IV. RITE DE PASSAGE AND SPATIALITY
4.2.5 Nineveh
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the human world from the chaotic sea.285 Previous attempts to locate where Jonah has landed miss the point inasmuch as Jonah's location is not a matter of real geography; he is still in a place where reality is not comprehensible to human beings.286
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engineering marvels which expanded Nineveh dramatically.289 This reputation preceded the city, and the hyperbolic statement of Nineveh‘s size in the book of Jonah conforms to the expectation that Assyrian civil engineering was of a fantastic scale.
The author(s) of the Jonah story have no apparent first-hand experience of the city, suggesting that it was already in ruins by the time the Jonah story was formed. The anonymity of the ―King of Nineveh,‖ which it should be noted is not an actual title of the Assyrian kings, reinforces the folkloric conventions of this narrative. Historicized details like this would only potentially undercut the carefully constructed atmosphere of the folktale. What is more germane for the narrative‘s purposes is the symbolic
representation of Nineveh. ―For the Israelites of the seventh century Nineveh was the capital of their worst nightmare as the political center of the empire in which they were absorbed.‖290 Long after the city itself had fallen, Nineveh was still remembered as a focal point for the hostile socio-political agenda of the Assyrian rulers.291
Assyria was well-known to the biblical writers owing to that nation‘s program of expansion during the early first millennium BCE. But aside from the brief mention of Nineveh in Gen 10:11-12, the city of Nineveh itself does not appear much until the prophetic books, a period coinciding with that city‘s preeminence as the Assyrian capital.292 In Hebrew texts the city is frequently the subject of excoriation or a paragon
289 David Stronach and Kim Codella, ―Nineveh,‖ OEANE 4:144-148.
290 Handy, Jonah’s World, 33.
291 Compare, for example, Nineveh with the favorable description of Persian Shushan (Susa) in the book of Esther. Also a world capital of a mighty empire, the spin is different because of the Persians‘ more relaxed social policy. Incidentally, Susa had been leveled itself by Ashurbanipal in 647 BCE.
292 The foundation of the city is attributed to Nimrod, of the Hamites.
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of iniquity. The book of Nahum, in particular, takes an antagonistic stance towards the city and foretells its destruction:
What has become of that lions‘ den, that pasture of great beasts, where lion and lion‘s breed walked, and lions cub – with none to disturb them?
[Where is] the lion that tore victims for his cubs and strangled for his lionesses, and filled his lairs with prey and his dens with mangled flesh?
(Nah 2:12-13)293
Zephaniah 2:13-15 also strongly condemns the city for its irreverent pride. Thus the stunning and instant reversal of its king to the uninspired, one-sentence prophesy of a foreigner underscores that the story is still operating in a world of fantasy.
Although Jonah has returned from his isolation literally he has not returned figuratively. Nineveh in its repentance allegorically represents the ideal for Israel: a people who recognize their iniquity and take strong steps to live in accord with God‘s directives, much as the sailors‘ devotions turned to Israel‘s God while Jonah stands aloof on the ship‘s deck. Nineveh in this story is a parallel to Israel, not what it is but what it could and should be. Jonah‘s failure to recognize and interface with that that reality is at the heart of his misshapen transformation.
4.2.6 ―East of the City‖
After coming so close reemerging from the hinterlands in his journey of prophetic development, Jonah instead withdraws from Nineveh and goes out ―east of the city‖
further away from both Nineveh and Israel (4:3). The site of Nineveh is bordered on its west by the Tigris River, but the easterly direction of Jonah's movement from the city
293 JPS translation; the lion is known in Mesopotamian iconography as a common symbol for the Assyrian king, though we know it had been appropriated by the Judean and other courts as well.
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was surely chosen for its symbolic value. André and Pierre-Emmanuel LaCocque note the psychological symbolism of the west-east in this story:
Jonah's flight to the west is probably to be interpreted in parallel with many popular legends as a plunging into darkness. One can find
confirmation of this in the awakening of Jonah's conscience at dawn (4:7, Italics theirs), while he sits to the east of Nineveh (4:5) under the blowing of an east wind (4:8).294
Yet if Jonah's placement here results in an "awakening" of his conscience his arousal is strikingly unlike Lugalbanda's divinely inspired revitalization at dawn. In an ironic twist, Lugalbanda‘s epiphany at the eastern horizon of his world, nearer to the rising of the sun, is countered here by Jonah‘s physical placement at the east but his symbolic incongruity with the rising sun. Rather than the eastern horizon being the place where Jonah‘s fate is
―fixed‖ as it is in the other tales, he now sits, literally and figuratively, in a state of limbo.295 Jonah is left gazing westwards, much as he had been at the story's beginning, upon the city of Nineveh waiting to see what is going to happen next. Despite all of the space he had traversed, not much has changed within him.
Jonah is greatly pleased by the fantastically rapid growth of the qîqāyôn, but just as it is easily withered by the caterpillar's attack, Jonah's misery has been brought about through his failure to recognize that God's true miracle was not the qîqāyôn or even the
"big fish" from earlier but, rather, the repentance of the Ninevites. Even as Jonah
purports to understand this (4:2) he does not demonstrate it through his actions. Thus the Jonah narrative utilizes this topos to place Jonah in places of fantastic potential, but the
294 LaCocque and LaCocque, Jonah: A Psycho-Religious Approach to the Prophet, 79. It is also worth noting that this "east wind" is one of the four objects "appointed" (wayyĕman) by God in the text, along with the "big fish" (1:17), the qîqāyôn (4:6), and the worm which attacked the plant (4:7). Recall the danger of easterly winds to "Tarshish ships" mentioned above.
295 For the ―Cutting of fates‖ at the eastern horizon as a feature of Lugalbanda and other Mesopotamian narratives, see Woods, ―At the Edge of the World,‖ 213 ff.
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narrative re-imagines it as well. The symbolic geography of this story is fraught with parallels to Jonah's own (failed) transformation. At the crucial moment in Nineveh that he seems to be on the verge of reintegrating with humanity he instead fails and withdraws from the city (and human society) completely.