First Glance

When you think of all the events in the Book of Jonah—the prophet running away from his mission to Nineveh, the storm, the sailors, the great fish, Nineveh’s mass repentance, the gourd that blossoms and then shrivels—it’s hard to remember that the book’s four chapters total a mere 48 verses. But what memorable verses they are! Not only have they stirred the imaginations of generations of Bible readers, they have also stoked the creative fires of many an artist. James Limburg, in “Jonah and the Whale Through the Eyes of Artists,” leads us through a gallery of works inspired by the prophet’s tale. But this is no lazy-Sunday-afternoon-in-the-museum stroll. Limburg shows how the works reflect different understandings of the story and, among other points, he explains how Jonah and Jesus came to be linked in one of Western art’s greatest achievements, the Sistine Chapel.

The beautiful artwork continues in David Noel Freedman’s “Did God Play a Dirty Trick on Jonah at the End?” This time, however, the emphasis is not on visual creativity but on theological creativity. Studded with the fresh insights BR readers have come to expect from Freedman from his previous appearances in these pages and from Biblical Archaeology Society seminars, this article explores a doctrine that makes its first appearance in the eighth-century B.C.: the notion that human repentance can produce divine repentance.

Rounding out the Jonah discussion, Nahum Sarna explains “Why the Book of Jonah Is Read on Yom Kippur,” the Jewish day of repentence (see sidebar to “Jonah and the Whale: Through the Eyes of Artists”).