HarperCollins Study Bible

by Harold W. Attridge

  This Introduction holds with those scholars who argue that the central issue in the book of Jonah is God’s justice and mercy. Why does Jonah not want to let the Ninevites hear God’s word of doom, thus giving them an outside chance to change? Jonah wants God to make them like Sodom and Gomorrah because Nineveh has been the archetypal wicked city for generations, not because it is a gentile city. This is Jonah’s challenge to God in ch. 4. Should one all-out repentance ceremony that includes sincere adults along with innocent children and animals warrant God’s “changing his mind” concerning the judgment planned for the city (3.10)? This is not justice, thinks Jonah; this is divine caprice. There is something beyond repentance and covenant justice, however, that Jonah and readers must learn. God speaks of “pity” for a world he has created—a world that is full of ignorant humans and animals—leaving Jonah with a question about the role of divine mercy within the created order. Yet the God who judges “to the third and the fourth generation” lurks in the background (Ex 34.7). The earliest readers of Jonah knew that Nineveh (612 BCE) and Jerusalem (587 BCE) had both been destroyed. In this story we encounter a God who is indeed concerned about social injustice, but who, in the mystery of God’s ways, permits the sovereignty of the divine heart to overrule the requirements of divine justice. By challenging Jonah (and the community of the writer’s contemporaries) to emulate the idealized Ninevites by repentance and reform, God (and the writer) reminds readers of the strong biblical tradition of divine compassion that will welcome and bless the day when the original community of readers is itself thus overthrown (i.e., transformed; see note on 3.4–5). [JAMES S. ACKERMAN]

  JONAH 1

  Jonah Tries to Run Away from God

  1Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, 2“Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.” 3But Jonah set out 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 his fare and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD.

  4But the LORD hurled a great wind upon the sea, and such a mighty storm came upon the sea that the ship threatened to break up. 5Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried to his god. They threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea, to lighten it for them. Jonah, meanwhile, had gone down into the hold of the ship and had lain down, and was fast asleep. 6The captain came and said to him, “What are you doing sound asleep? Get up, call on your god! Perhaps the god will spare us a thought so that we do not perish.”

  7The sailorsa said to one another, “Come, let us cast lots, so that we may know on whose account this calamity has come upon us.” So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. 8Then they said to him, “Tell us why this calamity has come upon us. What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?” 9“I am a Hebrew,” he replied. “I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” 10Then the men were even more afraid, and said to him, “What is this that you have done!” For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the LORD, because he had told them so.

  11Then they said to him, “What shall we do to you, that the sea may quiet down for us?” For the sea was growing more and more tempestuous. 12He said to them, “Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you; for I know it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you.” 13Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring the ship back to land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more stormy against them. 14Then they cried out to the LORD, “Please, O LORD, we pray, do not let us perish on account of this man’s life. Do not make us guilty of innocent blood; for you, OLORD, have done as it pleased you.” 15So they picked Jonah up and threw him into the sea; and the sea ceased from its raging. 16Then the men feared the LORD even more, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows.

  17b But the LORD provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah; and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

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  a Heb They

  b Ch 2.1 in Heb

  1.1–16 Jonah’s call and flight.

  1.1 In 2 Kings 14.25 we learn that Jonah son of Amittai from Gath-hepher was a court prophet who told Jeroboam II (786–746 BCE) that God would extend his reign in the Northern Kingdom (Israel) from the Dead Sea to the entrance of Hamath in Syria (see Num 34.7–9).

  1.2 Nineveh, a major city in Assyria, the nation to the east that conquered the Northern Kingdom in 722 BCE. Although many biblical prophets gave oracles against foreign nations, only Elisha (and the Jonah of this story) journeyed from Israel to another land to deliver a message from God (2 Kings 8.7–15).

  1.3 Tarshish, a western seaport possibly to be identified with Tartessus in Spain—on the outer edge of the then known world. Many biblical prophets resisted their initial call from God (e.g., Ex 3.11; 4.10–17; Jer 1.6). Jonah resists even more strenuously, moving in a direction exactly opposite to the one commanded by God. His flight from the presence of the LORD is described as a series of descents, down from his village and down into the Tarshish-bound ship. Later in the story he will descend even deeper!

  1.7 See Josh 7.16–18; 1 Sam 14.40–42.

  1.9 Jonah’s pious confession of faith in God as creator of the sea and the dry land underscores the futility of his attempt to escape from God’s presence.

  1.15 The Lord hurled the great wind (v. 4), which prompted first the hurling overboard of the ship’s cargo (v. 5) and then finally the hurling (the same word is used in Hebrew) of Jonah.

  1.16 The sailors have changed from fearing the storm and crying to their gods (v. 5) to crying to (v. 14) and fearing the Lord.

  1.17–2.10 God judges and delivers Jonah by means of a fish.

  1.17 The Hebrew verb translated to swallow up always has a negative meaning in the Bible (Ex 15.12; Num 16.30–33). To readers the fish may appear as an instrument of divine judgment taking the prophet down to Sheol, but Jonah’s prayer, if taken literally and sequentially, seems to indicate that the prophet had already gone down to the city of death and been rescued there by the fish. Three days and three nights is the traditional time for travel to or from the underworld.

  JONAH 2

  A Psalm of Thanksgiving

  1Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God

  from the belly of the fish, 2saying,

  “I called to the LORD out of my distress,

  and he answered me;

  out of the belly of Sheol I cried,

  and you heard my voice.

  3You cast me into the deep,

  into the heart of the seas,

  and the flood surrounded me;

  all your waves and your billows

  passed over me.

  4Then I said, ‘I am driven away

  from your sight;

  howa shall I look again

  upon your holy temple?’

  5The waters closed in over me;

  the deep surrounded me;

  weeds were wrapped around my head

  6at the roots of the mountains.

  I went down to the land

  whose bars closed upon me forever;

  yet you brought up my life from the Pit,

  O LORD my God.

  7As my life was ebbing away,

  I remembered the LORD;

  and my prayer came to you,

  into your holy temple.

  8Those who worship vain idols

  forsake their true loyalty.

  9But I with the voice of thanksgiving

  will sacrifice to you;

  what I have vowed I will pay.

  Deliverance belongs to the LORD!”

  10Then the LORD spoke to the fish, and it spewed Jonah out upon the dry land.

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  a Theodotion: Heb surely

  2.1 Since the Hebrew verb translated p
rayed always refers to asking for help not yet rendered, many scholars conclude that Jonah’s song of thanksgiving in vv. 2–9 was added by a later writer or editor. If the song is read as an integral part of the story, however, we again find Jonah saying words that do not accord with the action (cf. 1.9). It is thus possible to read the prayer ironically as false piety, since Jonah is eager to return to the temple even though he has not repented for having disobeyed God’s command.

  2.3–6 Other biblical texts depict the underworld as a walled city located under the waters and below the mountains that were thought to support the cosmos (see Job 38.16–17; Pss 9.13–14; 107.18). This city is the antipole of Zion and its temple as well as of God’s temple in the heavens.

  2.6 City gates were secured with bars in the ancient world (Deut 3.5; Judg 16.3; Nah 3.13).

  2.8–9 Jonah perceives pagans as forsakers of true loyalty (Hebrew chesed) and vows to make a proper sacrifice when he returns, while the gentile sailors in the ship above him have already completed their sacrificial vows to the Lord (1.16).

  2.10 God’s response to Jonah’s song is to have the fish spew Jonah out; a better translation would be “vomit” (see Lev 18.28; Prov 23.8; Jer 25.27).

  JONAH 3

  Conversion of Nineveh

  1The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time, saying, 2“Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” 3So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. 4Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” 5And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.

  6When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 7Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. 8Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. 9Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.”

  10When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.

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  3.1–10 A second group of Gentiles turns to God; here the king and Ninevites replace the captain and sailors of ch. 1. Jonah’s great success with the king in Nineveh should be contrasted with the prophets’ repeated failure with kings in Jerusalem (e.g., Jer 36.9–32).

  3.3 An exceedingly large city, in Hebrew lit. “a great city to God,” thus contrasting it with the city of death that Jonah had almost entered during the fish episode (2.3–6). The three days it takes to traverse Nineveh recalls Jonah’s three days in the belly of the fish (1.17).

  3.4–5 Overthrown renders the same Hebrew verb that describes the overturning of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen 19.21, 25, 29), but Jonah here uses the passive-reflexive voice, which can mean “turned around” or “transformed”(Ex 7.17, 20; 1 Sam 10.6).

  3.6 Covered…with sackcloth, sat in ashes, traditional acts of repentance in response to personal and national crises; see Job 42.6; Dan 9.3; Neh 9.1.

  3.10 Changed his mind. See Ex 32.14; Jer 18.8, 10; Am 7.3, 6; cf. Num 23.19; 1 Sam 15.29.

  Jonah’s Anger

  JONAH 4

  1But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. 2He prayed to the LORD and said, “O LORD! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. 3And now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” 4And the LORD said, “Is it right for you to be angry?” 5Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city.

  6The LORD God appointed a bush,a and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. 7But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. 8When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.”

  Jonah Is Reproved

  9But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.” 10Then the LORD said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. 11And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”

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  a Heb qiqayon, possibly the castor bean plant

  4.1–11 Ch. 4 juxtaposes Jonah’s response to the sparing of Nineveh with God’s reason for that action.

  4.2 Citing part of God’s self-description before Moses on Mount Sinai (Ex 34.6–7), Jonah accuses God of having too much steadfast love (Hebrew chesed; cf. note on 2.8–9). Readers will note, however, that Jonah skips the ending of 34.7 about God “by no means clearing the guilty…to the third and the fourth generation.”

  4.3 Returning to the death/descent theme of chs. 1–2, the prophet prefers death to living in a world with no recognizable order of justice.

  4.5 Certain that Nineveh will return to its evil ways, Jonah finds solace in a secure shelter (booth, Hebrew sukkah) that he builds for himself.

  4.6–7 Reinforcing the shelter theme, God appoints a bush to save Jonah (cf. 1 Kings 19.4–18) and then destroys it to bring the prophet to his senses.

  4.8–9 The scorching wind (Hebrew ruach) playfully recalls the divine spirit (ruach) that traditionally inspired the prophets (Num 11.24–29; 2 Kings 2.9, 15). Jonah’s reaction to the loss of the protective bush is the same as his reaction to the sparing of Nineveh (v. 3). Back then he was angry at God’s mercy; now he misses God’s protective care.

  4.10–11 In vv. 2–3 Jonah confronted God with thirty-nine words (in Hebrew) of complaint. Here God gets the last thirty-nine words. The Lord emphasizes his sovereignty over and care for the whole creation rather than Nineveh’s repentance. The bush perished in a night; both the sea captain and the king were desperate to keep their people from perishing (1.6; 3.9). God, we learn, is attentive to their concern.

  4.11 The Jonah of 2 Kings had prophesied the expansion of the Northern Kingdom’s borders even though its king had done wrong in God’s eyes. The writer continues, “For the LORD saw that the distress of Israel was very bitter; there was no one left, bond or free, and no one to help Israel” (14.26). The Lord’s pity on Israel’s helplessness elicited divine intervention despite the king’s wickedness. Could the writer of this story have selected Jonah as (anti-) hero in order to develop his theme of God’s merciful care for the helpless of the earth?

  MICAH

  1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |

  The Prophet

  VERY LITTLE IS KNOWN about Micah, whose name, which means “Who is like the LORD?” was common in ancient Israel. The prophet is distinguished from his namesakes by being identified with his hometown Moresheth, a pastoral village that was most likely a military and administrative outpost of Jerusalem. Together with Amos, Isaiah, and Hosea, Micah was one of Israel’s four great eighth-century BCE prophets. His rural roots in the Southern Kingdom, Judah, enabled him to understand how the overbearing policies of the political, social, and religious leaders of h
is time affected the peasant class. A prophet more of the marketplace and town square than the temple or its sanctuary, Micah addressed injustice with passion and poetic eloquence.

  Historical Situation

  THE SUPERSCRIPTION (1.1) SUGGESTS that Micah prophesied during the reigns of three Judahite kings: Jotham (742–735), Ahaz (735–715), and Hezekiah (715–687/6 BCE). More precisely, Micah’s prophetic career probably spanned the last quarter of the eighth century during the reigns of Ahaz and Hezekiah.

  A vigorous ruler, Hezekiah initiated several religious reforms. He took many precautions to safeguard Judah against the threat of an Assyrian invasion, including forming a coalition with Phoenicia and Philistia against Sennacherib, Assyria’s king, the successor of Sargon II. Under Hezekiah, Judah experienced an economic revolution. Wealth, invested in the land, led to the growth of vast estates and the collapse of small holdings. Wealthy landowners thrived at the expense of small peasant farmers. The shift from a bartering to a monetary, mercantile economy increased the gap between the rich and the poor. Furthermore, many priests and prophets viewed their ministry as a business rather than a vocation and acted accordingly. Thus, Micah preached during a time when Judah was experiencing radical internal change while living under the threat of a foreign military invasion.