The Sign of Jonah: No Whale of a Tale

 

"A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. And he left them, and departed." Matthew 16:4 (KJV)

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What is the sign of Jonah? 

From my experiences in church, I find that it is usually treated as a metaphor for Jesus' having died and being buried in a tomb for three days before the resurrection. It asserts that the tomb was parallel to Jonah being swallowed by a big fish and then after three days, he was puked up on the shore. The sign of Jonah then, is Christ's prophecy of his own death and resurrection.

This isn't wrong, but it misses so much from the Jonah story that bleeds into the Christ narrative. 

In chapter 1 of the Book of Jonah, Jonah is called to prophesy to the Assyrian city of Nineveh, which was in what today is Mosul, Iraq. Jonah bolted. He did not want to preach to non-Hebrews. Though Israel was roughly monotheistic, they lived out this faith in a monlatrous way, meaning that they acknowledged other nations and their gods, but focused solely on their God, being Yahweh. Israel believed that other gods were not the almighty and 2nd Temple Judaism into Christianity believed these other gods to actually be demons -- fallen angels. 

So, when Jonah bolted from God's instructions, he went the opposite direction aboard a boat to what is probably Spain. The Hebrews also had traits on henotheism, which was common in the ancient Near East. This is basically the worship of a family's or tribe's deities. The locus of God in this mindset is where the people worship. In the Jewish world, the temple was the locus of God. Theologically, Jonah should know that God is the Almighty and not confined to a single location, but by fleeing on a boat, there is this impression that Jonah might escape God who is stuck in the temple. 

So, God sends a storm to wake Jonah up. Jonah confesses to the boatmen that the storm is because of him and he's cast overboard. Then a big fish eats Jonah. Then chapter 2, below... 

    2:1 Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish's belly,

    ² And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou            heardest my voice.

    ³ For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves passed over me.

    ⁴ Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight; yet I will look again toward thy holy temple.

    ⁵ The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head.

    ⁶ I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O Lord my God.

    ⁷ When my soul fainted within me I remembered the Lord: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple.

    ⁸ They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy.

    ⁹ But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord.

    ¹⁰ And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.

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The contemporary Christian view is that God made a special fish to eat Jonah and he chilled inside the fish for three days before he was spat-up to continue on the mission God set up. After all, verse two shows that he was conscious and praying, so he was apparently alive in the fish. Or was he?

Note the language used.

In verses 2 and 3, Jonah says that he cried from Sheol (the grave) and the deep, in the heart of the seas. The language speaks of the antithesis of order -- the chaos of the deep waters, which according to Genesis 1:2 the Holy Spirit hovered over at creation whilst bringing the world into order. The deep is more than merely the dark depth of the ocean, for it was also the abyss beneath the ground -- below the water table. It was the furthest reach into chaos and the grave. It is that final place for the demons in eternity. Basically, Jonah was eaten by a big fish -- plausibly the Leviathan, which was a demonic figure that's etymologically related to other demonic entities like Lotan and Lillith in the ancient Near East.

What we have then is Jonah going to the grave or Sheol. He was swallowed by the fish and was conscious, but he was dead. He got gobbled up and basically went to Hell. The experience is what made him repentant. So then, being spit out on the beach in verse 10 is a re-ordering of Jonah's life from the chaos of the sea to the order of dry land. Jonah was basically resurrected. So when Jesus says that the only sign people will get is the sign of Jonah, it is not simply figurative of a few days in a dark place and then a return to light, but it is reference to real death, real experience in Sheol or Hades (Jesus preached victory and released the captives of death there), and a real resurrection. Jesus is saying that he will really die, enter chaos to calm it (see Mark 4:35-42 when Jesus calms the stormy sea), and then rises from the dead into order -- the flesh. 

Great stuff.