The aftermath of the storm
Chapter Three
Looking into Jonah 1
Meeting the main characters
With the biblical-theological approach and themes outlined earlier fresh in our minds, we are ready to take up the book of Jonah itself. All three of the book’s themes (mission, conversion and spirituality) are clearly in view in Jonah 1, and set the stage for the rest of the book by helping us understand the characters of God, Jonah and a curious group of Gentiles. The fact that these are the only characters in the story for the first half of the book emphasizes the author’s interest in their interrelation, and his use of an amazingly disobedient Israelite prophet and of exceptionally converted Gentiles further hints at his central concern.
God
The book begins by identifying the God who commissions Jonah by means of the tetragrammaton (Jon. 1:1, commonly pronounced ‘Yahweh’ and translated as ‘Lord’ in most English Bibles). This divine name first comes to prominence in the Bible when God connects it in a special way to Israel’s deliverance from Egypt (Exod. 6:2–8). The exodus is the fulfilment of part of God’s promise to Abraham (Gen. 15:13–14), showing that God is able to deliver his people wherever they are and that no god is able to withstand him. In the context of the exodus from Egypt, this has largely ethnic significance, but the fact that a mixed multitude left Egypt with Abraham’s descendants (Exod. 12:38) prevents even that definitive event from being cast exclusively in such terms. The author of Jonah withholds more elaboration on this name’s significance until he has introduced the other characters.
Jonah
The first chapter identifies Jonah in no fewer than four ways: the narrator makes reference to his family and prophetic call (1:1), and Jonah himself later refers to his ethnicity and religion (1:9). We will consider later what Jonah says about himself, so here we can focus on the statement that ‘the word of Yahweh came to Jonah, son of Amittai’. This identification of the story’s antagonist is very important for understanding Israelite sentiment (possibly widespread) regarding other nations because of the link it establishes to Jonah’s prophecy in 2 Kings 14, which states that Jeroboam II would restore Israel’s borders. It is also very significant that the phrase ‘the word of the Lord came’ is used to introduce Jonah’s ministry, since within the OT this introduction, occurring some eighty-five times in the precise form found in Jonah 1, always introduces recipients of the divine word, whom the biblical authors present as historical individuals (e.g. 1 Sam. 15:10; 2 Sam. 7:4; 1 Kgs 6:11; Jer. 1:4; Ezek. 3:16; Hab. 1:3; Zech. 4:8). There is therefore good reason to take the story of Jonah as historical, something Christian interpreters have done for centuries, and to understand its literary genre as didactic history. This, in turn, necessitates a glance at eighth-century Israel.
By the time Jeroboam II gained Israel’s throne (782 bc), Assyrian imperialism had been threatening Israel’s existence for over half a century. Happily for Jeroboam, just before his accession Assyria entered a period of decline that lasted several decades. This had already allowed his father and predecessor J(eh)oash (798–782 bc) to work toward developing a small-scale empire in southern Syria-Palestine, a push that included making Judah an Israelite vassal (2 Kgs 13:12). Jeroboam continued this project with significant success, retaking cities Aram had taken from Jehoahaz, stopping tribute payments to Assyria, and coming to control more territory than any Israelite king before him. The book of Kings explicitly connects this military success with the fulfilment of the prophet Jonah’s word that such would be the case (2 Kgs 14:25), a prophecy indebted to God’s promise to Jehu (2 Kgs 10:30) and to his compassion for the Israel so recently buffeted by Assyria and Aram (2 Kgs 14:26–27; cf. 13:23; Amos 1:3) (Provan 1995: 238).
While the book of Kings frankly assesses these kings as among those that ‘did evil in the sight of Yahweh’ (2 Kgs 13:11; 14:24), it does not explore their sinful behaviour in a way that illuminates how Israel understood her place among the nations. For this we have to turn to the northern prophets contemporary with Jeroboam II: Amos and Hosea. Hosea called Israel back to God as her King (Hos. 13:10–11) and condemned her present rulers (7:3), while Amos artfully contrasted Jeroboam’s syncretistic regime and grasping after godless autonomy with Yahweh’s uniquely legitimate claim to sovereignty over Israel (Amos 7:7–17), ultimately directing Israel’s hope to the restoration of the Davidic monarchy (9:11) (P. Miller 2000b: 531).
The indifference to God’s revelation and prophetic testimony calling for repentance that Hosea and Amos condemned was hardly restricted to Israel’s royalty, however. The response of Jeroboam II (or of Amaziah, his priest at Bethel) to Amos’s announcement of judgment, which forbade Amos from continuing his ministry in Israel (Amos 7:12–13), is mirrored in the response of many Israelites, whose self-indulgence (2:6–7; 3:15; 4:1) and blatant syncretism (3:15) demonstrated a similar desire to live by their own rules and for their own satisfaction.
When this background is integrated with the events recounted in Jonah, the picture of an Israel that was comfortable in her temporary military success, mistaking God’s mercy and compassion for his indifference in the face of her religious apostasy, emerges in all its garish colour. If the powerful in Israel and a wide swathe of commoners were equally interested only in themselves at the expense of their own Abrahamic kin, it is nearly certain that these same people would have completely disregarded their role in God’s plan to bring blessing to the nations. At any rate, their disregard for obedience to the covenant would have rendered their centripetal witness ineffective even if it came about. As a result, the reader is encouraged to consider Jonah’s role in the book that bears his name as a representative of unrepentant Israel.
Jonah’s similarity to the Israel of his day will become evident if we examine his role as prophet. Though necessary to the plot, Jonah’s prophetic identity is also important for its ironic value. Jonah first avoids the role entirely (chs. 1–2), then performs it perfunctorily (chs. 3–4). More striking still is the way that the book consistently portrays him as a prophet who delivers Yahweh’s words while being fundamentally in conflict with him. But what of Jonah in the book of Kings, where (whether before or after his trip to Nineveh) he relayed to Israel the message that her borders would be expanded as never before?
The two episodes, taken together, create a number of contrasts and ironies that enrich our understanding of him. First, they present a prophet in direct opposition to Yahweh when his message is apparently not for Israel’s immediate, humanly defined, good, while that same prophet is presumably complicit in the announcement of Israel’s expansion. This inconsistency on Jonah’s part is paired with a reversal of the reader’s expectations when Yahweh shows mercy to Nineveh, since God’s fulfilment of Jonah’s prophecy concerning Israel’s expansion (assuming it came before his mission to Nineveh) showed him to be capable of fulfilling his word, and so made Nineveh’s punishment a possibility. Finally, Nineveh’s preservation contributed directly to Israel’s imminent destruction by Assyria, an event that 2 Kings 17 connects to Israel’s complicity in Jeroboam’s religious perversion in particular. Nineveh’s deliverance in Jonah, in other words, contributes to Israel’s punishment for her covenant infidelity, which was not at all in view in Jonah’s prophecy regarding Jeroboam. Jonah’s double appearance in the OT encourages the reader to see the book’s events against the background of the complex role Israel had among the nations and also contributes to a striking comparison between Israel and Assyria, since both can be delivered and yet ultimately fall under God’s just judgment.
Nineveh
Nineveh in Jonah’s day had been an Assyrian royal residence since the time of Shalmaneser I (1273–1244), though it became the capital city in common parlance only in 705, when Sennacherib moved it from the ill-omened Dar-Sharrukin that his father Sargon II had recently built before being assassinated in a plot led by several of his sons. As a prominent Neo-Assyrian city, Nineveh was closely associated with the empire’s military activity throughout the first millennium bc, and this meant that it surely conjured up very negative images in the minds of Israelites, and that for several good reasons.
First and foremost, the Assyrian empire was built by military action. While initially Assyria had actually to achieve her conquests, she soon discovered the usefulness of intimidation to achieve the same ends. The success of this intimidation depended upon Assyria’s earned reputation as a brutal and merciless military opponent, and by the ninth century, when it was perfected by Ashur-nasir-apli II (883–859), it was often successful in convincing states to assume vassal status (Bedford 2001: 18). This monarch’s royal inscriptions also illustrate the religious element that, together with the financial benefits which attended conquest, motivated Assyria’s imperialism (Oded 1992). One such inscription opens in typical fashion by describing him as ‘king of the universe, unrivaled king, king of all the four quarters, sun(god) of the people, chosen of the gods Enlil and Ninurta, beloved of the gods An and Dagan, destructive weapon of the great gods’. The inscription emphasizes his obedience to the gods and seems to relish the brutal tactics that eventually made Assyrian intimidation successful:
By the command of Ashur (and) the goddess Ishtar, the great gods my lords, I moved out of the city Nineveh. . .. I approached the city Suru. . .. Awe of the radiance of Ashur my lord overwhelmed them. The nobles (and) elders of the city came out to me to save their lives. . .. I erected a pile in front of his gate; I flayed as many nobles as had rebelled against me (and) draped their skins over the pile; some I spread out within the pile, some I erected on stakes upon the pile, (and) some I placed on stakes around about the pile. I flayed many right through my land (and) draped their skins over the walls. I slashed the flesh of the eunuchs (and) of the royal eunuchs who were guilty. I brought Ahi-yababa [the ruler of Suru] to Nineveh, flayed him, (and) draped his skin over the wall of Nineveh.
The violence that these texts glibly detail also appears in the narrative art of the period that adorned, if that is the proper term, the palaces of the Assyrian monarchs. Many events like those verbalized in the inscription cited above are elaborately represented in the bas-reliefs of Assyrian royal architecture, which typically presents as humorous ‘the problems, contortions and maltreatment of dead or doomed enemies’.
As the inscription cited above shows, there was also a prominent religious aspect to Assyria’s self-image that most Israelites would have found offensive, if not for theological reasons then for practical ones:
Assyrian texts expound an imperial ideology claiming that Ashur was the pre-eminent deity who ruled over all the gods and, as a corollary, the political reality on earth should therefore be that all peoples acknowledged the sovereignty of Ashur’s representative, the Assyrian king. To that end the king was charged at his coronation to ‘extend the borders’ of Assyria.
This link between god and king is at the very centre of Assyrian kingship, as expressed by a royal hymn for Assurbanipal (668–627) which begins with the exclamation ‘Ashur is king! Ashur is king!’
Once Ashur-nasir-apli II had perfected the tactic of intimidation, it was put to frequent use, and the lesser powers around Assyria become either provinces or client states. Client states retained vestiges of independence such as indigenous rulers and their own political institutions, while provinces were fully absorbed into the empire’s administration and control. All the same, the very identity of peoples in client states and provinces alike was overwritten by their new master: all people dominated by the Assyrian empire were termed ‘Assyrians’ by the empire.
If this were not enough, the Israelite nation itself had a long and inglorious history of making payments to Assyria as a result of her subordinate status. After Ahab’s successful resistance as part of the anti-Assyrian coalition in the Battle of Qarqar in 853 bc, Jehu (841–814) was compelled to pay tribute to Shalmaneser III in 841. Though the campaigns of Shalmaneser III against Damascus in 838–836 were followed by several decades of Assyrian inactivity in the west, this soon changed and J(eh)oash (798–782) was obliged to pay tribute to Adad-Nirari III in 796. Beginning just before the reign of Jeroboam II in Israel (782–753) and for a few decades more, Assyria entered a period of decline, allowing the Israelite kings J(eh) oash and Jeroboam after him to develop the small-scale empire mentioned earlier in the period covering Jonah’s ministry. This changed suddenly with the accession in 744 of the Assyrian monarch Tiglath-Pileser III, who campaigned aggressively and successfully in the West to re-establish Assyrian supremacy there. Consequently, Menahem (752–742) and Hoshea (732–722) paid tribute to him. Tiglath-Pileser III’s imperialist success reduced Israel to a rump state through repeated annexations of its territory and deportations of its population in the 730s, so that by the end of Jonah’s ministry Israel had a plethora of reasons to dislike the Assyrian behemoth intensely.
Not only were these factors historical realities in Israel’s experience, but Assyrian ideology was also transmitted to, or present in, Israel by a number of means, including memorial monuments, administrative presence, and word of mouth. All things considered, Israel was not lacking reasons to dislike Assyria, yet those things Israel would have found most offensive and threatening were bound up with the very well-being of the Assyrian empire.
Initial identities and contrasts
The disobedient Israelite prophet
Immediately after hearing of Jonah’s prophetic commission and understanding how Jonah might have felt about warning Assyria, the reader is presented with the surprising and almost comical picture of his attempt to flee from Yahweh’s word and presence (note the repetition of ‘from the presence of Yahweh’, in Jon. 1:3, and its reiteration in 1:10). The only biblical text outside Jonah in which the same expression for flight from God is mentioned is Psalm 139:7, a psalm celebrating divine omnipresence, so the expression is rare enough that we have only the immediate context to help us understand it here. When the wickedness of the Ninevites comes up into God’s presence (Jon. 1:2), something distinct from his omnipresence must be in view, since omnipresence by definition is not localized. On the other hand, when Jonah explains to the sailors in verse 9 that he has attempted to flee from ‘the God of the heavens who made the sea and the dry land’, the sailors clearly infer that flight from that God is futile precisely because he is omnipresent, being bound neither to land nor to sea (unlike almost all other ancient Near Eastern deities). The fact that Jonah’s flight is understood in terms of omnipresence in 1:10 suggests that the same is true of it in 1:3, and this makes Jonah’s flight not just sinful, but inevitably unsuccessful.
Verse 4 reinforces the conclusion that Jonah’s behaviour is a pitiful attempt to flee from the omnipresent God of Israel by inverting the normal Hebrew word order to interrupt the chain of events and to place Yahweh at the head of the clause and thus ‘one step ahead’ of Jonah. This highly abnormal relationship between Yahweh and his prophet, one to which Jonah is apparently trying to put an end, is drawn into sharper focus throughout the rest of the chapter, which develops a number of contrasts between the Israelite Jonah and the Gentile sailors.
Yahweh and Gentile sailors in Psalm 107
While the announcement that Nineveh’s wickedness has impelled God to announce judgment against it bodes ill for Nineveh, the book slowly but surely starts preparing the reader for another aspect of God’s relation to Gentiles. Beginning in 1:4, we witness anonymous Gentile sailors participating in maritime commerce (cf. Ps. 107:23, the first verse in the section of that psalm which clearly includes God’s relationship to non-Israelites), and very soon encountering a ‘stormy wind’ (rûaḥ sĕ’ārâ in Ps. 107:25; sĕ’ārâ in 107:29; cf. sa’ar in Jon. 1:4). At that point in the story the sailors are (poly)theistic, as was normal in the ancient Near East, but they do not know Yahweh. Thus when their lives are threatened by the storm, their actions reveal the hope that their gods are capable of doing something to save them from a watery grave, and they cry out to them (with the phrase zā’aq ’el, Jon. 1:5; contrast zā’aq ’el with Yahweh as the object in Ps. 107:28). This same disposition motivates the captain’s order that Jonah call upon his God (Jon. 1:6), something that he apparently does not do.
Jonah, the Gentile sailors and God
In the course of this initial presentation of the sailors, we are also told several things about Jonah that contrast him with them and with God. In 1:5, where the sailors are painfully aware of their plight, Jonah is immersed in stupefying sleep and so knows neither their danger nor his own. In the light of Yahweh’s interest in Nineveh (albeit as the universal Judge who issues a threat of punishment), we also see the continuation of another contrast: that between God and his prophet. God goes so far as to send a prophet to a non-Israelite city (something quite rare in the OT), yet Jonah not only disobeys that commission but when in the company of other Gentiles remains completely withdrawn from them. Despite the captain’s plea that Jonah pray to his God, it is only the casting of lots that brings Jonah out into the open, after which the sailors’ efforts to divine his connection with their precarious situation finally reveal his connection to Yahweh.
Identities clarified and remade
Yahweh as creator and judge
After unsuccessfully imploring their gods to save them in 1:5–6, the sailors begin to reckon with what might be called theodicy (the relation of divine justice to human experience, especially suffering) when they conclude, since the storm continues to rage, that there is unresolved sin in the life of someone among them. Theodicy in the ancient Near East routinely saw the sufferer as ignorant of rather than innocent of some offence, and tended to define righteousness as having done all that can be done to account for, or bring an end to, personal suffering (Bricker 2000: 211–212). The sailors, in other words, take for granted that they have unfinished business with their gods as long as their lives are threatened.
Their alarm, already palpable as we see them jettison as much cargo as possible without concern for economic consequences, escalates further when the lot falls to Jonah and he begins to speak. Leaving aside for the moment his self-identification as a Hebrew, the sailors take to heart especially the second element in his statement, which identifies him as guilty before the creator of heaven, earth and sea. The sailors are aghast when they hear that one among them has attempted to flee from a deity who has sovereignty on sea and land, and who as their creator exercises his justice everywhere. Their own gods (to whom they attributed the ability to control primarily just one sphere anyway) had failed to respond, or were unable to aid them, so that not just Jonah’s words, but the sailors’ present experience, remove all deities except Yahweh from the scene.
The sailors and Jonah thus find themselves face to face with a deity who has unlimited power and has apparently begun to punish some sin among them. It is striking that in those circumstances the sailors are the first ones to react, asking Jonah what they should do to him so that the sea would become calm. Jonah himself does exactly nothing until thus prompted, though he understood more clearly than the sailors his unique responsibility for their common predicament. Why he is so passive is a question we will consider in connection with his claim to fear Yahweh.
Jonah, Yahweh and the sailors
To return to the first element in Jonah’s reply to the sailors’ questions, his statement that he is a Hebrew distinguishes him ethnically from everyone else on board. Since Jonah identifies himself first ethnically, then religiously, we may infer that his ethnicity is foremost in his self-identity, though it is clearly of no relevance to the sailors.
Jonah’s self-description as one who ’fears Yahweh’ complicates our task of interpretation, since it jars with his disobedience of the divine commission. As already mentioned, Wolff notes that fearing or revering Yahweh ‘describes a living relationship of obedience and trust’, but neither of these elements is evident in Jonah’s behaviour. Jonah is undoubtedly Hebrew, but in the light of his actions the reader has every right to doubt Jonah’s second claim: apparently, not every Hebrew fears Yahweh.
The last phrase that Jonah uses to describe Yahweh, the one ‘who made the sea and the dry land’, suggestively traces all humanity back to the divine act of creation and articulates our fundamental equality before God (cf. Exod. 20:11; Neh. 9:6; Ps. 146:6; Amos 5:8; 9:6) (Lux 1994: 109–111). It thus confirms that while Jonah’s ethnicity is what comes first to his mind, other considerations outweigh it: as soon as Jonah opens his mouth, his words begin to establish a contrast between his view of himself as different from the Gentile sailors and God’s view of humanity as fundamentally equal before him in the light of their common status as creatures in his image.
This presentation of Jonah as a prophet fundamentally in rebellion against Yahweh, and thus on the same religious plane as the sailors (even though he thinks otherwise), sets the stage for a surprising turn of events in the sailors’ lives. This new situation, moreover, allows the narrator to develop further his characterization of both Jonah and the sailors.
While some have argued that Jonah’s call for the sailors to throw him overboard indicates his concern for them, this explains at most only part of his behaviour. He certainly does understand that the storm indicates divine displeasure at his own disobedience (1:12b) and that the others were in danger of drowning on account of his sin. So, once prompted to do something, he suggests that the sailors throw him into the waves so as to make the sea ‘calm for them’ (1:12a). But what led Jonah to assume that his death would assuage the storm? And why, especially in the light of the later emphasis on Nineveh’s change, does Jonah completely ignore repentance, which can deliver sinners from seemingly certain punishment? Nowhere in this chapter, or anywhere else in Jonah for that matter, are we told that he repented of his disobedience, so his eventual trek to Nineveh should not be taken as irrefutable evidence that he has fully submitted himself to God’s call.
In the light of this conscious avoidance of repentance, we are permitted to explore other possible motives, in particular that his choice to go overboard rather than repent suggests that he would rather die than change course. If this seems presumptive in the light of the meagre data available here in Jonah 1, recall that we will see this same attitude again in Jonah 4, where Jonah’s life becomes meaningless to him if his desire to see Gentiles punished is thwarted. Jonah’s desire to perish by drowning might also suggest that he sees divine justice as inevitably bringing immediate punishment (in this case, of Jonah himself), a theodicy that he surely applies to Nineveh (but fears that God does not). In any case, Jonah’s confession in 4:2–3 that his attitude toward Nineveh has been consistent from the beginning gives us good grounds to doubt that an altruistic motive was uppermost in Jonah’s decision to go overboard. It also suggests that Jonah’s real motives are not yet visible, so a ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’ is biblically authorized at this point.
The sailors and Yahweh
While Jonah’s willingness to sacrifice his life in order to save the sailors is perhaps laudable, the sailors’ efforts to save him from death are certainly so. For one thing, it is telling that while Jonah is willing to involve the sailors in his death, they recoil from the suggestion and with courage and compassion do all they can to avoid throwing him to his death. But the growing storm renders this effort unsuccessful, and with no other option they then pray for Yahweh not to count them guilty for Jonah’s death.
This clearly demonstrates their newfound conviction that he really is the universal Judge of whom Jonah had told them. Their prayer, cast in words that echo Psalms 115:3, 135:6, recognizes Yahweh’s sovereignty over them and the storm. Not only that, but they recognize Yahweh as God before he has shown that he will not hold them guilty for Jonah’s death, and before the storm has abated. Because their religious transformation is evident before they derive any demonstrable benefit from it, it cannot be motivated by pragmatism or self-preservation. In short, they revere Yahweh for who he is, not for what he can give them.
The links between the sailors’ prayer and Psalms 115 and 135 merit further reflection. The former contrasts at length ‘the nations’ (Ps. 115:1) and those who believe in Yahweh, and sets the impotence of the Gentiles’ idols over against Yahweh’s sovereignty and power in delivering those who trust in him. Psalm 135, for its part, echoes the description of idols in Psalm 115 but adds references to the sea as subject to Yahweh (135:6) and Jerusalem as the site of his throne (135:21). These elements create an interesting complexity in Yahweh’s identity: though he is tied to Israel, his deliverance is available to all who trust in him. The echo of these two psalms in Jonah 1 also has the effect of substituting the now-converted sailors for the Israelites of Psalms 115 and 135, and contrasting pagan deities with the God of Israel.
The characterization of the sailors that has so far focused on their speech is next complemented by a focus on their actions once the storm has ended (in all likelihood the sacrifices were offered after their voyage ended, since the recently lightened ship would no longer carry the wherewithal for a sacrifice). First, their reverence for Yahweh is expressed in precisely the same terms that described their fear of the storm: ‘and the men feared YHWH with a great fear’ (Jon. 1:16). This can hardly be something less than whole-hearted conversion to Yahweh: as already noted, the phrase ‘to fear/revere God’ in the OT consistently describes those who have and maintain a healthy relationship with Yahweh. The sailors’ sacrifices and vows in the same verse confirm this, since such actions habitually prove a permanent commitment to a deity. We should not overlook the fact that the description of the sailors’ worship in Jonah 1:16 lacks the Zion element apparent in Psalm 107, which began the characterization of the seamen by means of references to other parts of Scripture earlier in the chapter (Ps. 107:32; Jon. 1:4–6, 13).
Here again the author of Jonah has echoed OT texts that do more than simply illustrate the link between true faith in Yahweh and offering vows and sacrifices. Psalm 50 draws our attention first of all because it is one of a very few texts that speak of ‘sacrificing’ and ‘vows’ in the same breath. No less interesting is the stress its author puts on the propriety of vows and sacrifices provided that the worshipper’s life is in accord with God’s revealed will. It is also interesting that Psalm 50 addresses Israelites who have taken the covenant upon their lips but whose hearts disdain God’s word (50:17). Likewise Isaiah 19:21, which shares several terms with Jonah 1:16, describes the eschatological restoration of Egypt (Isa. 19:16–25) and shows Israel’s ancient enemies fulfilling the normal Israelite cultic duties of vows and sacrifices (Oswalt 2003: 243).
These intertextual links to other passages in the OT show that the author of Jonah is a careful interpreter of existing Scripture. The first link, to Psalm 107, shows that Yahweh can deliver anyone, anywhere, and the links to Psalms 115 and 135 contrast ‘the nations’ with those who ‘fear Yahweh’, tying such belief to Jerusalem (135:2, 21) but applying the language of ‘fearing Yahweh’ to the Gentile sailors! The last intertextual connection in is to a variety of texts that describe true devotion to Israel’s God in terms of his worshippers’ cultic actions of vowing vows and offering sacrifices, passages that either see some ethnic Hebrews as unqualified to offer acceptable sacrifices (Ps. 50) or foresee the eschatological participation of Gentiles in Israel’s cult (Isa. 19:21).
This wealth of identifying information, in addition to establishing a glaring contrast between Jonah and the sailors, completes the rapid transformation of the sailors’ religious identity (Lux 1994: 121). This is, moreover, the clearest instance of such a change in the book of Jonah, and it occurred with sailors whose prior identity was a blank in everything but religion – and in that domain, they were as far from Yahwism as could be! The description of their conversion in language drawn from elsewhere in the OT, material that in its original context applied to faithful Israelites, adds potency to the description of their entry into the number of those who revere Yahweh.
The aftermath of the storm
Even though Israel was almost constantly threatened by Assyria, and would fall to its armies barely thirty years after the end of Jeroboam’s reign, the book of Jonah views Israel and Assyria through the largest possible lens, that of humanity under the threat of divine judgment but presented with the possibility of repentance. In doing so it pushes to the side the imperialist motives of Jeroboam II and Assyria alike and reasserts Yahweh’s universal kingship and grace, paradoxically pointing to the only way of escape for both Israel and Nineveh (Timmer 2008a: 22).
In more concrete terms, Jonah’s anti-missionary activity has ironically resulted in the conversion of non-Israelites, preparing the reader for the shocking contrast between Jonah and God that comes fully into view in . While we never hear of these sailors again, their contribution to the story’s development is substantial. As for the fate of Jonah, presently under the waves if the Hebrew chapter division is followed (Eng. 1:17 is Heb. 2:1), one must read on.