Of all the prophetic books of the Bible, the book of Jonah ismost difficult to understand and study in depth. With its small volume, this work poses a tremendous amount of problems for researchers, complicating not only its interpretation, but even the classification. Thus, a number of specialists in Old Testament biblical studies even deprive the book of Jonah of the status of prophetic writings, giving various arguments to defend his thesis. For example, O. Kaiser notes that the book of the Prophet Jonah is not a prophetic text, but a story about a prophet, in connection with which he relates this work to the historical writings of the Tanakh.
The contents of the book Jonah
Книгу Ионы можно структурно разделить на три components. The first part begins with the command of God Jonah to go to Nineveh to report the anger of the Most High. The mission of Jonah is to induce the Ninevites to repentance so that God may annul the harsh sentence. Jonah, on the other hand, tries to evade 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 for whom this bad weather has befallen them. The lot rightly points to the divine deviation (the prophet Jonah), he, forced to admit his fault, asks sailors to throw him overboard. Sailors follow the advice and throw Jonah into the sea, where he is swallowed by some huge creature, in Hebrew called simply “fish”, and in the Russian translation of the Bible it is denoted by the word “whale”. According to the story, the prophet Jonah stayed inside this fish for three days and three nights. Then the fish, after the prayer of Jonah, spat him out on the shore of the very Nineveh, where God had originally sent him. This event is known in the Christian tradition as a sign of the prophet Jonah, and is usually associated with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The second part of the story tells howThe prophet Jonah proclaimed 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 announced a nationwide repentance and all residents, even domestic animals, had to fast, wearing sackcloth - penitential clothing.
The third part of the book contains a description of the dispute betweenGod and Jonah. The latter, when he saw that the Almighty, mitigated by repentance of Ninevites, canceled his sentence and pardoned the city, was upset because of his tarnished reputation. In order to sensitize the prophet, God produces a miracle: a whole tree grows in one night and it dries up in one night. The latter serves as a moral illustration for Jonah - he felt sorry for the plant, so he even cursed his life. If a pity is a tree, then how not to pardon the whole city? - God asks Jonah. On this issue, the book's narrative ends.
The historicity of the book of Jonah
It is highly doubtful that the events described in thisthe work had to be. Fairy-tale components that permeate the entire outline of the narrative reveal the fact of literary influence of non-Jewish origin. Voyages, fish rescue, etc., are all common motifs in ancient fairy tales. Even the name Jonah is not Jewish, but most likely Aegean. At the estimated time, Nineveh was not at all what it was presented in the book - a great city with a population of one hundred twenty thousand people just fantastic). Most likely, the plot of the book was composed of various fairy tales and folk fables for educational purposes.
Moral of the Book of Jonah
The very fact uncharacteristic for the Jewish religionGod's attention to the pagan city (and Nineveh had nothing to do with the cult of the Jewish God Yahweh) speaks of circumstances in which pagans played a significant role. Perhaps this suggests a local coexistence of carriers of different traditions and the desire of the Jews to reconcile their religious world with the pagan environment. In this regard, the book of Jonah differs sharply from the Pentateuch of Moses, where pagans are subject to total sherem (curse) and are subject to destruction, or, at best, can be tolerated. The book of Jonah, on the contrary, preaches God, who cares equally for all people, both Jews and Gentiles, so he even sends his prophet to the latter 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 question of the Lord, how not to regret the great city, where one hundred and twenty thousand foolish people and many cattle.
Time writing
Based on the internal analysis of the text, from the presence of late Hebrew words and characteristic Aramaic constructions, the researchers refer this monument of literature to the 4th — 3rd centuries. BC uh
Authorship of the Book of Jonah
Of course, the prophet himself could not have written the book.Jonah, 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 an area with strong pagan influence — for example, a port city. This explains the moral universalism of this work. It is not possible to establish the identity of the author more precisely.
The Prophet Jonah - Interpretation and Exegesis
Две традиции истолкования Ветхого Завета – Jewish and Christian, interpret this text differently. If the Jews first of all see in the book of Jonah the statement of the omnipotence of God Yahweh, which is superior to all other gods and whose jurisdiction covers all nations, as well as all creation in general, then Christians see a different meaning. Namely, for Christians, the episode of swallowing Jonah with fish becomes central. Based on the words attributed by the Gospels to Jesus himself, the prophet Jonah in the belly of the whale represents Christ crucified, descended to hell and resurrected on the third day.
