The Book of Jonah

The Book of Jonah is one of the most recognizable, most curious, and most strangely compelling in the Bible. For centuries, it has inspired sermons, art, literature, music, and debate (including debate about whether the story is history, parable, allegory, or satire). Despite its familiarity and antiquity, it is filled with surprises and themes that are still relevant.

As sacred text, it serves as a source of revelation and wisdom about the divine. But Jonah is a paradoxical figure: he is a prophet almost without a message and nearly lacking the courage to convey it. And the Book's brevity--"one of the smallest strands in the mighty cable of the Scriptures"--belies its rapid shifts in scene and plethora of challenges to the hero. Besides the famous "great fish" (or whale, in fact a small part of the narrative) it features storms and sailors, rebellion and rescue, preaching and protest, and a miraculous plant and miraculous worms that devour it.

The Book of Jonah:

• KJV
• NIV
• KJV audio 9 mins

Supplemental:

• Animated overview
• The World in Time podcast on "The Sermon"
• Jonah and the Varieties of Religious Motivation
• In the Belly of the Whale song by Newsboys
• "Jonah and the Whale" S2E01 of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

Extracts:

• “Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.” -Jonah (Moby-Dick, Extracts)
• "... in those jaws of swift destruction, like another cursed Jonah... bustles a little withered old man, who, for their money, dearly sells the sailors deliriums and death." (Moby-Dick, 3)
• "Shipmates, this book, containing only four chapters—four yarns—is one of the smallest strands in the mighty cable of the Scriptures. Yet what depths of the soul does Jonah’s deep sea-line sound!" (Moby-Dick, 9)
• "Be it known that, waiving all argument, I take the good old fashioned ground that the whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back me." (Moby-Dick, 32)
• "They may circumnavigate the world fifty times, and they see about as much of it as Jonah did in the whale’s belly." (White-Jacket, 3)
• "Damn you, you Jonah! I don’t see how you can sleep in your hammock..." (White-Jacket, 78)
• "And here in the black bowels of the ship, sunk low in the sunless sea, our poor Israel lay for a month, like Jonah in the belly of the whale." (Israel Potter, 3)
• "Over this lip, as over a slippery threshold, we now slide into the mouth. Upon my word were I at Mackinaw, I should take this to be the inside of an Indian wigwam. Good Lord! is this the road that Jonah went?" (Moby-Dick, 75)
• "And no doubt, if Jonah himself could be summoned to the stand, he would cheerfully testify to his not having heard a single syllable, growl, grunt, or bellow engendered in the ventricle cells of the leviathan, during the irksome period of his incarceration therein." ("Etchings of a Whaling Cruise")
• "I am the only traveller sojourning in Joppa. I am emphatically alone, & begin to feel like Jonah." (Journals, 20 Jan 1857)
• "The genuine Jonah feeling, in Joppa.... it is only by stern self-control and firm defiance that I contrive to keep cool and patient." (Journals, 22 Jan 1857)

This meetup is part of the series In the Belly of the Whale.