Notes

Notes

Introduction

. ‘At any time from that of the historical Jonah onwards, [Nineveh] stood as the epitome of everything that was cruelly hostile to Israel and Judah’ (Payne 1979: 7).

. Dorn (1991: 89) notes that Exod. 34 was always applied to Israel until its use in Jonah.

. See Payne 1979; Timmer 2008a: 19–22.

. See further Rosner 2000; Carson 2007.

Chapter 1: The nations and mission in Jonah

. Ware, for example, goes on to deny any missionary significance to the book of Jonah (2005: 71). The line I mention should be seen as extending from Eden to the new heavens and new earth; cf. Beale 2004.

. Compare the broader definition of mission as the ‘divine activity of sending intermediaries, whether supernatural or human, to speak or do God’s will so that his purposes for judgment or redemption are furthered’ (Larkin 1996: 534–535). Consequently he includes Moses, Samuel and the prophets etc. If God is the subject of the verb, the ultimate purpose of God’s glorification in judgment and salvation is more immediately tied to the definition of mission (since it is his) than if a human is the subject of the activity. To be faithful to biblical idiom, however, the definition of mission must be closely connected to the proclamation of the gospel. Paul recognizes that some will not receive his gospel, but this does not obscure its saving purpose (2 Cor. 2:15–16; 4:3–6).

. P. Miller 1995; Dell 2003.

. Schnabel 2002: 35–36; C. J. H. Wright 2006: 191–264. All translations are my own.

. This section is adapted with permission from Timmer 2009b.

. On ‘kingdom of priests’, see Barbiero 1989; Cheung 1986; J. A. Davies 2004; Schenker 1996; Steins 2001; J. B. Wells 2000. On ‘holy nation’, see Fuhs 1987; Mosis 1978. On the import of Exod. 19:5–6 as a whole, see Averbeck 1997; Balentine 1999: 79–176; Levenson 1985: 30–31.

. As Averbeck (1997: 1002) suggests.

. See Carpenter 1997; Durham 1987: 256; Greenberg 1951.

. The frequent suggestion that the kî in Exod. 19:5 is causal (e.g. Köstenberger and O’Brien 2001: 33) is possible, but not demonstrably preferable to a concessive sense (‘although’), since there it is difficult to prove that the semantics of the two phrases differ significantly (Follingstad 2001: 46). Given this ambiguity, it is preferable to adopt the sense that adds the least to the meaning of the verse, following the linguistic rationale of Joos 1972.

. See J. A. Davies 2004; Steins 2001.

. Duke 2003. Their teaching of Torah was directed at Israelites who had already come into covenant with God, and so does not presage some form of evangelism.

. J. A. Davies (2004: 238) argues for a more restricted role that denotes ‘primarily how the nation is to relate to God, rather than how it is to relate to the other nations’. But Israel’s relationship with God was almost immediately entrusted to the Levitical priests, and since in the OT priests are routinely intermediaries, one should rather conclude that Israel was to the nations as the Levites were to Israel.

. By ‘historical’ I mean what actually occurred during Israel’s existence as opposed to what the OT might foretell would be the case at some point in the future (what I call ‘eschatological’). This distinction needs to be kept in mind lest we lose sight of the redemptive-historical dynamic inherent in the theme of mission.

. The first use of a form of the primary Hebrew word ‘family’ for remnant, šĕ’ar, appears in Gen. 7:23 (there as a niphal verb), near the middle of the flood narrative. On the narrowing of the line of promise to Shem, see Vos 1975: 56–65. Matthews (1996: 487–488) points out that the genealogies of Gen. 5 and Gen. 11 intentionally put Shem in the middle of the generations prior to the flood, a position that highlights his importance.

. All the writing prophets except Hosea include ‘oracles against the nations’, and constitute 13.6% of that corpus (Raabe 1995: 236). The helpful survey of these oracles given by Robertson (2004: 168–173) notes that the nations’ typical sins are pride, idolatry, violence and mistreatment of God’s people.

. For a recent treatment of the conquest that takes its historicity seriously, see Millard 2004.

. ‘YHWH is the all-sufficient divine warrior who dispossesses the land for the chosen people’ (Habel 1995: 60).

. Dempster (2003: 127) points out Joshua’s mention that the Anakim (descendents of the Nephilim) were then in the land of Canaan, as they were prominent before the flood (Num. 13:33; Josh. 11:21–22; Gen. 6:4), and the use of the words kôl (all) and nĕšamâ (breath) together in the context of destruction that appears in Gen. 7:22 and in Deut. 20:16; Josh. 10:40; 11:11, 14; 1 Kgs 15:29.

. E. Nicole (1996) makes this point very well, and I am indebted to his argument in this paragraph.

. Block (1999: 146–147) details this pattern, which is based on Judg. 2:11–23.

. The nations are used to punish Israel under the monarchy as early as Solomon himself, 1 Kgs 11:14. See representative examples of this trend later in 1 Kgs 14:25 (Judah under Rehoboam); 1 Kgs 20 (Israel under Ahab); 2 Kgs 12:17–18 (Judah under Jehoash); 2 Kgs 15:17–22 (Israel under Menahem). By national existence I do not mean that Israel during or after the return from exile did not exist, but only that the usual criteria for national existence (land, sovereignty, self-government etc.) were lacking to one degree or another. While the Hasmoneans brought Israel to a brief enjoyment of nationhood from c. 143–63 bc, I hope that I follow the NT in seeing that as having limited importance for the future.

. A remnant appears in the north as early as Elijah’s ministry (1 Kgs 19), and the concept features largely in the writing prophets of the eighth–sixth centuries; it even appears in the post-exilic prophets, e.g. Mal. 3 – 4.

. Robertson 2004: 433–444; Nisus 2009 (see 231–233 on Amos 9 in particular).

. One must allow some secondary import for ethnic Jewishness in Rom. 9 – 11, but Israel’s status there is ultimately determined in terms of her coming to faith in the Messiah. Cf. Seifrid 2000; Holwerda 1995: 147–176.

. Beale notes that in Revelation John uses the phrase ‘peoples, nations, tongues and many kings’ ‘of all who are redeemed (5:9; 7:9), but now [in 10:11] and hereafter he uses it of unbelievers, who will be judged because they identify with Babylon or the beast (so also 11:9; 13:7–8; 14:6ff.; 17:15)’ (Beale 1999: 555). The term ‘nations’ by itself (Rev. 2:26; 12:5; 19:15 [all citing Ps. 2:9]; 11:2, 18; 14:8; 16:19; 18:23; 20:3, 8) is normally negative in Revelation, with the exceptions (15:3–4; 21:24, 26; 22:2) clearly identified as the redeemed in their contexts.

. Cases that may fit neither of these categories exactly include Jethro, Moses’ Kenite father-in-law (Exod. 18:1–12), and Caleb, a Kenizzite (Num. 13:6; 32:12; cf. Gen. 15:19; 36:11, 15, 42). Of them Martens says, ‘All these non-Jews are enfolded in the group known as “the people of God” because they believed God’ (Martens 2007: 234).

. Carroll R. 2000: 30. Martens (2007) lists as ‘examples of the blessing of Abraham devolving on others without intentional “missionizing” efforts’ Jethro, who acknowledges ‘the sovereignty of Yahweh (Exod. 18:10–11)’, and Nebuchadnezzar, who is inspired to ‘give allegiance to God (Dan. 3:28–30)’ (251). I am not convinced that Isaac indeed gave ‘wholesome witness to his Canaanite neighbor’ (252) when Isaac’s greeting of Abimelech and his men is less than cordial (26:27) and he remains silent regarding the theophany that makes direct reference to God’s promise to Abraham (26:24), and similar ambiguity characterizes Abraham’s interaction with an earlier Abimelech in Gen. 21.

. For a recent review of the existing evidence for Semites in Egypt during the New Kingdom period (Dynasties 18–20) and in all probability as early as the Middle Kingdom (Dynasties 11–12), see Hoffmeier 1996: 52–76. C. J. H. Wright (2006: 210–211) gives several more examples of Gentiles who experience blessing through Israel.

. The promise to bless the nations is therefore partially or typologically fulfilled in various ways, but Silva is correct to insist that ‘the life-giving principle of the Spirit . . . corresponds to the saving promise of Gal. 3:14’, which is ‘the fulfillment of the Abrahamic promise’ (2001: 177, 188).

. Goldsworthy 1996: 9. The nuance that the book of Kings shows in treating that theme is notable, however. McConville argues convincingly that ‘the book’s careful detachment from the historical institutions is strikingly illustrated by [Solomon’s] prayer’s insistence that God cannot be contained by heaven itself, much less by a building (1 Kgs 8:27). The true nature of Israel depends not on institutions, not even on possession of land, but on loyalty to Yahweh’ (McConville 2005: 632).

. Cf. Vanhoozer 1998: 201–280, esp. 246–259. At the same time, however, one’s words can have unintended consequences, as Jonah’s surely did when he spoke of Yahweh to the sailors; Vanhoozer explores this briefly in 1998: 254–255.

. Raabe (1995: 253, n. 34) notes, with reference to Bartlett 1989: 141–143, that there is archaeological evidence for Edomites in the Negev in the decades prior to Jerusalem’s fall.

. ‘God’s intention to bless him, his seed and all peoples of the world is a reassertion of his original purpose for humankind’ (Köstenberger and O’Brien 2001: 30–31).

. C. J. H. Wright (2006: 216–220) argues well for the ‘middle’ voice for the niphal here.

. Carroll R. 2000: 29. He refers there to Gen. 30:30; 31:5–13, 42 (cf. 24:40–49, 56); 33:5, 10–11 (cf. 24:35); 39:9; 40:8; 41:12–16, 25–33, 50–52. On the historical plausibility of locating the patriarchs in this window, see Kitchen 2003: 313–372.

. Block 1997: 968.

. See further Meier 1997.

. Pss 9:11; 18:49; 33:8; 46:10; 49:1; 57:10; 66:1–4; 67:1–7; 72:8, 11, 17; 83:18; 96:3, 10 (//1 Chr. 16:24); 105:1; 108:3; 117:1; 119:46; 145:6, 12, 21. It is surprising that Köstenberger and O’Brien 2001 treat the entire psalter in a few pages, and deal with none of the passages listed here; it seems they have followed especially Munro on the Psalms to the exclusion of other viewpoints (G. Munro, ‘The Place of the Nations in God’s Plan According to the Book of Psalms’, unpublished seminar paper, Moore College, 1996). Schnabel likewise is very brief on the import of the psalter, and essentially excludes it from his discussion of mission in the OT (2004: 75–76). See Blomberg 2007: 65 for a brief critique of his position, and Boda 2010 for convincing arguments for the psalter’s centrifugal missiology.

. These categories are used by Marlowe (1998), who identifies Pss 33:8, 102:15, 106:8, 148:7–12, 150:6 as containing ‘passive outreach terminology’, and further notes that Pss 2, 33, 67, 96, 98, 117 and 145 deal in substantial measure with direct or indirect outreach in various ways. See further Landon 2002, Hogg 1988 and especially Boda 2010.

. Martin-Achard (1962: 58) suggests this liturgical hermeneutic for mission language in the psalter: ‘The Canaanite antecedents of the cult of the “High God” call us to interpret the universalism of the psalms liturgically. The major preoccupation of the psalmists was not with propaganda for Yahweh directed to the heathen. Their psalms were designed to be used by the Jerusalemite community and concern Israel and not the nations. They voice the Chosen People’s faith and, in so doing, they strengthen it.’ He is followed to some degree by C. J. H. Wright (2006: 480, 504).

. While these imperatives (in the second-person plural) are addressed to all Israelites, this does not make this command a corporate national responsibility on the order of Exod. 19. Further, the increasing (rather than decreasing) prominence of the remnant concept prior to the exile is a theological argument against imposing a missionary task at the national level.

. Notice also the inclusion of the ‘nations called by Yahweh’s name’ in God’s eschatological people in Amos 9:12, which follows the essentially comprehensive list of nations on which Amos pronounced judgment: Amos 1 – 2.

. This paragraph follows Raabe 1995: 251.

. Note especially Jesus’ passing over the phrase ‘and the day of the vengeance of our God’ (and his addition of ‘to set free those who are oppressed’ from lxx Isa. 58:6) when he interprets Isa. 61 in the light of the ministry of his first coming in Luke 4:16–30; see J. A. Sanders 1993; Bock 1990 on that passage.

. Raabe 1995: 252–253. On this last point, see also Thompson 1980: 652.

. Filbeck (1994) helpfully sketches how the OT’s diverse mission theology is brought fully into view by the NT.

. This point is explored by Goldsworthy (1996). A historical corollary of this biblical-theological reality is OT Israel’s being a national, theocratic group, so that interaction with other nations was quite restrained (and regularly adversarial) by modern standards. Note especially the Pentateuch’s concern (Deut. 12:30; 18:9) to preserve Israel from religious contamination through interaction with them, something that was (again) a pressing necessity in Nehemiah’s day (Neh. 13:21–29). From a NT perspective, divine presence via the Spirit wherever believers are present (Matt. 28; Acts passim) is an inversion of the Jerusalem-temple paradigm, and this shift from a centripetal religious structure to one that is non-localized has ramifications for mission.

. Christ’s own revelation of himself was necessary to enable his disciples to identify the proper fulfilment of the OT’s promises; cf. Goldsworthy 2000: 78–79. See Fitzmyer 2007 for a survey of the various ways the OT’s messianic content was understood in the Judaisms of the First and Second Temple periods.

. Scripture was relatively inaccessible to Israelites due to limited literacy (on which see the spectrum of opinion represented by Niditch [1996] and Lemaire [1990]), the relative inaccessibility of the biblical material in the temple and later in the synagogues, and the sporadic public reading of Scripture apart from temple and (later) synagogue liturgies. Books completed in the post-exilic period include Chronicles, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi and some parts of the psalter.

. Turner (1998: 338) sees Acts 2:38–39 as paradigmatic for the linking of the Spirit with ‘conversional repentance/faith’; he goes on to explore a number of OT contexts in which Israel’s restoration is connected with the unprecedented outpouring of the Holy Spirit, something that the choice of topics and themes in Acts underlines. This topic has been well explored in Hamilton 2005; note also Carson 1991: 195–196. Fredericks (1988) and Grogan (1967), whom Fredericks follows in large part, seem to overlook especially the necessary dependence of the application of redemption upon its accomplishment, and so mute some of the dynamic elements of the Spirit’s work across the history of redemption when they deny almost any difference between the experience of the Holy Spirit by believers before and after the Christ-event.

. Compare Schnabel’s similar (NT) definition (2004: 11): ‘the activity of a community of faith that distinguishes itself from its environment in terms of both religious belief (theology) and social behavior (ethics), that is convinced of the truth claims of its faith, and that actively works to win other people to the content of faith and to the way of life of whose truth and necessity the members of that community are convinced.’ The ‘community’ element makes it hard for such a definition to apply in the OT, as Blomberg notes (2007: 63), and the degree to which Israel ‘actively worked to win other people’ to her faith was immensely inferior to what we see in the NT after Pentecost. While the transmitter’s intention is important, it is not essential to an OT definition of mission for the same reason that proactivity on Israel’s part was not essential. Blomberg (2007: 65) similarly suggests that a definition of mission that allows for an implicit aspect is appropriate to the OT, as does Seitz (2001: 155) in the context of Isaiah.

. See further on this point Martens 2007; Seitz 2001: 145–158.

. Packer correctly claims that ‘in the last analysis, there is only one agent of evangelism: namely, the Lord Jesus Christ’ (Packer 1991: 85). For reflection on how God uses human proclamation to save sinners, see DeVries 2009.

. Acts 1 presents all that is recorded in that book as a continuation by Jesus, through the Spirit and the instrumentality of the apostles, of what he had begun to ‘do and to teach’. The mission-related language Luke uses in Acts, where God sends and testifies etc., is fairly complex. Bolt (1998: 214) summarizes the data as follows: ‘The narrative [of Acts] does not provide the readers with a mission, in the sense of them being directly commissioned for a particular task, but instead it presents God’s mission. . .. The risen Jesus has been sent to Israel and the nations through his chosen witnesses. . .. As they listen, there is a natural movement towards evangelizing the world (cf. 8:4; 11:19–21).’

. Joyce Baldwin thus calls 3:4 the ‘theme’ of Jonah’s sermon (Baldwin 1993: 576–577).

. For this discussion I adopt Schnabel’s definition (2004: 11).

. Squires (1998: 20, 37–39) correctly judges God’s plan to be ‘the broadest possible theological context’, one in which (notably) the proclamation of the gospel by the early church fits without being identical to it.

. Wright’s view, which is difficult to classify, is most fully expressed in C. J. H. Wright 2006. It is not clear to me that Wright uses the term ‘mission’ consistently, since elsewhere he states that ‘the whole Bible renders to us the story of God’s mission through God’s people in their engagement with God’s world for the sake of the whole of God’s creation’ (2006: 51).

. See Moreau 2000: 637. Note Stott’s speech entitled ‘The Great Commission: Part 1’, given at the 1966 World Conference on Evangelism held in Berlin, in which he paired ‘identification’ with ‘proclamation’ in mission as part of his exposition of John 20:19–23 (Stott 1967: 41). This line of thought appears, largely unchanged, in Stott 1992; note its critique in Köstenberger 1997a, esp. 199–220. For a recent effort that recognizes the connection between the two but still fails to distinguish proclamation from practice, see Thacker 2009; and contrast Bavinck’s view as presented in Tuit 2009.

. While Jesus’ own mission and those of his followers during his earthly ministry were largely focused on Israel (Matt. 15:25 // Mark 7:27), Matthew (for one) clearly assumes in 28:16–20 that the former is consistent with mission to the nations upon Christ’s ascension; cf. Marshall 2004: 101. In Luke’s work, Luke 24:49 and Acts 1:4 together establish the same transition.

. See Schnabel 2004: 348–382 for a convenient survey of these data.

. For a discussion of these and similar texts, see Schnabel 2004: 931–945; Köstenberger and O’Brien 2001: 101–106, 123–131, 221–222. D. Miller (1961) argues that God’s glory and the predicament of fallen human beings as exposed to his wrath are prominent motives for Paul’s mission.

. As Schnabel (2004: 1355) notes, with reference to Reck 1991: 169.

. Keller (2008: 1) speaks of the Christian life as ‘a process of renewing every dimension of our life’ that grows out of our reception of the gospel.

. Notice the shifting meaning of ‘mission’ in Goheen and Bartholomew 2008: 5–6. After beginning with the church’s ‘mission. . . to make known the kingdom of God. . . throughout the world as Jesus has made it known in Israel’ (with reference to John 17:18; 20:21), they then infer that ‘since the gospel is about God’s rule over all of creation, all nations, and all of human life, the mission of Jesus’ followers is as wide as creation itself. They have been commissioned to witness to the gospel in all of public life. . . and every other corner of human experience.’ While Christians surely have a responsibility to ‘do all to the glory of God’ (1 Cor. 10:30), and while that has implications for the success of the church’s evangelistic efforts (1 Cor. 10:32 – 11:1), there remains a basic difference in content between what one communicates by one’s conduct and the historically particular and referential nature of the gospel.

. ‘One must distinguish between, on the one hand, the gospel as what God has done and what is the message to be announced and, on the other, what is demanded by God or effected by the gospel in assorted human responses’ (Carson 2009: 1).

Chapter 2: Conversion and spirituality in Jonah and in biblical theology

. J. B. Green (2006) helpfully speaks of conversion as a process that spans time, even though some of its elements are instantaneous.

. Longenecker 1997: xiii, cited in O’Brien 2004b: 362. Complications begin to arise when one adds more detail to the definition, as Wright does by adding to the three elements of rejection other gods, ongoing ethical transformation, and exclusive recognition of Yahweh a fourth, the requirement of participation in the community of those who revere God (C. J. H. Wright 2004a: 18–19). Naaman’s conversion (since he returned to Syria) apparently would be excluded by this definition, which suggests that the last criterion should at least allow for exceptions even if it was normal or at least desirable for converts in the OT to move to the land of Israel.

. By ‘justification’ I mean the imputation of (an alien) righteousness in the traditional forensic sense; ‘faith borrows a righteousness elsewhere, of which we, in ourselves, are destitute’ (Calvin 1948: 407).

. Cf. Moo 1996: 261–265; Gathercole 2004, esp. 157–168; O’Brien 2004b, esp. 378–379. For the contrary view, see Robertson 1980; Calvin 1948: 405, 408; Hafemann 2007: 44.

. ‘At the point of his justification Abraham was in the “ungodly” category’ (Gathercole 2004: 157, 162; likewise Carson 2004: 60).

. See Lindsay 2008. That faith cannot be woodenly defined in Heb. 11 – 12 as ‘faith in Jesus’ appears from the fact that Jesus is the ‘author and finisher’ of that same faith and the perfect example of its practice, Heb. 12:2; cf. Lane 1991: 312–313, 319; J. Miller 2005: 262; and Rissi 1987: 104–113. It is also necessary to attribute more than one meaning (and more than one referent) to ‘faith’ (pistis) in the light of the description of Abraham in Heb. 11, where it is first used of the ‘hope’ that let him leave behind his life in Ur in 11:8, then is drawn out to cover all of his time in Canaan in 11:9–10 when he was looking for the heavenly inheritance God had promised (cf. Gen. 20:1; 21:23, 34; 35:27), then is key to his ability to conceive Isaac with Sarah in Heb. 11:12, and finally underlies his willingness to offer Isaac in Heb. 11:17.

. Alexander 1993; Carson 2004: 67. Note Moo 1996: 78: ‘the meaning of faith in the NT is deepened through its intimate relationship to Christ as the object of faith’. A good case can also be made for what Gathercole (2004: 164) calls ‘the resurrection-content of Abraham’s faith’, which he suggests ‘opens up the possibility not just of Abraham’s justification, but is “also for us”’, citing Rom. 4:24; similarly, Carson 2004: 67, 77. This ‘resurrection-content’ is soteriologically significant in Genesis in the light of the obedience–life, disobedience–death paradigm put in place in Eden and still regnant outside it; cf. Vlachos 2004.

. Cf. Witherington 2007: 291, 304.

. On the inseparability of faith and repentance across the biblical canon, see S. Ferguson 1996: 130–135.

. The verb dikaioō needs to be defined by its context, and here James assumes Abraham’s true faith in Gen. 15 precisely because true faith brings forth the works that ‘vindicate’ that person and his faith. This makes not only possible, but necessary, a distinction between what faith does (it receives the implanted word, Jas 1:21; cf. Gen. 15:6) and what works do (demonstrate faith’s genuineness). This means that dikaioō in Jas 2 should be translated ‘vindicate’ or ‘approbate’. This is not surprising given the Septuagintal colouring of some of James’s language and thought: ‘James’ usage [of dikaioō]. . . is like its normal use in the lxx, “show to be righteous”’ (Davids 1982: 51). See further Laato 1997; Moo 2000: 110–112.

. Moo (2000: 137) helpfully draws attention to the closest biblical expression in 1 John 4:12, where something without flaw (the love of God) attains its intended goal or fullest expression via human obedience (‘if we love one another’), also using the passive of teleioō.

. Bock’s treatment of the OT in a single paragraph (1996: 118) is surprisingly short, perhaps in part because he concentrates on the term šûb.

. See Gaventa 1986; Beckwith 1987, esp. 115–116.

. See esp. Hamilton 2005, and note the statement by Warfield (1952: 133) that the Holy Spirit’s work in individuals ‘is, throughout the Old Testament, more a matter of prophecy than of present enjoyment’. In the NT the Holy Spirit works with more clarity and brings to bear on believers the vastly increased quantity of redemptive accomplishment and revelation; cf. Goldingay 1996: 24–25.

. Roth’s suggestion (2005: 112) that repentance and conversion are not themes that run through the book depends in part on her judgment that the sailors were not sinners, an assertion that the book does not establish or support.

. This is fundamental to a wide swathe of Protestant anthropology and soteriology; cf. the Westminster Confession and the 1689 Baptist Confession, chs. 6, 10; the Belgic Confession, articles 16, 17; the Confession of La Rochelle, articles 12, 21. How regeneration, indwelling and other aspects or facets of conversion relate to this is somewhat debated; cf. Fredericks 1988 and Hamilton 2005.

. C. J. H. Wright’s use (2004a) of ‘conversion’ to cover a wide variety of realities in the OT (in both history and prophecy) and to mean both ‘complete inclusion, participation and equality with the living community of God’s people’ (18) and radical displacement of all other gods, ethical transformation and an end to the commitment to war (on the parts of the nations as such, 15–16) unfortunately creates confusion by not distinguishing between sociological (the first definition) and theological aspects (the second definition) and by mixing what took place in the OT with what it anticipated in the last days.

. I am hardly at odds with Calvin on the inseparability of what I here call conversion and spirituality, though he typically uses ‘regeneration’ to speak of the whole process of renewal that the Spirit works in believers throughout their lives, inclusive of initial conversion. See e.g. Calvin 1960: 3.3.1–2, 6, 18, 20. His use of the term pietas more closely resembles what I mean by ‘spirituality’, as when he states, ‘The whole life of Christians ought to be a sort of practice of godliness [pietas]’; ibid. 3.19.2.

. See P. Adam 2004, esp. 15–46; Carson 1996: 555–569; Dieter et al. 1987; Howard 2008; Packer 1990, 1994; Porter 2008; D. Wells 2005: 125–176. On the equally important theme of the definitive sanctification of believers as part of their initial conversion, see Murray 1977a; 1977b; Peterson 2001.

. Packer 1994: 2. D. Wells (2005: 5) cautions that in a religiously diverse society ‘therapeutic spiritualities which are non-religious begin to look quite like evangelical spirituality which is therapeutic and non-doctrinal’.

. For the task of systematizing all that the Bible tells us on this point, see the suggestions in Packer 1994 and Lewis 1970.

. A notable point of difference is the mode of divine presence in the OT, while after Pentecost God’s permanent indwelling of believers is the rule; cf. Hamilton 2005. Since during the OT era Christ had not yet accomplished in his life, death and resurrection what he would give to believers in their Spirit-based union with him, the Spirit’s indwelling of believers in the OT, thought possible and even probable in a limited way, could not have entailed the same benefits as in the NT era. Contrast the claim of Kaiser (1997: 44) that ‘the experience of believers in the days before Christ’s final coming [by which he means the incarnation] was as full an experience of the Holy Spirit as that experienced by the New Testament saints in every way except two – the Holy Spirit’s visible coming in state and his act of incorporating believers into one body, the church’.

. Barton (1986) suggests that OT spirituality was mainly communal (apart from ‘exceptional individuals’ like Moses, Jeremiah and Job), though his survey focuses almost exclusively (and without explanation) on the book of Psalms and prayers found elsewhere in the OT.

. VanGemeren 1988: 48; Timmer 2009b: 68–71. This is only one of a number of ways that the Bible presents the goal of human existence. The second creation narrative prefers the image of eternal life, conferred through obedience and eating of the tree of life. See Matthews 1996: 202; Walton 2001: 170; Vos 2001: 73–76.

. Luther 1883: 593; Pelikan et al. 1957: 190. The connection between the human condition at creation and in the consummation of redemption is perhaps better described with reference to concepts like holiness or righteousness, as does Hughes (1989: 60), than in terms of the divine image restored (though the two are not unrelated). ‘The condition of goodness in which [humankind] was created was not one of static goodness; he was not made to sit still in the world to be passively good, but to be actively holy. In a very real sense he had to establish his holiness by faithful performance of the Creator’s will. Doing this, he would have actualized the potential with which he was by nature endowed and have known what it is to be authentically human.’

. See E. Davies 1999, pace Lindars (1973), who largely restricts imitatio Dei (imitation of God) to the NT. For more on imitatio Dei, see ch. 7, n. 19 in this book.

. See the classic treatment in Warfield 1952, and more recently that in Hamilton 2005. Goldingay is right to underline the fact that the Holy Spirit can be referred to in an OT passage where either Hebrew term is not present (Goldingay 1996: 16–19), while Warfield, surprisingly, restricts his discussion of the Spirit’s saving work in individuals to passages that use the term ‘spirit’ (i.e. Ps. 51:11; Isa. 63:10–11 only), even though he clearly recognizes the dynamics of progressive revelation (e.g. Warfield 1952: 130).

. For an example of the former, see Bock 2008; of the latter, Owen 1965–8.

. See especially Birch and Rasmussen 1989: 74–81; also Hauerwas 1975: 203.

. On the necessity of this connection, see Otto 1991; E. Davies 1999.

. See Wolff 1986: 121. For a correlation of character ethics with the fear of the Lord, see Timmer 2009a; Packer 1994: 12–14. As noted above, what I understand by ‘spirituality’ is identical to what Calvin meant by ‘godliness’ (Lat. pietas; cf. Calvin 1960: 3.19.2).

. B. Green (2005b) traces Christian use of Jonah in spirituality from antiquity to the present.

. On the corporate element of OT spirituality, cf. Averbeck 2008.

. Moo 1996: 78: ‘the meaning of faith in the NT is deepened through its intimate relationship to Christ as the object of faith’.

. ‘According to Romans 4:20, the innermost essence of faith is that it gives glory to God’ (Vos 1980: 398). See Piper 2009 for a contemporary and incisive treatment of the question from the perspective of the New Testament, and Fuller 1992: 251–402 for a discussion of faith across the canon.

Chapter 3: Looking into Jonah 1

. While this text is often thought (e.g. Driver 1913: xxvi–xxvii; Collins 2004: 112, 47–65, esp. 50) to provide a criterion for separating its supposed author (the Priestly source, P) from the other sources purportedly present in the Pentateuch that used this divine name freely prior to Exod. 6, such an approach probably misses the gist of the passage. John Walton reminds us that in the ancient Near East an entity’s existence was dependent upon its having both a name and a function, and that various ancient Near Eastern deities had multiple names (e.g. Marduk receives fifty in Enuma Elish, an apologetic for his rise to the top of the Middle Babylonian pantheon). Walton (2006: 92) thus argues, Exod. 6:2–3 ‘indicates that there were some names that had been manifest to the patriarchs, but that [God] had not yet acted in ways [i.e. function] that would manifest the identity bound up in the name Yahweh’.

. Hoffmeier (1996) stresses that ‘the plagues story needs to be examined in the light of Pharaoh’s rule as the god of the Egyptian state’, an aspect of the account that highlights God’s conflict with the nations as his opponents (151; cf. Exod. 12:12).

. On the other hand, God’s promise to Abram explicitly included the judgment of the ‘Amorites’ as a result of his descendants’ entry into Canaan (Gen. 15:16), much as the Egyptians symbolized the nations in their opposition to God (Exod. 5:2; 12:12; 18:11). This ambiguity, though not erasing the distinction between ethnic Israel and the rest of the world, shows that barrier to be a permeable one.

. Bolin (1997: 151) points out several elements that bind the prophet’s book and ministry together. Though not convinced of the historical basis of the events that Jonah recounts, Ben Zvi (2003: 46) recognizes that ‘it is likely that there is a close link between this story and the character described in Kings, and thus it draws the attention of the rereaders to the particular account in 2 Kings 14:23–29’.

. This argument is made in Alexander 1985.

. Bowers (1971: 31–32) shows that the first five centuries of Christian interpretation of the OT routinely understood Jonah as presenting ‘the concrete reality of historical events’. As far as the authorship of Jonah goes, while the prophet himself (assuming he saw the error of his ways after the events described in Jon. 4) is perhaps the most likely candidate, but the book’s anonymity and the significant connections it has to what may well be later Scripture (e.g. Ps. 107) both allow and suggest that it may have been composed some time after Jonah’s ministry. See the careful ambivalence of Estelle (2005: 11–13) regarding both date and author.

. J(eh)oash paid tribute to Adad-Nirari III in 796; see Younger 2000. In addition to dominating her kinsfolk in Judah, beginning in the ninth century Israel subjugated Moab to her east; Miller and Hayes 1986: 275; cf. 2 Kgs 3:4–27 and the Mesha Inscription (Moabite Stone).

. Inscriptions on two pottery storage vessels from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud in Northern Sinai bless someone ‘by Yahweh of Samaria and his/its asherah’; see Smith 2002: 108–147, esp. 118–125; and Arnold 1999, esp. 411–413. Hess (2007: 255–256) summarizes the broader situation well: ‘There was much confusion in the north regarding Yahweh. Perhaps Yahweh was a manifestation of Baal as a national deity distinguished from the local baals. Offerings were made on certain days and offerers invoked a particular deity (Hosea 3:13–17 [Heb. 15–19]). Invoking the name determined the recipient of the offering. The designations “my baal” and the “days of the baalim” suggest festivals to Baal in which his name was proclaimed. . .. Men participated alongside female officiants. The females functioned as prostitutes.’

. See Stek 1969: 37–43 on Jonah’s representative role.

. For helpful reflections on irony and satire in Jonah, see Person 1996. Thiselton (2007) briefly explores Jonah’s epistemology and determines that the prophet is a half-believer, holding ‘beliefs that operate in some circumstances but not in others’ (31).

. This is admittedly an argument from silence, but given the noise that Jonah makes in response to Nineveh’s being spared, it should not be rejected on that account.

. This section is adapted with permission from Timmer 2008a.

. Stronach and Codella 1996: 146. For a brief review of the history, see Leichty 1995.

. Grayson 1976: 119 (from the Ninurta temple at Kalach, i 9).

. Grayson 1976: 123–124 (from the Ninurta temple at Kalach, i 69).

. Reade 2005: 20. See further Winter 1997; Lumsden 2004; Holloway 2002: 80–216; Niehaus 2008: 73–81.

. Bedford 2001: 21; cf. Parpola 2004: 13.

. Livingstone 1989: no. 11; see on the circumstances of its use Garelli 1975: 116–117.

. Bedford 2001: 30–31. In Assyrian texts ‘Subjugated peoples and their rulers who were submissive and continued to be obedient were applauded for their moral virtues and for acting “like Assyrians”’ (2001: 36; similarly, Parpola 2004).

. For an overview of Neo-Assyrian imperialism’s development as a replacement for the practice of concluding treaties with other states, see Grayson 1994.

. Although the Kurkh Monolith of Shalmaneser III claims an Assyrian victory at Qarqar, the subsequent campaigns in the same area in 849, 848, 845 during the reign of J(eh)oram and in 841 during the reign of J(eh)oram or Jehu demonstrate that this was not the case; see Grayson 1996b, texts 6 and 8, respectively. The Black Obelisk epigraphs (in Grayson 1996b, text 8; cf. also the Calah Bulls) state, ‘I received tribute from Jehu (Iaua) of Omri (Humri): silver, gold, a gold bowl, a gold tureen, golden vessels, gold pails, tin, the staffs of the king’s hand, (and) spears.’

. See Younger 2000.

. In addition to dominating her kinsfolk in Judah, Israel subjugated Moab (Miller and Hayes 1986: 275); see 2 Kgs 3:4–27 and the Mesha Inscription (Moabite Stone; cf. Smelik 2003), dating to the second half of the ninth century, which states that ‘Omri was king of Israel, and he oppressed Moab for many days. . .. And his son followed him, and he also said: “I will oppress Moab!”’ Note what is probably an attempt by Amaziah of Judah to break free of Israelite domination in 2 Kgs 14:8–14. Israel may even have dominated Hamath and Damascus intermittently (2 Kgs 14:28), though that text poses interpretative difficulties; cf. Isa. 8:23.

. For Menahem’s tribute, see 2 Kgs 15:14–22 and the Calah Annals (Younger 2003b) as well as the Iran Stela (Younger 2003d), which he probably set up after the campaigns of 737 (so Younger 2003d: 287). The date of Menahem’s tribute is debated; see Kuan 1995: 143–144, 187–188; Becking 1992. For Hoshea, see 2 Kgs 15:30, 17:1–6 and Summary Inscription 4 of Tiglath-Pileser III (Younger 2003f).

. Thus he states that ‘the wide [land of Bit]-Haza’ili (Aram-Damascus) in its entirety, from Mount [Leb]anon as far as the city of Gilea[d, Abel. . . [on the bor]der of Bit-Hurmia (Israel) [he] annexed to Assyria’ and that he ‘spared only Samaria’. See the opening lines of Summary Inscription 9–10 (Younger 2003g) and lines 17’–18’ of Summary Inscription 13 (Younger 2003h), respectively. This period is helpfully analysed in Younger 1998. The population of the Lower Galilee was decimated by Assyrian activity, dropping from about 30,000 to nearly zero from the mid-eighth into the seventh centuries; see Gal 1988–9.

. See the excellent survey of these modes of Assyrian presence, especially in the late eighth century, in Aster 2007b.

. This phrase can indicate God’s presence generally (Gen. 19:13; Jon. 1:2; very rarely negatively, as in Lam. 4:16), in a theophany (Gen. 19:27), as personal accompaniment (Exod. 33:16), as the object of prayer (1 Kgs 13:6), or in the cult (Leviticus passim; Deut. 16:16); see van Rooy 1997; Simian-Yofre 2001.

. E.g. the assumption of the Arameans in 1 Kgs 20:23; the restricted spheres of operation of most Egyptian gods (cf. Te Velde 1995; Allen 2001: 43–44); and gods of seafarers, who had fairly well-defined spheres of responsibility: storms, the sea, protection of sailors, and navigation (Brody 1998: 9–38).

. Furthermore, if God’s cultic presence were intended, it makes little sense to say of a northern prophet presumably in Israelite territory that he fled from Yahweh’s cultic presence, which was tied to Jerusalem to the exclusion of alternative worship sites in the north.

. The fourth stanza of Ps. 107 shares a number of terms or concepts with Jon. 1, suggesting that the author of one knew of the other (I hesitate to state which), so I explore their interrelationship here. The psalm consists of four corresponding stanzas, all of which end with a shared two-part refrain (Ps. 107:8–9, 15–16, 21–22, 31–32); see Jarick 1997, esp. 273. The pronoun ‘they’ in 107:3 ties the first stanza to Israelites, as does the idea of ‘rebelling against the words of God’ in stanza two (107:11) and (most likely) the terms ‘fool’ and ‘iniquities’ in stanza three (107:17). The fourth stanza, however, contains no elements that restrict its scope to Israelites, and the fact that Israelites were hardly enamoured of the sea or of commerce on it also carries some weight; note 1 Kgs 9:27; 22:48. The use of Ps. 107 in Jonah (if that is in fact the direction of the literary relationship between them) is all the more striking for its post-exilic setting (cf. vv. 2–3), in which ethnic purity and the temple (cf. Ps. 107:22) were prominent.

. The verb used to describe Jonah’s sleep (rādam) is also used of a fool’s blithe ignorance of the right moment to harvest in Prov. 10:5 (cf. 19:15), as well as of sleep induced by God (Gen. 2:21; 15:12; Ps. 76:6; probably Dan. 8:18; 10:9 as well) or caused by exhaustion (Judg. 4:21). The noun that shares the same root (tardēmâ) is also unusually deep (Gen. 2:21, like general anaesthetic), Gen. 15:12 (theophanic dream), 1 Sam. 26:12 (a sleep that prevents awakening), Job 4:13, 33:15 (sleep for receiving visions), the result of laziness that produces lack and loss (Prov. 19:15), and cognition-preventing deadness (Isa. 29:10). These points favour seeing Jonah’s sleep as essentially a stupor that highlights his lack of perception.

. Note Elisha’s trip to Damascus to deliver an oracle to Hazael, a subordinate of Ben-Hadad II, in 2 Kgs 8:7–15.

. Wolff observes that the sailors’ terrified ‘What have you done?’ is ‘a cry of terror springing from knowledge’ (Wolff 1986: 116, followed by Lux 1994: 112), and the text strongly favours seeing this as based on their new knowledge of Yahweh as Jonah has just announced him. Jenson (2008: 53–54) plausibly suggests that Jonah said more than what is recorded in 1:10. On the link between God’s identity as Creator and as Judge, see Schmid 1984.

. The term ‘Hebrew’ frequently distinguishes Israelites from ethnic non-Israelites (Abram, Gen. 14:13; the Israelites vis-à-vis Egyptians throughout the first half of Exodus); Angel 2006: 5.

. Wolff 1986: 121, with reference to Gen. 22:12; Exod. 20:20; Prov. 1:7; Ps. 111:10; similarly, Murphy 2002: 16; Murray 1999: 229–242.

. The absence of repentance on Jonah’s part is also noted in Jenson 2008: 55; Landes 1999: 281.

. Levine (2002: 175) helpfully lists instances of Jonah’s non-repentance.

. Cf. Wolff 1986: 121. This prohibits the conclusion that the sailors were polytheists who simply added Yahweh to their pantheon; pace Gervarhahu (1981) and Brody (1998: 11).

. Yahweh’s deliverance of the sailors was not in the first place saving them from death at sea (that was not their prayer), but from divine condemnation and punishment for manslaughter (that was their prayer). They were delivered secondarily (and perhaps consequently) from drowning.

. In addition to Murphy 2002, Murray 1999 and Sheriffs 1996: 162–164, note Becker 1965. Sheriffs concludes (1996: 164; similarly, 92–93), ‘The spirituality of the “fear of the Lord” is both the deep inward orientation and its practical outcome in behavior.’

. Apart from cultic legislation, see 1 Sam. 1:21; Ps. 50:14; Isa. 19:21; negatively, Jer. 44:25; Prov. 7:14; Mal. 1:14; Jon. 2:10. On vows and sacrifices, see P. Miller 2000a, esp. 97–100.

. See Kraus 1993b: 329–330; VanGemeren 1991: 686.

. By establishing this connection to Isa. 19, the author of Jonah is arguably implying that a very small and preliminary, but still significant, fulfilment of this prophecy is being realized in Jon. 1.

Chapter 4: Looking into Jonah 2

. The contention of Brenner (1993) that the link between the events of the poem and the narrative is tenuous is difficult to sustain in the light of the links mentioned here and below. All the same, she recognizes the irony it adds to the book.

. This suggests that attempts to see the verb ‘swallow’ as negative here, as it is elsewhere in the OT, have minimized the importance of the term’s immediate context in determining its meaning; pace Trible (1994: 158). Context, as usual, is key: nowhere else in Scripture is someone swallowed by a fish so as to escape drowning.

. A later version in Akkadian features Ishtar and makes corresponding minor changes to the story; see Dalley 2003. A more recent translation that differs in some details can be found in Black et al. 1998.

. See Abusch 1999 on the vagaries of Ishtar’s identity.

. While the myth presents her voyage literally, it may intend to portray the movement of the goddess’s cult statue (Dalley 2003: 381).

. Kramer 1950: 53–54. Text in italics indicates readings that are uncertain but probable.

. This method was developed especially in Talmon 1978 and Hallo 1990. Important refinements include K. L. Younger Jr.’s delineation of four lines of propinquity (‘linguistic, geographic, chronological, and cultural’, Younger 2003c) and J. H. Walton’s stress on the ‘cognitive environment’ that is determinative for the interpretation of a given text (Walton 2006).

. This summary of the method is given by Averbeck (2002: 89).

. Contra Landes (1967). It could also be urged that Jonah had got as close as possible to Sheol even before the fish swallowed him (2:2), so that another voyage nearly to the same destination, and then back again, is not only repetitive but unattested in Jonah.

. Establishing the possibility and plausibility of propinquity would be a necessary step in an argument for literary influence, something I will not undertake here.

. The verb used of Jonah’s praying (hithpael of pālal) is standard language for addressing God (1 Sam. 8:6; 2 Kgs 19:15; 20:2), though it often includes an element of intercession; cf. Gen. 20:17 (Abraham), Num. 11:2 (Moses), 2 Kgs 4:33; 6:17 (Elisha). Occasionally it is used for prayer against God’s enemies (2 Kgs 6:18) or for prayer to false gods (Isa. 44:17). This breadth of use prevents us from identifying the type of prayer by simply noting the verb used to describe it (pace Ackerman [1981: 221]) and forces us to look at the prayer itself as we try to understand the significance of Jonah’s address to God.

. Westermann 1965: 25–30, 102–116. For a more recent and detailed description of the genre, see Gerstenberger 1988: 14–16. Pss 18, 30, 32, 34, 77 and 116 are typical songs of individual thanksgiving.

. McCarter (1973) suggests that we see Jonah’s deliverance as a ‘river ordeal’, a practice attested elsewhere in the ancient Near East through which the gods would show someone’s guilt (by seeing them drowned) or innocence (by preserving them). For examples of this in written law, see especially the Law of Hammurabi, law 2, as well as the Laws of Ur-Namma, paragraph 14, and the Middle Assyrian Laws, tablet A paragraph 24. McCarter’s reading does not take into account Jonah’s sin, however. For reasons argued above, it is safe to say that had Yahweh subjected Jonah to a water ordeal, Jonah might well not have survived. But perhaps Jonah did anticipate a ‘trial by water’ as he went overboard, only to find that Yahweh had not dealt with him according to his sins.

. Such psalms describe ‘a devout worshipper saved from misfortune, one who prays in the temple, makes a sacrifice, and acknowledges deliverance from Yhwh’ (Trible 1994: 162, emphasis added).

. Fretheim is probably right when he suggests that this statement ‘may well serve as the key verse of the book’ (1977: 103).

. Merrill 1997: 6–7; Johnston 1994: 416.

. Sauter (2003) has some insightful comments on Jonah’s perspective here.

. Fretheim (1977: 101) overlooks the fact that Jonah nowhere even mentions his disobedience when he states that Jonah ‘ascribes his brush with drowning not simply to the consequences of his own rebellion, but as a consequence of God’s actions’.

. While ‘The poet may not necessarily be thinking of Jerusalem’s temple when Jonah laments his fate’ (Sasson 1990: 181), Jonah’s focus on his privileges as an Israelite makes me suspect that the Jerusalem temple was more prominent in his mind than God’s heavenly abode. The arguments brought by Wolff (1986: 135) also favour this conclusion.

. On this see Goldsworthy 1996; Roth 2005: 169.

. In Pss 42, 43, the enemies ridicule the author because his trust in Yahweh seems ill-founded. The psalmist’s response is to encourage himself by trusting that God will again deliver him (Ps. 42:5, 11), act toward him with ‘mercy’ (42:8) and vindicate himself and the author in the face of their common enemies (43:1).

. Angel (2006: 7) recognizes the climactic position of this comparison in the prayer.

. While in Jonah the participle šōmĕrîm is pointed as a piel, it is in all likelihood to be read as a qal, as suggested by the editors of BHS (no Qere for this reading in Jonah exists, however). Despite Barré’s argument (Barré 1991) for abandoning the traditional rendering, the use of the same root for fidelity to a god (or to Yahweh) in Ps. 31:7 and Hos. 4:10 allows for the same sense here; see further Kraus 1993a: 363. Only in the Hosea passage is the reading perhaps textually suspect, since the Syriac takes ‘fornication’ from 4:11 as the final word of 4:10. Barré’s argument also requires that the group in context be Israelite, something quite foreign to the Jonah context.

. So also Pyper 2006: 349.

. The construction Jonah uses (hablê šāw) is very strong, meaning ‘utterly worthless gods’.

. Note Fretheim 1977: 103: ‘In the absence of any repentance on Jonah’s part, it would appear as if he here seeks to cover up his own disloyalty with language that sets him apart from others who do not praise God as he does.’ Fretheim concludes that Jonah in ch. 2 ‘has not repented to God at all’ (1977: 104; likewise Angel 2006: 6).

. By contrast, Roth (2005: 150) suggests that the prayer of ch. 2 can correct the negative presentation of Jonah in ch. 1.

. For reasons to take poems in narrative as potent contributors to the text’s meaning, see Smelik 1996.

Chapter 5: Looking into Jonah 3

. Pace Clements (1975: 21), it is indeed significant ‘that the people threatened should be Ninevites’ given the story’s emphasis on ethnicity and its insignificance for one’s relation to God.

. P. Ferguson 1996: 308.

. I assume that by ‘Nineveh’ the author of Jonah intends the city, even though it is possible that he is referring to the province that includes the city; Wiseman 1979: 38–39, and P. Ferguson 1996: 306–307. There are instances in which city and province names are interchanged (city of N, province of N), P. Ferguson 1996: 304–305; or a region can be referred to by means of a prominent city within it, as when the Tell Fekherye inscription mentions the ‘land of the city of Gozan’; note also ‘various logograms for city and province’ in Parpola 1970b: 262–267.

. During this period the Assyrian king was not completely powerless, however; Kuhrt (1995: 491) reminds us that he ‘was called in to resolve a boundary dispute between Gurgum and Kummuh [also in the west, not far from where Shamshi-Ilu ruled] (Pazarcik stele)’.

. On this question see Lawrence 1986; P. Ferguson 1996.

. Mattila 2000: 31, 139; P. Ferguson 1996.

. Grayson 1982: 279; L. M. White 1996: 484. Mattila suggests (2000: 29–31) that the individual described here is not identical to the governer of Guzana, eponym of 727.

. Grayson 1982: 278. Shamshi-ilu’s description of the area he controlled is akin to that of Sargon II a few decades later, whose even longer description of his area of control includes Hatti and Namri and portrays him as ruling ‘from western Iran to the border of Egypt’ (Mieroop 1999: 332).

. See Lawrence 1986: 311; Brinkman 1968. Shamshi-ilu was commander-in-chief under Adad-Nirari not later than about 796 bc, when the Antakya Stele that names him was probably set up (Younger 2003a). The title is first attested in the early midninth century, and as of 708, following the annexation of Kummuhi in that year, Sargon II established a ‘left’ tartan (the original one had been centred in Til-Barsip) (Mattila 2000: 111).

. Younger 2003e; Lawrence 1986: 127.

. See the translation of the inscription in Younger 2003e.

. See Oppenheim 1969; Parpola 1970a.

. In the eponym lists for the ninth year of Ashur-Dan III, ‘in the month Simanu an eclipse of the sun took place’. This date can be fixed as 15 June 763. Wiseman (1979: 50) draws on the limmu list during Ashur-Dan III’s reign for the reference to famine.

. Wiseman 1979: 46, with reference to the Nineveh versions of Enuma Anu Enlil, some of which are more readily accessible in Van Soldt 1995.

. This addresses Sasson’s concern (Sasson 1990: 247) that information did not, under normal circumstances, move quickly from the populace to the Assyrian monarch.

. Cf. Oates 2005: 42–58; Stronach 1997.

. Sasson points out that a superlative sense is not strictly possible (unless the grammar here is anomalous), since superlatives use a noun in construct with ’ĕlōhîm or ’ēl (Sasson 1990: 228).

. Stronach and Codella 1996: 146; Dalley 1989: 325; Grayson 1982: 275.

. Sasson (1990: 229) makes this point as well.

. Stronach and Codella 1996: 146. Sennacherib augmented the city’s agricultural output and added royal infrastructure as well as perimeter defences; cf. Oates 2005: 42–58; Stronach 1997.

. Even Samarra, the largest city the region was ever to know, was no more than 6 miles across (Wiseman 1979: 37).

. Marcus (1999: 43–45) gives good reasons to avoid a literal, precise understanding of these phrases in Jonah.

. Contrast the arguments for Jonah’s ‘sabotaging’ the divine message in Lubeck 1988. At the same time, we might suppose that Jonah was not terribly willing to elaborate on the topic of repentance, but was more than willing to emphasize God’s holiness, justice and power against the offending city. The Assyrians, for their part, would almost certainly have pressed Jonah for more details as to their fate, the deity involved and so on.

. This makes the suggestion that Jonah was disinclined to bring his message because he thought he would be considered a false prophet if it were heeded less than convincing. The relevance of Jer. 18:7–10 for the book of Jonah is noted in Jenson 2007: 234.

. Peleg 2004: 265–266; Vos 2001: 81–83.

. This seems to be the position taken by Walton (1992: 54).

. Lichtert 2003: 250 (in his words it falls short of a ‘reconnaissance plénière’ of God); Roth 2005: 169 agrees.

. It is tempting to think through this question in terms of the distinction between general and special revelation, with the content of the message not being in and of itself saving (i.e. general revelation). Special revelation, for its part, is defined by Berkhof as ‘a revelation of the gratia specialis [special grace], and therefore gives rise to the Christian religion of redemption. It is a revelation of the way of salvation’ (1996: 136; H. Bavinck’s position is similar, 1977: 60–61). The Ninevites’ response could then be understood in terms of responses to general revelation along the lines of Rom. 1 – 2. But there is not a neat correlation between an oracle of judgment like the one announced by Jonah and general revelation, since the latter is typically defined as non-verbal (Berkhof 1996: 128).

It is better to resolve this quandary by recalling that judgment and salvation are inseparably bound together in special revelation. Note Van Til (1967: 127): ‘After the entrance of sin into the world God’s revelation to man becomes a revelation of grace and of wrath. . .. The sinner’s reaction to this gracious revelation, to this call to repentance, can never be right in principle unless and until he is redeemed in Christ.’ Thus while the message of condemnation to Nineveh was itself judgment, it is not for that reason to be reduced to general revelation or denied its status as God’s (potentially saving) self-revelation to the Gentiles. It is worth noting that the ministry of John the Baptist had clear reference to the coming gospel but remained focused on judgment.

. On the necessity of this connection for the redemptive nature of special revelation, see P. Wells 1986: 23, 37 and passim.

. While Assyrian religion was inherently iconic (cf. Walker and Dick 2001; Jacobsen 1987), it is highly ironic that Sargon II’s records on Nimrud Prism 4 testify that upon the destruction of Israel he carried away as spoil ‘the gods in whom they trusted’; cf. Becking 1997: 157–171.

. The Hebrew phrase ḥārôn ’ap almost always describes God’s anger against disobedient Israel (Creach 1997: 266), but here applies to Nineveh.

. For the hiphil of ’āman with the preposition bĕ and God as the grammatical object in response to divine miracles, see Exod. 14:31; Num. 14:11; 20:12; Deut. 1:32; Ps. 78:22. For the phrase’s description of a response to the divine word, see Gen. 15:6 (God as object); Deut. 9:23 (God as object; the parallel line has qôl as the object of šām’a; 2 Kgs 17:14 (God as object, in parallel with stiffening one’s neck); 2 Chr. 20:20 (God as object); Pss 106:12, 24 (God’s word as object in both cases); 119:66 (God’s commandments as object). For the use of the phrase with a variety of objects other than God, see the full list in Jepsen 1977: 300.

. The flexibility of the expression is also noted in Jepsen 1977.

. Jenson (2007: 244) notes that this removes the possibility of ‘cheap grace’. The observations of Gwaltney (1998: 103) that ‘throughout Mesopotamian history. . . one senses a pervasive pessimism that the god’s decisions were arbitrary and amoral’ and of Wiggermann (1995) that the affairs of the world were governed by divine decrees, show that this is typical of the Mesopotamian world view in the ancient period.

. Trible’s summary is superb: ‘New to the story, the theology of repentance sets up a correlation, neither inevitable nor necessary, between human and divine turning. What the Ninevites do may effect [sic] (but does not determine) what God does’ (Trible 1998: 203). I cannot explain why she goes on to claim that this repentance ‘works on a quid pro quo basis, an equal exchange between the city and the deity’.

. Another reason not to press the divine names into saving/non-saving categories is the patriarchs’ preference for divine names other than Yahweh; cf. J. M. Nicole 1986: 19–20.

. Walton 1992: 54. Clements (1975: 18) similarly notes that there is no mention in Jonah of the Ninevites ‘embracing of the torah, their rejection of idolatry, their acceptance of circumcision, nor even to so basic a feature as a confession that Yahweh the God of Israel is the only true God’.

. Walton 1992: 54; Walton goes on to deny that they so much as recognized ‘Yahweh’, which is literally true but is probably overemphasized.

. Nixon 2003: 203–204. This was underlined as long ago as Targum Psuedo-Jonathan (probably sometime after the seventh century ad, Chilton 2000: 904), which explains Nah. 1:1 by means of Nineveh’s short-lived repentance (Ego 2000: 249).

. Nor should we assume that our Lord’s statement that Nineveh repented (Matt. 12:41 // Luke 11:32) means that he intended his audience to exhibit the same kind of repentance, and then reason that the full repentance Jesus called for (that it was full we cannot doubt; see Carson 1984: 99) is nothing more than what the Ninevites exhibited. The same logic is more clearly problematic in Matt. 12:42, where Jesus surely expects his audience to do more than listen to, and express wonder at, his wisdom, as the Queen of Sheba had done after seeing Solomon’s wisdom and accomplishments, only to return home without the slightest indication of a conversion to Yahweh.

. Chmiel (1993: 63) similarly suggests that repentance is made up of ‘(a) an external change in lifestyle that is easily noticeable and (b) an inner turning away from evil and towards God’. Thompson and Martens likewise urge, on the same basis, that ‘Critical in this turnabout, if it is to be repentance, is the direction toward which one turns, namely, to Yahweh’ (Thompson and Martens 1997: 57).

. While popularity does not imply correctness, a number of theologians conclude similarly. Berkhof perhaps goes slightly beyond the text in saying that the Ninevites ‘repented of their sins’, but nonetheless classifies it as a ‘national conversion’ that by definition was ‘merely of the nature of moral reformations’ (Berkhof 1996: 483). Day similarly argues that it was ‘moral repentance (cf. iii. 8, 10) rather than conversion to Judaism’ (1990: 43). Boda’s summary is more ambiguous: ‘Repentance is key to remedying sin in the book of Jonah, and this repentance is prompted by divine threat as well as divine discipline. Underlying this is the gracious character of Yahweh announced and experienced on Sinai’ (Boda 2009: 318).

. See Job 16: 17, Isa. 59: 6 for the collocation of ‘violence’ and ‘hand’ (ḥāmās with kap) as denoting a fundamentally violent character and pattern of behaviour. The king calls for a fast in words also used of Jehoshaphat, 2 Chr. 20: 3, and may echo Joel 2: 15.

. Dozeman (1989: 223) has shown that the king echoes the words of Exod. 32: 12b in ‘turn from… burning anger’. He likewise shows that the narrator in Jonah echoes Exod. 32: 14 in stating that God ‘relented from the calamity which he had said he would do’ (223).

. This summary is given by Shemesh (2010: 19). The decree appears in the Berlin tablet (seventh century BC) and the Paris tablet (third century BC). Apart from this text, Judith 4: 10 is a better analogue than Herodotus, Histories, 9.24, as John Day (1990: 34) has pointed out, but Judith is in all likelihood drawing on Jonah. This need not rule out the possibility of hyperbole or humour in the description of the animals’ participation in the actions of mourning, however (cf. Moberly 2003, esp. 156, n. 4), though I favour a more straightforward or literal sense.

. Friedrich et al. 1940: 13f, no. 5, cited in Wiseman 1979: 51; these texts can now be found in Fales 1979. Cf. Sasson’s translation (Sasson 1990: 245) : ‘A royal message. To Mannu-kī-Assur: Over a three-day period, you and your district’s citizens should pray and perform a public weeping before the god Adad. Purge all your land and fields, and offer many burnt-sacrifices. The purification of the nakarkānu-house should be undertaken within one full day, so that you may bring about the reconciliation of Adad.’

. Walton 2006: 130–134, 136–137. Though often fragmentary, a selection of texts from various points across the ancient Near East that deal with how one escapes punishment (usually already inflicted) do not mention repentance; see Foster 2003a (note esp. tablet II, where the sufferer hopes that his acts of piety will spell his relief, but no repentance is mentioned), 2003b, 2003c, 2003d; Klein 2003.

. See Walton 2006: 135–161; van der Toorn 1985: 94–99.

. See the ‘Plague Prayer’ of Mursilis II (Singer 2002) and the Sumerian ‘Man and His God’ (Klein 2003) for examples of royal and individual focus, respectively.

. Here I give only a partial and abbreviated comparison and contrast of these two texts, but within those limits I am following the compare-and-contrast method developed by Talmon (1978) and Hallo (1990), briefly explained above in discussing Jon. 2.

. Note the opening lines of the Tell Fekherye inscription, in Lipiński (1994: 36) : ‘To Adad, water controller of heaven and earth, who rains down prosperity, provider of pasture and of watering place, for the people of all the towns, provider of sustenance and of offerings to the gods his brothers, water controller of the rivers, who makes the world luxuriant, the merciful god to whom praying is sweet…’ Greenfield concludes that Adad’s persona was both merciful and vengeful (Greenfield 1999: 379).

. We cannot be certain, however, to what extent the Ninevites melded their own conception of deity with the God Jonah presented.

. The portrayal of this king’s repentance has been seen by some as consciously contrasted with the reaction of Jehoiachin in Jer. 36; e.g. Roth 2005: 156.

. In the case of the pharaoh of the exodus, anonymity certainly relativizes that pharaoh’s importance and may also function as a subtle riposte, since removal of one’s name in an Egyptian context meant one was ‘essentially deprived of existence’ (Allen 2001: 80).

. Nissinen 2003: 100–101; see further Parpola 1997: xxxvi–xliv.

. See the translation and reproduction of the inscription in Millard and Bordreuil 1982: 137–138. This point is noted by P. Ferguson (1996: 303), though he takes the terms to be synonymous while Millard and Bordreuil speak of the ‘double status’ of the ruler in question (1982: 139). The fuller discussion in Abou-Assaf et al. 1982 is more ambivalent.

. Postgate (1995) notes the various forms and levels of centralized authority in the ancient Near East generally, while Mattila (2000: 167) more explicitly concludes that in Neo-Assyria ‘the king’s magnates can be interpreted as aspects of royal power’ and Parpola (1983: xxviii, 516) notes that in 678 a lunar eclipse ‘did indeed require the enthronement of a substitute king, though only in Nineveh’.

. For a brief overview, see Scurlock 1995: 1885.

. Parpola 1983: xxii–xxiii. Other more detailed exceptions were also possible.

. In this paragraph I follow Parpola 1983: xxiv–xxv.

. See the translation of some of these documents in Leichty 1995, following Parpola 1993. The šumma âlu ina mêlê šakin omens are of secondary important in this context (so Wiseman 1979: 47). They relate (in the context of divination) the behaviour of animals to the god’s wrath, and foresee that the god’s wrath will afflict king, people and animals; see Freedman 1998, 2006.

. Parpola 1983: xxiv.

. Stek 1969: 43, n. 35; Stuart (1987: 496) is similar: ‘the pagan Assyrians of Nineveh repent as fully and heartily as any Israelites ever did! The chosen people had not yet in their history (i.e., to the mid-eighth century bc) repented so sincerely. Only later, in the days of Ezra (Ezra 10: 1–7) and Nehemiah (Neh. 9: 1–3) do we read of appeals for mercy quite so self-abnegating.’ These comparisons are helpful in understanding God’s evaluation of Nineveh’s change in Jon. 3: 10 and Jesus’ use of Nineveh’s repentance to condemn his hearers for their lack of response to his message (Matt. 12: 41 // Luke 11: 32).

. See the helpful pastoral treatment of the question by Estelle (2005: 113–121).

. Moberly 1998.

. Notably, God’s words to Jeremiah make clear that he does not respond differently to Israel than to other nations, something the author of Jonah (if the book was written after Jeremiah) may have had in mind.

. Pratt 2000: 183. Pratt likewise speaks of God’s ‘responsiveness’ to human actions in connection with Jer. 18 (189). The arguments in Willis 1994 (esp. 158–159, 169–170) and Fretheim 1988 (esp. 62, 65–66) unnecessarily assert that historical contingencies like that in Jonah require that the future be ‘genuinely open’ and that the future holds ‘uncertainty’ for God (Fretheim 1988: 62, 65).

. Again, Pratt Jr.’s reasoning follows essentially the same line. While he argues that all prophetic ‘declarations’ (which are qualitatively different from God’s eternal decrees) have implicit or explicit qualifications, God’s commitment to his covenants (which are qualitatively different from prophetic declarations) is both inviolable and the norm for understanding the different ways that God works out qualified prophetic declarations (Pratt 2000: 190–191).

. Levine (2002: 176) overlooks the importance of God’s grace in relenting when he asserts that ‘the city is saved by deeds alone’.

. Eagleton (1990: 233) puts it well: ‘Prophetic utterances of Jonah’s sort are “constative” (descriptive of some real or possible state of affairs) only in what one might call their surface grammar; as far as their “deep structure” goes they actually belong to Austin’s class of “performatives”, linguistic acts which get something done. What they get done is to produce a state of affairs in which the state of affairs they describe won’t be the case. Effective declarations of imminent catastrophe cancel themselves out, containing as they do a contradiction between what they say and what they do.’ It should be added that Eagleton’s analysis of such utterances holds true only when there is repentance, so that such speech is always potentially open-ended from a human perspective.

. For a fiery presentation of this view, see Levine 2002 (above I refer to p. 178).

. Fretheim (1978: 231) offers a helpful corrective that relativizes the power of repentance per se: ‘The repentance of the Ninevites provides the necessary (though, as we shall see, not sufficient) occasion for God’s repentance.’

. Guillaume 2006: 248. Levine’s conclusion (2002: 185) that ‘By sparing Nineveh from destruction, God appears to be in violation of that very Law of which he is the author and to which he is party’ similarly appears to overlook the validity of divine patience and grace, something he speaks strongly against in connection with ‘post-biblical antinomian sectarians who viewed [the law] as a “burden” or “curse” that, through faith, could be removed by divine Grace’ (with reference to Paul, Gal. 4: 21–26).

. Rom. 3: 21–26. See Nixon’s helpful reflections on the compatibility of grace and justice in Nixon 2003: 182–183.

. ‘The issue is theodicy, not repentance’ (Guillaume 2006: 249).

. Guillaume 2006: 246; similarly, Ben Zvi 2003: 27.

. As recognized by Ben Zvi (2003: 28). Levine (2002: 194) seems to think that the book of Jonah allows no other position than the punctilinear divine relenting from the threatened destruction of Nineveh, but there is little ground in Jonah, and less elsewhere in the OT, for that assumption.

Chapter 6: Looking into Jonah 4

. ‘Since God alone is a fit judge of man’s conduct, there is no reason for us to boast that we are influenced by good intentions; for there is nothing more fallacious than our own balances. When therefore we weigh facts, deeds, and thoughts, by our own judgment, we deceive ourselves’ (Calvin 2003: 129). Clements (1975) argues that the message of the book is the possibility of repentance for anyone, but this neglects the amazing refusal of Jonah (at least within the book that bears his name) to repent.

. Abela (2001: 14) notes the importance of Jonah’s speech for his characterization.

. Keil and Delitzsch rightly reject the conjecture that God, prior to the elapse of the period given for repentance, had revealed Nineveh’s fate to Jonah, and so prompted Jonah’s reaction before the forty days were over (Keil and Delitzsch 1977, 7: 413).

. The divine decision to spare Nineveh in the light of its repentance, as the immediate antecedent, is the most likely subject of the verb ‘and it was evil’ in 4: 1a.

. Sasson argues that the phrase I have translated ‘and he was angry’ should be understood as depression rather than anger, and as depression not caused by God’s sparing of Nineveh (Sasson 1990: 273–276, 286–287). While I argue differently, it is important to recognize that a critique of Jonah’s theology and behaviour is quite different from the misuses of that interpretation ‘to censure Judaism and Jewish attributes’ that Sasson notes. As I show here and below, major themes in the OT itself are the standard by which one can and should critique Jonah’s behaviour in Jon. 4, so this approach cannot be turned to the improper ends to which Sasson objects (see esp. Sasson 1990: 274, n. 7).

. Shemesh (2010: 21–23) argues for this understanding as well.

. Peleg (2004: 272) appropriately contrasts Abraham’s intercession for the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 18: 23–33) with Jonah’s exasperation over Nineveh’s deliverance.

. That God’s anger is clearly real in 3: 9 is a point in favour of taking the ‘anger’ in 4: 1 as a genuine emotion rather than removing any element of anger from Jonah’s subjective condition, as Sasson does (Sasson 1990: 275) when he suggests that ‘anger is a relatively healthy emotion’ that ‘dissipates quickly’ and that Jonah’s ‘prayer’ here precludes the possibility of his being angry. Jonah’s theological distance from God is inseparable from his words, which makes them much more a wish than a prayer (Calvin’s comments on this point are useful, Calvin 2003: 118).

While Sasson focuses on 1 Sam. 18: 8 to understand anger psychologically, 1 Sam. 15: 11 may be closer to Jonah’s situation. There Samuel expresses despair or consternation over God’s regret (with the same verb translated ‘relented’ in Jon. 3: 10) that he made Saul king. Firth thinks that ‘Samuel often appears awkward and prickly’ and speaks of Samuel’s ‘anger at what Yahweh has announced’ (Firth 2009: 174), while McCarter translates 1 Sam. 15: 11 as ‘Samuel was enraged’ (McCarter 1980: 258).

. Hab. 3: 8 is the only time in the prophets that the same verb is used to express God’s anger ‘on Israel’s behalf’ (Creach 1997: 267).

. The fact that these two verbs both describe Jonah’s subjective condition, a condition that his prayer expresses in a very monochromatic way, also makes it reasonable to assume that both verbs have the same subject.

. Fernando calls Jonah’s attitude ‘theological racism’ (1988: 61).

. Limburg and others rightly point out that the closest parallel to Jon. 4: 2 is Joel 2: 13 (Limburg 1993: 90). The difficulty of dating Joel renders impossible any firm conclusions on the description’s use there, however. Dozeman (1989) explores how the Jonah and Joel texts illuminate each other, and how both together throw light on Exod. 32 – 34. The primacy of Exod. 34: 6–7 in the biblical storyline gives it priority, and in fact later uses intend to capitalize on its connotations (Laney 2001).

. As Dozeman (1989: 211) points out, ‘The expansion of the formula of Yahweh’s gracious character [in Jon. 4: 2]. . . is, itself, anchored in the same narrative context in which the formula is introduced in Torah.’

. Sacrificing to other gods is a capital offence, Exod. 22: 20; cf. 23: 13; the ‘these’ of Exod. 32: 4 makes clear that Israel is worshipping more than one god at that point.

. See Widmer 2004: 169–211 and Timmer 2007 for further reflection on the points touched on here.

. This is also noted in Dozeman 1989: 221.

. See Widmer 2004: 113–119 for more detail. This explanation may be preferable to that offered by Roth (2005: 150), who suggests that ‘the grace-formula is as valid for the Gentiles as for Israel because Yahweh is the creator of the whole world’, since there is no obligation on God’s part as Creator to redeem his fallen world (’Die Gnadenformel gilt genauso für die Völker wie für Israel, weil Jhwh der Schöpfer der ganzen Welt ist’).

. Noted in Dorn 1991: 89. See the tabulation of the passages that cite Exod. 34: 6–7 in Sasson 1990: 280. Ps. 145: 8 may be an exception, but is not as strongly formulated as the passage in Jon. 4 and, more importantly, anticipates rather than recounts the international reach of Yahweh’s gracious character. On the global horizon of Ps. 145, see VanGemeren 1991: 861–862; Kraus 1993b: 548.

. Israel begins to repent in Exod. 33: 4, and the repentance in 33: 5–6 is even stronger; cf. Timmer 2009b: 113–116.

. Provan (1995: 144) notes two parallels: ‘travelling to a far-flung place without a divine travel permit (Jonah 1: 1–3); attempting to write his own contract for the job of prophet (Jonah 4)’. Sasson (1990: 284–285) also notes relevant parallels in Jer. 20: 14–18, Job 3 and Num. 11: 10–15, which are left unexplored here. They are all motivated by situations quite different from Jonah’s, and Elijah’s also happens to be the most striking contrast.

. Trible’s careful exploration of the prayer reaches a similar conclusion (Trible 1994: 203–204), as do those of Keil and Delitzsch (1977, 7: 411) and Fretheim (1977: 121–122).

. Magonet notes the semantic overlap of the two passages (Magonet 1976: 52).

. The range of possible meanings for the hiphil, according to Koehler and Baumgartner (2001: 408–409), is ‘to be friendly towards, deal well with; to do good to someone; to do something well; to do good, do well; well, utterly’ (the last is the adverbial use). The hiphil infinitive absolute of yātab occurs nine times outside Jon. 4, functioning twice as a complement to the cognate finite verb (Gen. 32: 13; Jer. 7: 5), six times adverbially (Deut. 9: 21; 13: 14; 17: 4; 19: 18; 27: 8; 2 Kgs 11: 18) and once as a transitive verb (Jer. 10: 5, where it is contrasted with doing harm to someone).

. Here I build on the reasoning given above to see the ‘forty days’ as having passed. To indulge briefly in conjecture, given my argument above that Nineveh’s repentance did not entail internal spiritual change, perhaps Jonah saw (a mere 40 days after his warning had been issued and Nineveh had repented) that Nineveh had not changed all that much, and so was hopeful that her destruction would follow in short order (so Abela 2001: 28). This understanding, in one form or another, is shared by a Targum on Jonah and several commentators; see Sasson 1990: 289. Whatever the intervening events between Jonah’s initial message and his conversation with God in Jon. 4, it is unnecessary to rearrange or modify the text, as many propose (Sasson [1990: 287–289] gives a convenient summary of approaches to the question). Interpretations that take 4: 5 as introducing a flashback (e.g. Stuart 1987: 504) are unlikely in the light of the verbal syntax, which gives no indication of such a shift.

. A ‘booth’ is always temporary (Sasson 1990: 290).

. As Stuart (1987: 504) and Sasson (1990: 317) suggest. Alternatively, perhaps Jonah found the absence of air circulation in his hut unpleasant (especially if it had earthen walls) and sat outside it, under the gourd. Fretheim’s interpretation accommodates either situation: ‘Anyone who has sat in a tent for a day in the Near East understands that additional shade is always welcome!’ (Fretheim 1977: 123). One might speculate (with Sasson 1990: 304; Alexander 1985: 129) that the east wind blew down Jonah’s hut, but given how important his own comfort was to him it seems likely that Jonah would simply have built another hut.

. Hence the Hebrew term rā’â should be translated ‘discomfort’ here and taken (along with the reference to shade in 4: 5 and especially the sun which beat down on Jonah’s head after the gourd’s demise in 4: 7) as a reference to the excessive heat that characterized his days outside Nineveh’s walls.

. There is probably an intentional use of ‘deliver’ and ‘evil’ to highlight the banal, self-centred nature of Jonah’s character here (Riede [2009: 258] similarly suggests that Jonah’s anger fuelled his compassion for the plant but raged against God’s compassion for Nineveh). This very unfavourable comparison shows that Nineveh’s sparing, and Yahweh’s agency behind it, are no more important for Jonah than his physical comfort, which shows Jonah’s self-centredness to be idolatry (also noted in Goodhart 1985: 53).

. Walton (1992: 48) makes almost the same point, stating that ‘the use of the compound divine name serves to signal to the reader that Jonah is being treated like Nineveh’. Kidner (1970: 126–127) counters that because both ‘Elohim’ and ‘Yahweh’ have dealings with Jonah after 4: 6, ‘no theological motive is apparent’, but such interchangeability is most easily understood if 4: 6 has a significance like that which I suggest here. See further Goldstein 2007.

. If my explanation below is convincing, this fills one of the ‘information gaps’ that Landes notes (Landes 1999: 288).

. Fernando (1988: 67) suggests that he could have run for cover into Nineveh, but that he would rather die! Riede (2009: 254) sees an intentional echo of ‘head’ from 2: 6 in 4: 8, contrasting Jonah’s strong desire for life there with his strong desire for death here.

. The Hebrew noun nepeš, normally translated ‘life, soul, being’, is used adverbially here: Jonah asked with all his being, with his very soul, to die.

. See Bolin 1997: 149. Pace Bolin, this numeric equality should not be understood as signifying rhetorical equality. In the OT Yahweh’s wisdom is routinely shown to be superior to humanity’s, and such a conclusion overlooks both the rationale and ultimate position of Yahweh’s closing words in the argument as well as the fact that this question of Yahweh goes unanswered (as Trible 1994: 216 points out).

. Here I build on the explanation of the passage offered in Walton 1992, though with a few changes.

Ninevites’ relationship to Yahweh after their ‘belief’ in him, contrasted with the clear change to Yahwism on the part of the sailors, makes future judgment of Nineveh quite possible.

. The verb occurs most frequently with ‘eye’ as its subject (e.g. Gen. 45: 20; Deut. 7: 16; 13: 9; 19: 13, 21; 25: 12; Isa. 13: 18; Ezek. 5: 11; 7: 4, 9; 8: 18; 9: 5, 10; 16: 5; 20: 17; 24: 14; presumed for grammatical reasons in 1 Sam. 24: 11; etc.) and means ‘pity’ (‘concern’ or ‘worry’ is better in Gen. 45: 20). When the verb’s subject is a person and the object is identified with the same preposition (Neh. 13: 22; Ps. 72: 13; Jer. 13: 14; Jer. 21: 7; Joel 2: 17) the phrase means ‘have compassion on’. God’s statement in Ezek. 24: 14 that he will not have mercy on Israel until he has brought his wrathful judgment upon her, and the hope of the Israelites in Joel 2: 17 that Yahweh may have mercy on them if they repent, are particularly salient in connection with Jon. 4, and make plausible a connection of Yahweh’s sparing here with the mercy he showed to Israel in Exod. 34.

. Walton (1992) argues that part of God’s purpose in giving and then taking away the plant is to make Jonah subjectively aware of the difference between receiving grace and having it taken away.

. A few interpreters (e.g. Guillaume 2006) argue that God states in 4: 11 that he will not have pity on Nineveh (‘I will not have pity’), and is not posing a rhetorical question (‘Will I not have pity?’). While this is prompted in part by Guillaume’s concern for resolving the question of divine justice, justice and mercy can coexist in the OT’s theology. God’s sparing of Nineveh after they repented in the light of Jonah’s preaching is compatible with his eventual destruction of them (some 150 years later, on a biblical reckoning) when their iniquity had reached its absolute limit (cf. Nahum). While Hebrew syntax does not clearly settle the matter, the context seems opposed to a declarative sense for 4: 11, mainly because Yahweh has already spared the city. Whatever he may do later (and sparing Nineveh for a mere moment is difficult to understand), Yahweh has already withheld his judgment long enough for Jonah to see Yahweh’s gracious character with blinding clarity. The ambiguity of the Ninevites’ relationship to Yahweh after their ‘belief’ in him, contrasted with the clear change to Yahwism on the part of the sailors, makes future judgment of Nineveh quite possible.

. While the Hebrew ribbô can mean ‘10,000’, or more generally ‘myriad’ (Koehler and Baumgartner 2001: 1178), the fact that there are twelve ribbô suggests that the numerical sense is in view. Sasson’s translation of ‘12 myriads’ could carry the connotation of twelve (Israelite tribelike?) groups of large size, though that suggestion is mine and not his (Sasson 1990: 312–313).

. McNutt (1999: 70, 151), for example, considers reasonable estimates for Canaan’s settled population in the twelfth century BC around 20,000, and in the mideighth century BC a total (Judah and Israel together) of about 500,000.

. While the animals’ importance in Jon. 4 is sometimes undervalued (see the interesting historical survey offered in Shemesh 2010), efforts to put them on a par with the Ninevites, as Person seems to do (Person 2008, esp. 89), move too far in the other direction. The book of Jonah is not exceptional in assigning animals an important, but qualitatively subordinate, place under humanity. Note the limited amount of text given to them in Jon. 4: 11 compared with God’s lengthier, and more detailed, description of Nineveh’s human population. This accords well with the order of creation in Gen. 1: 20–30, especially the command for humanity to rule over the animals in 1: 28.

. Lux notes the Creator–creature relationship that inheres in Yahweh’s compassion for Nineveh, both humans and animals (1994: 157, 203–208).

. Goodhart (1985: 53) offers this insightful analysis: ‘Jonah has refused to prophesy to the Ninevites, in other words, because he would reserve salvation for the Israelites alone. He would make an idol, ironically, of the law of anti-idolatry itself. But what God would teach him…. is that to begrudge salvation to the Ninevites is not simply snobbish: it is anti-Jewish. For who are the Jews? They are not some people indigenous to the region in which they live, who have been given some kind of special handling by God… The Jews, in other words, are ex-Ninevites, and by this same understanding, as those who had given up their sacrificial and idolatrous ways and turned in repentance to the religion of the Hebrew God.’

. Riede says that 4: 11 shows God to be the ‘friend of life’ (2009: 236), and that the point of the book’s closing question is ‘Can Jonah recognize what God’s actions actually show and disentangle himself from the power of death which he carries in himself?’

Chapter 7: Conclusions

. Chapell 2005: 276; so also Greidanus 1999: 288.

. Contrast E. J. Young’s claim (1960: 280) that ‘the fundamental purpose of the book of Jonah is not found in its missionary or universalistic teaching. It is rather to show that Jonah being cast into the depths of Sheol and yet brought up alive is an illustration of the death and resurrection of the Messiah for sins not His own and of the Messiah’s resurrection.’ Lessing (2007) and Woodhouse (1984) argue (correctly) that the ‘sign of Jonah’ is the analogy between Jesus’ experience of death and Jonah’s ‘descent into Sheol’ (Lessing 2007: 21; Woodhouse [1984: 39] notes that kardia [heart] and gēs [earth] appear in both the Greek translation of Jon. 2: 4, 7 and Matt. 12: 40), but are careful not to make this the ‘fundamental purpose’ of the book. For a partial survey of other interpretations of the sign of Jonah, including John the Baptist, see

A. K. M. Adam 1990. Larsen (2000) helpfully explores the correspondence of the blessing–judgment polarity in exploring Jonah’s sign.

. For one such effort, see the existential application of Jonah made by Van WijkBos (1999: 233).

. Goldsworthy 2000: 113; see his concise summary of this point on 113–114.

. ‘It was Israel’s exile, and the future beyond the exile, that the literary prophets of Israel were called and commissioned to explain’ (Robertson 2004: 6).

. I am convinced that the Sinai covenant was a unitary part of God’s gracious plan of redemption, but also recognize that its function as a period in redemptive history associated it (through Israel’s weakness and sin) with the bondage and death that characterize disobedience; see the helpful discussions in Estelle et al. 2009; Meyer 2009. Some aspects of the Sinai covenant’s fulfilment are explored in Timmer 2009b.

. Ladd’s ‘fulfillment without consummation’ describes this well (1974: 105).

J. Kline (2005) reflects at more length on the ways that Christ’s cross and resurrection fulfil the Day of the Lord.

. Note the generally eschatological overtones of ‘darkness’ in 1 Sam. 2: 9; 2 Sam. 22: 10, 12 = Ps. 18: 9, 11; Job 15: 23; Prov. 20: 20; Amos 8: 9; Jer. 15: 9; Isa. 13: 10, and

especially its prominence in the Day of the Lord, Joel 2: 2; Amos 5: 18, 20; Zeph. 1: 15. Webb 2000: 80–81 notes the echo of Lamentations in Mark 15.

. Terminology for the second coming is quite varied, including the day of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 1: 8), the day of God (2 Pet. 3: 12), the parousia (1 Cor. 15: 23) etc.

. See Vos 1930 for a penetrating treatment of the relationship, especially its chronological aspects, of believers’ experience and Christ’s work.

. Hansen (1998) helpfully breaks his analysis of sermons in Acts into those addressed to Gentile and Jewish audiences.

. On this point note Hays 2003, esp. 157–200.

. ‘As Paraclete, the Spirit makes a home for the Father and the Son in the believer, who becomes individually as well as ecclesiastically “a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit” (Eph. 2: 22)’ (S. Ferguson 1996: 187). See Turner 1998 and Read 2009 for further reflection on how the soteriological and ecclesiological aspects of the Spirit’s work in Acts relate. I do not at all intend to restrict the Spirit’s role in Acts to empowering for mission.

. O’Brien 1999a: 221. The same image of the eschatological temple’s building and inclusion of the Gentiles appears in Acts 15: 16–18; 1 Pet. 2: 4–10.

. Piper (2009: 31–32, 36–37, 70–71, and passim) explores this point: ‘the second objective historical event that had to happen for us to be born again with eternal life was the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. 1 Peter 1: 3–4. . . Jesus must be raised from the dead if we are to have new life in union with him’ (Piper 2009: 82–83).

. While theological reflection tells us that the subjective and objective aspects of Christian belief must be kept together, it is important to note that this dictum has biblical foundations, even (to the surprise of some) in Luke-Acts; see Read 2009.

. Moberly (2004: 166–167) calls this ‘the problem of defective understanding of confessions which are foundational within Scripture and for faith’.

. M’Cheyne famously wrote (in quotation, though he does not provide the source), ‘For one look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ!’ (M’Cheyne and Bonar 1883: 239). Thomas Chalmers attributes it to Richard Baxter; see F. Sanders 2010.

. Jonah’s use of imitatio Dei rather than an apodictic command for inculcating a specific posture toward Gentiles facilitates its message’s reception. ‘An ethic based on the notion of imitatio Dei was designed to inspire individuals to ever greater and nobler acts of compassion and love, for it spoke in the most eloquent terms of a morality of aspiration rather than a morality of duty, of what was intrinsically desirable rather than what was legally obligatory’ (E. Davies 1999: 112). For more on the imitatio Dei as an ethical motive, see C. J. H. Wright 1995: 139–140; Janzen 1994: 115, 119, 130, 154.

Other ways that the book of Jonah promotes a specific spiritual-ethical response include wisdom, which is itself related to imitation of God; see Moberly 2004, whose illumination of the book’s wisdom elements also confirms the relevance of imitatio Dei for understanding and applying the book.

. This will help in a very small way to forestall worry that imitation of God/ Christ is being urged apart from redemption, a sticking point noted by Webster (1986: 99–103).

. Wenham (2000: 106) recognizes the importance of Exod. 34 as an ethical point of reference in the OT.

. E. Davies 1999: 105; see e.g. Jer. 9: 24; 22: 3; Hos. 4: 1. I draw on Davies’s argument at several points in this section; see also Tinsley 1960: 50–64; Hauerwas 1984: 76–81.

. While the trinitarian element in the NT’s ethic of imitation is strong, it is particularly imitation of Christ as the exact and full image of God (Col. 1: 15; 2: 9) that is advocated.

. Jones (1994: 24) calls this ‘the goal of redemption’.

. ‘One of the essential ingredients in Christian holiness is steady patient contemplation of Jesus as he was in the fullness and simplicity of his human life’ (Neill 1960: 118).

. R. E. O. White 1979: 109, cited in Burridge 2007: 74. Webster is similar: ‘the Christian life… is contoured by reference to the historical existence of the Saviour and not merely by an abstract “salvation-event”’ (Webster 1986: 110, in the context of a critique of Käsemann’s view).

. Burridge (2007: 75) puts it well: ‘the main problem comes in deciding what it is we are supposed to imitate in or about Jesus’. Burridge singles out Christ’s ‘selfemptying or humility’ (with reference to Phil. 2: 1–13) and concludes that Paul presupposes ‘some knowledge among his readers of the biographical narrative about Jesus’, especially ‘his accepting of others, what we have to call his open pastoral practice’ (2007: 138–148, citation from 148). He further argues that Mark sees imitation of Christ as centred on taking up one’s cross, denying oneself and serving others (2007: 183–184); that Matthew and especially Luke make Jesus’ whole life the object of mimēsis, ‘imitation’ (2007: 223, 280); and that John focuses our imitation of Christ on his self-sacrificial love for sinners (2007: 339–345). A. K. M. Adam (2001) probes the issues of identity and difference in trying to determine what exactly Christians are to imitate in Christ’s behaviour, and Webster (1986) is more helpful still.

. See Averbeck 2008 for further reflections on the trinitarian aspects of spiritual formation.

. See especially Fernando 2000b, 2000c, 2000d for a convenient and concise summary of mission in relation to the Trinity.

. O’Brien 1999b: 205; several points in this paragraph derive from his article. Luke 4: 16–30 sketches a trajectory for the whole of Luke’s work (cf. J. B. Green 1995: 76). The Spirit-filled Messiah, in accordance with Scripture, comes to Nazareth to proclaim the ‘Jubilee’ of Isa. 61. The question of his identity is critical, and the hearers’ refusal to honour him is followed by a ‘judgment’. The message he brings, as earlier in Israel’s history, is rejected by Israel, and God turns to extend his grace to Gentiles; cf. J. B. Green 1997: 197.

. A prominent passage outside the Lukan corpus is John 15: 26 – 16: 2; see

M. Green 2002: 254 and the substantial contribution of Köstenberger (2009: 539–546), who argues that John’s very presentation of the Trinity ‘is a function of his mission theology’ (Köstenberger 2009: 540).

. See also S. Ferguson 1996: 45–52.

. The same point is made in Dominy 1993: 36–37.

. Note J. B. Green 1995: 151: ‘Luke understands Jesus to operate throughout his ministry in the sphere of the Spirit’s direction and power. And he understands that those who will continue Jesus’ mission, the divine project, must also receive the Spirit and move forward under the Spirit’s influence.’

. For an exploration of it in terms of biblical theology, see C. J. H. Wright 2006: 519–521.

. As summarized by Brown (1996: 7–9), perception ‘involves the way one selects, interprets, and evaluates events by means of certain fundamental symbols’. Intention ‘expresses purpose and gives direction to choice’; and virtue ‘denotes the pattern of choices an individual makes’.

. Virtues are habits that lead us to ‘act, think, or feel in a way that disposes a person to its proper end.… Virtues are those habits that make us truly human, that help us live our lives in the properly human way’ (Fedler 2006: 35). On Jesus’ concern for the lost in Luke, note Luke 19: 10 (‘the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost’) and the ‘compassion’ of the father for the prodigal son, Luke 15: 20.

. J. B. Green (1995: 85) notes that the Levi and Zacchaeus accounts ‘highlight the character of Jesus’ mission’, not least by quoting his summary of his motivation (Luke 5: 32; 19: 10).

. See further the classic expositions of ‘missionary spirituality’ by Nemer (1983) and Reilly (1975), and the more recent works that Nemer and Thomas (2003) annotate. I am gratified to see that Averbeck (2008) identifies the same constellation (conformity to the image of Christ; divine indwelling as God’s temple; outreach to the lost) in his overview of spiritual formation.

. Seltz (2006) offers a helpful description of the Christian life that combines union with Christ in his death and resurrection with a focus on mission.

. Compare the simple and pointed directives given in Strobel 2000: 189–202.

. ‘Every initiative in evangelism recorded in Acts is the initiative of the Spirit of God’ (M. Green 2003: 209).

. Lausanne 1974: introduction. Calvin’s remarks on Deut. 22: 1–4 are worth reflecting upon: ‘To love our neighbor is not to be regarded as an end in itself. Any indifference towards the salvation of our neighbor is to be regarded as indifference to God’s glory, for our neighbor is his property and possession by right’ (Calvin, sermon on Deut. 22: 1–4, cited in Wallace 1959: 39).

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