Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 47:2 (NA 1996)
Article: Who Was The ‘King Of Nineveh’ In Jonah 3:6?
Author: Paul Ferguson

TynBul 47:2 (1996) p. 301

Who Was The ‘King Of Nineveh’ In
Jonah 3:6?

Paul Ferguson

Summary

This article seeks to show the title ‘king of Nineveh’ is not an anachronism. Comparison with Aramaic use of the north-west Semitic mlk, important in a north Israelite context, may suggest that a city or provincial official might have been under consideration. Cuneiform evidence seems to suggest that no distinction is made between city and province in designating a governor. Common custom was to give provincial capitals the same name as the province. This could explain the fact that the book of Jonah says the ‘city’ was a three day walk (3:3).

I. The ‘King Of Nineveh’

The Hebrew phrase melek nînĕveh (‘king of Nineveh’) is found in the Old Testament only in Jonah 3:6. It never occurs in any contemporary documents. Most literature proceeds on the assumption that the author used this expression to refer to the king of the Assyrian empire. It has often been suggested that this wording indicates the author wrote centuries after the fall of this nation.1

1. ‘King Of Nineveh’ Vs ‘King Of Assyria’

If this be the case, then one must consider why, if the author of the book lived centuries after the ‘historical Jonah’ of 2 Kings 14:25, he

TynBul 47:2 (1996) p. 302

would ignore the usual designation ‘king of Assyria’. This phrase is found thirty times in 2 Kings 18-20. This problem is heightened by the fact that he is in the habit of meticulously selecting exact phrasing from the ‘Kings corpus’.2

It is further compounded by the fact that the book mentions nothing about ‘Assyria’ or the ‘Assyrian empire’. One would expect that a post exilic author would betray some trace of the strong memory of Assyrian war crimes denounced by the prophet Nahum. Yet Nineveh is presented as a large city faced with doom rather than a super-power threatening to swallow her neighbours. The evil denounced in the book has not passed on the whole earth (Na. 3:19) but consists of violence within their own territory (Jon. 3:8).

It does not seem plausible that a writer living long after the eighth century BC would ignore a wide body of tradition about the ‘evil empire’, invent an apparently unique title (‘king of Nineveh’), and conf...