Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 171:684 (Oct 2014)
Article: “The Great City Of Nineveh” (Jon. 1:2)
Author: Douglas K. Stuart

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BSac 171:684 (October-December 2014) p. 387

“The Great City Of Nineveh” (Jon. 1:2)*

Douglas K. Stuart

* This is the fourth article in the four-part series “My Favorite Mistranslations,” delivered as the W. H. Griffith Thomas Lectures at Dallas Theological Seminary, February 5-8, 2013.

Douglas K. Stuart is Professor of Old Testament, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, Massachusetts.

The translation of Jonah 1:2 from the New International Version1 is as follows: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” I propose the following translation:2 “Go to the important city, Nineveh, and speak to it,3for their trouble4 concerns me.”

BSac 171:684 (October-December 2014) p. 388

The usual translation, as typified by the NIV, describes a command to Jonah from God to preach judgment against Nineveh because of its evil. The proposed translation, however, suggests that Jonah is being sent on a mercy mission intended to offer God’s help to Nineveh in light of hardships it is experiencing.

If the proposed translation is accurate, the book of Jonah would begin with wording that helps the reader understand at the outset why the anti-Assyrian prophet Jonah chose to try to flee from his assignment instead of eagerly carry it out. It would also provide a logical connection with his behavior at the end of the story (chap. 4), i.e., his bitterness at the thought that God would spare Nineveh rather than destroy it.

The translation of the final three words of the Hebrew text of Jonah 1:2 (עָלְתָה רָעָתָם לְפָנָי) are perhaps of greatest interest. But first I wish to address other parts of the verse because of the way that translations of those parts also contribute to our understanding of what Jonah understood that God was commanding him to do.

“The Great City Of Nineveh”

The English translation of נִינַוֵה הָעִיר הַגַּדוֹלָה is usually “the great city of Nineveh” or the like. This relatively neutral translation of three words has the unfortunate potential to be at least slightly misleading, because there is reason to think that a somewhat different nuance would more precisely capture the sense of the Hebrew original. The published English v...

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