OT Notes for Jonah 3:1-5

Jonah 3:1-5
1) We are immediately after Jonah is unceremoniously deposited on the beach. After being in the belly of the beast, (my girls loved this when little) the beast vomited him up on the shore. A most inauspicious beginning, but we have dramatic tension. Will Jonah run again?

2) Never worry about the God of second chances. The word fo the Lord comes a second time. Still, will Jonah pay heed? Notice we are told that god speaks a second time, but the alteration occurs in that we are not given explicit reason to go to Nineveh. does the first reason carry over or not? Even here, Trible (Rhet. Crit. p.177; see also her excellent commentary in the NIB) wonders if Jonah's response is complete as one verb is still left dangling in the narrative.

3) Here we have a marvel of narrative concision. We have no mention of the journey. Instead, we get from beach to Nineveh. Nineveh seems to me to function as the ‘evil empire” here, think Berlin in WWII or Moscow in the Cold War. It was the seat of the empire that defeated Israel, subjected it, put some into exile and repopulated it with other peoples in the Assyrian program of breaking up rebellious territories. They were a threat to Judah too.I have not been persuaded when this wonderful piece was written.

4) In Hebrew, it is Nineveh, a city great to god. it could be size but it could point to other interpretations obviously (Trible:178). I find the description to be exaggeration in the interest of the story itself, an extension of the fish story where the catch keep getting bigger; a three days walk across is one big town. It is a narrative way of seeing little lone Jonah in the midst of a new beast, Nineveh.

5) On occasion overthrown can have a sense of deliverance as in Dt. 23:5. Jer. 31:13. (1800 Trible wonders if we have an omission here. Jonah does go in but does he speak the world of the Lord?

6) The response of the city is a mass conversion of everyone to this short sermon that puts preachers in a spasm of envy. I again see it as humorous as the pagans react as a group while Jonah was slow in responding.Now the whole pagan city acts as a Jewish city. They show the signs of repenting.