Jonah’s two callings to Nineveh were spaced well apart in time

 

by

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

“Even if they hide at the bottom of the ocean,

I will send the sea serpent after them to bite them”.

 Amos 9:3

  

Two biblical prophets, Amos and Jeremiah, provide, respectively, something of a terminus a quo and a terminus ad quem for what I would consider to have been two separate – and well spaced in time – callings by the Lord of the prophet Jonah.

 

Testimony of Amos

 

Amos (Amoz, Amaziah), who was “Amittai” the father of Jonah. See my latest article:

 

Were any Old Testament prophets from Galilee?

 

(4) Were any Old Testament prophets from Galilee?

 

clearly refers to the first episode, the one involving Jonah’s flight (the storm at sea) and the great sea creature (Jonah ch’s 1-2), when he writes (Amos 9:3): “Even if they hide at the bottom of the ocean, I will send the sea serpent after them to bite them”.

 

It is hardly surprising that Amos should refer to such a significant incident in the life of his family, for he, as Micah (“Amos redivivus”), and his son, Isaiah (Jonah), were an intertwined Simeonite prophetic combination, both, for example, going naked and barefoot (cf. Micah 1:8; Isaiah 20:2) and both preaching absolutely identical messages:

 

Micah 4:1-3:

“Now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established on the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and peoples shall flow to it. Many nations shall come and say, ‘Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways, and we shall walk in His paths.’ For out of Zion the law shall go forth, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between many peoples, and rebuke strong nations afar off; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”

 

Isaiah 2:2-4:

“Now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established on the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow to it. Many people shall come and say, ‘Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways, and we shall walk in His paths.’ For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and rebuke many people; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”

 

But Amos (Micah) was no longer alive when his son’s second calling to Nineveh occurred decades later than the first one.

 

Testimony of Jeremiah

 

Jeremiah retrospectively recalls the latter days of Amos-Micah (Jeremiah 26:18): “Micah of Moresheth prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah. He told all the people of Judah, ‘This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘Zion will be plowed like a field, Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble, the temple hill a mound overgrown with thickets’.”

 

Jeremiah was, contrary to the received chronology, a younger contemporary of the reforming king Hezekiah of Judah and his great prophet Isaiah (Jonah).

For Hezekiah was the same as Jeremiah’s reforming king, Josiah - and Isaiah was the same as Josiah’s high official, Asaiah (2 Kings 22:12).

 

With the significant condensing of Judean history, due to the recognition of the era of King Hezekiah as being the era of King Josiah - see e.g. my article:

 

Damien F. Mackey’s A Tale of Two Theses

 

(6) Damien F. Mackey's A Tale of Two Theses’

 

then there must occur a corresponding reduction of Assyro-Chaldean (and Egyptian) history. And so, while in conventional terms the prophet Amos would seem a long way away from the prophet Jeremiah, in this revised structure of things their lives partly overlapped, Amos being the contemporaneous prophet Zephaniah (a Simeonite).

 

Amos, referring to what are effectively chapters 1-2 of the Book of Jonah, will be succeeded by Jeremiah, who was a contemporary of Jonah chapters 3-4, involving the conversion of Nineveh.

 

This incident occurred right at the troublous beginning of the reign of the superstitious and paranoïc Esarhaddon, Jonah 3:6’s “king of Nineveh”.

He, the insane, Babylon-building, invader of Egypt, was none other than Nebuchednezzar, the insane, Babylon-building, invader of Egypt.

 

And, just as the pantomiming prophet, Amos-Micah, had subtly represented his son’s great fish trauma as pantomiming faithless Israel trying to flee from the Lord, so now will Jeremiah symbolise his contemporary, Nebuchednezzar, as Jonah’s great fish swallowing Israel (51:34): “King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has devoured me; he has crushed me. He has set me aside like an empty dish; he has swallowed me like a sea monster; he filled his belly with my delicacies; he has vomited me out”.

My previous reconstructions of the life of Jonah had the long-lived prophet as a very old man, indeed, when undergoing the storm at sea, being dumped into the ocean, and being swallowed whole by the great sea monster.

This revised version potentially, at least, takes decades off that severe biological strain.