Jonah (review)

Book Reviews 85 Esau (Edom), reflect how Israel felt about her near neighbors with whom she had an uncertain relationship and who had paid for her triumphs. Finally Greenspahn claims that, although such tales need not necessarily have been written in Solomon's time, they were intended to provide a pattern to which the rise of both David and Solomon conformed. The weakened and subordinate position ofthe Jews during the Exile might have been a fertile ground for the retelling of such accounts of successful if not always worthy ancestral younger siblings, in whom Israel saw herself. The ample footnotes testifY to the rich resources that Greenspahn has utilized. He has produced a lucid discussion of the topic that successfully challenges many long-held assumption and stimulates rethinking about these men and women, their stories and their purpose in the Bible. Further, he has demonstrated how all of this is part of the one central theme of God's relationship with his chosen people. For him, the whole works to portray Israel as God's bekor, but neither the firstborn nor the best. If the glorious theology of election did not always match Israel's disloyal behavior and the sad realities of political conflict and weakness, then the stories of Jacob and Joseph, David and Solomon, flawed but selected, gave from Israel's past a hope for her future. John Barclay Burns George Mason University Jonah, by James Limburg. Old Testament Library. Louisville, KY: Westminsterl.John Knox, 1993. 123 pp. $20.00. This balanced commentary pays attention to literary and theological issues within the book of Jonah, but its special contribution consists of excerpts from the history of interpretation, particularly from the Jewish Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer (ninth century) and the Zohar, and from the Arab source, The Tales of the Prophets of Al-Kisa'i. The brief observations extracted from the writings of Luther and Calvin have little of interest, except Luther's wry remark that in the belly of the whale Jonah could not keep track of time or his precise location in the sea because the sun was obscured from his view, his comment that if such a story were not in the Bible one would brand it a lie, and his opinion that Nineveh's repentance was a greater miracle than survival in a whale or the crossing of the Red Sea on dry ground. The Arab source presents Jonah in a more favorable light than the biblical story, concentrating on Jonah's temporary loss of wife and 86 SHOFAR Spring 1995 Vol. 13, No.3 children, divine discipline of the prophet, and eventual restoration of his family. The Jewish midrash on Exodus 35:1-38:20 in the Zohar has Jonah pay the fare for all passengers on the ship, emphasizes God's creating of the fish from the foundation of the world with the purpose of sustaining the prophet, and introduces a pregnant fish. The latter makes Jonah's condition more wretched than it had been in the first fish, for the foul environment caused by countless baby fish was unbearable. Naturally, the Zohar interprets the images offish and rescue allegorically, seeing in them the grave and resurrection. The haggadic Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer notes that other ships on the sea had no trouble reaching their destination, remarks that representatives of the seventy nations accompanied Jonah, each with an idol, has them dip Jonah in the sea by grades, and alludes to the eventual defeat of leviathan, who will become food for the righteous at a great banquet. limburg understands the book ofJonah as a message to outsiders, in contrast to the rest of the Bible which addresses insiders and assures them of God's love for a special people. The book's universal sweep provides a corrective to the narrow view that limits God's activity to the Jews. limburg does not pOSit a context-for example, the exclusive views of Ezra and Nehemiah-as the reason for the emergence of this book. He does consider its vocabulary post-exilic, and he thinks the themes belong to that period as well. In a couple of places his remarks resemble too closely the sermonic...