Brent A. Strawn, «Jonah’s Sailors and Their Lot Casting: A Rhetorical-Critical Observation», Vol. 91 (2010) 66-76
Several considerations suggest that the sailors’ lot casting in Jonah 1 is unusual and meant to be both surprising and literarily delightful. The most important of these is the correspondence between the sailors and the Ninevites within the book’s rhetorical structure. This correspondence suggests that the sailors’ lot casting is a particularly Israelite practice with the sailors themselves appearing as adepts in Israelite ritual activity. That depiction corresponds to the Ninevites’ ability to know precisely how to repent in chapter 3. In both cases, the foreigners are portrayed in particularly pious ways in contrast to the reluctant prophet.
Jonah’s Sailors and Their Lot Casting:
A Rhetorical-Critical Observation *
All readers are agreed that the book of Jonah is a work of high literary
artistry 1. Even those approaches that do not focus on literary features
cannot resist remarking on them or citing studies that have made much of
them. Among these meaningful and oftentimes delightful literary aspects is
the parallel or diptychal structure of the book. According to P. Trible, Jonah
lays out neatly into two scenes, each with four episodes:
Scene One (1,1–2,11)
Episode One (1,1-3)
Episode Two (1,4-6)
Episode Three (1,7-16)
Episode Four (2,1-11)
Scene Two (3,1–4,11)
Episode One (3,1-4)
Episode Two (3,5-10)
Episode Three (4,1-4 and 5)
Episode Four (4,6-11) 2.
There is both symmetry and asymmetry at work in this two-part, four-
episode structure, but what is significant is how much the “external designâ€
of Jonah reveals close correspondence between the book’s constituent
parts 3. For the purposes of the present study, we will focus on the verses
* I thank B.T. Arnold, J.K. Mead, and the Editors of Biblica for their
comments and critique.
A classic study remains J. MAGONET, Form and Meaning. Studies in the
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Literary Technique of the Book of Jonah (Sheffield 21983). The most thorough
rhetorical-critical analysis in the stylistic mode of J. Muilenburg is P. TRIBLE,
Rhetorical Criticism. Context, Method, and the Book of Jonah (GBS;
Minneapolis, MN 1994). See also her commentary “The Book of Jonah.
Introduction, Commentary, and Reflectionsâ€, NIB VII, 461-529. A recent study
focusing on chap. 1 is C. LICHERT, “Par terre et par mer! Analyse rhétorique de
Jonas 1â€, EThL 78 (2002) 5-24. In addition to a very thorough analysis, he
offers a comprehensive summary of previous studies of Jonah’s rhetorical
structure.
See Appendix A in TRIBLE, Rhetorical Criticism, 237-244. Versification
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here and throughout follows MT.
See TRIBLE, Rhetorical Criticism, 111-120 on symmetry and asymetry.
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