The JPS Bible Commentary: Jonah (review)

The Jewish Quarterly Review, XCII, Nos. 3-4 (January-April, 2002) 644-646 Uriel Simon. The JPS Bible Commentary: Jonah. Translated from the Hebrew by Lenn J. Schramm. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society , 1999. Pp. xliii + 52. In its third incarnation, this attractive Jonah commentary by Uriel Simon remains pitched to a narrow audience, not because it was first crafted (1992) for a Hebrew-reading, and so almost exclusively Jewish, public and not because in its German edition of 1994 it was subtitled Ein jüdischer Kommentar , and certainly not because a Jewish society is publishing the edition that I am now reviewing. Rather, it remains narrowly focused because it seems committed almost exclusively to inner Jewish solutions ("sage" used as a noun is commonly attached to Jewish exegetes). In the rare cases that it cites non-Jewish authorities, it rarely does so approvingly. In this regard, the bibliography is deceptively generous, listing gentile sources that are rarely invoked in the comments. Moreover, despite its many avatars, Simon 's work is not particularly drawn to a horde of recent works that treat Jonah as a literary contribution from the ancient Hebrews. Phyllis Trible, who wrote a fine stylistic analysis (Rhetorical Criticism: Contexts, Method, and the Book ofJonah, 1994) is occasionally mentioned, but always under the name "Tribble." My own effort for the Anchor Bible (Jonah, A New Translation . . . , 1990), itself by no means unsubstantial, might as well have been distributed in Mars since it attracts Simon's attention in just one dismissal of an interpretive crux at 3:4 ("The suggestion that 'overturned' has a double meaning . . . seems dubious," p. 29). This reticence in engaging with non-Jewish and modern scholarship has its price. It will be paid most heavily by Jewish readers, who will miss an opportunity to broaden their perspective on a book that has drawn extraordinary attention across lines, religious (see Y.-M. Duval, Le Livre de Jonas dans la littérature chrétienne grecque et latine, 1973; a wonderful tribute to Christian medieval exegesis, often echoing Jewish interpretations) as well as artistic (nicely reviewed in James Limburg's commentary to Jonah, 1993). Yet there is so much intelligence, sensitivity, even passion in Simon 's search for the (largely quixotic) "original meaning of the Book of Jonah" and his exploration of its significance for Jewish theosophy, that readers may forgive this work's limited and limiting horizons and search instead for its many constructive insights. Simon has modified the JPS translation that normally is the backbone for this Bible series, ostensibly in order to bring out Hebrew idiom and to highlight word repetition inherent in the Hebrew text. In most cases, the many changes are harmless; but they introduce a certain archaism or wood- SIMON, JPS BIBLE COMMENTARY: JONAH—SASSON645 enness that is foreign to the Hebrew. Simon is literal in translating the verb qûm, even when it serves as an auxiliary, for example at 1:2, "Arise and go to Nineveh" where JPS gives "Go at once to Nineveh." In a few spots his choices lack bite (compare 2:9 in JPS, "They who cling to empty folly / forsake their own welfare" to Simon's "will give up their bounty") or sense (in 2:7 the clause can be verbless in Hebrew but not in English, as recognized by the JPS rendering). I have noticed only one passage in which Simon improves on JPS. In 4:11, he captures the notion of a vast population better with "in which there are more than twelve myriad persons" than JPS's arithmetically resolved "one hundred and twenty thousand persons." Incidentally, inspection of the relevant passage in my commentary would show that ribbô 'myriad' already occurs in Old Babylonian documents. The heart of Simon's commentary is not the annotations, despite their competence, but the introductory remarks, where he discusses interpretive issues that Jonah invites. For reasons that are not always clear to me, Simon feels the need to declare allegiance to only one of four themes commonly associated with Jonah, "Compassion: Justice versus Mercy," allowing it control over plot, characters, and dialogue of the story (see pp. xii-xiii). This is indeed a vital theme, but why...