The Sign of Jonah
They say if you give a man a fish,
he will eat for a day. Which is well
enough. But if you give a fish a man,
well, then you have yourself a fun
story to tell. Indeed, commenting on Jonah’s popularity in pre-Constantinian
art Graydon Snider observes “there can be no doubt that the primary artistic
representation of early Christianity was the Jonah cycle.”[1] Representations in frescoes, mosaics, and
sarcophagi of one or another aspect of the Jonah story outpace their closest
competitor Noah by a factor of nearly fourteen (one-hundred and eight to
eight).[2] So popular was the story that when Jerome
altered the Latin translation of the traditional “gourd plant,” (curcurbita) to “ivy plant,” (hedera) riots nearly broke out in North
Africa, and Jerome complained that Rome accused him of sacrilege.[3] Yet today, outside of the Sunday school
room’s flannel board, or the occasional bemusing apologetics debate about the
logistics of surviving inside of a fish (or related business discussion of just
how this might be marketed to travel agencies) it seems rare that a word might
get in edgewise about the coughed-up prophet.
As
Jonah is the only prophet Jesus ever directly compared himself to, this
negligence appears as a double loss. We
are not simply bereaved of the complexities of what seemed to be a (prima facie) quaint and even simple
story, one that is actually “from beginning to end, in form and content, in
diction, phraseology and style a masterpiece . . . [where] every word is in
place, every sentence.”[4] Also, when in Matthew 12:39-41 (and 16:1-4)
Jesus is challenged by the Pharisees and the Sadducees to produce a sign, to
which he responds enigmatically that no sign would be given “except the sign of
Jonah,” we simply glide across the surface of this text. For certainly the tale of Jonah and the Whale
has enough press for the popular consciousness through flannel-graph and Veggie-Tales (not to mention Pinocchio and Moby-Dick) that “superficially this passage comparing the
experiences of Jonah and Jesus appears straightforward.”[5] In fact Jesus himself appears to provide the
context for his own saying by noting, “that just as Jonah was in the belly of
the sea-monster for three days and three nights, so for three days and three
nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth.” (Mt. 12:40), so extra
effort may perhaps seem unnecessary or superfluous.
Nonetheless this
“sign of Jonah” has been the object of much speculation by scholars under its
multiple aspects: What does the sign itself
refer to specifically? Jonah’s
preaching? His sojourn in the fish? His being spat up on the land?[6] Moreover other scholars debate the precision
of the “three days,” reference as by our current time management standards
Jesus’ death and resurrection cut some chronological corners. And a third observation relates to the
analogy of the fish as Sheol and Jesus going into the “heart of the
earth.” The apparent problem is that
Jonah did not die, while Jesus on the other hand, most certainly did.
On further
analysis we will show these all appear to be cases of men dividing what God has
joined, so to speak. It is the
contention of this essay that the “sign of Jonah” is to be taken epexegetically
or as a genitive of apposition: the sign is
Jonah, not merely this or that action or detail of his.[7] By this I do not mean to base my essay claim
on a slender grammatical point. Rather I
am using a grammatical point’s terminology to help make an analogous
theological claim: one does not have to parse between “Jonah’s preaching,” or
“death” or “resurrection,” because all of these are included within the unity
of the single “sign [which is] the man Jonah.”
The “sign [which is] Jonah” is thus a complex, narratively rich, “thick
descriptor.”[8] The
“sign of Jonah,” indicates no single static referent, but points to a narrative
trajectory or dramatic context with many rich details to be embodied in the person
of Jesus. As part of elaborating this
thesis, we will see that the sign of Jonah as
a dramatic movement contains images of sacrificial death, judgment, and
ultimately salvation. Boldly stated, the
sign of Jonah can be seen as a circumlocution for the gospel itself. We must
not (like Jonah) go overboard however.
This thick-description or narrative trajectory is not an allegorical
free-for-all but is rule governed and bracketed by three coordinates: Death,
Sheoul, Resurrection. It is the
narrative movement between these three coordinates which is summarized by the
epithet “sign of Jonah,” and thus constitutes the analogate sequence for
Christ.
Thus
in this essay we will first display the Greek text along with our translation
of it in the first section. Then in the
second section we will briefly go over the three problems noted above. In the third section, we will analyze the
actual details of the parallel between Christ and Jonah, and in the fourth and
final section we will summarize our findings and situate them in their proper
context within the overall flow of Matthew’s narrative.
1.
The
Text
Matt. 12:38
π To/te aÓpekri÷qhsan aujtwˆ◊ tineß tw◊n grammate÷wn kai« Farisai÷wn le÷gonteß:
dida¿skale, qe÷lomen aÓpo\ souv shmei√on i˙dei√n.
Matt. 12:39
oJ de« aÓpokriqei«ß ei•pen aujtoi√ß: genea» ponhra» kai« moicali«ß shmei√on
e˙pizhtei√, kai« shmei√on ouj doqh/setai aujthØv ei˙ mh\ to\ shmei√on ∆Iwna◊
touv profh/tou.
Matt. 12:40
w‚sper ga»r h™n ∆Iwna◊ß e˙n thØv koili÷aˆ
touv kh/touß trei√ß hJme÷raß kai« trei√ß nu/ktaß, ou¢twß e¶stai oJ ui˚o\ß touv
aÓnqrw¿pou e˙n thØv kardi÷aˆ thvß ghvß trei√ß hJme÷raß kai« trei√ß nu/ktaß.
Matt. 12:41
a‡ndreß Nineui√tai aÓnasth/sontai e˙n thØv kri÷sei meta» thvß genea◊ß tau/thß
kai« katakrinouvsin aujth/n, o¢ti meteno/hsan ei˙ß to\ kh/rugma ∆Iwna◊, kai«
i˙dou\ plei√on ∆Iwna◊ w—de.
Then some among the Scribes and
Pharisees answered him, saying, “Teacher, we desire to see a sign from
you.” But Jesus answered and said to
them, “an evil and adulterous generation seeks a sign, and it shall not receive
a sign except for the sign of Jonah, the prophet. For just as Jonah was in the belly of the
great sea-monster three days and three nights, so also shall be the Son of Man
in the earth’s heart three days and three nights. The men of Nineveh shall rise up in the
Judgment with this generation and shall judge them, for the men of Nineveh repented
at the preaching of Jonah and behold!
Something greater than Jonah is here
[now].
II. Prolegomena: What is a Semeion?
Before we search
for the “sign” of Jonah, it behooves us to ask just what a sign itself is in
general. The full gamut of its meaning
and significance cannot be expounded here,[9]
nor is a complete word-study really needed.
For our purposes, to summarize the term we suggest: “a miraculous
meaning-filled act/event/object/person designed to produce faith in the
recipient.” This picks up on two
elements of Semeion as noted in BDAG.[10] The first is a more general usage: “a
distinguishing mark, whereby something is known, [e.g.] sign, token, indication.” (BDAG, 920). Hence part of the working definition here is
“meaning filled act/event/object/person.”
A sign fundamentally turns these things into conveyors of
information. For example Semeion
is used like this in Luke 2:12 (kai«
touvto uJmi√n to\ shmei√on, euJrh/sete bre÷foß e˙sparganwme÷non kai« kei÷menon
e˙n fa¿tnhØ.); or Matthew 26:48 uses “sign” to
indicate a signal which gains meaning qua signal from the context of previous
agreement between parties: oJ
de« paradidou\ß aujto\n e¶dwken aujtoi√ß shmei√on le÷gwn: o§n a·n filh/sw
aujto/ß e˙stin, krath/sate aujto/n.
The
second aspect BDAG notes (920) however is that Semeion is used to indicate
“miracles,” i.e. supernatural acts of God which are not just interventions by
God or a supernatural agent, but whose meaning confirms and references the agent.
That is, not all miracles are technically signs, since it is conceivable
a miracle could occur that no one noticed, or was able to “read” as indicating
God. Thus when we determine exactly what
the “Sign of Jonah,” refers to, the sign itself, whatever its object, is in
fact a miraculous meaning-filled thing which points to God’s power. Once again, it is the thesis of this essay
that the sign is itself Jonah, i.e. the genitive construction is epexegetical:
the sign (which is) Jonah. As we shall
see this is not merely a grammatical point, but has a corresponding theological
component which makes the sign not any single thing, but a dramatic movement.
III. Which sign is the sign?
Just
above we noted our thesis that the “sign of Jonah,” is not a single thing but
refers to the person of Jonah-as-sign.
And as we mentioned in the intro Jonah-as-sign is interpreted through a
narrative path within three main “topographical” features: death, Sheol,
resurrection. Thus the “sign of Jonah” is Jonah and not merely one or another
of Jonah’s actions—yet Jonah’s person is the
sign of Jonah only insofar as it is bracketed by the three points and hence is
limited or rule governed by these coordinates which guard against allegorical
speculation on any and every detail.
However, our thesis is debated among scholars and needs justification
before specific details can be brought forth.
We can immediately
notice that thematically the number three runs through this entire section. “Jonah was in the belly of the great
sea-monster[11]
for three days and three nights.” The
phraseology of which, Gundry notes, appears to be an explicit nod by Matthew to
assimilate Jesus’ words to the Old Testament, as this is a verbatim copy of the
LXX. More evidence for Matthew’s
particular composition comes in contrast to the Lukan account, where Matthew adds
the words “touv profh/tou,”
so as to apparently hammer home that Jesus is fulfilling the prophetic typology
characterized by Jonah.[12] Thus
will Christ be in the “earth’s heart” for three days and three nights. The basic movement has three parts as well:
going-to the sea monster (by being thrown overboard), in the sea-monster,
tossed-out of the sea monster. So too
then we have a triadic pattern of Christ’s death, in the “earth’s heart,” and
resurrection. And finally Christ repeats
the word sign three times. Bruner suggests that the triple repetition of
the word “sign” by Jesus is to emphasize “the evil of the search for [the sign],”[13]
which is possible but seems a difficult thing to ascertain from the text with
certainty. It seems just as likely that the
triple repetition is a literary device playing off and so again emphasizing the
three days and three nights thematic thus perhaps alluding to the sign’s
diachronic nature.
The “three”
thematic is interesting, but of course is meager evidence in itself for the
thesis that the “sign of Jonah” is a typological movement rather than a specific event. Several commentators believe, in fact, that
the sign is not as we have suggested—namely the whole of Jonah’s life distinguished
by the three coordinates of death, Sheol, resurrection—but is in fact Jonah’s preaching to Nineveh specifically. Just as Jonah came preaching judgment and
repentance (however vaguely) so too has the Son of Man come and is now
preaching the same things. Bultmann, H.B
Green, Krister Stendhal, and J.P. Meier are all to some extent of this opinion.[14] Their general argument stems from Mt. 12:41
in which Nineveh’s repentance is alluded to specifically via Jonah’s
preaching. Bultmann also specifically
makes the argument that this would help account for Mark’s version (8:12) where
no sign at all will be given,[15] as
the original and Matthew’s “addition” as a sort of creative exegesis which
gives justification for the triduum
tradition.
Yet Bultmann’s
arguments specifically do not seem very compelling unless one accepts the whole
of his system of demythologization. His
argument for the creative addition of a physical sign (death and resurrection)
by Matthew (one that is thus not
authentic) fits his general distaste for the significance of particular
historical events as opposed to the existential proclamation of the Word. The isolation of Jonah’s preaching from the
context of the “three days and three nights” by these commentators seems not
only reductionist, but causes us to miss key thematic elements in Jonah (and
hence in Matthew) as well. Eugene H.
Merril has argued persuasively that while certainly preaching is included
within the sign, the “sign of Jonah,” itself is Jonah’s travels in, and being
regurgitated by, the fish.[16] Indeed, argues Merril, that this in particular would be the sign God
chose to display to Nineveh is given increased significance when understood
against the background of Nineveh itself.
The details are quite interesting and so it behooves us to quote him at
some length:
Nineveh was one of the most ancient
of the Assyrian cities, with traceable roots going back to the Uruk period (ca.
4300-3100 B.C.). Its name from the
earliest times was composed of the composite Sumerian logogram NINUA (=NINA),
the interior sign of which is…in Akkadian, nünu,
“fish.”…A town of identical name (Nina) near Lagash worshipped the fish-goddess
Nanshe, so it is suggested that she was also the chief deity of early
Nineveh. The logogram NINUA can also be
read NANSÊ, an obvious support for this connection. The name of Nineveh, “Fishtown,” is highly
intriguing then in considering the meaning of Jonah as a sign to
Nineveh….Berossus has preserved an Assyrian tradition to the effect that
Assyria’s arts and sciences were brought from the Persian Gulf by a half-fish,
half-man deity, called in the Greek, Oannes. A representation of this God may be detected
on bas-reliefs from Kouyunjok … Place names are commonly aetiological in
nature, so the myth describing the founding of Nineveh by a fish-god is incidentally
confirmed by the name [Fishtown] itself.[17]
He continues by
noting that the relevance of this myth in connection with the story of Jonah is
significant as it points toward the indication that the “sign of Jonah” as Jonah being swallowed and spat out by
a fish, would have had high contextual relevance given the “religious
imagination,” of the long-standing heritage of the Ninevites. As part of his argument Meril points out as
well that the Old Testament theme of YHWH proving himself to be more powerful
than other deities—thereby coopting their traditional functions for Himself
(e.g. His disputes with the Ba’als)—can now be seen as a theme in Jonah as well. When viewed against this historical
background the sign if taken as Jonah and the Fish, is quite explicitly a
declaration that YHWH is in fact the true-God, dominant over NANSE as He
commands her minions, and indeed He even turns the “fish-man” who was the
supposed progenitor-deity of Nineveh into His messenger in the person of Jonah. Against this background, says Meril, that the
Ninevites would have recognized Jonah’s peculiar arrival as of immense
religious significance would explain their near-immediate repentance at Jonah’s
somewhat lackluster prophetic message.
Regardless of the
validity (however interesting) of this historical background, that Jonah and
the Fish were together taken as the
sign, at least in Jewish interpretation, and not just Jonah’s preaching alone,
is confirmed by the judgment of Michael Licona[18]
and H.F. Bayer[19]
in their respective analyses on the resurrection. They both note that several Jewish texts (3
Macc. 6:8; Pirque R. El. 1, 10; and Ta’an 2:(1)4.; Josephus, Antiquities 9.10.2 sec.208-214) have the
tendency to identify Jonah’s miraculous journey and resuscitation with the
sign. In fact, highly relevant for our
discussion Pirque R. Elohim uses semeion for the miraculous
resuscitation. Moreover while
undoubtedly the preaching is an important element,
it seems quite reductive to focus solely on the preaching when Matthew’s Christ indeed seems to have the “three
days and three nights” of the Noah story clearly in view. This form/content distinction, or
sign-act/proclamation distinction appears wholly unnecessary to explain the
differences amongst the Synoptics, moreover. The absolute refusal of a sign in
Mark comes just before Peter’s confession of Christ as the Messiah, and seems
to serve to emphasize the faithlessness of the Pharisees to an even further
degree. And in fact the absence in Luke
is itself an absence still pregnant with meaning, as Luke’s Jesus says “Jonah [i.e. the man himself] was a sign”
for the Ninevites (Lk. 11:30), which would fit seamlessly into our thesis.[20]
Feasibly the
“three days” occurs in Matthew, but is absent in Luke and Mark, because Matthew
is particularly interested in Christ fulfilling and in many cases “being
greater” than Old Testament figures and events.[21] This
fits as well with the “upward” trend in Matthew’s narrative to this point as
Bruner notes: “the stories go higher and higher: from visible institutions
[Sabbath controversy] to invisible powers [accusing Christ of using Satan’s
power] to God [sign of Jonah]”[22]
and eventually up into Christ’s “who do you say I am?” in Mt. 16. It thus seems Darrell Bock’s judgment (which
parallels our thesis above) is correct when he notes “the sign [of Jonah] is a message that comes with verification,”[23]
and not the message alone. A more
parsimonious argument for the differences therefore seems to be to assume that
Matthew records the full event, or possibly merely elaborates on the cryptic
idea in Luke that Jonah was the sign,
which would argue for a prior origin for Matthew and Luke’s versions in Q
independent of Mark.[24]
IV. Death (and Resurrection?)
So far the
argument has vindicated our thesis that the “Sign of Jonah” is more
of an encompassing narrative
sequence than it is a specific discrete event “sliced” from the narrative. Above we saw that isolating Christ’s
proclamation by itself does not seem viable, while at the same time Christ’s preaching
does indeed seem to be an important part within
the scope delimited by the “Sign of Jonah.”
Again motivated by an attempt to explain the Synoptic discontinuity,
especially Mark’s version where Jesus unilaterally denies a sign, Pierre
Bonnard[25]
and David Hill,[26]
argue that the sign is Jesus’ death. Their argument is that this death would be a
sort of “signless sign,” i.e. one that would be manifest only to the eyes of
faith, but to the eyes of the world it would appear without this meaning and
indeed as Christ’s failure. Thus the
“signless sign” makes the (in their opinion) expanded versions of Luke and
Matthew essentially harmless typological interpretation consonant with what
they consider to be the original account in Mark, since no “publically visible”
sign was given. The event of death later
could be attributed prophetic meaning after
Christ was raised when impetus to search for Old Testament parallels would have
been high. Since we have already argued
above that it appears more parsimonious to posit either Matthew’s recording of
the full event, or merely elaborating on the idea of Jonah as sign present
already in Q and Luke, a basic reason for the necessity of these gymnastics
seems lost.
Their argument for
this position continue, however, from the basis that the “three days and three
nights” parallels are not actually chronologically comparable with one another,
thus casting doubt on the truth that this would have been a prediction of Jesus
due to its inaccuracy. Jesus was, they
claim, at best dead for two days and two nights. Hence the analogy is fundamentally broken and
is actually just Matthew’s mathematically unsuccessful attempt to draw out the
details of the parallel.[27] Yet this argument is quite weak and rests on
the basis of an anachronistic and indeed non-Jewish standard for time keeping.[28] Bock apparently thinks so little of these
arguments he spends a mere one sentence in a footnote dismissing alternatives
by noting “it is a Semitic custom to count such days inclusively, which means any
part of a day involves counts as the whole day.”[29] Bruner likewise endorses this time-synecdoche
theory, and notes rather wryly that those who seek perfect symmetry between the
three days and three nights are ironically “too close for comfort to the demand
for a sign itself.”[30] Even apart from the Jewish metonymic use of
parts of days for the whole day (and parts of night for the whole night),
Licona analyzes every instance and variation of “after three days,” or “after
three days and three nights,” or “on the third day,” or “in three days” in the
New Testament in regards to the resurrection, and notes that taken strictly
literally they contradict each other. He
concludes, “this seems to suggest that the three day motif…was a figure of
speech meaning a short period of time.”[31] Thus the specific complaint non-identity
between the days is a non-sequitur.
V. Elements of Grave and Abyss
From
these arguments it seems plausible to accept that the “sign of Jonah,” is in
fact the entire dramatic sequence of his being thrown overboard, in a fish for
three days and three nights, and spat out again on land. We have demonstrated that arguments for any
piece of this sequence is reductive and is often supported by faulty arguments. In addition to those who think the sign is
merely Jonah’s preaching, or merely Jonah’s death, some scholars like N.T.
Wright and Michael Licona believe the “sign of Jonah” refers primarily to
resurrection.[32] Nonetheless their emphasis is not an
exclusive one (indeed resurrection presupposes death), and the way this affects
their exegesis to make it different from those like I. Howard Marshall, Gundry,
and Bruner who argue for the full dramatic context, is negligible.[33] It will thus be assumed here that both Wright
and Licona themselves can serve as witnesses, and not opponents, to our general
thesis that the entire dramatic sequence of Jonah and the fish constitute the
“sign of Jonah.”
Since
the general plausibility of our thesis has been established, let us look with
more precision at what themes emerge from this sign. It is interesting to note that prior to this
entire discussion of the sign of Jonah, Matthew has already made an allusion to
Jesus in terms of the Jonah story in Mt. 8:23-27 where Jesus calms the storm.[34] William Lane has argued that the similarities
are merely coincidental, and are “dictated by the circumstances of describing a
severe storm,” and its affect on the crew.[35] Certainly while some of the descriptions are
part of the exigencies of describing similar scenes, the parallels are of such
a nature as to grab one’s attention.
Indeed some agreeing parallels, such as both journeys across the water
going from Jewish to Gentile territory, are difficult to
dismiss as circumstantial. As in Jonah (1:5),
while on a boat a great storm begins to rage, and Jesus, like Jonah, is asleep
below deck (8:24). Like the crew aboard
Jonah’s boat, Jesus’ disciples become incredibly distressed and wake Jesus
(“Lord save us, we are perishing!”) just as the captain wakes Jonah, “so God
will save us and we will not perish.”
Jonah tells the men to toss him into the sea because God is angry with
him. They reluctantly do this and “the
waves stood from their raging” (Jon. 1:15).
Here there is an interesting difference-within-similarity. Jesus, obviously, does not jump overboard but
merely commands the storm to be quiet.
When in Jonah the storm stills, the (Gentile!) crew praise God; when the
storm is stilled in Matthew the disciples ask the very loaded question, “what
sort of man is this that even the wind and the waves obey him?” (Mt.
8:27). As mentioned above this is part
of the Matthean “elevating” narrative which leads to Peter’s confession in
ch.16. The response to the disciples
question then, is that this is “the Son of God.”
The
relevance of this story comes to the fore when we analyze the “sign of
Jonah.” As the story goes, Jonah is
tossed overboard to still the storm on behalf of the crew, to appease God’s
anger. The immediate parallel that comes
to mind is obviously Christ’s death for our sins. Yet this similarity itself has a unique
wrinkle. In speaking of the “sign of
Jonah,” Christ refers to himself as o tou anthrwpou.
It is in fact “the Son of Man”
that will be in the “heart of the earth” for three days and three nights. It would be impossible to go over the nuances
of this term “Son of Man,”[36]
for our purposes we can allude to the fact that this apocalyptic figure (e.g.
in Daniel 7) became associated as the agent of the coming judgment (e.g. Mat.
19:28; c.f. Luke 12:8). The uniqueness
of this is that if Jonah was the anti-type of “sacrificial death” (to a certain
degree) Jesus, as the Son of Man now typified through this sign of Jonah, something
along the lines of Barth’s “the Judge who is Judged,” on behalf of others
appears. In the Matthew 8:27 parallel,
Jesus has already established that He holds the authority that God did in Jonah
to still the storm. He does what God
does. Yet now also, in the very specific
sense of dying to save others (ignoring Jonah’s petulant attitude and the fact
he caused the mess in the first place) Jesus also is now seen to do what Jonah
does. And he does this specifically by
combining the sign of Jonah with the figure of the Son of Man. The Judge is taking judgment upon himself. Lessing notices this theme within the
original context of Jonah itself.
Commenting on the Hebrew he writes: “If the phrase…’but YHWH provided’
[a great fish] indicates that Jonah is receiving salvation from God, then what
the great fish does with Jonah indicates
that the prophet is also paradoxically placed under judgment by YHWH’s
judgment. The Hebrew term ‘to swallow’
is never used in a positive context
in the Old Testament…always a destructive one.”[37] This is the first movement of the dramatic
context of the sign of Jonah, ripe with the paradox of judgment and salvation,
and indeed sacrificial death.
The
second movement, obviously still being along the same trajectory as the first,
is the Son of Man being “in the heart of the earth,” for three days and three
nights. The phrase kardia tes ges does not merely mean “in his
tomb,” or simply “dead.” Much more
specifically Gundry notes that: “[heart of the earth] means the realm of the dead
(c.f. Sir. 51:5; Eph. 4:9),”[38]
i.e. Sheol. (c.f. the LXX of Jonah 2:3: bath kardia thallases.) Here the
parallel seems to be with Jonah’s phrase “the heart of the seas” in 2:4. Lessing notes that “the land” in Jonah 2:7 is
also strictly equivalent to Sheol (LXX: kataben tes gen), thus giving “heart of the earth” a mixture of equivalent
images. Richard Clifford records that these
images in ancient Near-Eastern literature pair with the previous verb used of
the fish, “to swallow.” He writes that
Mot, the lord of the underworld, is portrayed as a voracious monster into whose
gullet one goes, only to descend further into the underworld.[39]
Hence both the sea and the fish in some sense represent Sheol. This parallelism of both the sea and the fish
as Sheol is to be expected given the ancient Near-Eastern context of
Jonah. “The people of Israel, in common
with other peoples of the Ancient Near East, conceived the world as an island
surrounded by the waters of chaos, the Great Deep. This chaos to Israel represented a force
radically opposed to God’s creative power.”[40] Just as Baal defeated Yam (the sea), likewise
God is sometimes pictured as overcoming the Sea and the Sea Monster at creation
(Ps. 74:12-17; 89:10-15). Both the sea
and the sea-monster remained one of the most common literary expressions for
chaos or the grave. This idea of chaos
bled into the idea of Sheol, as often death was seen as a reversal of creation,
when God’s breath is taken from our nostrils we turn back into unbound dust
(Eccl. 12:7); or the flood of the world as God’s removal of the boundaries he
used to hold the chaos waters in place (Gen. 6). Moreover darkness was synonymous with chaos,
often in the form of crime or wicked, treacherous deeds (Prov. 2:13). Night was when chaos was at its height of
power, when the lawless did as they pleased (Job 24:14; Jer. 49:9; Matt. 24:43;
1 Thess. 5:2). Hence when Christ died
the world went dark (Mt. 27:45), chaos encroached the world, as Christ, the
Limen between order and chaos in whom all things hang together (Col. 1:17), is
dead. Tellingly as a parallel between
Christ and Jonah and their mutual descent into the dark waters of Sheol, Luke
saw a special significance of Jesus’ arrest at night (Luke 22:53), and one
wonders if this is so because the restless plotting of the wicked, much like
that conspiracy which moved against Christ, could be likened to the movement of
the sea (Is. 57:20).
We
must recall that it is precisely the Son of Man who will be in Sheol, that same
Sheol which is located beyond God’s presence (Amos 9:2; Prov. 15:11; Ps.
139:8), an absolute and final end (Jer. 51:39; Job 14:12). A place of captivity, with gates (Is. 38:10)
and, in Jonah 2:7, bars. A place of
darkness (Lam. 3:6) and silence (Ps. 31:17-18).
It is these images that flesh out the concept of chaos seen above.
“Jonah’s use of Sheol in 2:3 thus
indicates that he is under God’s judgment,” writes Lessing.[41] Yet the Son of Man, the one under judgment
bearing the “sign of Jonah,” as we have seen, is also the judge. We have also
touched upon another double aspect: that the sign of Jonah is both a sign of
judgment, yet also simultaneously a sign of God’s salvation. We saw this specifically in God sending the
fish (salvation) and the fish swallowing Jonah (judgment). To extend this slightly further we must
return to the concept of “three days and three nights.”
We
saw above regarding “three days and three nights,” that 1.) Hebrews counted any
part of the day as the whole, and 2.) that it is often idiomatic for “a short
period of time.” Yet in specific reference
to the underworld, there is a third idiomatic-type of reference: “in the
ancient Near East there was a common understanding that in some contexts ‘three
days and three nights’ could refer to the time it took to travel to what we
call ‘hell.’”[42] This was quite frequent, for example, in both
Sumerian and Egyptian mythology. While
again, this background is slightly tenuous, it does help make sense of Jonah’s somewhat strange psalm in chapter
two. Why would Jonah be praising God
inside of a fish? Writes Lessing: “If this interpretation is correct, the
‘three days and three nights’ is the time it takes the great fish to take Jonah
back from Sheol and the brink of death
(2:3, 7) to life and the worship of YHWH (2:8-10). This is not the time it took Jonah to sink to
the depths of the nether region, as in the pagan myth of Inanna; rather, in
this span, the great fish returns his
passenger from Sheol to the dry land (2:11).”[43] Even more, as the fish—the ketos--though not the Leviathan per se, was
itself the general image along with the seas of both chaos and Sheol, here the
image of the great fish saving Jonah from
Sheol at God’s behest is an image of God using
chaos against itself. Sheol has
betrayed Sheol at the command of God.
That is: he uses death to overcome death, YHWH “kills and makes alive;
casts down to Sheol and brings back up.” (1 Sam. 2:6). Thus the Son of man being in the “heart of
the earth” for three days and three nights is a sign of judgment, but also a movement toward resurrection. “The Sign of Jonah,” is itself a gospel
proclamation.
Conclusion
We
demonstrated in this essay that the best formal way to understand “the sign of
Jonah,” is to take it as no one single thing, but the dramatic context
surrounding Jonah being cast into the sea, being swallowed by a fish for three
days and three nights, and finally being spat up on land. Materially, we saw that the parallel is
referenced by Christ with the title “the Son of Man,” which further brings out
the dialectic of judgment and salvation already contained in the Jonah
story. Ultimately the sign of Jonah
refers to Christ’s experience of death and descent into Sheol; but also and
just as (if not more) importantly, the movement into life wrought by God. The sign of Jonah is now Christ crucified,
raised and so justified by the Spirit of God (1 Tim. 3:16), who was appointed
to be the Son of God in power via the resurrection from the dead (Rom. 1:4). Just as Jonah’s cries in Sheol were heard by
YHWH, a fortiori God did not forget
His Son, the “one greater than Jonah.”
We also saw that within the sign of Jonah lay a picture of God
overcoming death by death’s own weapon and servant; overcoming chaos by chaos’
own agent. So too has the Son of Man,
the judge, taken judgment upon Himself, and so uses death to overcome death in
a sacrifice for us. As Lessing
concludes, “in making reference to the sign of Jonah, Jesus is indicating to us
that he is dying to live.” Which is to
say, dying to live, for us.
[1] Graydon Snider, Ante
Pacem: Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine
(Macon: Mercer University Press, 1985),
45.
[3] As noted in Claude Peifer, “Jonah and Jesus: The
Prophetic Sign,” The Bible Today
(1982): 377-387.
[4] H.C. Brichto, Toward
a Grammar of Biblical Poetics: Tales of the Prophets (New York: Oxford
Univervisty Press, 1992), 68.
[5] Dominic Rudman, “The Sign of Jonah,” Expository Times (July 1, 2004): 324.
[6] A helpful summary account is given in Frederick Dale
Bruner, Matthew: A Commentary (Volume
One: The Christbook, Mt. 1-12) (Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s Publishing, 1987),
574-575.
[7] In this I am following the analysis of K. H.
Rengstorf, “Semeion,” TDNT vol.7 (1971): 233.
[8] I am borrowing the term “thick description,” from the sociologist
Clifford Geertz, “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of
Culture.” The Interpretation of the Cultures: Selected Essays (New York:
Basic Books, 1973), 3-30. Geertz was a
pioneer in what is now known as “symbolic anthropology,” which gives prime
attention to the role of symbols, traditions, typology etc… in the perception
of meaning. Thick
description focuses more on sequences which gain meaning from overall context
rather than individual actions understood atomistically.
[9] C.f. K. H. Rengstorf, “Semeion,” Theological
Dictionary of the New Testament vol.7 (1971): 200-261.
[10] Frederick William Denker, ed. A Greek English Lexicon of the New Testament and Early Christian
Literature (Chicago: University of
Chicago, 2000).
[11] Here of course the story has defaulted to the English
word “whale” (even the scientific name for Whales is “cetacean” which derives
from khtoV ). Yet the text
makes no reference to a specific species of any fish. BDAG (p.544) notes khtoV notes the more general “sea monster.”
In fact this is the term used in Greek mythology of the monster that was
to devour Andromeda before she was rescued by Perseus, and the term also refers
to the creature slain by Heracles (Appolodorus
2.4.3 and Iliad 21.441
respectively). In ancient Greek art the
sea-monster khtoV was generally represented as more serpentine, even
dragon-like. We will see that this has
some significance in a moment.
[12] Robert Gundry, Matthew:
A Commentary on His Literary and Theological Art (Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s
Publishing, 1982), 243-244.
[13] Bruner, The
Christbook, 574.
[14] Rudolph Bultmann, The
History of the Synoptic Tradition (Peabody: Hendrikson Publishing, 1994),
118; H. B. Green, The Gospel According to
Matthew (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), 129; John P. Meier, The Vision of Matthew (Eugene: Wipf and
Stock, 1994), 87; Krister Stendahl, “Matthew,” in Peake’s Commentary on the Bible ed. M. Black and H. H. Rowley
(Routledge: Routledge Publishing, 1991), 785.
[15] Bultmann, History
of the Synoptic Tradition, 118.
[16] Eugene H. Merril, “The Sign of Jonah,” Journal for the Evangelical Theological
Society. Vol. 23 no. 1 (1980): 23-30.
[18] Michael Licona, The
Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (Nottingham: Apollo
Press, 2010), 292n.55.
[19] H.F. Bayer, Jesus’
Predictions of Vindication and Resurrection: The Provenance, Meaning, and
Correlation of the Synoptic Traditions.
(Tübingen: Mohr, 1986), 136-138.
[20] N.T. Wright, The
Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 433
agrees that it appears in essence Luke is in harmony with Matthew. However Wright believes the sign itself is
resurrection. Obviously this is part of
it, but as this paper will continue to argue this emphasis is one sided and
misses out on some key themes if it does not broaden its focus to also include
the whole series of being thrown overboard to still the storm, consumed by the
fish, and then spat up by Nineveh.
[21] As Gundry points out in Matthew, 243-244.
[22] Bruner, The
Christbook, 572.
[23] Darrell Bock, Jesus
According to Scripture: Restoring the Portrait from the Gospels (Grand
Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), 193.
Italics added.
[24] Licona, Resurrection,
292n.54 notes that the material could simply be two different instances of
similar conversation where the exact nature of what was said was changed with
regard to the audience with whom Jesus was speaking instead of Matthew adding
to Q. Licona concludes ultimately that
he believes the “Sign of Jonah” and “three days and three nights” are original
to Matthew without claiming they are a tradition independent of Luke.
[25] Cited in Donald K. McKim, Dictionary of Major Biblical Interpreters (Downers Grove:
InterVarsity Academic, 2007), 205f.
[26] David Hill, The
Gospel of Matthew (New Century Bible Commentary) (Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s
Publishing, 1981), 220.
[27] Ibid. The reason
Hill claims the parallel is still valid in regards to the death is that,
post-hoc, the analogy can be drawn with Jonah being tossed into the sea to
still the storm, with Jesus’ death on the cross to appease God’s wrath.
[28] It might be said as well, somewhat tongue in cheek,
that since Christ in 12:41 says he is greater than Jonah, the fact that he got
on with his business after being dead a bit quicker is to be quite expected.
[29] Bock, Jesus,
192n.35. C.f. Gundry, Matthew, 244.
[30] Bruner, The
Christbook, 574. C.f. Gn. 40:13, 20;
2 Chron. 10:5, 12; Hos. 6:2.
[31] Licona, The
Resurrection of Jesus, 327.
[32] Wright, Resurrection
of the Son of God, 433; Licona, Resurrection,
292n.54.
[33] I. Howard Marshall, Luke (NIGTC) (Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s Publishing, 1978), 483-485;
Gundry, Matthew, 244; Bruner, Christbook, 574.
[34] Reed Lessing, “Dying to Live: God’s Judgment of Jonah,
Jesus, and the Baptised.” Concordia
Journal no.1 (January 2007): 9-25, has a very thorough account of the
parallels.
[35] William Lane, The
Gospel According to Mark (Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s Publishing, 1974),
176n.91.
[36] C.f. M. E. Osterhaven, “Son of Man,” in The Evangelical Dictionary of Theology,
1127-1130.
[37] Lessing, “Dying to Live,” 11.
[38] Gundry, Matthew,
244.
[39] Cited in Lessing, “Dying to Live,” 11.
[40] Rudman, “The Sign of Jonah,” 326.
[42] Lessing, “Dying to Live,” 14.
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