Jonah

Phillip Cary

BrazosPress

a division of Baker Publishing Group

Grand Rapids, Michigan

©2008 by Phillip Cary

Published by Brazos Press

a division of Baker Publishing Group

P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

www.brazospress.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cary, Phillip, 1958–

Jonah /Phillip Cary.

p. cm.—(Brazos theological commentary on the Bible)

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN 978-1-58743-137-1 (cloth)

1. Bible. O.T. Jonah—Commentaries. I. Title. II. Series.

BS1605.53.C37 2008

224′.92077—dc22

2008019716

Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible

Series Editors

R. R. Reno, General Editor

Creighton University

Omaha, Nebraska

Robert W. Jenson

Center of Theological Inquiry

Princeton, New Jersey

Robert Louis Wilken

University of Virginia

Charlottesville, Virginia

Ephraim Radner

Wycliffe College

Toronto, Ontario

Michael Root

Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary

Columbia, South Carolina

George Sumner

Wycliffe College

Toronto, Ontario

For my mother and father:

where blessings begin

in the middle of things

Contents

Series Preface

Abbreviations

Introduction: Christian Readers of a Jewish Book

Text

Jonah 1: Jonah Goes Down and the Ship Is Saved

The Word of the Lord, Jonah, and the Gentiles (1:1–3)

At Wit’s End (1:4–6)

Finding out Jonah (1:7–10)

The Logic of Redemption (1:11–17)

Excursus: The Sign of Jonah

Jonah 2: Jonah’s Psalm from the Depths

Jonah 3: The Repentance of Nineveh

Jonah Calls and Nineveh Believes (3:1–5)

The King and God (3:6–10)

Jonah 4: The Repentance of the Lord

Jonah Contends with the Lord (4:1–4)

The Parable of the Gourd (4:5–11)

Epilogue: Jonah, Jacob, and the Older Brother

Subject Index

Scripture Index

Series Preface

Near the beginning of his treatise against Gnostic interpretations of the Bible, Against the Heresies, Irenaeus observes that Scripture is like a great mosaic depicting a handsome king. It is as if we were owners of a villa in Gaul who had ordered a mosaic from Rome. It arrives, and the beautifully colored tiles need to be taken out of their packaging and put into proper order according to the plan of the artist. The difficulty, of course, is that Scripture provides us with the individual pieces, but the order and sequence of various elements are not obvious. The Bible does not come with instructions that would allow interpreters to simply place verses, episodes, images, and parables in order as a worker might follow a schematic drawing in assembling the pieces to depict the handsome king. The mosaic must be puzzled out. This is precisely the work of scriptural interpretation.

Origen has his own image to express the difficulty of working out the proper approach to reading ...