Jonah a Dove and Semiramis a Fish

 



by

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

““Jonah” means “dove,” both in Hebrew and Aramaic;

according to Diodorus, the name of Semiramis is linked to doves as well

(the etymology is probably based on the Akkadian word for “dove,” summu/summatu).

…. The fish motif: Jonah spends three days in the belly of a fish, which eventually

spits him out, reformed and almost reborn. Semiramis is the daughter of

the fish goddess Derceto, a kind of divine mermaid”.

 

Eckart Frahm

 

 

Introduction

 

As with the Noachic Flood, so with the tale of Jonah, there has sprung up an abundance of legends and mythologies whether based loosely, or more closely, upon the Hebrew original.

I touched upon just a few of these (Oannes; Jason; Endymion) in Part Two (iii) of my series:

 

Historical Window for Jonah's Nineveh Visit. Part Two: Jonah as a Contemporary of Jeroboam II. (iii) Putting Jonah Back Together: Fairytale?

 

https://www.academia.edu/32974769/Historical_Window_for_Jonahs_Nineveh_Visit._Part_Two_Jonah_as_a_Contemporary_of_Jeroboam_II._iii_Putting_Jonah_Back_Together_Fairytale

 

 

Now, whilst I have described the Hebrew versions of Noah and Jonah as the “original” ones, conventional scholarship would almost universally have it that the Hebrew texts were later versions of a, say, Greco-Roman original. This is apparent from the following article (which provides examples of other Jonah legends) whose very title betrays a presumed Hebrew dependence upon the Greeks: “Was the Book of Jonah inspired by Jason and the Argonauts?” http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot.com.au/2014/05/was-book-of-jonah-inspired-by-jason-and.html#!/2014/05/was-book-of-jonah-inspired-by-jason-and.html

 

Having recently re-read Apollonius of Rhodes' 'Argonautica' it caused me to recall that in the early twentieth century several classical scholars wondered; and even argued, that some parts of the Old and New Testament had been consciously modeled on this popular account of the exploits of Jason and his crew of heroes. In particular they focused on the story of the romance of Jason and Medea arguing; not implausibly, that the anointing of Jason by Medea was the parallel drawn on by the gospels for the anointing of Jesus. (1)

 

In the Old Testament: scholars have focused on the book of Jonah as being the principle element that has been inspired by Apollonius' account of the adventures of Jason and his crew. Gildas Hamel has argued that the name Jonah; in terms of the book, is a deliberate anagram for Jason since Jonah in Greek is 'Ionas', while Jason in Greek is 'Iason'. Indeed Jason was a common Greek name taken by Hellenizing jews in Palestine and viewing it as an anagram of the Greek way of saying Jonah would go a significant way to explain its popularity.

 

Elsewhere others have noted the similarity of story of Jonah to the Greek story of Perseus (3) and Hamel himself points out that it also bears a striking resemblance in places to the labours of Hercules. (4)

 

Hamel's thesis is simple: we know that the 'Argonautica' (in its various editions) was a widely read Greek epic (being as popular as tales about Perseus and Hercules for example) and was especially popular among the masses. Given that the jews of the period that the book of Jonah was written; the late fifth/early fourth century BC [sic], had come into significant contact with the Greeks and their ideas via the close Greek relationship and interchange of ideas with the Phoenicians and the Persians.

 

It is unsurprising that a literate and well-read jew, which the author of Jonah most certainly was, (5) would have drawn on the popular oral traditions of non-jewish peoples he had come into contact with in order to ensure a wide dissemination of his work among his target jewish audience (which was; we should note, ultimately successful). It is also worth noting that the author of the book of Jonah; which is set in eighth century Assyria, used the general story of an actual Mesopotamian legend to provide the basis for his narrative. (6)

 

This amalgamation of mythical narratives into the book of Jonah has predictably given rise to a string of claims from less than careful writers that Jason was merely a mythological derivative of Hercules (viz Robert Graves) (7) or that the 'Argonautica' validates the truthfulness of the Bible (with the assumption that it was written before it when in fact the inverse is almost certainly true). (8)

 

Aside from these enthusiastic attempts to re-write Greek religious history or validate Christian cosmogony: we can further note that there was a 'Tomb of Jason' with a drawing of what we may presume to be the Argo constructed in the first century BC in Jerusalem. (9) This in itself would be decidedly odd if there wasn't a strong tradition among the jews honouring Jason since the jews were notoriously inhospitable to Greek and Roman influences at this time. (10)

 

We also know that in some versions of the 'Argonautica' Jason meets with Triton; the merman of Greek mythology, (11) and this is perhaps transliterated via the Mesopotamian myth (12) into the famous description of Jonah's encounter with the 'big fish'.

 

While the meaning of 'Jonah' in Hebrew is 'dove' and he is guided to land by god, while Jason and the Argonauts are led through the Clashing Rocks by the good will of the gods and the agency of a dove. (13) Also worthy of note is the Hebrew term for the wind blowing Jonah along used in the original text of the book of Jonah verse 1.2; 'boreath', which is almost certainly derived from the Greek god of the north wind: Boreas. (14)

 

These are but a select few of the parallels that Hamel draws and it is clear that what he is describing is a piece of synthesis between different religious traditions and the formative works of Judaism, which clearly suggests that the idea of Judaism as a 'pure religion' or even a unique religious tradition without many non-jewish elements is increasing absurd.

 

The point being that if the book of Jonah is in effect a jewish writer combing Greek and Mesopotamian myths together then setting it in a jewish religious context: then it offers a strong counter to the idea that the Tanakh (i.e. the Hebrew Bible) is derived from God, but rather is a human work of mythology not one of divine inspiration.

 

After all if Jonah is simply Jason then are Yeshivas going to start using the 'Argonautica' as an aid to studying it?

[End of quote]

 

But, as I have consistently noted, the Greeks (and Romans) have often been credited with contributions to culture and civilisation (literary, technological, architectural, etc.) that were already in existence in far earlier times and kingdoms. And I gave a perfect example of this from the findings of Dr. Stephanie Dalley in my article:

 

Sobna (Shebna) the High Priest

 

https://www.academia.edu/31925425/Sobna_Shebna_the_High_Priest

 

Dr. Dalley has been able to demonstrate (actually in situ) that the screw pump, famously attributed to Archimedes (C3rd BC), was already being used by the Assyrians about half a millennium earlier, at the time of Sennacherib.                                       

[End of quote]

Mesopotamian Traditions of Jonah

 

 

“After Ninus’s death, Semiramis becomes the sole ruler of the

Assyrian empire, which she expands through numerous military campaigns.

When she eventually dies, after many years on the throne, she is, according to

the testimony of some witnesses, turned into a dove”.

 

Eckart Frahm

 

 

Jonah Coincides with Semiramis

 

Now it was at the time of this same Sennacherib, or at least during the hiatus period immediately after his assassination by two of his sons, when Assyria was in turmoil with no Assyrian king upon the throne - but only a high functionary, or governor - that I have identified as being, for me, the most likely period of time for Jonah’s arrival at Nineveh.

One will find the arguments for this revised scenario set out in my above-mentioned series: “Historical Window for Jonah's Nineveh Visit”.

Importantly, this precise phase of neo-Assyrian history, which featured an uncommonly powerful queen, Naqia (= Zakutu), who has actually been likened to the famous Sammuramat (Semiramis), I have in fact newly co-ordinated in my revision of Assyrian history:

 

Re-shuffling the pack of neo-Assyrian kings

 https://www.academia.edu/33167712/Re-shuffling_the_pack_of_neo-Assyrian_kings

 

with the very era of Queen Sammuramat herself.

That would make the prophet Jonah, in his visitation to Nineveh, an exact contemporary of Queen Sammuramat’s (of Semiramis’s), and might therefore explain the various Jonah-style legends associated with the Assyro-Babylonia of that queen’s day.

 

 

Eckart Frahm has discussed some of these in his article, “Of Doves, Fish, and Goddesses: Reflections on the Literary, Religious, and Historical Background of the Book of Jonah” (http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/docserver/9789004324749_webready_content_s025.pdf?expires=1495845886&id=id&accname=id23226&checksum=7245DD80F40E9D4274F0A51B574FF013), the relevant parts of which I shall produce here with occasional comments relating to my historical reconstruction of the prophet Jonah and of Queen Sammuramat:

 

The Semiramis legend is best known in the version found in the second book (1–20) of the Bibliotheca historica of Diodorus Siculus, a first-century [BC] Roman historian writing in Greek.7 According to Diodorus, Semiramis is the daughter of the goddess Derceto of Ascalon and a Syrian youth.

 

Mackey’s comment: Likewise Queen Naqia is considered to have been non-Assyrian: “Sennacherib died in January 681 [sic] by parricide, probably at Nineveh. He was survived by his principal wife Naqia, mother of his heir Esarhaddon; her non-Assyrian name suggests that she was of either Jewish or Aramaean origin”.

 

Her mother, ashamed of her sinful union with a mortal man, exposes her newborn child in the wilderness and then throws herself into a lake, where she is changed into a fish with the head of a woman.

 

Mackey’s comment: Compare this with the Assyrian fish-man (pictured above).

 

Against all odds, the abandoned little girl survives, nurtured by doves, and is eventually recovered by a group of shepherds, whose headman, Simmas, gives her the name Semiramis, after “the word which, in the language of the Syrians, means ‘dove’ ” (Diodorus II 4.6).

 

Mackey’s comment: Jonah’s Hebrew name (יוֹנָה), too, as we read, means “dove”.

 

Raised by Simmas, Semiramis grows up and becomes a great beauty. In due course, she catches the eye of an Assyrian officer, Onnes, who encounters her while inspecting the royal herds during a journey to the Levant.

 

Mackey’s comment: “Onnes”, better known as “Oannes”, is often identified with the Assyrian fish man, and also with Jonah, whose name compares favourably with “Oannes”. Interesting that Oannes is in “the Levant”, not Assyria. And that he is “inspecting the herds”, compatible with my view that the prophet Jonah is to be identified with Amos the herdsman (Amos 7:14).

 

 

Onnes takes her as his wife, but their marriage has no future. When the Assyrian king Ninus, founder of Nineveh, makes Semiramis’s acquaintance during his siege of Bactra, he falls in love with her, forces Onnes to commit suicide, and marries her himself. After Ninus’s death, Semiramis becomes the sole ruler of the Assyrian empire, which she expands through numerous military campaigns.

 

Mackey’s comment: Though many consider that “Ninus” refers to the biblical Nimrod, apparent “founder of Nineveh” (cf. Genesis 10:11) - perhaps he is a composite of Nimrod and a later Assyrian king (or kings) - he fits very well here with Sennacherib, a builder of Nineveh, and whose death led to the empowerment of (my composite) Sammuramat/Naqia, that is, Queen Semiramis.

Frahm continues:

 

When she eventually dies, after many years on the throne, she is, according to the testimony of some witnesses, turned into a dove.

There are several conspicuous parallels between this strange story and the book of Jonah. The most important ones were identified by Moshe Weinfeld in a short but highly stimulating 1991 article.8 Weinfeld, however, was interested primarily in the etymology of the name Semiramis and dealt with the links between the two stories only in passing. This, and the fact that Weinfeld’s observations have been largely overlooked by the Hebrew Bible scholars who have written about Jonah since his article appeared, has prompted me to revisit the issue here. The main features the two stories have in common are the following:

 

• The dove motif and the names of the protagonists: “Jonah” means “dove,” both in Hebrew and Aramaic; according to Diodorus, the name of Semiramis is linked to doves as well (the etymology is probably based on the Akkadian word for “dove,” summu/summatu). As seen above, other features of the Semiramis story are likewise associated with doves.

• The fish motif: Jonah spends three days in the belly of a fish, which eventually spits him out, reformed and almost reborn. Semiramis is the daughter of the fish goddess Derceto, a kind of divine mermaid.9 It may be meaningful that the Hebrew word for fish used in the book of Jonah, דג , appears once, in Jonah 2:2, with a feminine ending.10

• Eastern Mediterranean port cities: Jonah boards a ship in Joppa, while Semiramis’s mother is worshipped in Ascalon. Both are cities on the Eastern Mediterranean. They are located some 40 kilometers apart, but during certain periods, especially in the late eighth and seventh centuries [BC], Jaffa belonged to the territory of Ascalon.11 It may or may not be noteworthy that 9 Others have suggested that the fish motif in Jonah goes back to Indian models (see Meik Gerhards, “Zum motivgeschichtlichen Hintergrund der Verschlingung des Jona,” TZ 59 [2003]: 222–47), but this seems rather far-fetched, not least because the relevant Indian texts are all very late. Among the many attempts made over the centuries to explain the episode, there are some that border on the comical. Note, for example, the suggestion by the 18th-century German professor and abbot Hermann von der Hardt (mentioned by Gerhards, “Verschlingung,” 222 n. 4) that Jonah had actually reached an alehouse on an island in the middle of the sea that was called “The Whale” (see Ludwig von Holberg, Allgemeine Kirchenhistorie von dem Jahr Christi 1700 bis 1750, Funfter Teil [Ulm/Leipzig 1773], 156–57).

…. according to the early Jewish hagiographic collection Vitae prophetarum

Jonah was born near Azotos (Ashdod), situated between Ascalon and Joppa,

whence he later moved, together with his mother(!), to Tyre.12

• The Assyrian capital Nineveh: The life journey of both Jonah and Semiramis

ends in Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian empire.

 

Mackey’s comment: That “Jonah was born near Azotos (Ashdod), situated between Ascalon and Joppa” accord tolerably well with my Jonah was born near Azotos (Ashdod), situated between Ascalon and Joppa”, that the prophet Jonah (= Micah) hailed from Moresheth-Gath (See Map).

 

 

A few other features of the two stories invite comparison as well, although

their similarities are less obvious. In Jonah 3:6, the Assyrian king bears the title

“king of Nineveh” and not “king of Assyria,” which is used for him elsewhere

in the Bible. ….

 

Mackey’s comment: “King of Nineveh”, we have found, could indicate a “governor” of the city. The likeliest candidate at the time would seem to me to be the highly important Ahikar, second only to the king of Assyria.

 

…. Finally, there is the issue of the name of Semiramis’s first husband, Onnes. As has

been observed before,14 “Onnes” is apparently derived from the name of the

Mesopotamian primeval sage Uanna(-Adapa), who was known to the Greeks

as Oannes. The Babylonians and Assyrians imagined Uanna/Oannes as a creature

with the body of a fish, which makes him the male counterpart of the mermaid-

like goddess Derceto and provides a further, albeit indirect, link with the

Jonah story. ….

 

Or, there is this other consideration (Grant R. Jeffrey, Unveiling Mysteries of the Bible, p. 107):

 

It is interesting to note that both the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, and the New Testament Greek text spell the name Jonah as Oannes with the addition of the letter I before it (Ioannes). The eminent Assyriologist Dr Herman V. Hilprecht revealed that in the Assyrian inscriptions the letter J in foreign words is written as I, or is dropped completely.

“I have reason to be angry,” Jonah answers, “angry enough to die.”

Between Power Or Love: Euthanasia as a distorted image of God

By the Wider Web   

“Have you reason to be angry over the plant?” God asks Jonah. (The plant had sheltered Jonah, but then God sent a worm that attacked the plant so that it withered).

“I have reason to be angry,” Jonah answers, “angry enough to die.”

His response always baffled me.  How could he be so angry over something so inconsequential, embittered to the point of wanting to die?  The answer sheds light on our culture’s drift toward euthanasia.

Underneath the argument for “mercy killing” in Canada and other countries, and deeper than any desire to escape suffering, is our desperate human wrestling with a Power greater than ourselves.  At issue is our image of God: is there an impersonal Power that causes our suffering and death, or a loving Person who permits weakness and helplessness for our greater good?  Our perception will affect the depth of our anger in response to the injustices of life.  Our subsequent decision to either cultivate that anger into hatred, or dissolve it through forgiveness, will express our choice, accumulated and solidified over a lifetime, between love or power, life or death.

So much of what we suffer as innocent children we can choose to hold on to as responsible adults. 


Or we can forgive.  Imagine a child wounded by parental neglect or mistreatment, who grows us believing the lie that he or she has no inherent worth or dignity.  Depending on personality, one child might react to this injustice with anger, violence, and anti-social behaviour.  Another might feel like a helpless victim, with no choice but to roll up in a corner and die, to escape the pain of being unloved.   Victims can learn to identify with their abusers and abandon their own souls.   Interiorly, it is a tug of war, a battle between life and death.  Will we put our anger at the service of our true self, to defend our human dignity?  Or will we identify with our oppressor, and direct our anger inward, blaming ourselves for being rejected, punishing ourselves for not being good enough?  If we do not know there is a God of love, mercy and justice to whom we can appeal, we can despair.  Is a person
to blame? …

We can be angry with suffering.  This is understandable.  We are permitted to relieve our suffering, but when it is unavoidable, Christians are called to look to the Cross for its ultimate significance.  In his apostolic letter, The Meaning of Christian Suffering , John Paul II wrote that suffering is “man’s weakness and emptying of self.”   Suffering empties us, like Christ on the Cross.  It makes us weak, like Christ on the Cross.  It makes us dependent on Another, like Christ on the Cross. Ultimately, it opens our hearts to receive the fullness of love.

But it is frightfully easy to misread suffering.  For Christians, it is an invitation to union with Christ.


But those of other faiths, and even for Christians themselves, can misinterpret it as meaningless punishment of a vindictive God.  It is natural to be angry, even infuriated, at being the victim of unmerited punishment.  We could despise the One who inflicts it.

By Fr Tim McCauley, priest of the Archdiocese of Ottawa. Read more at Convivium.

....

Taken from: https://www.catholicweekly.com.au/between-power-or-love-euthanasia-as-a-distorted-image-of-god/

Ancient “Saviour” of Israel

 

by

 

 Damien F. Mackey

 

 

 

 

“And the Lord gave Israel a saviour, and they were delivered out of the hand of the king of Syria: and the children of Israel dwelt in their pavilions as yesterday and the day before”.

 

2 Kings 13:5

 

 

Various candidates have been suggested for the “deliverer”, or “saviour” (מוֹשִׁיעַ), of the prayers of Jehoahaz of Israel: e.g., Adad-nirari III of Assyria; Zakir of Hamath - neither of whom is named in the biblical account - Jehoash of Israel, or his son, Jeroboam II. Dr John Bimson had considered, for one, the possibility that Jehoash, amongst other candidates, may have been this “saviour”, whilst also stating the objections to this view (“Dating the Wars of Seti I”, p. 22):

 

There has been much discussion over the identity of the anonymous “saviour”. One view is that the verse refers to Joash [Jehoash], Jehoahaz’s successor, who defeated Ben-Hadad [II] three times and regained some of the lost Israelite cities (II Kings 13:24-25); or to Jeroboam II, son of Joash, who restored Israel’s Transjordanian territory and even conquered Damascus and Hamath (II Kings 14:25-28). But as J. Gray remarks: “The main objection to this view is that this relief is apparently a response to the supplication of Jehoahaz (v. 4), whereas relief did not come until the time of Joash and Jeroboam” … [Reference: I and II Kings: A Commentary, 2^nd edn., 1970, p. 595, where references can be found to scholars who favour Joash and/ or Jeroboam as the deliverer]. Other scholars do not acknowledge this difficulty, pointing to II Kings 13:22 (“Hazael king of Syria oppressed Israel all the days of Jehoahaz”) as evidence that deliverance did not come until after the reign of Jehoahaz … [Reference: K. A. Kitchen in NBD, p. 58].

 

Some commentators have suggested a three-year co-regency between Jehoahaz and Jehoash. And so it could be argued that the relief for Jehoahaz’s Israel would have begun to arise right near to the end of Jehoahaz’s reign, when there began the co-rule of the now more energetic Jehoash. However, this deliverance was only gradual and its proper effects would become manifest only after Jehoahaz had passed away.

Dr. Bimson’s second option for Israel’s “savior” was pharaoh Seti I, the father of Ramses II ‘the Great’, of the 19^th Egyptian dynasty. Bimson had provided a useful account of the similarities between Israel’s wars against Syria at this approximate time and Seti I’s campaigns into Syro-Palestine, leading him to consider the possibility that Seti I may in fact have been the “saviour” of Israel. (It needs to be noted that Dr. Bimson himself does not stand by these views today). Here, nevertheless, is part of what I would consider to be Bimson’s intuitive account of Seti’s I’s campaigns in a revised context (op. cit., pp. 20, 22):

 

In the chronology which we are testing here, the time of Jehoahaz corresponds to the time when Seti I campaigned in Palestine and Syria. It therefore seems very probable that the Aramaean [Syrian] oppression of Israel is the event of which we have … read on Seti’s Beth-Shan stelae”

 

… Aram is “the wretched foe”. Several parallels confirm that we are reading about the same events in both sources. Firstly we have seen that the stelae refer, in Rowe’s words, to “an invasion by tribes from the east side of the Jordan”; the Old Testament records that in Jehu’s reign Hazael occupied all of Transjordan as far south as the Arnon; it was therefore presumably from there that he launched his further offensives into the centre of Israel in the reign of Jehoahaz.

Furthermore, we have seen that the attacking forces of Seti’s day were operating from a base called Yarumtu, or Ramoth, probably Ramoth-gilead. ….

Once west of the Jordan, the immediate objective of Seti’s opponents was apparently the capture of towns in Galilee and the Plain of Esdraelon. In the time of Jehoahaz this was part of the kingdom of Israel. II Kings 13:25 speaks of towns in Israel which Ben-Hadad “had taken from Jehoahaz … in war”. Unfortunately the captured towns are not named, but we know they lay west of the Jordan, since all the territory east of the Jordan had been lost in the previous reign.

The invaders whom Seti confronted also had objectives further afield; they were attempting “to lay waste the land of Djahi to its full length”. We have seen that Djahi probably comprised the Plain of Esdraelon and the coastal plain to the north and south, extending southwards at least as far as Ashkelon. The capture of towns such as Beth-shan was probably an attempt to gain control of the Plain of Esdraelon, which provided access from the Jordan to the coastal strip, both to the north and (via the pass at Megiddo) the south. The coastal plain to the south was certainly one of Hazael’s objectives.

… In short, the movements and objectives of Hazael’s forces exactly parallel those of the forces opposed by Seti I, so far as they can be reconstructed. This is not to say that specific moves recorded in the Biblical and Egyptian accounts are to be precisely identified .… Seti’s two stelae from Beth-shan show that the invaders pushed westwards on more than one occasion, so it would be a mistake to envisage one invasion by the Aramaeans, repulsed by one attack by Seti. The important point is that in both sources we find the same objectives, the same direction of attack, and the probability that in both cases the enemy was operating from the same base.

 

Furthermore, commenting on the text of the smaller stela, Albright notes that since the attacking Apiru [Habiru] “are determined in the hieroglyphic text by ‘warrior and plural sign’ [not merely ‘man, plural sign’], they were not considered ordinary nomads” …. The stela is not describing mere tribal friction, as is conventionally assumed, but an attack by an organised and properly equipped military force. This would certainly fit an attack on Israel by Hazael’s troops in the late 9^th century BC.

 

Bimson now proceeds to consider other of Seti I’s inscriptions:

 

Turning from the Beth-shan stelae to the other sources of Seti’s campaigns, we may now suggest that some of Seti’s larger measures, not just his forays into northern Israel, were also directed against the growing power of Damascus. “… at the close of the ninth century, Hazael and Ben-hadad had imposed Aramaean rule upon vast South-Syrian territories, including Samaria, as far as the northern boundary of Philistia and Judah”. [Reference: H. Tadmor, Scripta Hierosolymitana 8, 1961, p. 241.]. It is logical that Egypt would see this expanding power as a threat to her own security and act to curb it. Seti’s military action in Palestine’s southern coastal plain (first register of his Karnak reliefs) may well have been aimed at establishing a bulwark against southward Aramaean advances along the coastal strip. …. His campaign into Phoenicia and Lebanon may have been to protect (or reclaim?) the coastal cities of that region (important to Egypt for supplies of timber and other commodities) from the westward expansion of Hazael’s rule. ….

We have already noted Faulkner’s suggestion that the reference to a campaign by Seti into “the land of Amor”, on the damaged Kadesh relief, refers to the conquest of “an inland extension of Amorite territory into the country south of Kadesh, possibly even as far south as Damascus” [Reference: Faulkner, JEA 33, 1947, p. 37, emphasis added].

 

[End of quotes]

 

What this shows, I think, is that the revision of history that has the 19^th Egyptian dynasty situated considerably lower than the conventional C13th BC view has a lot to recommend it. Whether or not Dr. Bimson managed to get the precise correspondence, he seems to have been, at least, not far off the mark.

Fine tuning of the biblical and revised Egyptian dates may still be required.

My own tentative suggestion at this stage for the “saviour”? Jeroboam II.

More than king Jehoash, whose efforts did not satisfy, but, rather, angered the prophet Elisha (2 Kings 13:19): “The man of God was angry with him and said, ‘You should have struck the ground five or six times; then you would have defeated Aram and completely destroyed it. But now you will defeat it only three times’,” Jeroboam II was a “deliverer”, a “saviour”. In fact 2 Kings 14:27 tells us straight out: “And since the Lord had not said he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven, he saved (וַיּוֹשִׁיעֵם) them by the hand of Jeroboam son of Jehoash”.

Compare here the root word וֹשִׁיעֵ (from the verb, yasha, to save/deliver) with the identical וֹשִׁיעַ in the word for “saviour: מוֹשִׁיעַ

The mighty Jeroboam II (2 Kings 14:25): “… was the one who restored the boundaries of Israel from Lebo Hamath to the Dead Sea, in accordance with the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, spoken through his servant Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath Hepher”.