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| Sperm whale (Physeter microcephalus) illustration by Uko Gorter |
So the LORD
spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.
Spoke (Heb., amar) occurs over 4,300 times in the OT. The vast majority of occurrences of this verb are followed by quotation marks. This is one of those exceptions. Something was communicated to the sperm whale by Yahweh that it clearly “understood” to perform certain actions.
and it
vomited Jonah
The amazing thing was not that the sperm whale discharged Jonah. Left to its
own devices, it would have naturally purged Jonah out in the deep blue, but he
disgorged Jonah at the time and place of the Creator’s choosing.
onto dry land
This
would be the whale's final action: to upchuck Jonah out of its forestomach on dry land would require the sperm
whale to beach itself and die there. There is nothing in the text to suggest
that Yahweh had this sperm whale return His prophet to Joppa or nearby; it is only an
assumption.
Now, I am not suggesting that it could not be a possibility, but my
hypothesis is that this great fish took Jonah further up the coastline and deposited him on an Assyrian beach to make a splash, sort of speak, before eyewitnesses. Such an event would be reported back to the king of Nineveh. The exact location is
theoretical at best. I’ve got an idea, but it may be a stretch.
If
Tarshish was located on the Atlantic side of Spain near the Gibraltar area, the
ship would have been moving in a westerly direction from Joppa, moving further
away from Nineveh with each nautical mile. How far the ship made headway before
the storm appeared out of nowhere is uncertain. “X” marks the exact spot where
the whale scooped up Jonah on any of the ancient maps of the Great Sea (former name) or the Mediterranean
Sea, right?
Wherever
“X” is located, the whale would have to be able to make it to land to unload
its unwanted content within the three days and three nights window once Jonah was
thrown overboard, and the whale swallowed him whole; it didn’t meander around
for three days and three nights. The question is where did it cough up Jonah:
Joppa, nearby Joppa, or somewhere on Assyrian soil? Does it matter?
Yes
and no. It matters for it is proof that Jonah survived the impossible. The man
and the message were married in the eyes of Yahweh. Jonah would have avoided
all of this had he maintained his vow (cf. Jon 2:9). Jonah on his own sought to
divorce himself from his vow. Vomiting Jonah on Assyrian soil would be more meaningful
for the Assyrians than for the inhabitants of non-Assyrian-controlled land.
It
wasn’t a vital necessity for Jonah to be disgorged on a beach in Assyrian, but it once
again promotes the idea that Yahweh is sovereign over His creation. This has
all the earmarks of being directed not happenstance. The whale wasn’t naturally
calling the spot to upJonah out of biological necessity.
Not
only that, Jonah being delivered on Assyrian soil would dovetail nicely, playing
off of their belief in Dagon and Nanshe (not Nancy!).
This alternative plan
(due to Jonah’s rebellion) is intricately woven by God in order to make Jonah
acceptable and receptive to the Assyrians. God had already been at work
softening up Assyrian resistance to His prophet’s declaration to save not a few
from destruction by bombardment, sandwiching them with an eclipse with a couple
of plagues, while in the midst of internal unrest. I will return to this later.
Did
Yahweh have to camouflage His prophet on the second commission (Jon 3:1-2) for it
looks like He did? It is a good question because had Jonah obeyed the first
commission (Jon 1:1-2), he would have looked normal entering into Nineveh. He is
looking like anything but normal now! I can’t answer that question, but what I do
know is that God is holy and cannot be charged with deceitfulness. We are
instructed to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves (Mt 10:16), yes?
These
overtures are similar today. Yahweh sent a messenger to ISIS to provide an
option. Now, He may have; I don’t know. But by the looks of things, either
Yahweh decreed them to be destroyed without remedy, or they rejected the
message; only God knows. Jonah’s disagreement with Yahweh for reaching out to
the Ninevites gave him no ground to challenge the Creator God. Yahweh is the
only true and living Creator God, not Jonah, you, or me. He alone calls the
shots.
Getting
back to the place where Jonah was gulped up, the distance may prove problematic
for a sperm whale, predicated on the whereabouts of the ship during the overboard
episode and the distance to Assyrian-controlled land in that short window
of time. Sperm whales normally travel around one hundred miles a week and can
obtain a speed of about 23 mph!
If
Tarshish was actually located closer in, then the navigational route would be
closer than a Tarshish located in Spain; it would, therefore, be very possible
of delivering Jonah on foreign soil within the whale’s physical limits of three days and three
nights time
frame. I told you many articles ago that the book of Jonah was ladened with
possibilities! It is kind of a fun book to interpret and hypothesize, with responsibility,
of course. It’s hard just to stick with the facts because of the data gaps
between the facts.
Unless you hadn’t noticed, I have exercised some restraint of injecting hyper-sovereignty
into the story of Jonah. Yes, Yahweh could overrule anything and everything
creation-related, in this case, the whale’s ability to get His prophet there faster
than naturally thought possible or plausible. I suppose Yahweh could have let
the whale cough Jonah up in the sea while an ethereal cloud hovered over him
and picked him up and conveyed him by the winds of providence to Nineveh! Yeah,
that’ll work; uh, no!
Back
to reality, there was really no need for Yahweh to intervene in this matter. To
keep Jonah alive inside the whale, yes; He did have to intervene to deliver
Jonah from drowning, but most of the time, we see God working with the natural
order of things (His creation), like the whale's ability to reach the precise
place of Yahweh’s own choosing at the exact time, but we also see Him “super” transcending
the natural (hence, supernatural), as in preserving Jonah alive in the
forestomach of a sperm whale, but, there again, I cannot discount the
possibility of Yahweh assisting Jonah’s uber whale either though, in this case, it may not have been necessary. Data are lacking to be conclusive.
If
the whale appointed by Yahweh was nearing the end of its life, it is possible
that it no longer took in any food after Jonah, save for what was already in
the forestomach and the rest of the gastric tract during Jonah’s time in the
whale. So, there is that latent potential that it traveled with all of its
strength to the modern-day Gulf of Iskenderun (formerly Alexandretta),
for instance, on the eastern Mediterranean Sea (the finger of Cyprus points in
the general direction of the gulf) on the southern coast of modern-day Turkey
to deliver Jonah on Assyrian shores and expired there. Jonah would still have a
considerable land journey remaining to reach Nineveh, but far less than from
Jerusalem, to either hike, take an uber caravan, or how about an uber cloud?
One
of the driving points of Yahweh using the whale to upchuck Jonah on Assyrian
soil was for Assyrian “whale watchers” to be there that day at that precise
time to witness Jonah being delivered by this humongous fish. This would be
astounding news to the Assyrians! News of such an event would precede Jonah into Nineveh
and to the king, post haste! It would be the talk of the town! “A messenger of
Dagon is coming!”
The only thing that tempered that excitement was the fear of the unknown for nothing
like this had ever happened according to extant Assyrian records (there are no Assyrian
records of a Hebrew ever visiting Nineveh, go figure), and they were unsure if
this was a good thing or a bad omen, as the recent plague + eclipse + plague
= OMG!
You can’t help but think that the inhabitants were acting kind of peculiar
when a strange-looking Hebrew dude came walking into Nineveh, the capital of
the Assyrian realm, Israel’s enemies actually, and he is given an immediate audience,
bottom to top, top to bottom (cf. Jon 3:4-9)! Sure, it was a God thing! But do you
see the wisdom of it? That it could have actually gone down this way? I am
inclined to believe that it did, but I’m flexible with a more compelling
narrative. <><
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| To Part 2 |
