S6E6: Reading narrative in prophetic books

In this episode, Francie Cornes asks Tony Watkins and Peter Williams about the book of Jonah. Jonah is an unusual prophetic book because it is mostly narrative and has a very small amount of text where Jonah is actually proclaiming God’s word. In this episode, Tony and Peter share some insights into chapter 1, and in the following episode they will look at chapters 2–4. 

Find out more about the host and guests here: 
Tony Watkins: https://tyndalehouse.com/about/staff/tony-watkins/

Peter Williams: https://tyndalehouse.com/about/staff/peter-j-williams/

Francie Cornes: https://tyndalehouse.com/about/staff/francie-cornes/

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to the Tyndale House podcast.

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I'm Francie Cornes, I'm the Communications Officer here

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at Tyndale House,

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and I'm joined again by Tony Watkins, who's the Fellow for Public Engagement

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here, and Peter Williams, who is the Principal at Tyndale House.

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And in our last episode, we were looking at the Book of Amos and how to read it.

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And in this episode, we're going to look at Jonah.

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So we'll do similar

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to what we did last time, looking at the background of the book,

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then digging into the text a bit and then talking about the audience.

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And this will be probably a two-part episode,

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depending on how quickly we get through these bits.

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So let's start with the background.

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Who was Jonah and what was going on in the world that he lived in?

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Okay, the book of

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Jonah only tells us that he is the son of Amittai.

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But he does appear in 2 Kings 14,

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during the time of,

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Jeroboam the Second, who was king

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in the northern kingdom of Israel.

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So 2 Kings 14:23, ‘In the fifteenth year of [King] Amaziah

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son of Joash king of Judah,

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Jeroboam, the son of Jehoash, king of Israel,

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began to reign in Samaria, and he reigned for 41 years.

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He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.

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He did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam

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the son of Nebat which he made Israel to sin.

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He restored the border

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of Israel [from various places] . . .

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according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel,

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which he spoke by his servant

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Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was from Gath-hepher.’

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So he is living,

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presumably, Gath-hepher is one of the places in the the region called the Shephelah,

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the foothills between the mountain spine up the centre of Judah and Israel,

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and the coastal plain where the Philistines lived.

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But, but Gath-hepher not far from,

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from the Philistine city of of Gath.

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So that little passage is saying that

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the king is doing things because Jonah's told him to?

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More that he's incredibly successful because,

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and that's in line with a positive prediction that Jonah made.

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And some people would build something on this cameo.

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And I think it it's fine.

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We've only got a few clues that the only other thing we know about Jonah,

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other than this book is that he makes some wonderful, positive

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prophecies about

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Israel, which then get fulfilled: expansion.

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And and so you could see that, as you

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know, he'd be really he'd like,

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the positive message there. Of course,

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at one level, he,

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you know, likes the idea that,

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God's enemies will be,

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overthrown,

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which eventually is a message he's prepared to deliver.

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He really doesn't like that, that they're going to do

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okay. So you could try and put these together and imagine

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that he's, you know, think of him, let's say, as a patriot,

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who wants Israel to do

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well and does not want Nineveh, the Assyrians, to do well.

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And and that can explain quite a bit in the book.

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Obviously, we're making a lot out of just some hints, but it seems reasonable.

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P: I mean, it's at least consistent. F: Okay.

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And that's

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reminds us that Jonah is a very different kind of a, of a prophetic book.

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So it is it is one of The Twelve, what in English we often call minor prophets.

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It's part of the Scroll of the Twelve, the the 12 shorter prophets

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that were included onto one scroll.

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But it is so different from the other prophets because it is

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not it's not the words of Jonah, apart from

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 this one line, ‘40 more days and the city will be overthrown.’

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T: in chapter 3. P: And the prayer

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And and his his

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yeah, and and his prayer in chapter 2.

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But it's not it's not the, primarily the announcements of a prophet

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to the people of God.

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And yet we have this account that he was saying things

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to God's people about what was going to happen.

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And those are not recorded for us.

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So so it yeah, it's it's a different kind of book because of it being narrative.

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And so that kind of takes us on to talking about the text.

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Because Jonah is very

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different from the other prophetic books.

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Being narrative rather than his words.

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How how should we kind of, do we need to approach it differently to how

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we've approached some of the other books that we've looked at in the series?

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Yes and no.

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No, in that we approach

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all Bible passages the same way.

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At one level, we are always wanting to know what is the background here,

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what's actually going on in the text, how was this heard in their context?

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How do we hear it today?

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So, so at that level, yeah, it's it's exactly the same in many ways.

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Jonah is much, much easier than other prophets

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because narrative is is more familiar to us.

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It's easier for us to understand what's going on.

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We still

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need to dig into it, but it's much more accessible to us than some of the

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the the other language of the prophets we've talked about their imagery and,

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and, and some of the metaphors that, that, that are,

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somewhat alien.

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They can make us stumble a little bit.

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We have to be prepared to slow down and to think hard about them.

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There's a danger there, of course, in that we we read Jonah too quickly

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and at a at a too shallow level because we don't have to stop and slow down.

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It feels very familiar to us, and therefore we don't necessarily

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think about it quite as hard as as we should.

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But we do need to ask the question if this is a prophetic book

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preserved in the in the Scroll of the Twelve,

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we'll get to this later,

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rather than now,

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but in what sense, how does this book speak to the people?

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Because that still seems to me its primary original function.

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It's not simply recording a nice story

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about what Jonah did, but this is God's word to his people then,

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and and enduringly through the generations since.

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Right.

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So we, should we just dig into the, dig into the text?

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So if I read chapter one first probably,

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and then and then you can

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comment on what you, what you read.

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So, chapter one

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‘Now, the word of the Lord came to Jonah,

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the son of Amittai, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh,

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that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come before me.”

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But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.

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He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish.

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So he paid the sat and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish, away

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from the presence of the Lord.

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But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea,

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and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up.

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Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried out to his god.

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And they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it

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for them.

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But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had lain down

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and was fast asleep.

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So the captain came and said to him, “What do you mean, you sleeper?

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Arise, call out to your god!

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Perhaps the god will give a thought to us, that we may not perish.”

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And they said to one another, “Come, let us cast lots, that

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we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us.”

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So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah.

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Then they said to him, “Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us.

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What is your occupation, and where do you come from?

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What is your country, and of what people are you?”

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And he said to them, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord,

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the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”

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Then the men were exceedingly afraid, and said to him,

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“What is this that you have done!”

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For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord,

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because he had told them.

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Then they said to him, “What shall we do to you, that the sea

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may quiet down for us?”

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For the sea grew more and more tempestuous.

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He said to them, “Pick me up and hurl me into the sea;

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Then the sea will quiet down for you, for I know it is

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because of me that this great tempest has come upon you.”

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Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to get back to dry land,

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but they could not, for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them.

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Therefore they called out to the Lord, “Oh Lord, let us not perish

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for this man's life, and lay not on us innocent blood, for you,

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Oh Lord, have done as it pleased you.”

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So they picked up

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Jonah and hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging.

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Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord

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and made vows.

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And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah.

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And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.’

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So what do you make of chapter one?

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It's great, isn't it?

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It is perhaps worth commenting that,

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chapter, the beginning of chapter one and the beginning of chapter three,

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are very closely connected with each other.

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You've got almost a, a direct repeat

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to some extent of, of of what's going on when we get to chapter three.

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So the book divides into two halves. So,

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but it's

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yeah, we've got a lot going on here.

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That the word of the Lord has come to Jonah saying, go one way.

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And he goes exactly the opposite way.

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And he, you've got this progression of going downwards

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as he flees, Jonah rose to flee from the presence of the Lord.

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He went down to Joppa, and he paid the fare, and he went down into the ship.

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He's going away from the Lord.

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And then he goes, he lies down and and goes to sleep.

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So he's going down, down, down.

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in his flight from from the Lord.

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Which is quite fun.

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And that's really important because in verse two, Arise, go to the great city

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and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.

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So you can think of God as on high.

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If you like, and the evil has come up.

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He's noticed it.

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And therefore you might think, well, the way to get away from God

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is just going down, down, down and far away.

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And so you've got twice this reference,

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verse three and verse four, actually twice in verse three,

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from the presence of the Lord, and like, Gods very difficult to escape.

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And so there is this, I mean,

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comedic, ridiculous, element to what he's doing.

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He's paying money.

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Worst deal ever to get away from God by going,

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due west, you know, to,

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Tarshish, various candidates, in the Mediterranean for that.

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But the idea is something very, very far away.

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Nineveh,

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is in Iraq.

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It's it's it's on the east.

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He's he's going west and he is trying to get away.

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The other thing is very deliberate use of words.

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I mean, a friend of mine read this book out loud in Hebrew in four minutes.

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It's incredibly brief, but the the use of the word great.

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That great city there in verse two.

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But then, God's response when,

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he runs away is a great wind.

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That means a great tempest, so you’ll see a mighty tempest,

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different words will come out in the English,

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or the great fish, the great fear that they have.

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There'll be great joy later on.

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All sorts of times this word is coming back again and again.

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There are other theme words, but I just love the fact that he runs

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away from God, and God hurls a wind.

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And, you know, this is a very imprecise sort of thing to throw out a wind.

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You don't expect

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that's going to have a precise effect, but of course the wind cause the waves.

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The waves cause the boat to be breaking up.

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And there they are

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throwing lots.

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And for me, calculating the physics of this is fascinating.

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So you can think of a wind causing waves, causing boats to move around.

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And then inside this, the physics of people

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throwing around a lot so that it lands

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exactly. You know, you can imagine it is like a die.

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It doesn't have to be like, a modern one.

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But so it lands on Jonah,

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and then he's trying to escape the God who could do those sort of calculations.

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I mean, this is for me,

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it is, you know, absolutely extraordinary.

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And of course, God hurls the wind.

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Soon the sailors are hurling the cargo.

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Eventually they're hurling Jonah.

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So so you have this set of

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actions

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going on,

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which are absolutely fascinating in terms of the way it's so carefully crafted

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and it's showing consequence of this ridiculous action of Jonah.

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T: Yeah. F: And just when, in terms of, 

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So he's fleeing from the Lord and it says, I was just intrigued by,

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when in verse eight they're asking him, you know, tell us what's going on.

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And he says, ‘“I am a Hebrew

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and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”

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Then the men were exceedingly afraid, and said to him, “what is this you've done?”

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For the men knew that he was fleeing

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from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them.’ What's different?

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What if so, if he got on the boat and said, ‘I'm fleeing from the Lord?’

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What about that was like, okay, cool, you do you.

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And then when he then says, ‘oh, I'm a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord,

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F: the God of heaven, who made the sea.’ P: Yeah.

00:13:36:07 - 00:13:40:01
So I think he's told them he's fleeing from the Lord after he's been woken up.

00:13:40:01 - 00:13:41:23
F: Oh, okay. P: But the interesting thing is,

00:13:43:00 - 00:13:45:06
I've seen it with young children

00:13:45:06 - 00:13:49:22
where they sometimes think when they shut their eyes that they become invisible.

00:13:50:15 - 00:13:54:01
And so there’s this idea that somehow if he just goes to sleep,

00:13:55:07 - 00:13:57:20
God goes away, I think is there.

00:13:57:20 - 00:14:01:22
But the sailors, of course, have a fascinating role.

00:14:02:04 - 00:14:05:04
And here we got the captain, because the captain

00:14:05:04 - 00:14:08:04
is telling the prophet to do some praying.

00:14:08:21 - 00:14:10:24
Which is a fascinating thing.

00:14:10:24 - 00:14:13:17
The sailors end up,

00:14:13:17 - 00:14:14:23
sacrificing to God.

00:14:14:23 - 00:14:17:20
The sailors are worried about innocent life.

00:14:17:20 - 00:14:21:06
Oh, please, God, don't let us be guilty for an innocent life.

00:14:21:11 - 00:14:25:11
Whereas we're going to find later on the prophet Jonah isn't remotely

00:14:26:00 - 00:14:29:09
worried about having the blood of people of Nineveh on his hand, and,

00:14:29:09 - 00:14:30:24
you know, whatever happens to them. So,

00:14:32:14 - 00:14:34:06
there is this reversal – some

00:14:34:06 - 00:14:37:07
people call him an anti prophet – a revert . . . you know, this,

00:14:38:15 - 00:14:40:20
inversion that that's, that's going on.

00:14:40:20 - 00:14:41:12
But actually

00:14:41:12 - 00:14:44:22
I like verse 6 particularly

00:14:45:01 - 00:14:48:09
where, you know, ‘what do you mean, [you] sleeper? Arise,

00:14:48:09 - 00:14:50:20
call out to your god. Perhaps God will give us a thought.’

00:14:50:20 - 00:14:53:20
Because in the pagan captain's mind,

00:14:54:09 - 00:14:58:00
the storm is because a god is not thinking about them.

00:14:58:06 - 00:15:03:10
Whereas in fact, the storm is precisely because God is thinking about Jonah.

00:15:03:10 - 00:15:05:17
So so again, it's

00:15:05:17 - 00:15:08:17
the the subtlety here,

00:15:08:21 - 00:15:09:18
the richness,

00:15:09:18 - 00:15:13:13
it is massive.

00:15:14:16 - 00:15:19:14
And and then the fear, he fears God, but does he fear enough?

00:15:20:06 - 00:15:23:05
P: Is a question T: Well it’s so hollow, isn't it?

00:15:23:05 - 00:15:26:13
If he did fear God, he would not be going on on the ship.

00:15:26:13 - 00:15:29:13
He would not be going down, down, down and heading the wrong direction.

00:15:29:17 - 00:15:32:22
He's he's doing that precisely because he does not really fear God.

00:15:32:22 - 00:15:35:22
So these these I mean, it's

00:15:35:22 - 00:15:38:22
I think it's a very hollow claim that he's making at that point.

00:15:38:22 - 00:15:42:03
Or is he is he actually coming to his, beginning

00:15:42:03 - 00:15:45:03
to come to his senses and, and saying,

00:15:45:06 - 00:15:50:08
yeah, that the God that I, that I claim to fear, the God I claim to to speak for

00:15:50:14 - 00:15:53:18
he is the one who's made all of this and therefore he is responsible.

00:15:53:22 - 00:15:56:22
So it's no wonder that they they fear a great fear,

00:15:56:22 - 00:16:01:14
because this is not just a provincial god, this is not a territorial god.

00:16:01:20 - 00:16:05:24
This is the the ultimate God who is, who made the sea and the dry land.

00:16:05:24 - 00:16:09:02
They’d be very familiar with, with, with passengers

00:16:09:02 - 00:16:13:05
from different places having gods from their, their own towns that

00:16:13:14 - 00:16:15:09
Well, it's no big deal to us.

00:16:15:09 - 00:16:17:03
But if this is the God who made the sea

00:16:17:03 - 00:16:19:04
and the dry land, then they're really in trouble.

00:16:20:08 - 00:16:23:08
The narrative also is very good at,

00:16:24:03 - 00:16:26:03
having gradual increase, if you like.

00:16:26:03 - 00:16:30:01
So, that the storm is getting worse and worse the whole time. And

00:16:31:02 - 00:16:33:22
these sailors,

00:16:33:22 - 00:16:35:22
they're trying to out row God,

00:16:35:22 - 00:16:38:22
which is, you know, difficult again.

00:16:39:10 - 00:16:42:10
And, and so that's, that's going on in verse,

00:16:43:02 - 00:16:46:01
12, 13, sorry.

00:16:46:01 - 00:16:49:02
And they're calling out to God that, you know, they,

00:16:49:11 - 00:16:53:23
they shouldn't be guilty of, this man's innocent blood.

00:16:53:23 - 00:16:55:06
You've done as it pleased you.

00:16:55:06 - 00:16:57:18
I mean, they really have got,

00:16:57:18 - 00:17:00:19
you know, fairly good theology there.

00:17:01:04 - 00:17:04:03
And then they're going to fear God again in verse 16.

00:17:04:03 - 00:17:08:02
And it seems that they've gone from fearing to even more fearing.

00:17:09:05 - 00:17:11:23
So, we've got that in

00:17:11:23 - 00:17:14:15
verse 10 verses verse 16.

00:17:14:15 - 00:17:17:15
They, they begin by fearing then they have a great fear.

00:17:17:19 - 00:17:20:21
And so the storm's getting bigger the whole time that the ships

00:17:20:21 - 00:17:24:21
thinking about breaking up every, everything’s, the word choice

00:17:24:21 - 00:17:28:05
is so deliberate through this chapter, very dramatic,

00:17:28:21 - 00:17:31:23
to get you, to, this point.

00:17:33:18 - 00:17:33:23
Yeah.

00:17:33:23 - 00:17:35:09
I, I love the ship

00:17:35:09 - 00:17:38:24
thought about breaking up and it's, it's not obvious in English, but the

00:17:39:07 - 00:17:40:01
So yeah.

00:17:40:01 - 00:17:45:07
In Hebrew, it’s ḥishshᵉva lᵉhishshaver thought is ḥishshᵉva 

00:17:45:16 - 00:17:47:01
hishshaver to break up.

00:17:47:01 - 00:17:48:20
It thought about breaking up.

00:17:48:20 - 00:17:51:20
And what you're finding here and it’s something

00:17:51:23 - 00:17:55:18
Tony's alluding to, is there's animation going on in the inanimate.

00:17:56:00 - 00:17:59:12
So just as we're going to see in this book, there is a

00:18:00:02 - 00:18:03:02
fish, big sea creature which obeys God.

00:18:03:15 - 00:18:08:14
We're going to find that there is a, a plant which, obeys God.

00:18:08:14 - 00:18:13:00
There is a, plant-eating creature which obeys God.

00:18:13:24 - 00:18:15:10
And all of that's going on.

00:18:15:10 - 00:18:18:15
And the whole final line is going to be about animals. But

00:18:18:15 - 00:18:23:09
you have in this that the sea is getting angry.

00:18:23:20 - 00:18:26:16
So they're actually talking about the sea ceasing from its raging.

00:18:26:16 - 00:18:29:03
And and we might read that as you know, sea rage, don’t they?

00:18:29:03 - 00:18:33:24
But but actually in the Hebrew it is more more graphic.

00:18:33:24 - 00:18:35:13
It's not just an analogy

00:18:35:13 - 00:18:37:12
rage, this is proper anger.

00:18:37:12 - 00:18:42:15
The sea is going to cease from its anger, and the ship is thinking about

00:18:43:04 - 00:18:44:20
breaking up. And all of this is again,

00:18:46:00 - 00:18:47:01
what's the difference between

00:18:47:01 - 00:18:50:01
something that's alive and not? God's will.

00:18:50:04 - 00:18:51:08
That's the fundamental thing.

00:18:51:08 - 00:18:54:24
Like God, who can raise up children to Abraham from stones,

00:18:55:17 - 00:18:58:07
you know, stones are deaf to humans.

00:18:58:07 - 00:19:00:04
They're not deaf to God.

00:19:00:04 - 00:19:03:21
You know, and so you have this whole thing that the God

00:19:03:21 - 00:19:07:00
who can animate anything is the God

00:19:07:00 - 00:19:09:12
this crazy prophet is fleeing.

00:19:09:12 - 00:19:12:03
And that's,

00:19:12:03 - 00:19:13:17
just brought out for us,

00:19:13:17 - 00:19:17:04
P: you know, so beautifully in this chapter. F: That, just to say that,

00:19:17:04 - 00:19:18:21
so that's verse four, it says,

00:19:18:21 - 00:19:21:23
well, in the ESV, it says so that the ship threatened to break up.

00:19:21:24 - 00:19:22:20
P: Yeah. F: So you're saying that’s

00:19:22:20 - 00:19:23:07
P: Yeah. Yeah.

00:19:23:07 - 00:19:25:01
F: . . . the ship thought to break up

00:19:25:01 - 00:19:25:22
And so

00:19:25:22 - 00:19:28:22
when you look in a dictionary at this word ‘threatened’,

00:19:28:24 - 00:19:32:20
this is the only occurrence you can find with that meaning.

00:19:33:03 - 00:19:35:07
And of course, you can take it, and even in English,

00:19:35:07 - 00:19:37:06
P: in more than one sense. T: Yeah.

00:19:37:06 - 00:19:38:18
Something's threatened to happen.

00:19:38:18 - 00:19:42:00
You can have in an inanimate sense, but you can also have it

00:19:42:01 - 00:19:46:04
threatened to break up, if you read that more in an animated way.

00:19:46:04 - 00:19:49:04
So I think that maybe part of the reason behind the word choice here

00:19:49:04 - 00:19:50:04
for the English Standard Version,

00:19:51:14 - 00:19:52:05
it does seem

00:19:52:05 - 00:19:55:05
to have those two possibilities.

00:19:55:23 - 00:19:57:03
T: And, sorry. P: Yeah, yeah.

00:19:57:03 - 00:20:00:08
Well, I was I was just going to say with, with the word choice being so careful.

00:20:00:08 - 00:20:03:10
Then, then when you in verse three, he paid the fare.

00:20:03:21 - 00:20:05:19
It's not,

00:20:05:19 - 00:20:07:24
It's clearly in Hebrew it's not

00:20:07:24 - 00:20:09:04
he paid his fare

00:20:09:04 - 00:20:10:11
He paid its fare

00:20:10:11 - 00:20:12:19
He paid the fare for the ship.

00:20:12:19 - 00:20:18:06
So actually, Jonah is investing, a huge amount of money to, to, to

00:20:18:10 - 00:20:23:07
because it appears that he is funding the whole ship's fare,

00:20:23:07 - 00:20:27:02
the whole ship's voyage to go to Tarshish.

00:20:27:16 - 00:20:31:14
He's he's sunk everything into into running away from the Lord.

00:20:31:19 - 00:20:34:19
F: Sorry which verse was that? T: verse three.

00:20:35:04 - 00:20:35:23
So as you say.

00:20:35:23 - 00:20:37:01
Yeah, absolutely.

00:20:37:01 - 00:20:39:18
T: The worst deal ever. P: Yes.

00:20:39:18 - 00:20:42:18
But he's heading to Tarshish, which is,

00:20:43:06 - 00:20:46:20
T: it’s thought to be Spain, probably P: That's the most likely.

00:20:46:20 - 00:20:48:15
But there are there are other possibilities.

00:20:48:15 - 00:20:51:16
But when you look at references to Tarshish in the rest of Scripture,

00:20:51:16 - 00:20:55:20
apart from the one reference in in the end of Isaiah,

00:20:55:20 - 00:20:59:08
where it's a little more ambiguous, in in every other place is Ezekiel

00:20:59:16 - 00:21:03:08
27 in particular, it's, it's associated with luxury.

00:21:03:11 - 00:21:06:11
So he's, he's spending a lot of money,

00:21:06:15 - 00:21:09:18
but he's is trying to escape to a place

00:21:10:02 - 00:21:13:12
where he seems to be imagining he's going to have,

00:21:14:11 - 00:21:15:00
to be able

00:21:15:00 - 00:21:18:05
to deliver, an idle, luxurious life free

00:21:18:05 - 00:21:21:05
from the interventions of God and God's,

00:21:21:14 - 00:21:24:14
requirements to go and speak to Nineveh.

00:21:24:16 - 00:21:26:14
He's,

00:21:26:14 - 00:21:29:05
we've talked before about the idea of shalom

00:21:29:05 - 00:21:32:10
within, within the whole of the Hebrew Bible.

00:21:32:10 - 00:21:36:06
But in within the prophets, in these the four relationships with God,

00:21:36:06 - 00:21:38:05
with other people, with the world around us and with ourselves.

00:21:38:05 - 00:21:39:24
You see all of these within Jonah.

00:21:39:24 - 00:21:42:24
But but Jonah is heading off,

00:21:43:00 - 00:21:45:11
having having emptied his coffers.

00:21:45:11 - 00:21:49:00
He's heading off to try and build some pseudo shalom on his own terms.

00:21:49:18 - 00:21:53:13
And what he finds is exactly the opposite of what he's looking for,

00:21:53:14 - 00:21:57:22
because everything is falling apart and even even the the ship and the sea.

00:21:57:22 - 00:22:00:00
These apparently inanimate objects,

00:22:00:00 - 00:22:03:13
They're against him, too, because they've been animated by by the Lord.

00:22:04:12 - 00:22:04:20
Okay.

00:22:04:20 - 00:22:07:22
And so then this chapter ends with Jonah

00:22:07:22 - 00:22:10:22
being swallowed by a big fish.

00:22:11:22 - 00:22:14:12
Anything to say on that?

00:22:14:12 - 00:22:15:21
Well, I mean a few things.

00:22:15:21 - 00:22:18:07
Firstly, ‘the Lord appointed a great fish,’

00:22:18:07 - 00:22:22:08
we read, and so, that's, appointed

00:22:22:14 - 00:22:26:04
you get again in 4:6, 4:7, 4:8,

00:22:26:12 - 00:22:30:18
where God, appoints a plant, then a worm, then an east wind.

00:22:30:21 - 00:22:33:23
So again, God's just in charge of everything.

00:22:34:06 - 00:22:37:06
And then, great fish. People,

00:22:37:12 - 00:22:40:02
the meaning of the word fish has changed over the last couple of hundred years

00:22:40:02 - 00:22:41:17
since Linnaeus.

00:22:41:17 - 00:22:43:10
So, so that now

00:22:43:10 - 00:22:46:10
things like whales are not classed as, as fish,

00:22:46:11 - 00:22:49:14
but in the taxonomy of the day back then,

00:22:50:03 - 00:22:53:13
you know, basically everything in the sea that’s swimming round is

00:22:53:15 - 00:22:57:09
a is a fish it’s interesting when you get this word used in the Gospels,

00:22:57:23 - 00:22:59:01
It uses the word kētos.

00:22:59:01 - 00:23:01:23
and we get cetacean and other words like that from,

00:23:03:09 - 00:23:05:04
for a whale.

00:23:05:04 - 00:23:08:04
And. Yes, absolutely extraordinary.

00:23:08:07 - 00:23:12:04
And, Christ picks this up in, in Matthew chapter 12

00:23:12:04 - 00:23:18:24
as a picture of his own burial and then, eventual resurrection,

00:23:19:11 - 00:23:21:22
as we're going to see that he doesn't stay in the,

00:23:21:22 - 00:23:24:24
the belly of, of of, of the fish or whale.

00:23:25:17 - 00:23:29:03
So, absolutely, unforgettable

00:23:29:19 - 00:23:34:08
From time to time, you hear people making a great thing of the,

00:23:34:08 - 00:23:35:09
the possibility you,

00:23:35:09 - 00:23:38:24
you know, how is this physically possible for somebody to, to be in the,

00:23:39:06 - 00:23:42:04
the belly of a, of a of a humpback whale or of a whale

00:23:42:04 - 00:23:45:04
shark or wherever and and,

00:23:45:09 - 00:23:48:19
there's still a story circulating around on the Internet of this guy

00:23:48:19 - 00:23:51:21
called James Bartlett, who was swallowed by a humpback whale in the South Pacific,

00:23:52:05 - 00:23:55:14
South Atlantic in the late 1800s from a whaling ship.

00:23:56:04 - 00:24:00:00
There's there's absolutely no evidence for this story whatsoever.

00:24:00:00 - 00:24:01:13
And yet it's still it circulates and

00:24:03:06 - 00:24:03:21
so

00:24:03:21 - 00:24:05:17
why do we why do we have to feel that

00:24:05:17 - 00:24:09:04
we have to, to bend over backwards to try to, to justify something

00:24:09:04 - 00:24:12:09
T: where, I mean, clearly the Lord has sent this great fish P: Its absolutely miraculous.

00:24:12:09 - 00:24:14:21
P: Yeah, yeah. T: This is a miraculous thing.

00:24:14:21 - 00:24:20:03
F: There was actually a video recently of a guy T: There was! F: being swallowed in a kayak and being spat back out again

00:24:20:03 - 00:24:21:05
He was spat out pretty quickly.

00:24:21:05 - 00:24:23:14
T: He wasn't in there for as long P: Ah I didn’t see this

00:24:23:14 - 00:24:25:14
T: this poor guy P: I obviously need to get on TikTok for this

00:24:25:14 - 00:24:28:14
he's going to be called Jonah for the rest of his life. Isn’t he?

00:24:29:11 - 00:24:33:00
But, but yeah, we don't need to do to reach for

00:24:33:00 - 00:24:37:18
for fanciful tales and for for stories that that have no basis in history.

00:24:37:18 - 00:24:42:02
When, when we believe in a God who has all of the elements

00:24:42:02 - 00:24:46:17
and all of the creatures at his disposal and, and can make them work

00:24:46:17 - 00:24:50:07
in whatever way he likes, it's it's not difficult for him.

00:24:50:13 - 00:24:50:19
Yeah.

00:24:50:19 - 00:24:54:12
And I think also, you know, the the the point is that

00:24:54:12 - 00:24:57:12
in ordinary circumstances this would be certain death.

00:24:57:20 - 00:25:00:15
And so there is that, that sense in which,

00:25:00:15 - 00:25:02:24
you know, this is very much like a resurrection.

00:25:02:24 - 00:25:03:09
Okay.

00:25:03:09 - 00:25:07:13
Jonah doesn't actually, die, but, you know,

00:25:08:13 - 00:25:08:21
there

00:25:08:21 - 00:25:12:24
is this amazing miracle that he is preserved and lives

00:25:12:24 - 00:25:16:00
to, appear again in this wonderful book.

00:25:17:07 - 00:25:17:13
Great.

00:25:17:13 - 00:25:20:13
Well, we'll draw it to a close for this episode.

00:25:20:16 - 00:25:23:16
So we'll continue to talk about Jonah in the next episode.

00:25:23:16 - 00:25:24:24
Thanks very much for joining us.

00:25:24:24 - 00:25:26:21
Thank you both for joining me.

00:25:26:21 - 00:25:29:14
Yeah. Please do rate review, subscribe.

00:25:29:14 - 00:25:32:04
And let us know in the comments, any questions that you've got

00:25:32:04 - 00:25:35:00
or any thoughts and reflections from the episode. Thanks for listening.