exaggeration, recalling a huge metropolis from the distant past. Wolff remarks: “The reader is not supposed to do arithmetic. He is supposed to be lost in astonishment …” (Wolff, Obadiah and Jonah, p. 148). Jonah is pictured as carrying out his assignment without much enthusiasm. He only “begins” to go into the city and only goes part way. His preaching in Nineveh does not reflect creativity or imagination and consists of only five words in Hebrew: “Yet forty days and-Nineveh will-be-overthrown” (author’s