentionality (deliberate re-use of an aspect of another text), recognisability (the author also intends that the re-use be recognised by the reader as such), indirect or partial re-use (only a part of the previous text is re-used) and impact (the interpretation of the alluding text is richer as a result of the reader recognising and making use of the allusion). There is much more that can be said on the matter of defining allusions, but since this is not a theoretical paper, and I do not propose any idiosyncratic definition of allusion, the reader can consult Tooman (William A. Tooman, Gog of Magog: Reuse of Scripture and Compositional Technique in Ezekiel 38–39, Forschungen Zum Alten Testament. 2. Reihe 52 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 6–8), Ben-Porat (Ziva Ben-Porat, “The Poetics of Literary Allusion,” PTL: A Journal for Descriptive Poetics and Theory of Literature 1 (1976): 105–28), the New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (Earl Miner, “Allusion,” The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, 39–40) and Irwin (William Irwin, “What Is an Allusion?,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 59 (
): 293.)
2.
See, for example, Joel Edmund Anderson, “Jonah’s Peculiar Re-Creation,” BTB 41 (2011): 179–88 esp. 182-183. Among the hints of creation imagery is, of course, Jonah’s own confession of the creative acts of God in Jon 1.9. Jonah uses the phrase אשׁר־עשׂה את־הים ואת־היבשׁה, ‘who made the sea and the dry land’. This is very close to Ps. 95.5: אשר־לו הים והוא עשהו ויבשת ידיו יצרו, ‘the sea is [God’s] and he made it, and his hands formed the dry land’. See Hans Walter Wolff, Obadiah and Jonah: A Commentary, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1986), 116; James Limburg, Jonah: A Commentary (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, ), 58. The particular words ים and יבשׁה/יבשׁת are more than an enumeration of items God made; they recall a creation story, as discussed below.
3.
For example: מצולה, deep (Jon. 2.4), is used in Job 41.23 in a passage describing God’s power over Leviathan, and in Ps. 107.24 in a description of God’s power over the sea. משׁבר, breaker (Jon. 2.4), is used in Ps. 93.3–4 in which the power of God is contrasted favourably with the power of the sea and in 2 Sam. 22.16 in which God rebukes the sea. גל, wave (Jon 2.4), is often used with respect to a creation tradition: Job 38.11, Jer. 5.22 and 31.35, Isa 51.15, Pss 65.7–8, 89.10–11, 107.25 and 107.29; see also Jer 51.42, 51.55 and Ezek. 26.3 in which the waves and sea are destructive forces in God’s battle against Babylon, in effect an agent of de-creation. תהום, depth (Jon. 2.6), occurs in passages explicitly concerning creation (Pss. 33.6–7, 104.5–9); concerning a battle with the sea (Pss 77.17–20, 104.5–9); and in ways which suggest God’s sovereignty over תהום (Pss. 107.26, 135.6 and 148.7). Finally, the bars imprisoning Jonah in the depths of the sea (בריח, Jon. 2.7) are also those used of the bars restraining the sea in Job 38.8–11.
It is not beyond all doubt that the author of the book of Jonah intended through the concentration of words to allude to such sea-combat creation traditions. An alternative is that their concentration is simply a result of the heavy use of the language of the psalms in Jonah’s poem. There is an overwhelming use of words most often used or otherwise prominent in the psalms (to give just a few examples: צרה, מצולה, סבב, משׁבר, אפף, תהום, עטף, שׁוא and תודה). Moreover, several of the passage’s verses may have been borrowed directly from the psalms (compare Jon. 2.3 with Pss. 120.1, 31.23, 18.7; Jon. 2.4 with Ps. 42.8; Jon. 2.5 with Ps. 31.23; Jon. 2.8 with Pss. 107.5, 77.4 and 88.3; and Jon. 2.9 with Ps. 31.7).
4.
5.
Specifically, the image of a wind from God that God sends over sea or water otherwise occurs in 2 Sam 22.16, Ps 18.16, and Isa 17.13. The first two recount individual redemption but may be influenced by the sea-combat creation traditions, and in the last God’s defeat of the waters is a metaphor for how he will deal with the nation.
6.
Christensen, “Jonah and the Sabbath Rest in the Pentateuch,” 54–55. The word רדם appears in five other places (Judg. 4.21, Ps. 76.6, Prov. 10.5 and Dan. 8.18, 10.9). The word תרדמה appears in six other places (Gen. 15.12, 1 Sam. 26.12, Isa. 29.10, Job 4.13, 33.15, Prov. 19.15). It is unclear whether the author of the book of Jonah intended the implication of divinely induced sleep that is present in some of these examples, as well as in Gen. 2.
7.
Some scholars also suggest that there is a narrative parallel between the qîqāyôn in Jonah and the tree in Gen 3, and between the worm which eats it and the serpent, though both have been caricatured and made less impressive as part of the author’s tendency to undercut symbolism for ironic purposes. See James S. Ackerman, “Satire and Symbolism in the Song of Jonah,” in Traditions in Transformation: Turning Points in Biblical Faith, ed. Baruch Halpern and Jon D. Levenson (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1981), 213–46 esp. 242; Arnold J. Band, “Swallowing Jonah: The Eclipse of Parody,” Proof 10 (): 177–195 esp. 181. However, in the absence of lexical connection, and given the different functions played by tree/qîqāyôn and serpent/worm in each narrative, the parallel is difficult to support.
8.
See Gen 29.25, when Jacob asks the question of Laban when he has given him Leah in place of the promised Rachel, and Gen 12.18 and 26.10 for two versions of the wife/sister stories (Marian Kelsey, “Jacob and the Wife-Sister Stories,” JBQ 46 (): 226–30.) See also Exod 14.11 when the question is asked of Moses by Israel because he had led them into apparent danger. Otherwise the question appears in Gen. 42.28, Exod. 14.5 and Joshua 22.24.
9.
Yitzhak Berger, Jonah in the Shadows of Eden (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016), 10. See also Vanoni: ‘Es fällt jedenfalls auf, daß außer Gen. 3.13 und Jon. 1:10 auf die Wortverbindung immer eine Präpositionalverbindung mit ל folgt.’ Gottfried Vanoni, Das Buch Jona: literar- und formkritische Untersuchung (St. Ottilien: EOS-Verlag, ), 131.
10.
Note also Judges 2.2 when the question is asked of Israel by the angel of the Lord after Israel has disobeyed God’s command.
11.
The others are Gen. 20.9, another version of the wife/sister stories; Gen. 31.26, another example from the Jacob cycle; Num 23.11; and (in statement form) Jer. 2.23, which concerns the breaching of covenant obligations.
12.
13.
Berger, Jonah in the Shadows of Eden, 13. Apparently the suggestion that Jon. 4.4 is a play on Gen. 4.6 is also made in Magonet’s dissertation (as noted in Wolff, Obadiah and Jonah, 169.) The suggestion does not seem to have made it into the published Form and Meaning.
15.
Downs, “The Specter of Exile in the Story of Jonah,” 42; Berger, Jonah in the Shadows of Eden, 13. See also Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer, “Jonah, the Eternal Fugitive: Exploring the Intertextuality of Jonah’s Flight in the Bible and Its Later Reception,” in Images of Exile in the Prophetic Literature, by Jesper Høgenhaven, Frederik Poulsen, and Cian Power (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, ), 260. Many thanks to the author for forwarding me a copy of the chapter.
16.
Downs, “The Specter of Exile in the Story of Jonah,” 33; Tiemeyer, “Jonah, the Eternal Fugitive: Exploring the Intertextuality of Jonah’s Flight in the Bible and Its Later Reception,” 259.
17.
18.
Baruch Halpern and Richard Elliott Friedman, “Composition and Paronomasia in the Book of Jonah,” HAR 4 (1980): 79–92 esp. 85-86. See also Brent A. Strawn, “On Vomiting: Leviticus, Jonah, Ea(a)Rth,” CBQ 74 (): 445–64 esp. 455-457.
19.
Berger, Jonah in the Shadows of Eden, 14.
20.
21.
Clifford suggests that both sea-combat cosmogonies and the exodus qualify as creation texts, at least as told in the psalms, as both are concerned with the emergence of a peopled universe i.e. including the founding of Israel. See chapter 7 of Richard J. Clifford, Creation Accounts in the Ancient Near East and the Bible (Washington: Catholic Biblical Association, 1994). See also Fishbane: ‘Historical redemption is, so to speak, a renewal of national origins, and uses the mythography of creation for dramatic emphasis.’ Michael A. Fishbane, Biblical Text and Texture: A Literary Reading of Selected Texts (Oxford: Oneworld, ), 127–28.
22.
For example, the word סוף in Jon 2.6 often appears in relation to the exodus as ים־סוף (or variation on it), though the name is also found in contexts unrelated to the exodus. In fact, the Targum translates the ‘reeds’ of Jonah’s poem as Reed Sea (Kevin J. Cathcart and R. P. Gordon, eds., The Targum of the Minor Prophets, The Aramaic Bible 14 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989), 107.) Both מצולה and תהום are on occasion associated with the exodus (מצולה only twice at Exod. 15:5 and Neh. 9.11, but תהום in Exod. 15.5, 15.8; Ps. 106.9, Isa 51.10 and 63.13), and one of the few uses of בלבב ימים (Jon 2.4) which is not in a passage referring directly to ships on the sea occurs in Exod. 15.8. These examples and others are listed and discussed by Alastair Hunter, “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. Johannes de Moor (Leiden: Brill, ), 142–58. Finally, Kahn notes that the prophet Jonah rather unexpectedly refers to himself as עברי, a Hebrew, rather than Israelite (Jon 1:9). ‘Hebrew’ is used in Exodus referring to Israel in slavery (Kahn lists Exod. 2.6, 2.11, 2.13, 3.18, 5.3, 7.16, 9.1. See also Exod. 9.13 and 10.3, and in the feminine in Exod. 1.15, 1.16, 1.19 and 2.7). Kahn, “An Analysis of the Book of Jonah,” 91.
Hunter suggests that the narrative of Jonah was developed from the poem as a commentary on the exodus myth. Most of these words are common and often used in other contexts, particularly creation contexts, as mentioned, or contexts of personal danger or distress. Hunter subsumes both other contexts under the umbrella of exodus associations, due to the established connection between exodus and creation accounts, and because he regards the imagery of the depths for death to be ‘in touch with a clear dimension of the exodus myth’ (Hunter, “Jonah from the Whale,” 148.) Whether descriptions of sinking as a metaphor for mortal danger are necessarily related to the exodus is debatable. It is also unclear why creation imagery is to be subsumed under exodus imagery, rather than vice versa. Nonetheless, the book of Jonah as commentary on the exodus myth may have developed as an interpretation at some point: a marginal note in Codex Reuchlinianus of the Targum reads that Pharaoh was king in Nineveh in those days (Cathcart and Gordon, Targum of the Minor Prophets, 108.) This might suggest that an imaginative analogy between Nineveh and Egypt was at play in translating Jonah.
23.
Exod. 14.16, 14.22, 14.29, 15.19, Neh. 9.11 and Ps. 66.6.
24.
Exod. 4.9, 14.16, 14.22, 14.29, 15.19, Josh. 4.22, Neh. 9.11 and Ps. 66.6. The connection in Exod. 4.9 is admittedly a little more oblique than the rest, as the word appears in the account of one of the plagues of Egypt. The one exception is Isa. 44.3 which refers to water being poured on thirsty land.
25.
Berger, Jonah in the Shadows of Eden, 17. See also Magonet, Form and Meaning, 70; Vanoni, Das Buch Jona, 144.
26.
Note also the similar מה־זאת עשינו (‘What have we done?’) in Exod. 14.5 after Pharaoh was told (נגד) that the people had fled (ברח). The sailors’ question to Jonah comes after he has told them (נגד) that he was fleeing (ברח) God. Berger, Jonah in the Shadows of Eden, 17.
27.
Magonet, Form and Meaning, 74–76. Magonet also draws into the web of text relations the words of Elijah in 1 Kings 19:4. See also Berger, Jonah in the Shadows of Eden, 18.
28.
And indeed, it is used even more frequently to describe the Canaanites et al being driven from the promised land (e.g. Exod. 6.1, 12.39, 23.28–31, Deut. 33.27, Josh. 24.18, Judg. 6.9, 1 Chr. 17.21 and Ps. 78.55).
29.
Berger, Jonah in the Shadows of Eden, 21–22.
30.
Magonet, Form and Meaning, 73–76.
31.
Magonet, Form and Meaning, 75.
32.
Magonet, Form and Meaning, 76.
33.
Marian Kelsey, “Jonah: Co-Texts and Contexts” (2018). The approach adopted within the book of Jonah and which the dissertation explores is not dissimilar to Ben Zvi’s understanding of the book as ‘meta-prophetic’; that is, a prophetic book that deals with ‘issues that are of relevance for the understanding of the messages of other prophetic books’, Ehud Ben Zvi, Signs of Jonah: Reading and Rereading in Ancient Yehud, JSOT Supplement Series 367 (London: Sheffield Academic Press, ), 86. Ben Zvi goes on to say that ‘a prophetic book dealing with the figure of the prophet cannot but serve as commentary on, or an interpretive key for, the understanding of “prophecy”’, Ben Zvi, Signs of Jonah, 87. The advantages of the label ‘meta-prophetic’ are that it takes into consideration the themes of the book, focusing on the relationship between prophet and God, and the form of the book, as imitative of (yet in some crucial details different from) pre-existing prophecy. There is, however, one caveat: the subject of the allusions within the book, its intertextual relationships in general, and the questions raised and explored in the book, are not confined to prophetic literature and prophetic subjects. Instead, the book is concerned with matters such as the character of God and God’s ways of dealing with the world as recounted across a much wider spectrum of scripture. Although the reflective nature of the book is appropriately foregrounded by the ‘meta-prophetic’ description, it does not, therefore, fully represent the object of such reflection.