by

 Damien F. Mackey

  

“Nebuchadnezzar the King of Babylon has devoured me, he has crushed me;

He has made me an empty vessel, He has swallowed me up like a monster;

He has filled his stomach with my delicacies, He has spit me out”.

 Jeremiah 51:34

  

Introduction

 

The Hebrew word, tannîn (תַּנִּין), “monster”, used here in Jeremiah, can be associated in the OT with a ‘great sea creature’ (cf. e.g., Genesis 1:2 and Job 7:12), which would be most fitting if the prophet were intending Jonah symbolism here.

Despite the incredible similarities, though, biblical commentators often fail to make any connection here between Jeremiah and the Jonah incident.

 

While this is surprising, it may be that King Nebuchednezzar, on the one hand, and Jonah, on the other, would be deemed historically too far apart for the prophet Jeremiah, a contemporary of the King of Babylon, to have intended any meaningful comparisons.

 

But, according to this present article, the apparent chronological gap is non-existent.

 

The time is considerably out of joint

 

Already I may have managed to alienate critical readers by even daring to suggest that there is no chronological gap between the prophet Jonah and King Nebuchednezzar.

 

For, while the Bible links Jonah’s prophetic ministry to the reign of King Jeroboam II of Israel (2 Kings 14:23, 25), who is conventionally dated to c. 786–746 BC, the Chaldean king, Nebuchednezzar, is thought not to have begun to reign until c. 605 BC.

 

That is, at the very least, a span of (746-605 =) 141 years (plus, of course, Jonah’s age at the time). The sum total would be well in excess even of the 120-13o years traditionally attributed to the long life of Jonah!

 

What the long life – and, presumably, the long prophetic ministry – of the prophet Jonah might at least allow for is that, if he began during the reign of Jeroboam II, his prophetic reach could have extended down through a series of reigns.

Now, one such prophet, who began during Jeroboam II, was still prophesying at the time of King Hezekiah of Judah. I am referring to Hosea (1:1): “The word of the Lord that came to Hosea son of Beeri during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and during the reign of Jeroboam son of Jehoash king of Israel”.

 

The long-lived Hosea I have identified with the great Isaiah, likewise long-lived and contemporaneous:

 

Did Isaiah and Hosea ever meet?

 

(6) Did Isaiah and Hosea ever meet?

 

And, given the incredible and abundant language parallels between Isaiah and Nahum, I have extended the identification to include Isaiah (Hosea) as Nahum:

 

Prophet Nahum as Isaiah Comforted

 

(6) Prophet Nahum as Isaiah Comforted

 

From there, it is but a small step to include Jonah, whom Tobit variously calls Nahum:

 

Tobit’s Jonah and Nahum interchange

 

(6) Tobit's Jonah and Nahum interchange

 

All of this has been worked out in more detail in my article:

 

De-coding Jonah

 

(6) De-coding Jonah

 

So, these arguments give rise to a completely new scenario, namely that the prophet Jonah (who is Isaiah/Hosea, Nahum), having begun to minister during the reign of Jeroboam II of Israel (d. 746 BC), continued down at least to King Hezekiah of Judah.

 

1.    Prophet Jonah’s ministry continued down to King Hezekiah.

 

In my postgraduate thesis (2007), I categorically rejected Edwin R. Thiele’s fixing of the reign of Hezekiah to 716/715 BC; whereas 2 Kings 18:10 clearly records that: “At the end of three years the army of Assyria captured Samaria. That happened in the sixth year of Hezekiah’s rule. It was the ninth year of the rule of Hoshea, the king of Israel”. Thus the Fall of Samaria (c. 722 BC) occurred in Hezekiah’s 6^th year of reign - implying that he would have become king in c. 727 BC.

 

Commencing, then, at 727 BC, Hezekiah’s 29-year reign (2 Kings 18:2) would have concluded in c. 698 BC, which is still well short of our goal of Nebuchednezzar’s commencement (c.  605 BC).

 

More tightening up work needs to be done.

 

Streamlining the Kings of Israel and Judah

 

In various articles, now, I have reproduced a simple table of which I am very content regarding the later Kings of Israel. Here, for instance, we find it in my article:

 

Getting the most out of the Kings of Israel and Judah

 

(5) Getting the most out of the Kings of Israel and Judah

 

as follows:

 

….

A big part of resolving the difficulties associated with the kings of Israel and Judah for this period is to recognise the alter egos, for instance, that a series of three kings of Israel has been duplicated. Thus, as I have tabulated previously:

 

ZECHARIAH (MURDERED) = PEKAHIAH (MURDERED);

SHALLUM (MURDERER-MURDERED = PEKAH (MURDERER-MURDERED);

MENAHEM (MURDERER)= HOSEA (MURDERER).

….

 

Added to this radical reduction is my merging of the long-reigning Jeroboam II, who does not figure at all in Chronicles:

 

Great King Jeroboam II missing from Chronicles

 

(5) Great King Jeroboam II missing from Chronicles

 

with his supposed father, Jehoash.

 

This era, the reign of King Jehoash/Jeroboam saw the beginnings of the prophet Jonah’s ministering:

 

An Old Testament “Saviour” of Israel

 

(6) An Old Testament “Saviour” of Israel

 

Coupled with so radical a revision of the Kings of Israel there must be a shortening, as well, of the Kings of Judah – not to mention of the contemporaneous Assyro-Babylonians and Egyptians.

 

The outstanding feature of this necessary revision is my collapsing of the era of the great reforming king Hezekiah of Judah into the era of the great reforming king Josiah of Judah. Too detailed to go into again here, it has all been spelled out in my article:

 

Damien F. Mackey’s A Tale of Two Theses

 

(6) Damien F. Mackey's A Tale of Two Theses

 

Hence, I now further conclude that the:

 

2.    Prophet Jonah’s ministry continued down to King Josiah.

 

The final touch

 

Some of the ramifications of this overhaul of biblical regnal history are that characters well-known from the era of King Hezekiah must re-emerge in the story of King Josiah.

 

-         Isaiah (Jonah), for instance, is to be found during Josiah’s reign as Asaiah.

-         Eliakim, son of Hilkiah, is to be found as Jeremiah, son of Hilkiah.

-         Judith is the great prophetess, Huldah.

-         Hezekiah’s wicked son/successor, Manasseh, is the apostate king, Jehoiakim.

 

And so on.

 

Finally, completely bridging the earlier discussed gap to King Nebuchednezzar, he emerges as Esarhaddon, following the assassination of Hezekiah’s Assyrian foe, Sennacherib:

 

Esarhaddon a tolerable fit for King Nebuchadnezzar.

 

(7) Esarhaddon a tolerable fit for King Nebuchednezzar

 

The prophet Jonah, very old by now, will reluctantly drag himself off to Nineveh, with Assyria in chaos, in the midst of a civil war, with Esarhaddon (Nebuchednezzar) desperately holding on only to the city of Nineveh at this tumultuous time:

 

The ‘Jonah incident’ historically identified

 

(7) The 'Jonah incident' historically identified

 

Asenapper, traditional name of Jonah’s king of Nineveh

 

(7) Asenapper, traditional name of Jonah's king of Nineveh

 

The prophet Jeremiah will, at a somewhat later phase, vividly recall this famous incident when likening the all-devouring Nebuchednezzar to the sea monster that had swallowed whole, and then spat out, Jeremiah’s older contemporary, Jonah.

 

3.      Prophet Jonah’s ministry continued down to Nebuchednezzar.