Chapter I

Abstract

The Book of Jonah is a Hebrew book, composed of but 48 verses. For generations exegetes have tried to classify Old Testament literary forms under the major headings of history, prophecy, poetry and wisdom (or proverbs), although these forms are seldom mutually exclusive. How then should Jonah be classified? Under prophecy? But it has the fundamental poetic elements of semitic style — the parallelism, the repetitions, the symmetry of clauses designed to produce a rhetorical incantation and emphasis which are carried over — mirabile dictu — in the Authorized Version:

• 4:1 But it displeased Jonah, and he was very angry. Or in the Clementine Vulgate:

• 4:1 Et afflictus est Jonas afflictione magna, et iratus est. Or in the beautiful verse where the synonymous phrases circle about the central assertation, amplifying the topic and enriching the feeling of the narrative voice:

• 2:3 For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves passed me over.