The Book of Jonah 1:1-3

Welcome back to my study/review of The Book of Jonah. If you missed the previous parts of this study, you can find them HERE.

Jonah 1:1-3

1 Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, ² “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” ³ But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.

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This Bible story is very familiar, but there are some interesting details that were unlikely to have been discussed much during Sunday School. (From The Pulpit Commentaries)

Jonah 1:1

Now; or, and. Some have argued from this commencement that the Book of Jonah is a fragment, the continuation of a larger work; but it is a common formulary, linking together revelations and histories, and is continually used in the Old Testament at the beginning of independent works; e.g. Joshua 1:1; Judges 1:1; 1 Samuel 1:1; Esther 1:1; Ezekiel 1:1. Jonah the son of Amittai (2 Kings 14:25). (See Introduction, § II)

It may be interesting for some of you to know that many of the above books are included as part of something known as the Deuteronomistic History.

The Deuteronomist, abbreviated as either Dtr or simply D, may refer either to the source document underlying the core chapters (12–26) of the Book of Deuteronomy, or to the broader “school” that produced all of Deuteronomy as well as the Deuteronomistic history of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, and also the Book of Jeremiah. The adjectives “Deuteronomic” and “Deuteronomistic” are sometimes used interchangeably; if they are distinguished, then the first refers to the core of Deuteronomy and the second to all of Deuteronomy and the history.

The Deuteronomist is one of the sources identified through source criticism as underlying much of the Hebrew Bible. Among source-critical scholars, it is generally agreed that Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic history originated independently of the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers (the first four books of the Torah, sometimes called the “Tetrateuch”, whose sources are the Priestly source and the Jahwist), and the history of the Books of Chronicles; most scholars trace all or most of it to the Babylonian exile (6th century BCE), and associate it with editorial reworking of both the Tetrateuch and Jeremiah.

Background

Since the mid-20th century, scholars have imagined the Deuteronomists as country Levites (a junior order of priests), or as prophets in the tradition of the northern Kingdom of Israel, or as sages and scribes at the royal court. Recent scholarship has interpreted the book as involving all these groups, and the origin and growth of Deuteronomism is usually described in the following terms:

• Following the destruction of Israel (the northern kingdom) by Assyria in 722 BCE, refugees came south to Judah, bringing with them traditions, notably the concept of Yahweh as the only God who should be served, which had not previously been known. Among those influenced by these new ideas were the landowning aristocrats (called “people of the land” in the Bible) who provided the administrative elite in Jerusalem.
• In 640 BCE there was a crisis in Judah when king Amon was murdered. The aristocrats suppressed the attempted coup, putting the ringleaders to death and placing Amon’s eight-year-old son, Josiah, on the throne.
• Judah at this time was a vassal of Assyria, but Assyria now began a rapid and unexpected decline in power, leading to a resurgence of nationalism in Jerusalem. In 622 BCE Josiah launched his reform program, based on an early form of Deuteronomy 5–26, framed as a covenant (treaty) between Judah and Yahweh in which Yahweh replaced the Assyrian king.
• By the end of the 7th century BCE Assyria had been replaced by a new imperial power, Babylon. The trauma of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, and the exile which followed, led to much theological reflection on the meaning of the tragedy, and the Deuteronomistic history was written as an explanation: Israel had been unfaithful to Yahweh, and the exile was God’s punishment.
• By about 540 BCE Babylon was also in rapid decline as the next rising power, the Achaemenid Empire, steadily ate away at it. With the end of the Babylonian oppression becoming ever more probable, Deuteronomy was given a new introduction and attached to the history books as an overall theological introduction.
• The final stage was the addition of a few extra laws following the Fall of Babylon to the Persians in 539 BCE and the return of some (in practice only a small fraction) of the exiles to Jerusalem.

I’ll just leave a note here to indicate that the academic view of history is often quite different than the traditional one and that difference is not always well-grounded or enduring. In this case I have no idea, though I am aware that some will be deeply unhappy with the idea that Deuteronomy was written separately from the rest of the Torah. I’ll leave feelings about that to curious readers. The point either way though is that if a lot of Old Testament texts begin with “Now…” (as though we were in the middle of a story rather than at the start) there is some belief that the reason is there was a larger source document for several books of the Old Testament.

Jonah = יוֹנָה yôwnâh, yo-naw’; probably from the same as H3196; a dove (apparently from the warmth of their mating):—dove, pigeon.

Amittai = אֶמֶת ʼemeth, eh’-meth; contracted from H539; stability; (figuratively) certainty, truth, trustworthiness:—assured(-ly), establishment, faithful, right, sure, true (-ly, -th), verity.

You might wonder if “doves” have some significance in ancient Israel, as it seems like an interesting name meaning for a famous prophet, and it turns out that they do.

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Few symbols have a tradition as long and as rich as the dove. A particular favorite in art and iconography, the dove often represents some aspect of the divine, and its use has been shared, adapted and reinterpreted across cultures and millennia to suit changing belief systems. From the ancient world to modern times, this simple bird developed layer upon layer of meaning and interpretive significance, making it a complex and powerful addition to religious texts and visual representations.

In the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean world, the dove became an iconic symbol of the mother goddess. Small clay shrines from the Iron Age Levant depict doves perched atop the doorways of these mini-temples. On one example from Cyprus, the entire exterior of the goddess’s shrine is covered with dovecotes. The doves represented feminine fertility and procreation, and came to be well-recognized symbols of the Canaanite goddess Asherah and her counterpart Astarte, as well as her Phoenician and later Punic embodiment, Tanit. First-century B.C. coins from Ashkelon bore a dove, which represented both the goddess Tyche-Astarte and the city mint. In Rome and throughout the Empire, goddesses such as Venus and Fortunata could be seen depicted in statues with a dove resting in their hand or on their head.

There is strong evidence in the Hebrew Bible, as well as the archaeological record, that many ancient Israelites believed the goddess Asherah was the consort of their god Yahweh. Perhaps it is not so surprising, then, that the heirs of this Israelite religion incorporated the “feminine” symbol of the dove to represent the spirit of God (the word for “spirit,” ruach, is a feminine word in Hebrew). The Babylonian Talmud likens the hovering of God’s spirit in Genesis 1:2 to the hovering of a dove. Indeed, this same “hovering” language is used to describe God’s spirit in the Dead Sea Scrolls as well as the New Testament.

But that is not the only allusion to a dove in the Hebrew Bible. The best-known example comes from the flood story of Genesis 6—9. In Genesis 8:8—12, after the ark has landed on the mountains of Ararat, Noah sends out a dove three times to see how far the flood waters have receded. The first time it found nothing and returned to the ark. The second time it brought back an olive leaf, so Noah could see that God’s punishment was over and life had begun again on the earth. (The image of a dove holding an olive branch continues to be a symbol of peace to this day.) The third time, the dove did not return, and Noah knew that it was safe to leave the ark. A similar flood story is told in parallel passages in the ancient Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh. There, too, the hero (Utnapishtim) sends out a dove, which returns to the ship unable to find a perch. In fact, from Ancient Near Eastern records to nautical practices as recent as the 19th century, sailors the world over used doves and other birds to help them find and navigate toward land. So, while Noah made use of an ancient sailor’s trick, the dove came to represent a sign from God.

A white dove represents the “spirit of God” that hovered over the face of the deep (Genesis 1:2) in this, the first of the Creation mosaics at the Cathedral of Santa Maria Nuovo in Monreale, Italy. Photo by the Casa Editrice Mistretta, Palermo, Italy

Dove imagery is also utilized in several of the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible. The low, cooing sound of a dove served as mournful imagery to evoke the suffering of the people of Judah (see Isaiah 38:14, 59:11; Ezekiel 7:16 and others).

But doves were more than just a soundtrack for a people who had fallen away from God; they were also an instrument of atonement. Several passages of the Torah (especially Leviticus) specify occasions that require the sacrifice of two doves (or young pigeons)—either as a guilt offering or to purify oneself after a period of ritual impurity (including the birth of a child). Several columbaria, or dovecotes, have been excavated in the City of David and the Jerusalem environs (by crawford). These towers were undoubtedly used to raise doves for sacrificial offerings, as well as for the meat and fertilizer they provided—a popular practice in the Hellenistic and Roman periods that continued into the modern period.

We need not completely embrace all of the above to keep it in the back of our mind. God’s chosen prophet here has a name that means “dove,” and that name carries with it some thoughts and connotations which the original readers would have noticed.

Continuing on to verse 2, from the Pulpit Commentaries:

Jonah 1:2

Nineveh, the capital of the kingdom of Assyria, is first mentioned in Genesis 10:11, as founded by Nimrod. It stood on the left bank of the river Tigris, where it is joined by the Khosr, opposite to the present town of Mosul. The Assyrians had already become known in Syria. In B.C. 854 Shal-maneser II. had defeated at Karkar twelve kings confederate against him, among whom is reckoned Ahab King of Israel. Long before his time, Tiglath-Pileser I. had made a great expedition to the west, captured a town at the foot of Lebanon, and reached the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Jehu was compelled to pay tribute to the Assyrians; and Rimmon-nirari, who reigned from B.C. 810 to 781, held the suzerainty of Phoenicia, Samaria, Edom, and Philistia. Jonah, therefore, knew well what his country might expect at the hands of this people. That great city. It is thus called in Jonah 3:2, Jonah 3:3; Jonah 4:11; and the epithet is added here in order to show to Jonah the importance of his mission. The size of Nineveh is variously estimated according to the sense attached to the name “Nineveh.” This appellation may be restricted to Nineveh proper, or it may comprise the four cities which lay close together in the immediate neighbourhood of each ether, and whose remains are now known as the mounds of Kouyunjik, on the southwest, directly opposite to Mosul; Nimrud, about eighteen miles to the southeast; Karamless, twelve miles to the north; and Khorsabad, the most northerly, about the same distance both from Karamless and Kouyunjik. Khorsabad, however, was not built till some hundred years after Jonah’s time. These cities are contained in an irregular parallelogram of some sixty miles in circumference. The following account of Nineveh proper is derived from Professor Rawlinson, ‘Ancient Monarchies,’ 1:252, etc.: “The ruins consist of two principal mounds, Nebbiyunus and Kouyunjik. The Kouyunjik mound, which lies nearly half a mile northwest of the others, is very much the more considerable of the two. Its shape is an irregular oval, elongated to a point towards the northeast. The surface is nearly flat; the sides slope at a steep angle, and are furrowed with numerous ravines worn in the soft material by the rains of some thirty centuries. The greatest height above the plain is ninety feet, and the area is estimated at a hundred acres. It is an artificial eminence, computed to contain 14,500,000 tons of earth, and on it were erected the palaces and temples of the Assyrian monarchs. The mound of Nebbi-yunus is at its base nearly triangular, and covers an area of nearly forty acres. It is loftier, and its sides are more precipitous than Kouyunjik, especially on the west, where it abutted on the wall of the city. The mass of earth is calculated at six and a half millions of tons. These two vast mounds are both in the same line, and abutted on the western wall of the city, which was some two and a half miles in length. Anciently it seems to have immediately overhung the Tigris, but the river has now receded to the west, leaving a plain of nearly a mile in width between its bank and the old rampart which evidently once followed the course of the river bank. The western wall is joined at fight angles by the northern rampart which runs in a straight line for seven thousand feet. At its other extremity the western wall forms a very obtuse angle with the southern, which impends over a deep ravine, and runs in a straight line for about a thousand yards, when it meets the eastern wall, which is the longest and the least regular of the four. The entire length of this side is sixteen thousand feet, or above three miles. It is divided into two portions by. the Stream of the Khosr-su; which, coming from the northwest, finds its way through the city and then across the low plain to the Tigris. The town is thus of an oblong shape, and the circuit of its walls is somewhat less than eight miles, and the area which they include is eighteen hundred acres. This, at the computation of something less than one hundred inhabitants per acre, would ascribe to Nineveh a population of one hundred and seventy-five thousand souls” (Rawlinson, ‘Anc. Men.,’ 1. Jon 1:1-17). Cry against it. The message is given in Jonah 3:4. Thus the knowledge of the true God is made known among the Gentiles. Their wickedness; i.e; as Pusey notes, their evil doing towards others, as in Nahum 3:19 (see Introduction, § I). Is come up before me, and appeals for punishment, as Genesis 4:10; Genesis 18:20, Genesis 18:21; Septuagint, Ἀνέβη ἡ κραυγή τῆς κακίας αὐτής πρὸς μέ, “The cry of its wickedness is come up unto me.”

The note gives us a sense of the size of Nineveh and a lot of its history. However, what made Nineveh so wicked? We should note a text parallel at the outset between the city and Sodom, as the text tells us that both had their evil come up before the Lord. Nineveh, as the note above describes, was also founded by Nimrod – who is typologically a Divine Rebel figure also associated with the Tower of Babel.

Genesis 10:8-12 ⁸ Cush begot Nimrod; he began to be a mighty one on the earth. ⁹ He was a mighty hunter before the Lord; therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord.” ¹⁰ And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. ¹¹ From that land he went to Assyria and built Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah, ¹² and Resen between Nineveh and Calah (that is the principal city).

We are not given specifics about Nineveh, however the context clues lead us to see Nineveh as a place not unlike Sodom or the Tower of Babel – both of which were judged by God in Genesis.

Jonah does not want to go. We learn more about his motivations later in the text, wherein we find out that he did not want God to forgive these people. He wanted God to punish them, not to show them mercy. We’ll get more into that later. First, though, he flees.

Continuing in The Pulpit Commentaries:

Jonah 1:3

Tarshish; probably, Tartessus, a Phoenician city on the south coast of Spain, and therefore in the opposite direction to Nineveh. He was sent to the far east; he flees to the distant west. From the presence of the Lord; literally, from the face of Jehovah. This may mean, from God s special presence in Jerusalem or the Holy Land, as banishment from Cannaan is called “casting out of his sight” (2Ki 17:20, 2 Kings 17:23; 2 Kings 23:27); or, from serving the Lord as his minister (Deuteronomy 10:8), Jonah preferring to renounce his office as prophet rather than execute his mission. The former seems the most natural explanation of the phrase. Kimchi says that Jonah supposed that the spirit of prophecy would not extend beyond the land of Israel. He could never have thought to escape from God’s all-seeing eye. His repugnance to the duty imposed upon him arose partly from national prejudice, which made him loth to interfere in Gentile business, and partly, as he himself says (Jonah 4:2), because he feared God’s compassion would spare the Ninevites on their repentance, and that thus his prediction would be discredited, and mercy shown to heathens already inimical to Israel, if not known to him as the future conquerors of his people. Joppa. This is the modern Jaffa (called Japho in Joshua 19:46), a town on the seacoast thirty miles in a northwesterly direction from Jerusalem. “Jaffa,” says Dr. Thomson, “is one of the oldest cities in the world. It was given to Dan in the distribution of the land by Joshua, and it has been known to history ever since. It owes its existence to the low ledge of rocks which extends into the sea from the extremity of the little cape on which the city stands, and forms a small harbour. Insignificant as it is, and insecure, yet, there being no other on all this coast, it was sufficient to cause a city to spring up around it even in the earliest times, and to sustain its life through numberless changes of dynasties, races, and religions, down to the present hour. It was, in fact, the only harbour of any notoriety possessed by the Jews throughout the greater part of their national existence. To it the timber for both the temples of Jerusalem was brought from Lebanon; and no doubt a lucrative trade in cedar and pine was always carried on through it with the nations who had possession of that goodly mountain. Through it, also, nearly all the foreign commerce of the Jews was conducted, until the artificial pert of Caessarea was built by Herod … . The harbour, howewer, is very inconvenient and insecure. Vessels of any considerable burden must lie out in the open road-stead—a very uneasy berth at all times; and even a moderate wind will oblige them to slip their cables and run out to sea, or seek anchorage at Haifa, sixty miles distant … . The road-stead is liable to sudden and unexpected storms, which stir up a tumultuous sea in a very short time … . The landing also is most inconvenient, and often extremely dangerous. More boats upset, and more lives are lost in the breakers at the north end of the ledge of rocks that defend the inner harbour than anywhere else on this coast.” Went down into it; ἀνέβη [ἐνέβη, Alex.] εἰς αὐτό, “went up into it”. Went on board; or, as Jerome says, sought a hiding place in the ship (comp. verse 5). With them. With the crew. Jonah had told them (verse 10) that he was flying from God’s service, but, knowing and earing nothing about Jehovah, they took him on board when he paid his fare, and thought nothing of his private reasons for joining them

The note here gives the mainstream belief that Tarshish was a city in Spain and then a lot of detail about the dangers of the travel. However, there are other candidates for “Tarshish.”

If you do a search for the word “Tarshish” in your Bible, there are a few interesting things that you learn. We can guess that it was a Bronze Age and Iron Age trading power with a notable fleet of ships because almost every mention of Tarshish in the Old Testament refers to its ships. The city was apparently destroyed at some point. It’s also part of various prophecies (Isaiah mostly) and is associated with lions (Ez. 38.)

Tarshish was known for trading things like silver, iron, tin (Ez. 27) ivory, peacocks, and apes (2 Chron. 9 & 1 Kings 10). Yes. The Bible says that Tarshish used to bring shiploads of apes to King Solomon, who reigned at approximately 1,000 BC.

Just imagine. Ship loads of apes. Hundreds of years before the Roman Republic even began.

Anyway, we can guess a few things on the basis of the traded objects. Most of the tin for Europe and the Mediterranean has been mined in Cornwall (now the U.K.) for thousands of years. That points to a far western location of Tarshish, assuming that proximity to the mines would make the city more likely to be a trader of the items. However, peacocks are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. Ivory and apes would most likely have originated in India or Africa. We know that tin was traded in the Indian subcontinent in antiquity, too. Those things point to India or East Africa as more likely locations for Tarshish (though it should be noted that peacocks were traded across the ancient world and have a long heritage tie with Spain in particular.)

One additional argument for East Africa or India, as possible locations for the Tarshish of the Bible (in addition to the goods traded), is that King Solomon was trading richly at around 1,000 BC – right in the middle of the Bronze Age collapse period of the Mediterranean. We know that even in times of poverty the wealthy often continue to have luxury, however, it might be that some of Solomon’s wealth was because of trade to the economically less effected East. We know he famously met with the Queen of Sheba, who is commonly associated with either Arabia or Ethiopia, both of which are far to the east of Israel and both of which (if there was a treaty or agreement of some sort) could have given Israel permission to access eastern ports and trade routes as far as India and eastern Africa.

Again, I will reiterate that the scholarly consensus for the location of Tarshish is that it was in Spain. However, I do not think we can rule out that Jonah was on his way to India.

Either way, while Jonah’s trip would not have been in the living memory of King Solomon, it would have been within the monarchy period of ancient Israel. Tarshish as an Indian (or Spanish) city would have been well within the historical memory of the Israelites and it may have remained a trade partner dating back to the time of Solomon.

Does the specific location of Tarshish really matter? I’m not sure that it does, at least to the extent that the location matters to the purpose of the writing. However, I think it is interesting to consider how interconnected the world was three thousand years ago.

I think that’s a good stopping point. We’ll pick it up next with Jonah’s trip to Tarshish – wherever that might actually be.