by
Only by a radical revision
of the neo-Assyrian regal succession
can Jonah’s Nineveh incident
be once again retrieved.
“The things that you’re liable, to read
in the Bible …”
Without the guidance of the Book of Tobit we may have stumbled about forever without being able to correlate a crucial portion of neo-Assyrian history with the Bible:
Book of Tobit
corrects the textbook history
(8) Book of Tobit
corrects the textbook history
Previously I have written regarding the difficulties of
historicising Jonah in Nineveh:
For
would-be trackers of Jonah’s “king of Nineveh” (Jonah 3:6), and the Jonah
incident, that biblical text (2 Kings 14:25):
[Jeroboam II] 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 ….
when
taken in a conventional context, makes it biologically impossible, I would
suggest, to connect the prophet Jonah, at the time of king Jeroboam II of
Israel, with the Jonah incident that occurred so much later.
Taking
the very latter part of the reign of Jeroboam II of Israel, say, c. 750 BC, the
Jonah incident, which I have already hinted belonged approximately to the time
of Assyrian multi-confusion, after
(i) the demise of the 185,000; and
(ii)
the murder of Sennacherib; when
(iii)
Esarhaddon was trying to hold Nineveh
in the face of civil war, say, c. 680 BC (plus the age of the prophet Jonah at
the time),
becomes
virtually irretrievable.
That
is why very determined researchers, such as Bill Cooper (“The Historic Jonah”, EN Tech. J., vol. 2, 1986, pp.
105–116), look for whom they might deem to be a
suitable candidate for “the king of Nineveh” amongst Assyrian kings somewhat
earlier than Esarhaddon, who does not (cannot) come into their calculations.
Bill
Cooper’s own choice for the biblical king of Nineveh is Tiglath-pileser
so-called III.
Even given my crunching of
neo-Assyrian kings (e.g. Tiglath-pileser as Shalmaneser), Tiglath-pileser falls
short of Jonah’s “king of Nineveh” by, I believe, two decades minimum.
Here
I intend to demonstrate, as had Bill Cooper intended in his probing article,
that the prophet Jonah's intervention in Nineveh was a
true historical event.
Focus
on Esarhaddon
A:
Historical ‘moment’
The historical ‘window of opportunity’ that I am going to
propose here as best fitting the Jonah narrative will be one that I have
already suggested before.
However, due to a then imperfect appreciation of the degree
of historical revision required, I had had to drop that particular model as
being unworkable.
Since that first effort, however, I have streamlined the
histories of Israel, Judah, Assyria and Babylonia, and that will now make all
the difference.
See e.g. my article:
Damien
F. Mackey’s A Tale of Two Theses
(7) Damien F.
Mackey's A Tale of Two Theses
The historical moment that I identify as that best suiting
the intervention in “the great city of Nineveh”, נִינְוֵה,
הָעִיר
הַגְּדוֹלָה,
by the prophet Jonah (Jonah 1:2), is the ‘moment’ when King Esarhaddon was in
the throes of trying to secure Nineveh from his older brothers, two of whom had
assassinated the previous Assyrian king, Sennacherib (2 Kings 19:37).
There may never have been a more dire or foreboding moment
in time for the Assyrian people.
Had it not only recently been preceded by the utter rout of
the proud king Sennacherib’s Assyrian army of 185,000 men. (v. 35)?
And, as might be the case, Esarhaddon’s crisis situation,
now, was very much due to the fact that he had been personally involved in that
horrendous and unprecedented humiliation of the highly-vaunted Assyrian army:
the 185,000.
The Book of Tobit - which will actually refer to Jonah’s
mission to Nineveh (Tobit 14:4) - seems to echo Jonah’s threat (Jonah 3:4): ‘Forty
more days and Nineveh will be overthrown’, when it repeats that very same time
period (Tobit 1:21. NRSV): “But not forty days passed before two of
Sennacherib’s sons killed him, and they fled to the mountains of Ararat. A son
of his, Esarhaddon, succeeded him as king”. {Though other ancient authorities
read for Tobit 1:21 either forty-five or fifty}.
Sennacherib himself - who was, just prior to his demise, in
the process of hunting down the honourable Tobit to kill him (Tobit 1:19) -
would seem to be a least likely candidate, amongst the Assyrian kings, for
Jonah’s repentant “king of Nineveh” (Jonah 3:6).
And I don't think any commentator has ever put forward
Sennacherib as being a possible candidate.
Esarhaddon, on the other hand - {who (under the benign
influence of Ahiqar) would allow for Tobit to return home (Tobit 1:22): “Then
Ahiqar interceded on my behalf, and I returned to Nineveh. Ahiqar had been
chief cupbearer, keeper of the signet ring, treasury accountant, and credit
accountant under Sennacherib, king of the Assyrians; and Esarhaddon appointed
him as Second to himself”} - seems to have been surprisingly tolerant towards
exilic Israel.
A footnote to this Jonah-Tobit connection:
The non-historical, composite character, the Prophet Mohammed, whose biography
tells of his various associations with “Nineveh”, all quite anachronistic of
course (as Nineveh was completely lost from sight long before the supposed AD
era of Mohammed), claimed that the prophet Jonah was his brother. “Muhammad
asked Addas where he was from and the servant replied Nineveh. “The town of
Jonah the just, son of Amittai!” Muhammad exclaimed. Addas was shocked because
he knew that the pagan Arabs had no knowledge of the prophet Jonah. He then
asked how Muhammad knew of this man. “We are brothers”, Muhammad replied”.”
(Summarized from The Life of the Prophet by Ibn
Hisham Volume 1 pp. 419–421).
And the names of Mohammed's
parents, ‘Abdullah and Amna, are virtually identical to
those of Tobit’s son, Tobias, namely Tobit (= ‘Obadiah = ‘Abdiel = ‘Abdullah)
and Anna (= Amna) (Tobit 1:9).
Islam also quotes from the wise sayings of Ahiqar, and even
has its own Ahiqar in Luqman, known as “the Ahiqar of the Arabs”:
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=_zvXrQ7W7PEC&pg=PA51&lpg=PA51&dq=luqman+and+ahiqar
B: Esarhaddon a repenting king
Moreover Esarhaddon was, as we shall soon learn, a king who,
like Jonah’s “king of Nineveh”, was known to have clothed himself with
sackcloth as if in the guise of a sinner.
And he certainly favoured the issuing of royal edicts or
decrees - (see below, “a public proclamation”).
Esarhaddon also, early, appears to have had the
solidarity-support of his people (cf. Jonah 3:5-6).
Thus Izabela Eph'al-Jaruzelska, “2016 Esarhaddon's Claim of
Legitimacy in an Hour of Crisis: Sociological Observations” (p. 126):
The Apology mentions
the oath sworn to Esarhaddon by the people of Assyria and the king’s
brothers before the gods at his nomination as Sennacherib’s successor.
.... This public ceremony was intended to express submission and
obedience to the king in a solemn way. This oath is invoked as the
basis of the loyalty manifested by the people of Assyria when they refused to
join the rebellion of those who opposed Esarhaddon’s accession to the
Assyrian throne.
....
It
also furnished grounds for the homage the people of Assyria paid to
Esarhaddon after his victory over the rebels. .... A public proclamation
of Esarhaddon as king during his struggle with the rebels also manifests
the people’s consent.
[End
of quote]
Esarhaddon will turn out to be amongst the strangest and
most complex kings of antiquity, possibly the most pious and superstitious of
all kings, outdoing others with his cruelty and vengefulness, terrifying, at
times quite mad, completely paranoid, highly literate, a phenomenal (no doubt,
oftentimes, lying) propagandist, yet a king also capable of deep contrition and
acknowledgement of a supreme deity.
But we shall need to continue to meet king Esarhaddon him in
his various powerful guises, or alter egos, which are an
integral feature of my revision.
It ought to be noted that, apart from his name, Esarhaddon
(“Akkadian: Aššur-aḫa-iddina, meaning
“Ashur has given me a brother”):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esarhaddon
“Esarhaddon had the further name of
Ashur-etil-ilani-mukin-apli”.
http://www.attalus.org/armenian/kvan1.htm
"Akkadian: Aššur-etil-ilāni
... , meaning "Ashur is
the lord of the gods","
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashur-etil-ilan
and "mukin-apli" meaning [Ashur] "(is)
establisher of a legitimate heir,”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nab%C3%BB-mukin-apli
Esarhaddon has been duplicated
in Assyro-Chaldean history. For example:
Esarhaddon, re-named
Ashur-Etil-Ilani-Mukin-Apli, and then duplicated by historians as
Ashur-Etil-Ilani
And, again, as Ashurnasirpal (= Ashurbanipal), most relevant
to Jonah:
King
Ashurnasirpal brings critically relevant elements to a reconstructed Jonah
(9) King
Ashurnasirpal brings critically relevant elements to a reconstructed Jonah
And, again, as Nebuchednezzar ‘the Great’ whom Jeremiah even
likens to Jonah’s great fish (sea monster) whale:
Nebuchednezzar,
Jeremiah’s “monster”, a vital component in the Book of Jonah
(9)
Nebuchednezzar, Jeremiah's "monster", a vital component in the Book
of Jonah
As Esarhaddon alone (qua Esarhaddon), though, we
know from one of the king’s inscriptions that he humbled himself with “sackcloth”.
Thus writes John H. Walton (Genesis, 2001): “The Akkadian
term for sackcloth is basamu. The
most relevant usage of it is in an Esarhaddon inscription in which he is said
to have “wrapped his body in sackcloth befitting a penitent sinner” ....”.
Cf.
Jonah 3:6: “When Jonah’s warning reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his
throne, took off his royal robes, wrapped himself with sackcloth and sat down
in the dust”.
There may be an even more relevant text, which I like to
think is a reference to the very Jonah incident.
The quote is from professor A. H. Sayce (The Religions of
Ancient Egypt and Babylonia, 1903), as cited by D. E. Hart-Davies in
Jonah: Prophet and Patriot (1925):
Already
we possess proof from the cuneiform tablets that the Bible account of Nineveh’s
repentance is described in a manner which exactly coincides with Assyrian
custom. “It was just such a fast”, says Professor Sayce, “as was ordained by
Esar-haddon when the northern foe was gathering against the Assyrian empire,
and prayers were raised to the Sun-god to ‘remove the sin’ of the king and his
people.
‘From
this day’, runs the inscription, ‘from the third day of this month, even the
month of Iyyar, to the fifteenth day of Ab of this year, for these hundred days
and hundred nights the prophets have proclaimed (a period of supplication)’.
The prophets of Nineveh had declared that it was needful to appease the anger
of heaven, and the king accordingly issued his proclamation enjoining the
solemn service of humiliation for one hundred days’.
[End of quotes]
This situation of anxiety, as described by professor A. H.
Sayce, must almost certainly be tied up with the above: “A public
proclamation of Esarhaddon as king during his struggle with the rebels
also manifests the people’s consent”.
Wikipedia’s article “Esarhaddon” has some highly interesting
information on Esarhaddon’s paranoia, and his efforts to secure his safety
during that above-mentioned “hundred days” period: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esarhaddon
“As a result of his tumultuous rise to the throne,
Esarhaddon was distrustful of his servants, vassals and family members. He
frequently sought the advice of oracles and priests on whether any of his
relatives or officials wished to harm him. ....
....
Esarhaddon’s paranoia was also reflected by where he chose
to live. One of his main residences was a palace in the city of Kalhu originally
constructed as an armory by his predecessor Shalmaneser
III .... Rather than occupying a
central and visible spot within the cultic and administrative center of the
city, this palace was located in its outskirts on a separate mound which made
it well-protected. Between 676 and 672 [sic], the palace was strengthened with
its gateways being modified into impregnable fortifications which could seal
the entire building off completely from the city.
If these entrances were sealed, the only way into the palace
would be through a steep and narrow path protected by several strong doors. A
similar palace, also located on a separate mound far from the city center, was
built at Nineveh. ….
....
... he performed the “substitute king” ritual, an ancient
Assyrian method intended to protect and shield the king from imminent danger
announced by some sort of omen. Esarhaddon had performed the ritual earlier in
his reign, but this time it left him unable to command his invasion of Egypt.
….
The “substitute king” ritual involved the Assyrian monarch
going into hiding for a hundred days, during which a substitute (preferably one
with mental deficiencies) took the king’s place by sleeping in the royal bed,
wearing the crown and the royal garbs and eating the king’s food. During these
hundred days, the actual king remained hidden and was known only under the
alias “the farmer”. The goal of the ritual was that any evil intended for the
king would instead be focused on the substitute king, who was killed regardless
of if anything had happened at the end of the hundred days, keeping the real
monarch safe. ….
[End of quote]
Don E. Jones will write (Searching for Jonah: Clues in
Hebrew and Assyrian History, 2012): “The ceremony of fasting and
putting on sackcloth and ashes was not at all alien to Assyria ... the custom
... goes back to Sumerian civilization and beyond”. In the Keil and
Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament, we read: https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/kdo/jonah-3.html
“Even the one feature which is peculiar to the mourning of
Nineveh - namely, that the cattle also have to take part in the mourning - is
attested by Herodotus (9:24) as an Asiatic custom.
“(Note: Herodotus relates that the Persians, when mourning
for their general, Masistios, who had fallen in the battle at Platea, shaved
off the hair from their horses, and adds, “Thus did the barbarians, in
their way, mourn for the deceased Masistios”.
Plutarch relates the same thing (Aristid. 14 fin. Compare Brissonius, de
regno Pers. princip. ii. p. 206; and Periz. ad Aeliani Var.
hist. vii. 8).
The objection made to this by Hitzig - namely, that the
mourning of the cattle in our book is not analogous to the case recorded by
Herodotus, because the former was an expression of repentance - has no force
whatever, for the simple reason that in all nations the outward signs of
penitential mourning are the same as those of mourning for the dead).
[End of quote]
Cf.
Jonah 3:7-8: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let people
or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything; do not let them eat or
drink. But let people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone
call urgently on God”.
(Cf. Judith 4:10-14).
{The story of the death of Masistios could well be yet
another of those countless Greek appropriations (as I have often recorded) of
originally Hebrew stories, in this case, the death of “Holofernes”}
“Greatest to the least”, “small and great” - Compare
Jonah 3:5: “The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them,
from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth”, with: “The use of this
general term with the addition of the idiom TUR GAL (ṣeḫer u rabi),
“small and great”, simply signifies the totality of Assyrians who
were involved in the oath”.
(Izabela Eph'al-Jaruzelska, op. cit., p. 127)
C:
Is Esarhaddon too late for Jonah?
Absolutely, he is, if we follow the text book chronology –
which, absolutely, I don’t!
Presuming that Esarhaddon were Jonah’s repentant king, then
we must be prepared for a very extensive floruit for the
prophet Jonah. He had to have been prophesying already as far back as king
Jeroboam II of Israel (2 Kings 14:25).
It should be noted that many commentators believe that
aspects of the biblical text around 2 Kings 14 are hopelessly corrupt, that v.
28, for instance, about Jeroboam II, “how he recovered for Israel both Damascus
and Hamath, which had belonged to Judah”, “probably should be understood as
referring” (for example, according to the Mercer Dictionary of the
Bible, p. 419), “to the fact that Jeroboam II reconquered territory in
Galilee and Transjordan held by Hamath and Damascus during the days of
[Jeroboam’s predecessor kings of Israel]”.
In conventional terms, from the death of Jeroboam II (c. 740
BC) to the beginning of the reign of Esarhaddon (c. 680 BC), is about 60 years,
meaning that Jonah at Nineveh would have to have been around 85-90 years of
age.
That is a very old age for someone to have been tossed into
a raging sea and swallowed by a sea monster.
The time span, at least, is easily covered by the
traditional Jewish estimations of Jonah’s very long life:
“[Jonah] is said to have attained a very advanced age: over 120
years according to Seder
Olam Rabbah; 130 according to Sefer
Yuchasin ...”.
We are going to find that Jewish tradition, which also
vastly stretches the career of the prophet Jonah, from Jeroboam II to the
Assyrian king, “Osnapper”, of Ezra 4:10, has come to the conclusion that there
must actually have been ‘two Jonahs’.
No need to go that far, I shall be suggesting.
Many commentators favour for Jonah’s king, Adad-nirari III
(c. 810-783 BC), conventionally a contemporary of Jeroboam II. Adad-nirari's
supposed preoccupation with the worship of Nebo is often taken as a sign of the
king of Assyria’s conversion to monotheism. It has been likened to pharaoh
Akhnaton's Aten worship.
Adad-nirari may simply have been copying that earlier
reform.
However, according to Don E. Jones (op. cit.): “...
as soon as Adad-Nirari could act on his own, he appears to have given the
reform no support”.
Some commentators favour the troubled reign (plague,
rebellion, even a solar eclipse) of Ashur-Dan III (c. 772 to 755 BC).
Bill Cooper is convinced that Tiglath-pileser III (c.
745-727 BC) was that biblical king.
Despite Cooper’s enthusiasm for his choice, Tiglath-pileser
was, like Adad-nirari, like Ashur-Dan III, a typical Assyrian king with nothing
during his reign to indicate a phase of serious repentance with a corresponding
edict.
Is there any biblical prophet who can meet the chronological
requirements of my revised Jonah, spanning from Jeroboam II to late king
Hezekiah of Judah (when Esarhaddon came to the throne)?
There is one, and only one, whose superscription, at least,
covers that approximate time span. He is the prophet Hosea, according to whose
superscription (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”.
From Jeroboam (II) all the way down to Hezekiah - the same
approximate chronological span as in my revised scenario for Jonah.
{Some critics have difficulty accepting Hosea’s alleged
lengthy prophetic range, and must needs ‘correct’ it, by replacing
Jeroboam (II) in Hosea 1:1 with some later king(s) of Israel}.
Hosea is straightaway told, just like Jonah, ‘Go ...’ (לֵךְ)
(cf. Jonah; Hosea 1:2).
That is an immediate likeness.
And we are going to discover more like this in the course of
this article.
An immediate unlikeness is that, whereas Jonah was “son of
Amittai” (as above), Hosea was “son of Beeri”.
The question of suitable alter egos for the
prophet Jonah (e.g. Hosea) will be properly discussed further on.
For example, the prophetic career of Amos had also been
active at the time of Jeroboam II (Amos 1:1), and did extend - at least
according to my own revision of Amos - all the way down to king Hezekiah (=
Josiah) of Judah.
Can Amos be Jonah?
Or, was Hosea, Jonah?
D:
Why “king of Nineveh”?
One of the many arguments thrown up against the prospect of
the Book of Jonah’s being an historical account is its supposed historically
inaccurate usage of the phrase “the king of Nineveh” - which actual description
the kings of Assyria are said never to have applied to themselves.
I shall come back to this point.
The complete rejection in modern times of the Book of Jonah
as an historical document is well described by Bill Cooper in “The
Historic Jonah” (p. 105):
“Ever since the prophet Jonah first penned the little book
that is known by his name, some two thousand six hundred years ago, the most
extraordinary notions have circulated concerning both him and his ministry.
Some early rabbis claimed that he was the son of the widow of Zarephath, the
lad whom Elijah had restored to life. .... Others, yet again, imagined him to
have been the servant whom Elisha sent to anoint King Jehu. .... Jonah is also
pointed out as having two tombs! One lies at Nineveh, and the other at Jonah’s
home-village of Gath-hepher, just a stone’s throw from the town of Nazareth.
And so it has gone on down the ages, until today we are informed that Jonah did
not even exist! The book of Jonah, we are asked to believe, is nothing more
than a pious fable, a moral tale written some time after the return of the Jews
from the Babylonian Exile; a story told around camp-fires that has all the
historical validity of a Grimm’s fairy-tale.
“Unfortunately, and not without incalculable loss, this
latest view has prevailed. Most modern Christian (and Jewish) authors will, if
they mention Jonah at all, speak of him only in terms of parable and myth,
usually in tones that amount to little less than an apology. Very few indeed,
and I personally know of none, will attempt to speak of Jonah in a purely
historical sense.
....
This is very odd, to say the least, because Jonah enjoys
more support from Jewish and Assyrian history than a great many other
characters of the ancient world whose existence few historians would doubt.
There is, indeed, something very sinister about the out-of-hand way in which
Jonah is dismissed from serious discussion by modernist critics and historians.
This sinister aspect has, perhaps, to do with the fact that
Jesus spoke of Jonah in a historical sense, and He referred to Jonah in direct
reference to His own forthcoming
resurrection from the dead. .... Could it be, perhaps, that if modernists can
cast doubt upon the historicity of Jonah, then they will also have license to
cast doubt upon the words and teachings of Jesus Christ and the truth of His
resurrection? The two are intimately connected, and any dismissal of the
historicity of Jonah should be treated with a great deal of suspicion".
[End of quote]
“A pious fable”, “a moral tale”. I have also heard a priest
employ the description, “a didactic fiction”, for the Book of Jonah. These very
sorts of terms are used, once again, to describe the Book of Judith, e.g., “a
literary fiction”, about whose historical defence I can largely say with Bill
Cooper: “Very few indeed, and I personally know of none, will attempt to speak
of [Judith] in a purely historical sense”.
Commentators who do take seriously the Jonah narrative - yes
there are indeed some - for instance, Paul Ferguson in his article, “Who Was
The ‘King Of Nineveh’ In Jonah 3:6?” (Tyndale Bulletin, Issue 47.2,
1996) - will attempt to show that the title, the “king of Nineveh”, can be
considered genuine historical usage.
Paul Ferguson, whose article is well worth reading as an
overall commentary on the Book of Jonah, offers the following “Summary” (p.
301):
https://www.galaxie.com/article/tynbul47-2-05
“This article seeks to show the title ‘king of Nineveh’ is
not an anachronism. Comparison with Aramaic use of the north-west Semitic mlk,
important in a north Israelite context, may suggest that a city or provincial
official might have been under consideration.
Cuneiform evidence seems to suggest that no distinction is
made between city and province in designating a governor. Common custom was to
give provincial capitals the same name as the province. This could explain the
fact that the book of Jonah says the ‘city’ was a three day walk (3:3).
"I.
The ‘King Of Nineveh’
The Hebrew phrase melek
nînĕveh (‘king of Nineveh’) is found in the Old Testament only
in Jonah 3:6.
It never occurs in any contemporary documents. Most literature proceeds on the
assumption that the author used this expression to refer to the king of the
Assyrian empire. It has often been suggested that this wording indicates the
author wrote centuries after the fall of this nation. ....
"1.
‘King Of Nineveh’ Vs ‘King Of Assyria’
If this be the case, then one must consider why, if the
author of the book lived centuries after the ‘historical Jonah’ of 2 Kings 14:25,
he would ignore the usual designation ‘king of Assyria’. This phrase is found
thirty times in 2 Kings
18-20. ...".
[End of quotes]
Arguments such as this one by Paul Ferguson had led me, in
the past, to wondering whether the Jonah incident may have occurred when
Assyria did not have an actual king - say, in between the assassination of
Sennacherib and the triumph of Esarhaddon - when, as I had considered, the city
of Nineveh may have been represented by a stand-in high official, such as
Ahiqar, who, too, presumably, would have been favourable to the message of
Jonah.
The king soon afterwards - but seemingly only after the
people themselves had begun to repent (Jonah 3:5-6) - received the message.
But there was a time delay. Perhaps, I had pondered, the
future king may still have been on his way: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Esarhaddon
“Sennacherib was murdered (681) [sic] by one or more of
Esarhaddon’s brothers, apparently in an attempt to seize the throne. Marching
quickly from the west, Esarhaddon encountered the rebel forces in Hanigalbat (western
Assyria), where most of them deserted to him, and their leaders fled.
Esarhaddon continued on to Nineveh,
where he claimed the throne without opposition” [sic].
(Compare instead, below, “persistent resistance by the
opposition”).
It
is interesting that Jesus Christ himself, who will refer specifically to “the
Queen of the South”, will fail to make any mention whatsoever of the king of
Nineveh, but only his subjects (Matthew 12:41-42):
“The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with
this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of
Jonah, and now something greater than Jonah is here. The Queen of the
South will rise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it ...”.
It can be (and is) debated as to the degree of conversion of
the Ninevites - that it should not be understood that they had converted to a
strict Yahwistic monotheism. Theirs was a general sort of repentance from their
wicked ways of living.
“The Ninevites believed God” [Elohim] (Jonah 3:5).
Refer back to the crucial quote above from professor Sayce
re “the Sun-god”.
For, when we turn to consider the parallel case of the Queen of Sheba (of the
South), we find that she will refer to the God of Solomon
as your, not as my, or as our, God (I Kings
10:9): ‘Blessed be the Lord thy God ...’.
Isaiah 7 is most instructive in this regard as the prophet
begins his discussion with king Ahaz with the words (v. 11): ‘Ask the Lord your
God for a sign ...’, but then soon switches in disgust to this (v. 13): ‘Will
you try the patience of my God also?’
Consider, too, in light of all of this, the startling case
of Rudolph Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz, and his dramatic return to his
Catholic roots just before he was hanged: “‘It was a hard struggle’, Höss had
written toward the end. ‘But I have again found my faith in my God’.”
(My emphasis):
https://www.thedivinemercy.org/articles/divine-mercy-and-commandant-auschwitz
I have since dropped any former notion of an official
governing Nineveh at the time of Jonah’s preaching there - though someone like
Ahikar, or even the family of Tobit, may have been partly instrumental in
fostering the mass conversion subsequent to the preaching of Jonah.
Tobit himself had been a witness to the Ninevites, e.g.
after his cure from blindness (Tobit 11:16-17):
Rejoicing and blessing God, Tobit went out to the
gate of Nineveh to meet his daughter-in-law.
When the people of Nineveh saw him coming, walking
along briskly, with no one leading him by the hand, they were amazed.
Before them all Tobit proclaimed how God had shown
mercy to him and opened his eyes. When Tobit came up to Sarah, the wife of his
son Tobiah, he blessed her and said: ‘Welcome, my daughter! Blessed be your God
for bringing you to us, daughter! Blessed are your father and your mother.
Blessed be my son Tobiah, and blessed be you, daughter! Welcome to your home
with blessing and joy. Come in, daughter!’ That day there was joy for all the
Jews who lived in Nineveh.
Esarhaddon, as Izabela Eph'al-Jaruzelska makes abundantly
clear, was confronted by revolutions and hostility all over the place, forcing
him even at one stage to flee for his life (op.
cit. p. 133):
“According to the Babylonian Chronicle: “On the
twentieth day of the month Tebet Sennacherib, king of Assyria, was killed
by his son in a rebellion (ina sīḫi).
For [twenty-four] years Sennacherib ruled Assyria. The rebellion continued
in Assyria from the twentieth day of the month Tebet until the second day
of the month Adar. On the twenty-eighth/ eighteenth day of the
month Adar Esarhaddon, his son, ascended the throne in
Assyria” (Chron. “The early royal correspondence reflects this long
struggle, which lasted about two months. According to Bel-ushezib (see
above, section III), Esarhaddon “evaded execution [by fleeing] to
the Tower (URU.a-ši-t [i…])”
(SAA X 109).
Likewise, Mardi, probably a Babylonian, mentions in his
letter to the king how he escaped to the tower (URU.i-si-ti) together with Esarhaddon (SAA XVI 29). These two
early letters corroborate Esarhaddon’s reference to his asylum (RINAP
4 1 i 39). Bel-ushezib’s emphasis that plotting the murder of
Esarhaddon and his officials continued “every day” (ūmussu SAA X 109 12') implies persistent resistance by
the opposition”.
[End of quote]
I therefore suggest that the author of the Book of Jonah
referred to the Assyrian ruler as “the king of Nineveh” because that is all
that he actually was at that particular, most critical moment in time.
Esarhaddon was under extreme duress, in part because of the
great debacle that had occurred in Israel, near Shechem (= “Bethulia”, the
Judith incident), which late sources wrongly refer to as a defeat by Egypt.
Thus Izabela Eph'al-Jaruzelska (op. cit., p.
123):
“For example, the Babylonian Chronicle yields information on
Esarhaddon’s great failure in Egypt, which is known only from here (Chron.
1 iv 16)”.
And again: “The Babylonian Chronicle mentions the expedition
of B.C. 675 [sic], but the recently translated tablet shows why it was without
results. Having ordered the investment of Jerusalem and Tyre, Esarhaddon
marched against Pelusium ... Egypt’s chief fortress on her north-east frontier.
He was overtaken by a storm. ....
The number of men who perished as given in the Bible must be
an exaggeration, but as the storm wrecked Esarhaddon's plans for the year his
army must have suffered severely”.
(Taken from E. A Wallis Budge’s The Mummy: A
Handbook of Egyptian Funerary Archaeology, 1893, p. 75)
This late testimony as recalled by E. A. Wallis Budge needs
a lot of tidying up.
Although the ultimate goal of king Sennacherib’s last great
western campaign was Egypt (cf. Judith 1:10-12), the Assyrian king would
by no means succeed in getting that far.
For, as Isaiah had rightly foretold (37:33): ‘He will not
enter this city [Jerusalem] or even shoot an arrow here. He will not fight
against it with shields or build a ramp to attack the city walls’ - all of
which Sennacherib had succeeded in doing on the earlier occasion (9th
Campaign).
In the last major western campaign, this time led by
Sennacherib's eldest son, Ashur-nadin-shumi (the Nadin, or Nadab, of Tobit
14:10), and not Esarhaddon, the king’s youngest ‘son’, the Assyrian behemoth
will not reach even as far as Jerusalem, having been stopped in its tracks in
the north, near Shechem, by the ruse of Judith the Simeonite.
As with Herodotus, “Pelusium” in Egypt (perhaps confused
with the like sounding “Jerusalem”) has irrelevantly been brought into the
Babylonian Chronicle account. There was no “storm” involved. No plague of mice.
No cosmic zapping. The Judith ruse would precipitate a rout, with many soldiers
of the massive Assyrian army perishing.
As Budge correctly observed, the Assyrian “army must have
suffered severely”.
But the Bible, when properly read, does not (as Budge
thought) ‘exaggerate’ this rout.
It took Esarhaddon, who succeeded Ashur-nadin-shumi (= “Holofernes”),
some time to get his army back to its full strength, ‘wrecking his immediate
plans’.
Historians wrongly attribute the demise of Ashur-nadin-shumi
to, instead, an un-mentioned (though added in square brackets) “Sargon”.
I quote again from Izabela Eph'al-Jaruzelska (op. cit., p. 131):
“Another example is the tablet K.4730 (+) Sm.1876,
called The Sin of Sargon, allegedly attributed in the text itself
to Sennacherib, which resembles the Naram-Sin epic in style and content.
This text explains that Sargon’s death on the battlefield was a result of
his sin: “Was it because [he honored] the gods o[f Assyria too much,
placing them] above the gods of Babylonia [ ......, and was it because]
he did not [keep] the treaty of the king of gods [that Sargon my father]
was killed [in the enemy country and] was not b[uried] in his
house?” In light, then, of this attitude about divine
support, Esarhaddon must have been highly embarrassed by his military
failure in Egypt, particularly as it followed a four-year period (from the
end of 677 until around 673) [sic] devoid of military achievement”.
[End of quote]
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