Imagine yourself when you were a child watching the old time
Disney movie, “Pinocchio” and seeing the inside of the whale that Pinocchio was
trapped in, after it swallowed him. Of course he was a wooden boy, but did the
whale really swallow him or was that something completely fictitious? My point
is, Pinocchio claims to be fiction by what the author places in the story. A
living wooden boy, who also has a chance of turning into a real boy someday if
he doesn’t blow it, and his wooden nose grows when he lies; everything about
that story is fictional. Let’s take a look at something real.
Although the author of the book of Jonah doesn’t explicitly
tell the readers who the actual author really is, I believe that Jonah was the
author for many reasons. One reason would be because of the way it ends. The
book ends with a question directed towards Jonah from God and there is no reply
from Jonah. I feel that once one sees the tone of the remote context, it can be
observed that most likely there would be a reply (to God’s final question) if
this book were a fictional story that was written after the death of the
prophet, or if someone else was writing about Jonah’s experiences. If it wasn’t
Jonah, then the actual author was acting bitter while writing the book. It can
seem that Jonah wanted to write in the third person because he didn’t want to
give himself credit for writing the book.
The argument of the sailor’s
conversation in Jonah 1:5, being knowledge that Jonah didn’t have because he
was below deck, can be refuted by reading the surrounding verses and analyzing
them grammatically. Jonah 1:5 says, “All the sailors were afraid and each cried
out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship”
(NIV, Jonah 1:5). An analysis
of this can tell us that the cargo of the ship was missing when Jonah woke up. So
naturally, he could have either asked, or, it was obvious why it was missing
because the captain of the ship went to him and woke him up to pray to his god to
calm the storm as one can see in verse six. This could explain how Jonah knew
of the sailor’s conversation.
In Jonah 1:16 however, after the calming of the storm, the
sailors made a sacrifice to God because they saw with their own eyes that
throwing Jonah overboard was the cause of the calming of the storm. This
information that Jonah had could have been gained after the great fish put him
on land and the possible meeting of the sailor’s again.
The date the book of Jonah was written has to be between the “time
of Jonah’s ministry, which 2 Kings 14:25 places in the first half of the eighth
century” (Smith and Page, 206), and 200 B.C. because the “twelve prophets” are
mentioned in an apocryphal book written at that time (Smith and page, 206).
This allows either the author to be Jonah himself, or anyone else in that
period of time. Some scholars argue that the size of the city of Nineveh
mentioned in Jonah is way too big for its time; therefore the book had to be written
quite some time after Jonah died. Some scholars argue that this could also
explain how the author had knowledge of the sailor’s conversations and such.
But, as we have already seen earlier, so could have Jonah himself had the
knowledge.
Nineveh is located “on the east bank of the Tigris River
opposite Mosul. Its ruins consist of a number of small mounds and two large
tells in an 1800-acre enclosure surrounded by a brick wall almost eight miles
in circumference” (achtemeier, 707). According to Genesis 10:11, “Nineveh was
one of the Northern cities founded by Nimrod or Ashur after leaving Babylonia
and excavation 25 m down to virgin soil shows that the site was occupied from
prehistoric times (c. 4500 B.C.)” (Wood and Marshall, 825). One argument on the
accuracy of the book of Jonah concerning whether or not he is the author, is
that the dimensions of the city mentioned in 3:3 and 4:11, are clearly off.
However, “at the height of its prosperity Nineveh was enclosed by an inner wall
of which, according to Felix Jones’ survey of 1834, more than 175,000 persons
could have lived” (Wood and Marshall, 826).
“Though the city was occupied from prehistoric times, it
reached the height of its fame at the turn of the eighth century B.C., when
Sennacherib made Nineveh the capital of the expanding Assyrian Empire”
(Achtemeier, 707). The city of Nineveh definitely reminds one of the histories
of ancient Egypt and ancient Greece. There were large stone figures of winged
lions with human faces at the gates of palaces in the city and on the walls one
could view mythological, hunting, and military scenes that were carved into the
walls. (Negev, 3rd ed. 1996)
The occasion for writing the book of Jonah could be for many
reasons. One, that through the author’s experiences, he turned to realize Gods
love, care, and concern for the gentiles (Walvoord, Zuck and Dallas Theological Seminary, 1:1462). [I
feel that the occasion for writing must be figured by observation and analysis
of the author’s purpose in this situation because they seem to be so tightly
intertwined.] This idea seems most probable to me for the occasion for writing
for obvious reasons. Such as, the entire New Testament pretty much shows that
Jesus died for ALL of us and not just the Jews. For instance, Jesus himself
said, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him
shall not perish, but have eternal life” (NIV Jn. 3:16 emphasis added).
Secondly, remembering how repentant the gentiles were, when
they were polemically told that they were living in sin, could be the occasion
for writing, and it being a possible model for Israel to look to and mimic,
could be the author’s purpose. I personally feel that the tone of the near
context of the final two chapters would allow this to be highly possible. The
author could have thought, “Look at what the gentiles did! That’s what the
Israelites need to do!” One thing that
could argue the death of this theory would be the whole first two chapters of
the book of Jonah. Why would he speak about his being swallowed experience if
this was just to show Israel that they need to repent? What purpose would that
have had in this? Unless of course, he was trying to show his own stubbornness
or if one were to add two of the theories of occasion for writing together,
such as this, and the sovereignty of God which brings up another subject.
It is possible that the author’s purpose could be to show the
readers that sometimes we do not understand things that God does because we
can’t see the whole picture but must trust in his loving, sovereign ways. This
could be the author’s realization that God is sovereign and taking action by
telling an audience about the experiences that the author had not only to
glorify God but to push his readers in the right direction.
In the book of Jonah, it can be observed that there are three
main parts in the first two chapters. One part would be the request from God,
asking Jonah to preach against the wickedness in Nineveh. Another part would be
Jonah’s refusal and fleeing from God. Finally, we see the consequences of
Jonah’s action which is being delivered by God through being swallowed by a
great fish.
In the next two chapters, we see that Jonah obeys the Lord,
seemingly hesitantly, but follows through anyways. Then, Jonah confesses to God
his true feelings towards Nineveh, and finally, Jonah, like Job, finds that he cannot
defend himself against God’s wisdom.
Written by Nace Howell through the grace of the Lord Jesus
Written by Nace Howell through the grace of the Lord Jesus
© Nace Howell, 2022
Works Cited
The Holy Bible: New International Version, electronic
ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996, c1984).
Billy K.
Smith and Franklin S. Page, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, electronic ed., Logos Library
System; The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman
Publishers, 2001, c1995).
Paul J. Achtemeier, Publishers
Harper & Row and Society of Biblical Literature, Harper's Bible
Dictionary, 1st ed. (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985).
D. R. W. Wood and I. Howard
Marshall, New Bible Dictionary, 3rd ed. (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press,
1996).
Avraham Negev, The Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy
Land, 3rd ed. (New York: Prentice Hall Press, 1996, c1990).
John F. Walvoord, Roy B. Zuck and Dallas Theological
Seminary, The Bible Knowledge Commentary : An Exposition of the
Scriptures (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1983-c1985).
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