The short story of Jonah has provoked library stacks of research and exegetical study, and has behind it two thousand years of Jewish and Christian preaching, preceded by at least a further 500 years of Jewish commentary and midrash. This is not an attempted literature review. This is a two part post on six of the books that to date I have used, learned from, and could recommend to others who want a reliable guide or two on their journey to Tarshish...and back!
This post describes three; a second post will follow with a further three. I'll then do a select survey of several popular expositions just to round off the resources available, especially for preachers.
Terence Fretheim's The Message of Jonah, the book that started me off on my travels chasing after Jonah on his travels, has an earlier post to itself. See here:
1976. Leslie C Allen, Commentary on Joel, Obadiah, Jonah and Micah (Eerdmans, NICOT)
On publication this was one of the more substantial treatments at 60 pages. The literary genre is neither historical narrative nor allegory, but a 'parable', created "to explore God's dealings with man." Imagine a group of travellers, sitting round the fire, and a storyteller entertaining them with a story intended to make the listener think. The literary tone is playful satire, with elements of parody and irony. Allen sees the Psalm in chapter 2 as pivotal, the key to the whole story: "The Psalm plays its part in demonstrating an overall theme, depicting the inconsistency of one graciously brought back from the brink of deserved destruction (chs.1-2), then churlishly resenting the divine right to rescue other sinners from perishing.(chs.3-4)" (185)
The message of the book is that God is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger - Jonah is a story that powerfully argues for God's sovereign compassion, while illustrating the all too human desire for the punishment of enemies. Jonah is a call to see the world through the eyes of God. All of this is worked out in exegesis full of sharp observations. For example on the repentance of Nineveh, Allen connects ch 3 back to ch 1. "Chapter 1 has served the purpose of softening the reaction of the listening circle toward comparatively innocuous foreigners before confronting them with an odious community of hardcore heathens." (224)
And so on throughout a detailed exegesis rich in expository suggestions, laced with humour like that of the book itself; humour used to enable truth to fly beneath the radar of our prejudices. This remains a valued conversation partner, despite its age. This volume is due for replacement in a few month's time, in a composite work covering Joel, Obadiah and Jonah, by James Nogalski, an acknowledged expert on the Book of the Twelve Prophets. I won't be banishing Allen to the reserve shelves any time soon though.
1990. Jack Sasson, Jonah, Anchor Bible Commentary.
Until the publication in 2020 of the Illuminations Commentary by Amy Erickson, this volume was the most substantial critical and technical commentary on Jonah. The real strength of Sasson's work is in philology, grammar and literary analysis, which are treated in near exhaustive detail. There isn't much theological reflection, more a clarifying of the text of a narrative that seems theologically inconclusive - that is the book ends without a resolution of Jonah's problem with God, or God's problem with Jonah! But the literary artistry, the rich syntax, the rhetorical devices and semantic choices, the derivations, parallel uses and intra-textual comparisons of each significant word - Jonah is a mine with numerous rich seams, and Sasson has worked them assiduously.
In relation to the bigger picture, Sasson refuses to pin Jonah down to a single literary form or style - parable, allegory, myth, short story - satire, irony, comedy - all of these are possible interpretations and indeed the book is a masterpiece of ambiguity, fluidity and narrative art. He settles for Jonah as 'comic dupe', a figure used to teach a serious theological and life-lesson, through the art of inducing knowing laughter and unforeseen consequence.
I confess to using this book as occasional reference now. For my own purposes of preaching, theological reflection on a narrative text, and personal reflection as lectio divina, there is less urgency for technical scholarship. This is especially true when a number of other commentaries while not ignoring the historical, critical and literary issues in interpretation, do so alongside theological interpretation and attempts to explore the continuing power of Jonah to challenge, upset and even contradict our favoured interpretations.
But as one reviewer said of Sasson's work on the minutiae of philology, grammar and text, his work is unlikely to require significant updating for at least a generation. It is, however, 30 years old. And as mentioned above, Amy Erickson's commentary has now appeared and it is all but encyclopaedic. Later in the year I will review it. More than that, the Hermeneia volume on Jonah, by Susan Niditch, is due at the end of April 2023, and Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer's Jonah Through the CenturiesIt seems there is a Jonah renaissance underway.
1993. James Limburg, Jonah, Old Testament Library, SCM / Westminster.
The driving thesis of Limburg's exposition is his view of the book as a "didactic story." If a story is told to teach a lesson, then any interpreting of the story should ask the question clearly, and require the hearer / reader to think about it and answer it. That's what God is about in the story of Jonah. It is a story, a comic tragedy, laced with humour and bristling with unsettling incidents, not least a story that calls in question the received theology of elect Israel, and the relation of the people of God to outsiders, pagans, others, even enemies, like Nineveh.
Limburg's exegesis is more spare than Allen's, and more accessible than Sasson. Like Allen he insists Jonah was designed to be heard. The best stories are spoken and heard, in the I-Thou of storytelling where reader and listener are present. The commentary proper is a running commentary on the story, supported by considerable scholarship sparingly used to clarify the rhetorical devices and theological digs and nudges throughout the story.
Limburg is a clever and entertaining guide through the text. There are sections of how Jonah has been interpreted in Christian, Jewish and Islamic thought. These are important glances at the reception history. As Philip Davies quipped, and he was no great fan of overblown commentaries; "Rarely do I think a commentary might have been longer; here is an exception."
More in next Jonah post.
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