postexilic era, rather than its earlier years—perhaps the same period as Ecclesiastes (cf. K. Marti, 247; O. Loretz, ibid., 25). How far removed the narrator is from the historical realities of the preexilic era is shown by the uninhibited way he combines historical names. The addressee of his Jonah is no longer the eighth-century Jeroboam II (as was the historical Jonah’s, according to 2 Kings 14:25*). Jonah’s message is now addressed to Nineveh, which entered Israel’s orbit only when it became