CCEJonah03_back03_footnotes

¹  The biblical story of Jonah is the main topic of discussion in chapters 9 and 83 of Melville’s 1851 classic about Captain Ishmael’s hunt for the White Whale. See Herman Melville, Moby Dick: or The Whale (New York: Modern Library, 1999). Jonah’s disobedience-obedience-fall-from-grace cycle serves as an archetype for Rev. John Pearson, the protagonist in Zora Neale Hurston’s first novel, originally published in 1993, Jonah’s Gourd Vine: A Novel (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2008).

²  Jonah would have been familiar with Pss 18:1-3; 24:6-10; and 121:3-8 as an Israelite worshiper and prophet of the Most High.

³  T. Desmond Alexander suggests, “By fleeing the Lord’s presence Jonah announces emphatically his unwillingness to serve God. His action is nothing less that open rebellion against God’s sovereignty” (“Jonah,” in Obadiah, Jonah, and Micah, TOTC [Leicester, UK: InterVarsity, 1988], 101). Kevin J. Youngblood’s thoughts expand this idea: “Most significant for Jonah, however, was the fact the Tarshish was known as a location where YHWH had not yet revealed his glory or his word. . . . This is the true goal of Jonah’s flight—banishment from the prophet’s unique experience of the divine presence” (Jonah: God’s Scandalous Mercy, HMS 28 [Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2013]: 57). Jonah’s flight also seems to be away from the temple of the Lord—the dwelling place of the Lord’s presence (1 Kgs 8:10; 2 Chr 5:14; 6:1-2)—to which Jonah later makes reference (Jonah 2:4,7).

⁴  Baldwin comments, “The use of a two-colored stone provided yes and no answers to specific questions, and in this way Jonah is implicated.”

⁵  On Romans 1:26, Moo writes, “When these factors are considered, it is clear that Paul depicts homosexual activity as a violation of God’s created order, another indication of the departure from true knowledge and worship of God” (Moo, Romans, 115). He later concludes on 1:32, “‘Death’ denotes here a divinely imposed punishment” (Moo, Romans,121). Similarly, Schreiner writes, “Just as idolatry is a violation and perversion of what God intended, so too homosexual relations are contrary to what God planned when he created man and woman. . . . That homosexual relations are contrary to nature, in the sense that they violate what God intended” (Schreiner, Romans, 94). So later Schreiner writes, “They not only know that God disapproves of their behavior but they also know that it deserves the punishment of death . . . nonetheless, they continue to engage in such wicked behavior,” and “the hatred of God is so entrenched that people are willing to risk future judgment in order to carry out their evil desires. . . . God’s wrath is rightly inflicted on those who not only practice evil but find their greatest delight in it” (Moo, Romans, 99–100).

⁶  The narrative presents Israel’s God as the only one who can save the mariners from perishing in the storm and as the only one who can save the Ninevites from impending judgment. As Strickland recognizes, “Salvation was only through believing . . . the true God, not foreign idols. This clearly presents exclusivism, not pluralism” (Strickland, “Isaiah, Jonah, and Religious Pluralism,” 32).

⁷  In 2:1 the waw consecutive + imperfect, yitpallel (“prayed”), indicates past time.

⁸  In the Hebrew “I called” (perfect aspect), “He answered” (waw consecutive + imperfect), “I cried out” (perfect), and “You heard” (perfect) are each indicating a past aspect.

⁹  See Appendix 1, “The Structure of Jonah’s Prayer in Jonah 2.” In preaching this passage it might be wise to provide listeners a hard copy or digital copy so that they might follow readily the explanation of the structure of Jonah 2.

¹⁰  The full narrative is in 1 Kings 8.

¹¹  Estelle suggests “Jonah’s oracle of doom against Nineveh” begins at 3:4c (Salvation through Judgment and Mercy, 129).

¹²  See also Timmer, A Gracious and Compassionate God, 41. I disagree with Timmer when he writes, “We can (and probably should) infer from the Ninevites’ reaction that Jonah’s message to the city consisted of more than the bare threat ‘Forty days more and Nineveh will be overthrown.’” The proclamation of only five words, possibly repeated many times through the streets over the course of Jonah’s journey, demonstrates that the Lord is the power behind the message of salvation, in keeping with the proclamation in 2:9. The Ninevites’ mass repentance at five words from the Lord’s prophet is no less miraculous than pagan sailors turning to the Lord, a storm ceasing when the prophet is thrown into the sea, a fish being prepared to rescue, keep, transport, and vomit the prophet, or a vine gourd coming up in a day and being demolished as quickly. The irony lies in the few words for which the Lord called Jonah to leave his country to preach, and the glory of God is exalted by the response. “The announcement itself is remarkably terse, consisting of a temporal phrase followed by a verbless clause (noun + participle)” (Youngblood, Jonah, 133.) The terseness supports the power of stewardship: When Jonah said only what the Lord commanded him to say, without embellishment or diminishment, the Lord accomplished His will in the lives of the Ninevites.

¹³  Baldwin (“Jonah,” 590) finds Nineveh “uninstructed and morally naïve,” and Banks (Jonah, 121) similarly sees a reference to “spiritual ignorance and lack of moral discernment.” In contrast, Youngblood thinks the Ninevites lack Israel’s access to the Lord’s special revelation. Yet he should see from his own argument that when “God often warned Israel not to turn to the right or to the left as they walked the path of obedience,” the turning indicates a moral decision with respect to obedience to the special revelation (Youngblood, Jonah,174; emphasis mine).

¹⁴  In 2014 Mosul was occupied by the terrorist organization known as “Islamic State” aka “ISIS” or “ISIL.” It is interesting how this ancient city is at the forefront of twenty-first-century AD geopolitical and global affairs.

¹⁵  O. Palmer Robertson (Nahum, 55) comments, “Nahum is unique in that the entirety of his book is characterized as a vision revealed by God. This prophetic material is not presented as the product of an ecstatic dervish whose mind swirled with frenzied irrationalities. His vision could be laid out as an objective, rational piece of literature with a unified theme embodying elaborate poetic structures.”

¹⁶  There are several additional short oracles scattered throughout the prophetic literature.

¹⁷  By 586 BC the Babylonians would invade Judah and destroy Jerusalem.

¹⁸  These four phrases consist of one infinitive and three imperative forms.

¹⁹  Cush is mentioned elsewhere in the biblical prophets, such as Jer 46:9; Ezek 27:10; 30:5; 38:5.

²⁰  Not to be confused with modern Ethiopia.

²¹  In the genealogical sections of Gen 10:6 and 1 Chr 1:8, Put is named as one of four sons of Ham who was a son of Noah. In the prophetic literature Put is mentioned in Jer 46:9; Ezek 27:10; 30:5; 38:5; and Isa 66:9.

²²  For a detailed discussion of the history of the end of the Neo-Assyrian Empire see Kaiser, A History of Israel, 367–87.

²³  J. J. M. Roberts (Nahum, 75) states, “One should note that the imperatives in v. 14 are all feminine singulars, not the masculine forms found in 2:2, where the Assyrian king is given a similar admonition to prepare for an attack.”

²⁴  The verb “saw” is found in Amos 1:1; Micah 1:1; in addition to Habakkuk 1:1. The noun translated “vision” is found in Obadiah 1:1 and Nahum 1:1.

²⁵  Cf. the description of David in 2 Sam 17:8.