Plant that gave Jonah shade

 

“Over the years scholars have tried to identify the plant and worm.

While a good candidate for Jonah’s plant has been proposed,

the identity of the worm has proved elusive”.

Kevin Tuck

  

Jonah’s worm · Creation.com

 

Jonah’s worm

By Kevin Tuck

Published 24 Jun, 2024

 

The plant that sheltered Jonah, and the worm that destroyed the plant, might no longer be a mystery. After 2,500 years, scientists may have discovered their identity.

 

The biblical account of Jonah gives us wonderful examples of God’s mercy. First, mercy is given to a recalcitrant prophet, and then to the undeserving city of Nineveh.

 

Jonah had to learn obedience the hard way. The account tells us that Jonah was called to preach to Nineveh, but instead he decided to flee across the ocean to a distant land.

 

However, God’s calling could not be evaded. Events led to Jonah being thrown overboard, where he was swallowed by a great fish prepared by God. His life was spared, and he then went to Nineveh to preach.

Jonah was disappointed that the people repented, and so God showed Jonah his further wrong attitude through the object lesson of a plant and a ‘worm’:

 

Fig. 1. Jonah’s ‘vine’ Ricinus communis

 

Now the Lord God appointed a plant [qiqayon], and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm [tola] that attacked the plant, so that it withered (Jonah 4:6–7).

Olepa ricini

 

Over the years, scholars have tried to identify the plant and worm. While a good candidate for Jonah’s plant has been proposed, the identity of the worm has proved elusive. Now, after more than 2,500 years, it seems scientists may have discovered this.

 

Jonah’s plant

 

Over the years scholars have tried to identify the plant and worm. While a good candidate for Jonah’s plant has been proposed, the identity of the worm has proved elusive.

 

The Hebrew word qiqayon for the plant has been variously rendered as vine, ivy, or gourd in English translations. None of these is accurate. But there is now general agreement that qiqayon refers to the castor oil plant, Ricinus communis, which gains support from Church and Hebrew tradition.¹ In AD 404, the Church Father Jerome suggested the plant was then known to the Syriac people. It was fast-growing and could stand without support, being neither a gourd nor ivy.²

 

The identification of Jonah’s ‘vine’ as the castor oil plant Ricinus is of interest to Bible scholars and entomologists because it is highly toxic. The leaves and seeds are poisonous, and the leaf extract makes a potent insecticide—therefore very few insects can feed on the plant. It is also toxic to people and animals, and ricin has even been used as a chemical weapon! (But castor oil, made from the seeds, is safe. First, because ricin hardly dissolves in oil, and more importantly, the oil is heated to 80 °C (176 °F) which denatures ricin.) So, how could a worm (tola) feed on Jonah’s plant if it is so poisonous?

 

Fig. 2. Leaf of Ricinus communis

 

‘New’ moth species described in Israel

 

Despite this toxicity, in recent years a beautiful species of tiger moth has been discovered in Israel, which in its caterpillar stage can feed upon Ricinus without harm. The moth was at first thought to be new to science and described under the name Olepa schleini.³ However, it has since been found to be the same species as Olepa ricini, which is known in Bangladesh, China, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Thailand.⁴ The caterpillars can cope with the toxins because they have very high activity of a detoxifying enzyme called glutathione S-transferase (GST).⁵

 

The habits of the caterpillars of O. ricini match the account given in the book of Jonah. They normally feed at night, and they can quickly destroy a Ricinus plant. (They also feed on useful plants such as cotton, maize, sweet potato, and banana.)

 

The caterpillars usually leave the plant before sunrise, and hide from the heat among dry leaves nearby.

 

Fig. 3. Larvae of Olepa ricini feeding on Ricinus communis (castor oil plant),

September 2017, Glilot, Israel.

 

Supernatural supplementing the natural

 

Jonah 4:10 says that the plant “came into being in a night and perished in a night”. Supernatural action is obviously involved with several aspects of the Jonah account, but in such a way that much of it still happens ‘naturally’:

 

Bible believers should not be surprised that the text of Scripture once again correlates with an aspect of observational science.

 

• Jonah could not naturally survive unharmed for three days inside the belly of any ocean creature. But it may well be natural for one of the marine monsters in creation’s catalogue to swallow such a mammalian morsel.
• A Ricinus plant would not normally reach a size large enough to shade a man within a night—but it is rather fast-growing. Similarly:
• The plant may well have succumbed faster than usual—but the natural destruction this caterpillar wreaks can be very rapid (fig. 3). And its attacks do take place at night, as the verse suggests.

 

It may appear surprising that an insect so destructive to Ricinus should have gone undocumented in the Middle East for so long, but the insect appears to be quite scarce there. While there are fears it may be on the verge of extinction, it has managed to survive for 2,500 years without anyone reporting on its behaviour.⁶

 

Summary and conclusion

 

This caterpillar’s feeding behaviour on Ricinus and its occurrence in the Middle East make it an extremely likely candidate for Jonah’s ‘worm’.¹ Bible believers should not be surprised that the text of Scripture once again correlates with an aspect of observational science.

….

 

 

 

Moses found the Israelites revolting

 

by

 Damien F. Mackey

 

Aaron hilariously (if it weren’t so serious) replies (Exodus 32:24):

“So I said to them, ‘Whoever has gold, take it off’, and they gave it to me.

When I threw it into the fire, out came this calf!’”

As if the end result were pure accident.

  

Introduction

 

Once mighty Egypt, now - following on from the devastating Plagues and the Exodus - would cease to be a power for a long time, virtually disappearing from the Bible for roughly half a millennium. And, despite the fact that the Exodus Israelites had, in their first encounter with an enemy, defeated the Amalekites at Rephidim (Beer Karkom), the Amalekites would continue for that period of time to be a dominant power in the land of Canaan.

They may well even have overrun fallen Egypt, as the warlike Hyksos people, referred to by some (e.g. Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky) as Egypt’s “Eleventh Plague”.

 

The great man, Moses, who had been commissioned to leave his settled existence in the land of Midian in order to lead his people out of the House of Bondage (Egypt), now found himself carrying on his shoulders a people who continued to be ungrateful and rebellious.

 

The burden would be eased to some extent by his sage Midianite father-in-law, Jethro, advising him to delegate responsibilities, so as not to exhaust himself (Exodus 18:18): ‘You’re going to wear yourself out—and the people, too. This job is too heavy a burden for you to handle all by yourself’.

 

Returning back to Mount Sinai, Moses will receive from the hand of Almighty God the Ten Commandments, and he will be given a code of Laws: all included in the Torah.

 

This important set of regulations will be emulated by nations down through the ages.

 

For example, the famous Hammurabi, King of Babylon, wretchedly mis-dated and thought to have influenced Moses - but actually reigning centuries later than Moses, at the time of King Solomon - will depict himself as receiving from the hands of his god, Shamash, the famous Law Code, which includes the lex talionis (“eye for an eye”).

 

The Spartans, for their part, have totally appropriated Moses in their famed Lawgiver, the, albeit fictitious, Lycurgus.

 

The young warrior, Joshua, who had “defeated Amalek and his army with the sword” (Exodus 17:13), was fast becoming Moses’s right-hand man, even accompanying him up the sacred mountain (24:13-14).

Aaron and Hur, and other elders, were instructed to “bow in worship at a distance” (24:1). Would this be taken as a slight, prompting later rebellion?

 

Moses was also given instructions to build the Tabernacle, the model for the later Temple built by King Solomon in Jerusalem, and the Ark of the Covenant (Exodus 25), and to include other liturgical features and offerings (Book of Leviticus), such as the priestly garments, so beautifully described much later by Sirach 45:6-17:

 

The Lord raised up Aaron, a holy man like his brother Moses, of the tribe of Levi. He made an eternal covenant with him, giving him the privilege of serving as priest to the Lord's people. He honored him by clothing him with magnificent robes and fine ornaments, perfect in their splendor. He granted him the symbols of authority: the linen shorts, the shirt, and the robe with the pomegranates around the hem. Gold bells were also around its hem, so that when he walked, their ringing would be heard in the Temple, and the Lord would remember his people. The Lord gave Aaron the sacred robe with the gold, blue, and purple embroidery; the breastpiece with the Urim and Thummim; the red yarn, spun by an expert; the precious stones with names engraved on them, mounted in a gold setting by a jeweler, placed on the breastpiece to remind the Lord of the twelve tribes of Israel. He gave him the turban with the gold ornament engraved with the words Dedicated to the Lord. It was expertly crafted, a beautiful work of art, and it was a high honor to wear it. Before Aaron's time such beautiful things were never seen. No one but Aaron and his descendants ever wore them, or ever will. The grain offering is to be presented twice a day and burned completely.

 

Moses ordained Aaron to office by pouring the sacred anointing oil over his head. An eternal covenant was made with him and his descendants, that they would serve the Lord as his priests and bless the people in the Lord's name. The Lord chose Aaron out of the whole human race to offer sacrifices, to burn fragrant incense to remind the Lord of his people, and to take away their sins. He entrusted the commandments to Aaron's keeping and gave him the authority to make legal decisions and to teach Israel the Law.

 

As I. Kikawada and A. Quinn would point out in their classic, Before Abraham Was. The Unity of Genesis, 1-11 (1984), Moses was presenting himself here as a ‘new Noah’, an Ark builder, covenant maker, etc.

 

Though no legend supports it, so I believe, it would be a nice symmetry if Karkom were the place where Noah, too, had built an Ark.

 

We read in a previous article, “Brilliant reconstruction of the Tabernacle in the wilderness”, how engineer Flavio Barbiero and his brother were able to reconstruct to exact specifications, from the imprint that it has left at Karkom, the Tabernacle that Moses had built.

 

See Flavio Barbiero’s book on this (2025), and his article:

 

THE CAVE OF TREASURES ON MOUNT HOREB

 

(14) THE CAVE OF TREASURES ON MOUNT HOREB

 

Now the troubles will really begin.

 

Israel’s Revolts

 

(i)      The Golden Calf

 

With Moses spending long periods of time with the Lord on the holy mountain, the briefly gruntled Israelites were now becoming totally disgruntled, dissatisfied and rebellious (Exodus 32:1): “When the people saw that Moses delayed in coming down from the mountain, they gathered round Aaron and said to him, ‘Come, make gods for us who will go before us because this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt – we don’t know what has happened to him!’”

 

Joshua, ever staying close to Moses, would have no part in any of this.

 

The story of the Golden Calf is well known.

I would just like to recall the ridiculously lame excuse given by Aaron when confronted by his angry brother Moses (Exodus 32:21): “Then Moses asked Aaron, ‘What did these people do to you that you have led them into such a grave sin?’”

 

Aaron hilariously (if it weren’t so serious) replies (Exodus 32:24): “So I said to them, ‘Whoever has gold, take it off’, and they gave it to me. When I threw it into the fire, out came this calf!’” As if the end result were pure accident.

 

For me, Aaron’s comment ranks with two other occasions of Old Testament humour, whether intended or not.

 

One, Gideon, the Israelite warrior, and leader of 300, who has been appropriated into Greek folklore as Leonidas and the 300 (Gid-eon Grecised to [N]id[as]-[L]-eon).

 

Gideon, under fierce pressure from the Midianites and the Amalekites, fires back (though respectfully) at the Lord, who had just said through his angel (Judges 6:12): ‘The Lord is with you, mighty warrior’, to the effect that, ‘If you are with us, Lord, then why are we copping this shellacking’?

 

Two, the remark made by the Philistine king of Gath, Achish, ‘… am I so short of madmen …?’, when David, who had been forced to flee the wrath of King Saul, feigned madness, dribbling and scratching at the doors of Gath.

 

“Achish said to his servants, ‘Look at the man! He is insane! Why bring him to me? Am I so short of madmen that you have to bring this fellow here to carry on like this in front of me?’” (I Samuel 21:14-15).

 

After Moses had, by the agency of armed Levites, slaughtered about 3000 of the rebels, the Lord weighed in by sending a plague upon the Israelites (Exodus 32:27-35).

 

Moses will be consoled not long afterwards by encountering the Glory of the Lord (Exodus 33:18-23).

 

When, in Deuteronomy 18:15, 18, Moses states to Israel that:

 

‘The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you’, he was not, as certain Moslem apologists hopefully insist - to deflect from its proper fulfilment in Jesus Christ (Acts 3:22) - referring to natural similarities, such as being married, having children, leading battles, and so on.

No, Moses was referring to his being empowered to speak “face to face with God” (Exodus 33:11).

 

Mohammed was unable to do this - well, for one, because he never actually existed!

See e.g. my article:

 

Zakir Naik’s apologetical tactic meant to embarrass Christians

 

(14) Zakir Naik's apologetical tactic meant to embarrass Christians

 

After all of the liturgical items (Ark of the Covenant, Tabernacle, vestments, etc., etc.) had been completed, the Glory of the Lord (popularly known as the Shekinah) filled the Tabernacle.

Later it would fill the Temple in Jerusalem built by King Solomon (2 Chronicles 7:1).

 

The new Israelite liturgy was soon in full swing.

 

(ii)    Miriam and Aaron oppose Moses

 

Numbers 12:1-3

 

Miriam and Aaron began to talk against Moses because of his Cushite wife, for he had married a Cushite. ‘Has the Lord spoken only through Moses?’ they asked. ‘Hasn’t he also spoken through us?’ And the Lord heard this.

 

(Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.)

 

Joseph of Egypt, likewise much favoured by the Lord, had experienced the same sort of jealousy from his older siblings.

 

For this, the Lord struck Miriam leprous.

Moses immediately interceded for her and she was healed (vv. 10-15).

 

Because Moses had a “Cushite wife” - and perhaps because of legends having Moses leading Egyptian armies into Ethiopia (Cush) - commentators can argue that the wife of Moses, Zipporah, was actually a dark skinned African.

 

We know, however, that she was a Semitic Midianite.

And Flavio Barbiero, again (op. cit.), has explained, with reference to Habakkuk 3:7: “I saw the tents of Cushan in distress, the dwellings of Midian in anguish”, that Cush- was also a term associated with Midian.

 

Aaron and Miriam may have been put off by her foreignness. Even though Zipporah’s Midianite people, too, were Abrahamic, their practices did not always conform to those of Israel. For instance, Moses got himself into serious trouble with the Lord for failing to circumcise his son, Gershom (Exodus 4:24-26) - he no doubt bowing to pressure from his Midianite relatives whose practice was to circumcise late, before marriage.

 

(iii) Korah’s rebellion

 

Numbers 16:1-4

 

Now Korah, the son of Izhar, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi, and Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab, and On, the son of Peleth, sons of Reuben, took men: And they rose up before Moses, with certain of the children of Israel, two hundred and fifty princes of the assembly, famous in the congregation, men of renown: And they gathered themselves together against Moses and against Aaron, and said unto them, Ye take too much upon you, seeing all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the LORD is among them: wherefore then lift ye up yourselves above the congregation of the LORD?

And when Moses heard it, he fell upon his face:

 

Here, again, led by a Levite, Korah, are those rotten, revolting, Reubenite rascals, Dathan and Abiram, whom we met already back in Egypt as troublemakers for Moses. They are the Jannes and Jambres (Mambres) whom Saint Paul will much later excoriate as “men of depraved minds” (2 Timothy 3:8).

 

Some of these various opposers of Moses may have been men of high standing in Egypt’s mighty Twelfth Dynasty, so-called.

One or other of the two brothers is supposed to have said to Moses (Exodus 2:14): ‘Who made you ruler and judge over us?’ Moses, as the important Mentuhotep, was, indeed, a “ruler” (Vizier) and (Chief) “judge” at this particular time.

 

Like Aaron’s sons (Leviticus 10:1-2): “But Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censor and put fire in it and put incense upon it and offered strange fire before the LORD, which He had not commanded them. Therefore, a fire went out from the LORD and devoured them. So they died before the LORD”, these wicked men, Korah, Dathan, Abiram, etc. would suffer a terrible, fiery fate.

 

 

Job’s ‘Behemoth’ and the wrong end of an elephant

 

 

by

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

 

“Look at Behemoth,
    which I made along with you
    and which feeds on grass like an ox.

What strength it has in its loins,
    what power in the muscles of its belly!

 

Its tail sways like a cedar;
    the sinews of its thighs are close-knit.

Its bones are tubes of bronze,
    its limbs like rods of iron.

It ranks first among the works of God,
    yet its Maker can approach it with his sword.

 

The hills bring it their produce,
    and all the wild animals play nearby.

 

Under the lotus plants it lies,
    hidden among the reeds in the marsh.

 

The lotuses conceal it in their shadow;
    the poplars by the stream surround it.

A raging river does not alarm it;
    it is secure, though the Jordan should surge against its mouth.

 

Can anyone capture it by the eyes,
    or trap it and pierce its nose?”

 

Job 40:15-24

 

 

 

Was ‘Behemoth’ a Dinosaur?

 

Favouring this theory, for those, who think that Job dated right back to the Ice Ages, or to the early patriarchal times, is the fact that, whereas common candidates for the Book of Job’s ‘Behemoth’ - say, the elephant or the hippo - have insignificant piggy-like tails, ‘Behemoth’ has a tail to recall the impressive Cedar of Lebanon (Job 40:17): “Its tail sways like a cedar …”.  

 

Some Creationists, for instance, think that a dinosaur was probably intended here.

Wayne Jackson, for example, referring to Creationist Dr. Henry Morris (d. 2006), will ask the question: “Why do you suppose that a dinosaur is rarely proposed as a candidate for behemoth?”

https://www.christiancourier.com/articles/1007-job-behemoth-and-dinosaurs

 

Dinosaur

 

Why do you suppose that a dinosaur is rarely proposed as a candidate for behemoth? The answer is very simple. As noted earlier, the common perception is that dinosaurs became extinct long before man arrived upon this planet (approximately 65 million years, it is alleged). Accordingly, behemoth simply could not be a variety of dinosaur — because the chronological disparity prohibits such. Dr. Henry Morris has addressed the matter in this fashion.

 

“Modern Bible scholars, for the most part, have become so conditioned to think in terms of the long ages of evolutionary geology that it never occurs to them that mankind once lived in the same world with the great animals that are now found only as fossils” (p. 115).

 

As we have demonstrated already, there is unequivocal biblical testimony that human beings and dinosaurs inhabited the same early environment of the earth, and there is not a shred of scientific evidence that proves otherwise. ….

 

And Mart-Jan Paul, in “Behemoth and leviathan in the book of Job”, asking, “What, then, was behemoth?”, will suggest that it may have been a now extinct apatosaur, or something akin to it: 

https://creation.com/behemoth-and-leviathan

 

What, then, was behemoth?

 

If we take extinct animals into consideration, a herbivorous dinosaur seems a more likely candidate. The apatosaur had a large tail, lived on green plants and weighed about 30 tonnes.

The ultrasaur could reach a height of 18 m and a length of 30 m, with a weight of 136 tonnes. It also was a herbivore with an enormous tail. The brachiosaur was 12 m tall, 23 m long and 60 to 70 tonnes in weight. Its tail could reach a length of nearly 6 m and a breadth of nearly 1.5 m. In the sauropods, large bundles of muscles are visible on the outside of the body of the animal. Behemoth is not only a herbivore, but more specifically it is a grass-eater. An animal that does fit this aspect is the 15 m long nigersaur, found in the Republic of Niger in Africa. ….

 

Because new kinds of extinct animals continue to be found in our time, and because the description in Job 40 is not specific enough, we cannot identify precisely which animal is described. Neither do we know whether the above-mentioned animals still lived in the time of Job, but it is useful for our exegesis to include such examples. ….

[End of quotes]

 

Allan Steel has, for his part, written an entire article on the subject, “Could Behemoth Have Been a Dinosaur?”: 

https://answersingenesis.org/dinosaurs/could-behemoth-have-been-a-dinosaur/ 

in which he concludes:

 

…. The whole passage in Job 40 concerning Behemoth certainly suggests a large animal, and no known living animal fits the passage adequately (for various reasons, including the detailed habitat presented).

 

The most natural interpretation of the key clause Job 40:17 … is that the tail of Behemoth is compared to a cedar for its great size, and there is nothing in the context which contradicts this possibility, even though the exact sense of the verb is extremely difficult to determine.

 

Consequently, the most reasonable interpretation (which also takes the whole passage into account) is that Behemoth was a large animal, now extinct, which had a large tail. Thus some type of extinct dinosaur should still be considered a perfectly reasonable possibility according to our present state of knowledge. ….

 

[End of quote]

 

These are all good, laudable attempts to make sense of ‘Behemoth’ in the Book of Job.

Given the pattern of the Book of Job, in which the Lord is holding up for Job’s consideration real animals (mountain goat, donkey, ox, horse, eagle, rooster, ibis, etc.), these attempts are far preferable, I think, to those that would attempt to make of Job’s

Behemoth’ and ‘Leviathan’ either mythical creatures, or demons.

 

I, however, have my own reasons – hopefully also good ones – for rejecting dinosaurs from the category of animals in the Book of Job.

 

For one, the:

 

Prophet Job did not belong to the Patriarchal or Judges era

 

(15) Prophet Job did not belong to the Patriarchal or Judges era

 

nor was he king Jobab:

 

Prophet Job was not the ancient Edomite, Jobab

 

(15) Prophet Job was not the ancient Edomite, Jobab

 

but lived much later than that - a good half a millennium later than that!

 

For Job was Tobias, son of Tobit, of the neo-Assyrian captivity:

 

Historical Era of the Prophet Job

 

(15) Historical Era of the Prophet Job

 

That, I think, puts paid to dinosaurs.

 

Was ‘Behemoth’ an Elephant?

 

And, secondly, I think that, by ‘’Behemoth’, the Book of Job is clearly (in hindsight) intending the elephant, an animal that is a popular choice for ‘Behemoth’ except for the mingy tail factor.

 

But I think that we may have the elephant the wrong way around.

 

Job 40:17 is not, I suggest, referring to the animal’s unimpressive posterius (tail), but, rather, to his highly impressive proboscis, swaying like a cedar.

Even looking somewhat like a cedar.