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Jonah's hidden intention for Nineveh through form of prophetic judgment

Chol-Gu Kang 1

1웨스트민스터신학대학원대학교

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ABSTRACT

This essay is an attempt to understand the book of Jonah through form of prophetic judgment. By comparing oracles of judgment in the book of Jonah with other books of prophets, I tried to understand the book of Jonah more specifically and to understand the purpose and meaning of prophetic judgment in the old testament in general. For this purpose, I used an approach of forms of prophetic speech(form criticism) as a methodology rather than a historical approach of the book of Jonah. In general, when the prophets proclaim the judgment of God against Israel or foreign nations around Israel, it is the fact that God or prophets specifically point out or accuse them of their sins. In the book of Jonah, unlike other prophetic books, these elements do not appear. In the book of Jonah, there is only a scene in which God points out a very comprehensive sin of Nineveh, as Jonah 1:2 (Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me). He simply announced that Nineveh would be overturned. If God sent Jonah to announce Nineveh God's Judgment, then Jonah should explain concretely what Nineveh has sinned against God. But there is not found in the book of Jonah that Jonah pointed to Nineveh's sin. There is only one prophecy of Jonah in the book of Jonah (3:4 "Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned"). What is surprising, nevertheless, is the fact that the King of Nineveh and all the people repented. In response to Nineveh’s repentance, God relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened (Jonah 3:10). It appears that Jonah intentionally disturb Nineveh's repentance by changing the form of prophetic judgment. Even though Jonah immediately declared the destruction without pointing out the sin of Nineveh, Nineveh repented. Why did Jonah do this? For what reason did this happen? This is the central theme that I want to research in this paper. Jonah saw that God’s prophetic judgments can be actually prophetic warnings to causes repentance. Therefore Jonah did not point out the sin of Nineveh. He does not want Nineveh to bring relief from the threat of punishment. But God knows the intention of Jonah and by forgiving Nineveh he wanted to teach where God's will is. The purpose of oracles of judgment is in the repentance and forgiveness of the subjects of judgment. This applies not only to Israel but also to all nations like Nineveh. The book of Jonah reveals God as a Creator and Lord of history to the post-exilic Jewish community. Therefor, God is asking them to accept his new image.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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