Yunus 1:10

1:10 Hearing this, ¹  the men became even more afraid ²  and said to him, “What have you done?” (The men said this because they knew that he was trying to escape ³  from the Lord, ⁴  because he had previously told them. ⁵ )

Yunus 2:3

2:3 You threw me ⁶  into the deep waters, ⁷ 

into the middle ⁸  of the sea; ⁹ 

the ocean current ¹⁰  engulfed ¹¹  me;

all the mighty waves ¹²  you sent ¹³  swept ¹⁴  over me. ¹⁵ 

Yunus 2:9

2:9 But as for me, I promise to offer a sacrifice to you with a public declaration ¹⁶  of praise; ¹⁷ 

I will surely do ¹⁸  what I have promised. ¹⁹ 

Salvation ²⁰  belongs to the Lord!” ²¹ 

Yunus 4:6

4:6 The Lord God appointed ²²  a little plant ²³  and caused it to grow up over Jonah to be a shade over his head to rescue ²⁴  him from his misery. ²⁵  Now Jonah was very delighted ²⁶  about the little plant.

[1:10]  ¹ tn Heb “Then the men feared…” The vav-consecutive describes the consequence of Jonah’s statement. The phrase “Hearing this” does not appear in the Hebrew text but is supplied in the translation for the sake of clarity.

[1:10]  ² tn Heb “The men feared a great fear.” The cognate accusative construction using the verb יָרֵא (yare’, “to fear”) and the noun יִרְאָה (yir’ah, “fear”) from the same root (ירא, yr’) emphasizes the sailors’ escalating fright: “they became very afraid” (see IBHS 167 §10.2.1g).

[1:10]  ³ tn Heb “fleeing.”

[1:10]  ⁴ sn The first two times that Jonah is said to be running away from the Lord (1:3), Hebrew word order puts this phrase last. Now in the third occurrence (1:10), it comes emphatically before the verb that describes Jonah’s action. The sailors were even more afraid once they had heard who it was that Jonah had offended.

[1:10]  ⁵ tn Heb “because he had told them.” The verb הִגִּיד (higgid, “he had told”) functions as a past perfect, referring to a previous event.

[2:3]  ⁶ tn Or “You had thrown me.” Verse 3 begins the detailed description of Jonah’s plight, which resulted from being thrown into the sea.

[2:3]  ⁷ tn Heb “the deep” (so KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV); NLT “into the ocean depths.”

[2:3]  ⁸ tn Heb “heart” (so many English versions); CEV “to the (+ very TEV) bottom of the sea.”

[2:3]  ⁹ tc The BHS editors suggest deleting either מְצוּלָה (mÿtsulah, “into the deep”) or בִּלְבַב יַמִּים (bilvav yammim, “into the heart of the sea”). They propose that one or the other is a scribal gloss on the remaining term. However, the use of an appositional phrase within a poetic colon is not unprecedented in Hebrew poetry. The MT is therefore best retained.

[2:3]  ¹⁰ tn Or “the stream”; KJV, ASV, NRSV “the flood.” The Hebrew word נָהָר (nahar) is used in parallel with יַם (yam, “sea”) in Ps 24:2 (both are plural) to describe the oceans of the world and in Ps 66:6 to speak of the sea crossed by Israel in the exodus from Egypt.

[2:3]  ¹¹ tn Heb “surrounded” (so NRSV); NAB “enveloped.”

[2:3]  ¹² tn Heb “your breakers and your waves.” This phrase is a nominal hendiadys; the first noun functions as an attributive adjective modifying the second noun: “your breaking waves.”

[2:3]  ¹³ tn Heb “your… your…” The 2nd person masculine singular suffixes on מִשְׁבָּרֶיךָ וְגַלֶּיךָ (mishbarekha vÿgallekha, “your breakers and your waves”) function as genitives of source. Just as God had hurled a violent wind upon the sea (1:4) and had sovereignly sent the large fish to swallow him (1:17 [2:1 HT]), Jonah viewed God as sovereignly responsible for afflicting him with sea waves that were crashing upon his head, threatening to drown him. Tg. Jonah 2:3 alters the 2nd person masculine singular suffixes to 3rd person masculine singular suffixes to make them refer to the sea and not to God, for the sake of smoothness: “all the gales of the sea and its billows.”

[2:3]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “crossed”; KJV, NAB, NASB, NRSV “passed.”

[2:3]  ¹⁵ sn Verses 3 and 5 multiply terms describing Jonah’s watery plight. The images used in v. 3 appear also in 2 Sam 22:5-6; Pss 42:7; 51:11; 69:1-2, 14-15; 88:6-7; 102:10.

[2:9]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “voice” or “sound.”

[2:9]  ¹⁷ tc The MT reads בְּקוֹל תּוֹדָה (bÿqol todah, “with a voice of thanksgiving”). Some mss of Tg. Jonah read “with the sound of hymns of thanksgiving” here in 2:9 – the longer reading probably reflects an editorial gloss, explaining תּוֹדָה (“thanksgiving”) as “hymns of thanksgiving.”

[2:9]  tn Heb “voice/sound of thanksgiving.” The genitive תּוֹדָה (todah, “thanksgiving”) specifies the kind of public statement that will accompany the sacrifice. The construct noun קוֹל (qol, “voice, sound”) functions as a metonymy of cause for effect, referring to the content of what the voice/sound produces: hymns of praise or declarative praise testimony.

[2:9]  ¹⁸ tn The verbs translated “I will sacrifice” and “I will pay” are Hebrew cohortatives, expressing Jonah’s resolve and firm intention.

[2:9]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “what I have vowed I will pay.” Jonah promises to offer a sacrifice and publicly announce why he is thankful. For similar pledges, see Pss 22:25-26; 50:14-15; 56:12; 69:29-33; 71:14-16, 22-24; 86:12-13; 116:12-19.

[2:9]  ²⁰ tn Or “deliverance” (NAB, NRSV).

[2:9]  ²¹ tn Or “comes from the Lord.” For similar uses of the preposition lamed (לְ, lÿ) to convey a sort of ownership in which the owner does or may by right do something, see Lev 25:48; Deut 1:17; 1 Sam 17:47; Jer 32:7-8.

[4:6]  ²² tn The verb מָנָה (manah) in the Piel stem is used elsewhere in Jonah meaning “to send, to appoint” (Jonah 2:1; 4:6-8; HALOT 599 s.v. מנה 2; BDB 584 s.v. מָנָה).

[4:6]  ²³ tn The noun קִיקָיוֹן (qiqayon, “plant”) has the suffixed ending וֹן- which denotes a diminutive (see IBHS 92 §5.7b), so it can be nuanced “little plant.” For the probable reason that the narrator used the diminutive form here, see the note on “little” in v. 10.

[4:6]  ²⁴ tc The consonantal form להציל is vocalized by the MT as לִהַצִּיל (lÿhatsil), a Hiphil infinitive construct from נָצַל (natsal, “to deliver, rescue”; BDB 664-65 s.v. נָצַל). However, the LXX’s τοῦ σκιάζειν (tou skiazein, “to shade”) reflects an alternate vocalization tradition of לְהָצֵיל (lÿhatsel), a Niphal infinitive construct from צָלַל (tsalal, “to shade”; see BDB 853 s.v. צָלַל). The MT vocalization is preferred for several reasons. First, it is the more difficult form with the assimilated nun. Second, the presence of the noun צֵל (tsel, “shadow”) just two words before helps to explain the origin of the LXX vocalization which was influenced by this noun in the immediate context. Third, God’s primary motivation in giving the plant to Jonah was not simply to provide shade for him because the next day the Lord killed the plant (v. 7). God’s primary motivation was to create a situation to “rescue” Jonah from his bad attitude. Nevertheless, the narrator’s choice of the somewhat ambiguous consonantal form להציל might have been done to create a wordplay on נָצַל (“to rescue, deliver”) and צָלַל (“to shade”). Jonah thought that God was providing him shade, but God was really working to deliver him from his evil attitude, as the ensuing dialogue indicates.

[4:6]  ²⁵ tn Or “evil attitude.” The meaning of the noun רָעָה (ra’ah) is intentionally ambiguous; the author puns on its broad range of meanings to create a polysemantic wordplay. It has a broad range of meanings: (1) “distress, misery, discomfort” (2) “misfortune, injury,” (3) “calamity, disaster,” (4) “moral evil,” and (5) “ill-disposed, evil attitude” (see BDB 949 s.v. רָעָה; HALOT 1262-63 s.v. רָעָה). The narrator has used several meanings of רָעָה in 3:8-4:2, namely, “moral evil” (3:8, 10) and “calamity, disaster” (3:9, 10; 4:2), as well as the related verb רָעַע (ra’a’, “to be displeasing”; see 4:1). Here the narrator puns on the meaning “discomfort” created by the scorching desert heat, but God’s primary motivation is to “deliver” Jonah – not from something as trivial as physical discomfort from heat – but from his sinful attitude about God's willingness to spare Nineveh. This gives the term an especially ironic twist: Jonah is only concerned about being delivered from his physical “discomfort,” while God wants to deliver him from his “evil attitude.”

[4:6]  ²⁶ tn Heb “he rejoiced with great joy.” The cognate accusative construction repeats the verb and noun of the consonantal root שׂמח (smkh, “rejoice”) for emphasis; it means “he rejoiced with great joy” or “he was greatly delighted” (see IBHS 167 §10.2.1g). This cognate accusative construction ironically mirrors the identical syntax of v. 1, “he was angry with great anger.” The narrator repeated this construction to emphasize the contrast between Jonah’s anger that Nineveh was spared and his joy that his discomfort was relieved.