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Prophet Jonah and the Beginnings of a New History
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I then, (i) having this ‘inside information’ that the powerful Syrian king Ben-hadad had also been one of Assyria’s greatest ever rulers, Ashurnasirpal II, and (ii) knowing that there was a uniquely Jonah-like depiction in the palace of this same Ashurnasirpal II, and (iii) being aware of the Jewish legends locating the beginnings of Jonah to the time of the prophet Elijah, which was also the time of Ben-hadad (Ashurnasirpal II), was then able to find (iv) a biblical scenario that had overtones of the Jonah incident of (a) the sparing of a non-Israelite people, much to the chagrin of an Israelite prophet, and (b) the change of heart of the king of that spared foreign people, with both (a) and (b) involving “sackcloth”.
Before going on to tell of that biblical incident, I should like to note that Jesus Christ never, in his references to Jonah and the conversion of the Ninevites and their king, actually praises the king himself, just “the men of Nineveh” or “the Ninevites”.This ruler of Assyria was, as I have shown in my thesis, a very wily and duplicitous character - full of presumption.
Now the biblical incident to which I refer - and that I think may be an other face to what is recorded in the Book of Jonah - is to be found in I Kings 20, Ben-hadad’s failure, twice, with a massive army, to defeat king Ahab of Israel and to take Ahab’s capital city of Samaria. And I would like to knit in to these two incidents (though without attempting any chronological precision at this stage), the two calls of Jonah, viz.:
(1:) 1 The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”
and
(3:) 1 Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.”
The story begins with king Ben-hadad, the “king of Aram” (Syria), apparently at the height of his power and his arrogance and determined to pick a fight:
(I Kings) 20 Now Ben-Hadad king of Aram mustered his entire army. Accompanied by thirty-two kings with their horses and chariots, he went up and besieged Samaria and attacked it. 2 He sent messengers into the city to Ahab king of Israel, saying, “This is what Ben-Hadad says: 3 ‘Your silver and gold are mine, and the best of your wives and children are mine.’”
4 The king of Israel answered, “Just as you say, my lord the king. I and all I have are yours.”
5 The messengers came again and said, “This is what Ben-Hadad says: ‘I sent to demand your silver and gold, your wives and your children. 6 But about this time tomorrow I am going to send my officials to search your palace and the houses of your officials. They will seize everything you value and carry it away.’”
7 The king of Israel summoned all the elders of the land and said to them, “See how this man is looking for trouble! When he sent for my wives and my children, my silver and my gold, I did not refuse him.”
8 The elders and the people all answered, “Don’t listen to him or agree to his demands.”
9 So he replied to Ben-Hadad’s messengers, “Tell my lord the king, ‘Your servant will do all you demanded the first time, but this demand I cannot meet.’” They left and took the answer back to Ben-Hadad.
10 Then Ben-Hadad sent another message to Ahab: “May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if enough dust remains in Samaria to give each of my men a handful.”
11 The king of Israel answered, “Tell him: ‘One who puts on his armor should not boast like one who takes it off.’”
12 Ben-Hadad heard this message while he and the kings were drinking in their tents,[a] and he ordered his men: “Prepare to attack.” So they prepared to attack the city.
But the king suffered an unexpected setback. The un-named prophet to Israel referred to in this next section may or may not be Jonah himself. Jewish legend has him as Micaiah (http://www.answering-islam.org/Books/Legends/v4_06.htm):
Ahab Defeats Ben-Hadad
13 Meanwhile a prophet came to Ahab king of Israel and announced, “This is what the Lord says: ‘Do you see this vast army? I will give it into your hand today, and then you will know that I am the Lord.’”
14“But who will do this?” asked Ahab.
The prophet replied, “This is what the Lord says: ‘The junior officers under the provincial commanders will do it.’”
“And who will start the battle?” he asked.
The prophet answered, “You will.”
15 So Ahab summoned the 232 junior officers under the provincial commanders. Then he assembled the rest of the Israelites, 7,000 in all. 16 They set out at noon while Ben-Hadad and the 32 kings allied with him were in their tents getting drunk. 17 The junior officers under the provincial commanders went out first.
Now Ben-Hadad had dispatched scouts, who reported, “Men are advancing from Samaria.”
18 He said, “If they have come out for peace, take them alive; if they have come out for war, take them alive.”
19 The junior officers under the provincial commanders marched out of the city with the army behind them 20 and each one struck down his opponent. At that, the Arameans fled, with the Israelites in pursuit. But Ben-Hadad king of Aram escaped on horseback with some of his horsemen. 21 The king of Israel advanced and overpowered the horses and chariots and inflicted heavy losses on the Arameans.
It may be at this point, with the king and his army in disarray, that the prophet Jonah -yet a young man (and perhaps for this reason assigned the arduous task instead of, say, Elijah) - was first commissioned to go to Nineveh whose “wickedness”is here referred to.
But Jonah had other ideas and it is at about this point that I would place his attempted flight to Tarshish, the consequent storm incident and that of the “great fish”.
I think that this famous incident must needs be separated well in time from Jonah’s second calling (note the word “Afterward” in v. 22 below). And was Jonah the prophet (the same as the one we met above, in vv. 13-14) who thus estimated the time for king Ahab (v. 22) “Afterward, the prophet came to the king of Israel and said, ‘Strengthen your position and see what must be done, because next spring the king of Aram will attack you again’.”?
At this same approximate time the Syrian king’s officials were providing their master with a‘theology’ for military effectiveness:
23 Meanwhile, the officials of the king of Aram advised him, “Their gods are gods of the hills. That is why they were too strong for us. But if we fight them on the plains, surely we will be stronger than they. 24 Do this: Remove all the kings from their commands and replace them with other officers. 25 You must also raise an army like the one you lost—horse for horse and chariot for chariot—so we can fight Israel on the plains. Then surely we will be stronger than they.” He agreed with them and acted accordingly.
So, true to the word of the prophet (who also must have known the military patterns of the day), the enemy of Israel attacked in spring. The colossal army of more than 120,000 (**) suffered a crushing defeat, with its proud king forced to flee and hide:
26 The next spring Ben-Hadad mustered the Arameans and went up to Aphek to fight against Israel.
27 When the Israelites were also mustered and given provisions, they marched out to meet them. The Israelites camped opposite them like two small flocks of goats, while the Arameans covered the countryside.
28 The man of God came up and told the king of Israel, “This is what the Lord says:‘Because the Arameans think the Lord is a god of the hills and not a god of the valleys, I will deliver this vast army into your hands, and you will know that I am the Lord.’”
29 For seven days they camped opposite each other, and on the seventh day the battle was joined. The Israelites inflicted a hundred thousand casualties on the Aramean foot soldiers in one day.
30 The rest of them escaped to the city of Aphek, where the wall collapsed on twenty-seven thousand of them. And Ben-Hadad fled to the city and hid in an inner room.
** Though it is very hard to imagine a fallen wall killing 27,000 men. Snaith has this: "The destruction of the city wall is often used to describe the capture of a city; and the verse may actually mean that this large, number of men lost their lives when the city was captured and taken."[16]
Now, with the fallen Syrian king completely at the mercy of king Ahab, the king of Israel would have been expected to have done what king Saul had been expected to do in the case of king Agag the Amalekite, to destroy him utterly. (I Samuel 15) 9 “But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep, the oxen, the fatlings, the lambs, and all that was good, and were unwilling to utterly destroy them”. And perhaps Ben-hadad’s officials recalled this incident, for:
31 His officials said to him,“Look, we have heard that the kings of Israel are merciful. Let us go to the king of Israel with sackcloth around our waists and ropes around our heads. Perhaps he will spare your life.”
32 Wearing sackcloth around their waists and ropes around their heads, they went to the king of Israel and said, “Your servant Ben-Hadad says: ‘Please let me live.’”
The king answered, “Is he still alive? He is my brother.”
33 The men took this as a good sign and were quick to pick up his word. “Yes, your brother Ben-Hadad!” they said.
“Go and get him,” the king said. When Ben-Hadad came out, Ahab had him come up into his chariot.
34 “I will return the cities my father took from your father,” Ben-Hadad offered. “You may set up your own market areas in Damascus, as my father did in Samaria.”
Ahab said, “On the basis of a treaty I will set you free.” So he made a treaty with him, and let him go.
Ahab had, just like king Saul, proved an abject failure.
It was with great forebodings, now, that the prophet Jonah finally heeded the call of the Lord and headed for Nineveh from whence the massive army of Ben-hadad (Ashurnasirpal II) had probably largely massed. The supposed son of Ashurnasirpal II, “Shalmaneser III once boasted a force of 120,000 men” in his western campaigns.
Attuned to the ways of the Lord, Jonah may have sensed that, as a prophet will actually say to Ahab in the aftermath of all this: “Therefore it is your life for his life, your people for his people” (v. 41). And, indeed, it was the “people” of Ben-hadad (Ashurnasirpal II), the Ninevites, not the king directly, who responded to the words of the prophet (Jonah 3:4): “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” (***) [*** The forty days may perhaps have been another time estimate by the prophet of how long it would take for Israel and her allies to mobilise themselves against Nineveh].
Then, later - perhaps much later - the king himself (Jonah 3:6): “When the message reached the king of Nineveh, he got up from his throne, removed his royal garments, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat down in ashes”. This very cunning and duplicitous king, who had already been forced to humble himself before Ahab, may have later, when back in Nineveh, made a big show of things as was his wont (Jonah 3):
7 This is the proclamation he issued in Nineveh:
“By the decree of the king and his nobles:
Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink.
8 But let people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence.
9 Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.”
I suggest that it was for the sake of the people of Nineveh, and not their king, that (v. 10): “When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened”.
But Jonah himself, having foreseen all this, was furious (Jonah 4):
But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. 3 Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”
While Jonah had become sullen and angry in Nineveh, a prophet back in Israel - perhaps Jonah upon his return there (Jewish legend has this prophet as Micaiah) - was to become incandescent with rage against king Ahab for his failure to destroy Ben-hadad, thereby causing Ahab, in turn, to become “sullen and angry” (exactly as Ahab had been, incidentally, in the case of Naboth, I Kings 21:4). Thus we read in this strange but most significant incident (I Kings 20):
A Prophet Condemns Ahab
35 By the word of the Lord one of the company of the prophets said to his companion, “Strike me with your weapon,” but he refused.
36 So the prophet said, “Because you have not obeyed the Lord, as soon as you leave me a lion will kill you.” And after the man went away, a lion found him and killed him.
37 The prophet found another man and said, “Strike me, please.” So the man struck him and wounded him.
38 Then the prophet went and stood by the road waiting for the king. He disguised himself with his headband down over his eyes.
39 As the king passed by, the prophet called out to him, “Your servant went into the thick of the battle, and someone came to me with a captive and said, ‘Guard this man. If he is missing, it will be your life for his life, or you must pay a talent of silver.’
40 While your servant was busy here and there, the man disappeared.”“That is your sentence,” the king of Israel said. “You have pronounced it yourself.”
41 Then the prophet quickly removed the headband from his eyes, and the king of Israel recognized him as one of the prophets.
42 He said to the king, “This is what the Lord says: ‘You have set free a man I had determined should die. Therefore it is your life for his life, your people for his people.’”
43 Sullen and angry, the king of Israel went to his palace in Samaria.
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