The book of Jonah is a simple narrative, with the exception of the prayer or thanksgiving in chap. ii. Its style and mode of narration are uniform. There are no traces of compilation, as Nactigall supposed. The prayer contains, indeed, not only imagery peculiar to itself, but also such imagery as at once was suggested to the mind of a pious Hebrew pre served in circumstances of extreme jeopardy. On this principle we account for the similarity of some portions of its phraseotogy to portions of Ps. xxx., xxxi., lxix., cxx., cxxx., etc. The language in such places had been hallowed by frequent usage, and had become the consecrated idiom of a dis tressed and succoured Israelite. The prayer, allowed by many to be original, is thus based on theocratic language which the saints used in com mon, and is well adapted to Jonah's strange and perilous situation—uttered by him in the whale's belly and afterwards recorded by himself. It is mere guesswork to say that the psalms referred to were imitated from it, and there is no proof of its being a collection of excerpts or an anthology. That the book of Jonah has a place among the pro phets shows the opinion held of it by those who formed the canon. It has, however, this anomaly, as Stahelin remarks, that it is not a prophecy, but the history of a prophecy' (Specielle Einleitung, p. 36o, 1862). But the lesson for the people and for all time lies as much in the circumstances as in the brief oracle which Jonah repeated. There is little reason either for dating the composition of this book later than the age of Jonah, or for supposing it the production of another than the prophet him self (Vance Smith, Proph. relating to Nineveh, p. 252). The book does not, indeed, claim Jonah for its author, but to his authorship its use of the third person in speaking of him can be really no objection. The Chaleixisms which Jahn and others find in it may be accounted for by the nearness of the canton of Zebulun, to vvhich Jonah belonged, to the northern territory, whence by national intercourse Aramaic peculiarities might be insensibly borrowed. Thus we have m7v3—a ship with a deck—not the more 7 • common Hebrew term ; 3.1—a foreign title applied to the captain ; NI:, to appoint—found however in Ps. lxi., a psalm which Hupfeld without any valid grounds places after the Babylonish cap.
tivity ; -int:, to command, as in the later books; 1312t3, command, referring to the royal decree, and probably taken from the native Assyrian tongue ; inn, to row, a nautical term ; and the abbreviated form of the relative, which however occurs in other books, etc.
As for the date of the book, Gesenins, Ewald. and many others, place it after the exile, Bleek in the Persian times, and Hitzig in the period of the Maccabees. Yet Ewald admits that the conclusion of the book is in the true prophetic style. There is no force in the assertion that the phrase Nine veh was an exceeding great city ' implies that it had long perished, the language is only in accord ance with the common idiom of narrative (Kell, Einleitung, sec. 9o). Sharpe (Bonomi, Nineveh eznd its palaces, p. 73) places the book in the reign of Josiah, as if the partial overthrow of Nineveh by Nabopolassar were connected with Jonah's prophecy, and the purport of his book were to explain the divine justice in sparing it. With as much probability the overthrow menaced by Jonah and warded off for a season by repent ance, may have come upon the city at the conclu sion of the first dynasty, for the first king of the second dynasty seems to have been a usurper, since, unlike his royal predecessors, Ile makes no mention of his ancestors [AssvittAi. The book seems to be but a fragment, though the commenc ing 1, 1. t, which refers to prior things, will not of itself prove a literary connection with some ante cedent and unreported oracles (Ezek. I), nor can we assign it the deeper logical meaning which Pusey gives it. Apocryphal prophecies ascribed to Jonah may be found in the pseudo-Epiphanius (De Vitis Proph., c. 16), and the Chrome. Pascha/e.
Among the numerous commentators on Jonah may be noticed Archbishop Abbot, Exposition of _Jonah, 1600 ; Crocius, Comment. zn yonam., Cas sellis 1656 ; J. Gerhardi, Annot. in Proph. Amos el you. etc., Eng. 1692 ; Leusden, Yonas tits, 1692; Lessing, Observat. 1.1i Vatic. Yon., 1782; Grimm, Der Proph. Yonas Uebersetz., 1798 ; For biger, Prolusio, etc., 1827 ; Krahmer, Das B. Yon. Hist. Krit. untersucht, Cassel 1839; Henderson, Minor Prophels,1845; Goldhorn, Excurs., IS03; Hitzig, die Zzoolf kl. prophelen, 1852, zd ed. ; Drake's Notes On Yozzah and Hosea,i853; Schreg, Die kleinen propheten, 1854; Pusey, Minor Pro phets,1861 ; Kaulen, Liber yona, Prop/2., M oguntiae 1862.—J. E. See also Raleigh's Story of the Pro phet 7onah.