Of Ships and Seas,and Fish and Beasts: Viewing the Concept of Universal Providence in the Book of Jonah through the Prism of Psalms

Abstract

The book of Jonah has inspired scholarly investigation in diverse perspectives, such as debating its literary category (fable, parable, allegory), analyzing its narrative art (narrator, character roles, modes of speech, scenes), comic interpretation (satire, parody, farce), and finally defining the book of Jonah as an anthology of biblical religious thought (obedience, forgiveness, repentance, providence). This article examines the last perspective, namely, the theological, and, in particular, the concept of providence through several motifs: the sea, the ship, the great fish and behemah (‘beast’). The occurrence of these motifs in Psalm 104 (vv. 14, 24-26) and almost all of them in Psalm 8 (vv. 8-9), and the poetic echo of Jonah’s narrative in Ps. 107.23-31, 38, illuminate the universal quality of God’s cosmic providence, which stands in pivotal contradiction to Jonah’s limited concept of Israel’s God.