72 BRENT A. STRAWN on the scene 18. In this process, the sailors are being painted in Israelite garb, as it were, and are depicted as adepts in Israelite ritual practice. The fourth and perhaps most significant consideration pertains to the structure of the book of Jonah itself. It takes its clue from the corresponding episode in Scene Two, which shows the Ninevites in full repentance (3,5-10). Despite Jonah’s recalcitrance and his ultra-brief oracle — only five Hebrew words which never once mention God, never once raise the possibility of averting judgment and obtaining forgiveness, and provide no instructions whatsoever as to how the Ninevites should respond — the people of Nineveh, “from the greatest to the least” (3,5; cf. 3,6-8), repent, and they do so with panache. Even the animals don sackcloth and join in the prayer and fasting (3,7-8)! Compared to the reluctant prophet, these “pagan” Ninevites 19 cannot wait to obey, are dying to repent, and know exactly what to do and how to do it, without any coaching, encouragement, or instructions from Jonah, the reluctant prophet 20. The diptychal, symmetrical construction of the book of Jonah suggests that something similar may be at work in the sailors and, especially, their lot casting in 1,7. Indeed, the sailors move from each crying out to his own god (1,5a), to lot casting (1,7), to a full-blown and highly eloquent prayer to Yahweh by name (1,14). That prayer is preceded by valiant attempts to return Jonah safely to dry land (1,13), and is followed by worship (ary), sacrifice (jbz), and vow-making (rdn) to Yahweh, again by name (1,16). The dense collection of pious terminology in 1,16 makes it hard to avoid the impression that the sailors are presented as converts to Yahwism 21. Be that as it may, the sailors clearly proceed developmentally, as it were, along the following lines 22 : Cf. H.W. WOLFF, Obadiah and Jonah. A Commentary (Minneapolis, 18 MN 1986) 114: “Narrator and readers evidently have in mind a familiar procedure, which they think would be applicable even on board a ship during a storm at sea”; and LIMBURG, Jonah, 52: “The exact procedure is not described; it would have been familiar to the first hearers of the story” (my emphases in both cases). One might wonder if the reference to idol-worshippers in 2,9 is the 19 prophet’s own perspective on both the sailors in chapter 1 and the Ninevites in chapter 3. TRIBLE, Rhetorical Criticism, 171-172, argues that the description fits neither group, which is no doubt true on the narrative level, but may not be true on the characterological level of the prophet himself. Cf. TRIBLE, Rhetorical Criticism, 182. 20 Cf. WOLFF’s (Obadiah and Jonah, 105) title to the larger unit is “The 21 Missionary Fruits of a Flight from God”. TRIBLE, too, uses the language of development for the sailors (“[t]he 22 developing portrait of the sailors gives ample reasons for their conversion”) but