by
“Nebuchadnezzar the King of Babylon has devoured me,
he has crushed me;
He has made me an empty vessel, He has swallowed me
up like a monster;
He has filled his stomach with my delicacies, He has
spit me out”.
Introduction
The Hebrew word, tannîn (תַּנִּין), “monster”, used here in Jeremiah, can be
associated in the OT with a ‘great sea creature’ (cf. e.g., Genesis 1:2 and Job
7:12), which would be most fitting if the prophet were intending Jonah
symbolism here.
Despite the incredible
similarities, though, biblical commentators often fail to make any connection here
between Jeremiah and the Jonah incident.
While this is surprising, it may be that King
Nebuchednezzar, on the one hand, and Jonah, on the other, would be deemed
historically too far apart for the prophet Jeremiah, a contemporary of the King
of Babylon, to have intended any meaningful comparisons.
But, according to this present article, the apparent
chronological gap is non-existent.
The time is considerably out of joint
Already I may have managed to alienate critical
readers by even daring to suggest that there is no chronological gap between
the prophet Jonah and King Nebuchednezzar.
For, while the Bible links Jonah’s prophetic
ministry to the reign of King Jeroboam II of Israel (2 Kings 14:23, 25), who is
conventionally dated to c. 786–746 BC, the Chaldean king, Nebuchednezzar, is
thought not to have begun to reign until c. 605 BC.
That is, at the very least, a span of (746-605 =) 141 years (plus, of course, Jonah’s age at the time). The
sum total would be well in excess even of the 120-13o years traditionally
attributed to the long life of Jonah!
What the long life – and, presumably, the long
prophetic ministry – of the prophet Jonah might at least allow for is that, if
he began during the reign of Jeroboam II, his prophetic reach could have
extended down through a series of reigns.
Now, one such prophet, who began during Jeroboam II,
was still prophesying at the time of King Hezekiah of Judah. I am referring to
Hosea (1:1): “The word of the Lord that came to Hosea son of
Beeri during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and
Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and during the reign of Jeroboam son
of Jehoash king of Israel”.
The long-lived Hosea I have identified with the
great Isaiah, likewise long-lived and contemporaneous:
Did Isaiah and Hosea ever meet?
(6) Did Isaiah and Hosea ever meet?
And, given the incredible and abundant language
parallels between Isaiah and Nahum, I have extended the identification to
include Isaiah (Hosea) as Nahum:
Prophet Nahum as Isaiah Comforted
(6) Prophet Nahum as Isaiah Comforted
From there, it is but a small step to include Jonah,
whom Tobit variously calls Nahum:
Tobit’s Jonah and Nahum interchange
(6) Tobit's Jonah and Nahum interchange
All of this has been worked out in more detail in my
article:
De-coding Jonah
So, these arguments give rise to a completely new
scenario, namely that the prophet Jonah (who is Isaiah/Hosea, Nahum), having
begun to minister during the reign of Jeroboam II of Israel (d. 746 BC),
continued down at least to King Hezekiah of Judah.
1.
Prophet
Jonah’s ministry continued down to King Hezekiah.
In my postgraduate thesis (2007), I categorically
rejected Edwin R. Thiele’s fixing of the reign of Hezekiah to 716/715 BC;
whereas 2 Kings 18:10 clearly records that: “At the end of three years the army
of Assyria captured Samaria. That happened in the sixth year of Hezekiah’s
rule. It was the ninth year of the rule of Hoshea, the king of Israel”. Thus
the Fall of Samaria (c. 722 BC) occurred in Hezekiah’s 6th year of
reign - implying that he would have become king in c. 727 BC.
Commencing, then, at 727 BC, Hezekiah’s 29-year
reign (2 Kings 18:2) would have concluded in c. 698 BC, which is still well
short of our goal of Nebuchednezzar’s commencement (c. 605 BC).
More tightening up work needs to be done.
Streamlining the Kings of Israel and Judah
In various articles, now, I have reproduced a simple
table of which I am very content regarding the later Kings of Israel. Here, for
instance, we find it in my article:
Getting the most out of the Kings of Israel and Judah
(5) Getting the most out of the Kings of Israel and Judah
as follows:
….
A big part of
resolving the difficulties associated with the kings of Israel and Judah for
this period is to recognise the alter egos, for instance, that a series
of three kings of Israel has been duplicated. Thus, as I have tabulated
previously:
ZECHARIAH (MURDERED) = PEKAHIAH (MURDERED);
SHALLUM (MURDERER-MURDERED = PEKAH (MURDERER-MURDERED);
MENAHEM (MURDERER)= HOSEA (MURDERER).
….
Added to this radical reduction is my merging of the
long-reigning Jeroboam II, who does not figure at all in Chronicles:
Great King Jeroboam II missing from Chronicles
(5) Great King Jeroboam II missing from Chronicles
with his supposed father, Jehoash.
This era, the reign of King Jehoash/Jeroboam saw the
beginnings of the prophet Jonah’s ministering:
An Old Testament “Saviour” of Israel
(6) An Old Testament “Saviour” of Israel
Coupled with so radical a revision of the Kings of
Israel there must be a shortening, as well, of the Kings of Judah – not to
mention of the contemporaneous Assyro-Babylonians and Egyptians.
The outstanding feature of this necessary revision
is my collapsing of the era of the great reforming king Hezekiah of Judah into
the era of the great reforming king Josiah of Judah. Too detailed to go into
again here, it has all been spelled out in my article:
Damien F. Mackey’s A Tale of Two Theses
(6) Damien F. Mackey's A Tale of Two Theses
Hence, I now further conclude that the:
2.
Prophet
Jonah’s ministry continued down to King Josiah.
The final touch
Some of the ramifications of this overhaul of
biblical regnal history are that characters well-known from the era of King
Hezekiah must re-emerge in the story of King Josiah.
-
Isaiah
(Jonah), for instance, is to be found during Josiah’s reign as Asaiah.
-
Eliakim, son
of Hilkiah, is to be found as Jeremiah, son of Hilkiah.
-
Judith is the
great prophetess, Huldah.
-
Hezekiah’s
wicked son/successor, Manasseh, is the apostate king, Jehoiakim.
And so on.
Finally, completely bridging the earlier discussed gap
to King Nebuchednezzar, he emerges as Esarhaddon, following the assassination
of Hezekiah’s Assyrian foe, Sennacherib:
Esarhaddon a tolerable fit for King Nebuchadnezzar.
(7) Esarhaddon a tolerable fit for King Nebuchednezzar
The prophet Jonah, very old by now, will reluctantly
drag himself off to Nineveh, with Assyria in chaos, in the midst of a civil
war, with Esarhaddon (Nebuchednezzar) desperately holding on only to the city
of Nineveh at this tumultuous time:
The ‘Jonah incident’ historically identified
(7) The 'Jonah incident' historically identified
Asenapper, traditional name of Jonah’s king of Nineveh
(7) Asenapper, traditional name of Jonah's king of Nineveh
The prophet Jeremiah will, at a somewhat later
phase, vividly recall this famous incident when likening the all-devouring
Nebuchednezzar to the sea monster that had swallowed whole, and then spat out,
Jeremiah’s older contemporary, Jonah.
3.
Prophet
Jonah’s ministry continued down to Nebuchednezzar.
