Spotting the exaggerations and humour in the book can help us understand, but it also acts as a warning!...
There are many ways in which the story-tellers of the Bible ensure that their tellings are lively and engaging. One is through the way they report speech. There is usually more “direct speech” (where the words of a character are “quoted”) then “indirect speech” (where the teller tells us the gist of what the character [&hellip...
Juxtaposition: putting things together to make something “more than the sum of the parts” is a common artistic skill, it is common (but often unrecognised) in the Bible. As my least favourite book of the Bible helps reveal!...
Jonah is carefully and neatly structured into four acts (the chapters): Act one: Jon 1:1-16 Pagan sailors converted Scene one: Jonah’s commission 1:1-3 Scene two: On a ship in a storm Jon 1:4-16 Jon 1:17 (MT & LXX 2:1) bridge Act two: Jon 2:1-10 Jonah talks to God Scene three: in the belly of the [&hellip...
Like soap-operas, and other serials, biblical narratives with several episodes often seek to bridge between two parts. These bridges are often verses that serve to link one episode to another. We’ll look at examples from Ruth, Jonah and Genesis 2-...
Biblical narrative is seldom clumsy and not often more complicated than it needs to be. So apparent clumsiness is usually intended to show us something. As I hope to convince you it does in Jonah 1:10. ...
The puzzle of Jonah’s actions, and other strange goings-on don’t stop in Jonah 1:3, but deepen (pun intended) as we begin to read on… we meet the ship that had plans of its own and hear echoes of Santa Claus in the telling of Jonah’s story&#...
Continuing the series on Jonah, we rush ahead into the second verse of the book, only to spot yet again possibly more than one meaning. Jonah’s task however is clear. By the way I am sorry about the long delays recently, I hope to post more regularly again, but not till after enjoying a two [&hellip...
So, here’s the second part of the Jonah series. This time we focus on 1:3. Again we end with a question – but at least the right question is better than the wrong answer! ...
This post deals with Jonah 1:1, I excuse this by reference to the new commentary series announced on the first of this month by Eisenbrauns 😉 This ‘cast deals with beginnings, and with whether the clues in this verse suggest Jonah is of the genre prophecy or narrative (if you don’t understand why this question [&hellip...
