The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version

by Michael D. Coogan

God's compassion and mercy, the central theme of the book of Jonah:

The two parts are symmetrical: the opening command assigning both missions is almost identical; the formulation of Jonah's flight and that of the fulfillment of the second mission open with the same words, “Jonah set out” (1.3; 3.3); both second scenes feature foreigners who are depicted favorably in contrast to Jonah; similar phrasing is used when the ship captain and the king of Nineveh express their belief in God when they are in danger, though unsure that their belief will save them (1.6; 3.6–9); Jonah prays to God in both final scenes: in 2.2 in order to save himself, and in 4.2–3 to express frustration over God's saving the people of Nineveh.

The author of the book of Jonah is unknown. Its language places it in the Second Temple period, its vocabulary and syntax corresponding with those of the Bible's later books, Aramaic sources, and rabbinic literature.

The book was apparently written after the destruction of the Assyrian capital of Nineveh in 612 bce, since it refers to that city in the past tense (3.3), and the king is not called the “king of Assyria” but the “king of Nineveh” (3.6), an inappropriate title. The book should be dated no later than the third century bce.

Dating of Jonah

In the flood story, God's regret over creating humankind causes God to want now to destroy it (Gen 6.6), while in Jonah, God regrets the impulse to destroy the Ninevites (Jon 3.10).

Jonah appears as Abraham's opposite. In the story of Sodom, Abraham pleads with God to save the city for the sake of the few righteous people without expecting the city's repentance (Gen 18.22–33). Jonah, in contrast, flees, refusing to warn the Ninevites lest they repent and be saved.

Jonah is also depicted as the opposite of Abraham's nephew Lot, who warned his sons-in-law of imminent destruction until being taken from Sodom by angels; Jonah's proclamation, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” (3.4) is recited unwillingly, and then he even leaves the city to watch events unfold with complete lack of interest (4.5).

Jonah is also contrasted with Moses, who was willing to die if God did not forgive the Israelites after the...

Jonah's actions are also patterned after those of Elijah, who fled from Jezebel and his mission a...

Jonah 4.2 appears to quote God's attributes (Ex 34.6–7) as they are presented in Joel 2.13. Jeremiah's prophecies (Jer 26.3; 36.7) echo in the words of the king of Nineveh who, with Jonah behaving as an anti-prophet, himself assumes the role of prophet and rouse...

Repentance, however, is not the book's central theme: if it were, the first three chapters would suffice, and Jonah's flight would be irrelevant. Instead, the book of Jonah concerns the essence of prophecy.

Jonah represents the concept, expressed explicitly in Deut 18.21–22, that the single proof for a prophecy's truth is its realization. God seeks to teach Jonah values more lofty than a prophecy's realization or a prophet's reliability—the saving of God's creation when found worthy.

The book therefore illustrates the position—voiced openly in Jer 28.9—that although a prophecy of peace must be fulfilled in order to prove that its deliverer is a true prophet, a prophecy of destruction is meant, from the outset, to educate and bring repentance. This holds true even for foreign nations: the prophecy of doom is a conditional prophecy that will come true only in the absence of repentance (Jer 18.7–8).

Re: The central theme of Jonah

The book of Jonah, unlike other prophetic writings, uses humor or irony to make its point. Exaggerated behavior (running away from God, 1.3); inappropriate actions (sleeping through a violent storm, 1.5); outlandish situations (offering a prayer of thanksgiving from inside a fish's belly, 2.1); ludicrous commands (animals must fast and wear sackcloth, 3.7–8); and emotions either contrary to expectation (anger at mercy, 4.1–2) or out of proportion (being angry enough to die because a plant has withered, 4.9) appear throughout the story.

The book has a role disproportionate to its size within religious tradition. Judaism, picking up on its theme of repentance, reads it liturgically on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. It is cited several times in the New Testament, where Jonah prefigures Jesus who spent “three days and three nights . . . in the heart of the earth” (Mt 12.40).

Re: Jonah

God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.” 10Then the Lord said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. 11And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”

The book of Micah gives us little information about the prophet himself, for whom the book is named. According to 1.1, Micah prophesied in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah whose reigns spanned 759–687 bce. Possible allusions to the fall of Samaria, the capital of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, in 722 (1.6), and to the campaign of Sennacherib, the Assyrian king, in 701 (1.10–16), place the prophet in the final quarter of the eighth century. As such he was a younger contemporary of Isaiah of Jerusalem.

Like Hosea, Amos, and especially Isaiah, Micah lived in a tumultuous era, the events of which are recounted in 2 Kings 16–20.

The prophet Micah was among the earliest of the Minor Prophets. In the organization of the Book of the Twelve in the Masoretic Text (MT), Micah follows Jonah, an arrangement apparently based on chronology since, according to 2 Kings 14.25, Jonah also lived in the eighth century. Micah is loosely connected to the following book of Nahum by catchwords; compare the final section of Micah (7.18–19) with the initial unit of Nahum (1.1–3).

Some scholars think that chs 1–3 form the oldest core of the book; it is characterized by the judgmental tone for which Micah was most famous (Jer 26.18). Chs 1–3 consist mainly of oracles of judgment; chs 4–5 of oracles of hope. The final section, chs 6–7, begins with judgment and moves to hope.

Re: Structure of Micah

The book of Micah may also have material from subsequent periods (e.g., 4.10 speaks of the Babylonian exile; 7.11 seems to reflect the postexilic period). Further evidence of editorial activity is the close correspondence between Micah 4.1–5 and Isaiah 2.2–5.

Micah offered a theological interpretation of the dizzying events near the end of the eighth century: the fall of Samaria, the expansion of Jerusalem fueled by emigrants from the north, and the international situation made unstable by an aggressive superpower, Assyria.

Micah, from a small town southwest of Jerusalem, Moreshethgath, had a populist message. He expressed disdain for the corruptions and pretensions of Jerusalem and its leaders. He recalled the traditions of early Israel (3.9–10; 6.3–5), and condemned religious practice unaccompanied by ethical performance (6.6–8).

While Amos and Hosea condemned the high places, provincial shrines where the proper worship of the Lord was diluted by illicit elements, Micah called Jerusalem itself a high place (1.5) and announced its destruction, for which he was long remembered; a century after Micah, in a rare direct quotation of one prophet by another, Jeremiah (26.18) quotes Micah (3.12).

Micah never lost faith in the future. The middle section of the book, chs 4–5, contains images of a restored and glorious Zion to which the nations make pilgrimage, and of an ideal king (5.2–5).

It is instructive to see how Micah's rural background shaped his populist vision of the ideal king, or “messiah.” Isaiah, Micah's contemporary, used the birth of a royal child (Hezekiah, son of Ahaz, was probably intended) in the Judahite capital of Jerusalem as a symbol of hope (Isa 7.10–14).

Micah affirmed the Davidic lineage of the ideal king by tracing his roots to Bethlehem (5.2), David's home village (1 Sam 17:12), but also reminded his audience that their greatest king once did and will again emerge from “one of the little clans of Judah” (5.2).

For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. 3He shall judge between many peoples, and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more; 4but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.

5For all the peoples walk, each in the name of its god, but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever.

18Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of yourd possession? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in showing clemency. 19He will again have compassion upon us; he will tread our iniquities under foot. You will cast all oure sins into the depths of the sea.

“Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree bad, and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit. 34You brood of vipers! How can you speak good things, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. 35The good person brings good things out of a good treasure, and the evil person brings evil things out of an evil treasure. 36I tell you, on the day of judgment you will have to give an account for every careless word you utter; 37for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”

Mark’s Gospel = “Jesus as Servant”

Among canonical Gospels, Mark features the briefest account of Jesus's life, death, and resurrection. Yet its authoritative status is clear from its use in Matthew and Luke and its inclusion in the biblical codices of the fourth century, where it is placed second, between Matthew and Luke.

The designation “according to Mark” was added in the second century ce, as Gospels began to circulate beyond the audiences for whom they were written.

One early second-century source claims that “Mark” was the apostle Peter's “interpreter” at the end of Peter's life, but no other evidence confirms that connection. Others have identified Mark as the “John Mark” who traveled with the apostle Paul (see Acts 12.12,25; 15.37–39; Col 4.10; 2 Tim 4.11; Philem 24), but none of these passages link John Mark with a written Gospel.

Though the author's identity is unknown, scholars find clues about its author in the Gospel itself. For example, its awkward style suggests that Greek was not the author's first language. Other details, such as the imprecise citation of Jewish scripture (1.2), the over-generalized portrait of Jewish practice (7.3–4), and problematic geographical details (5.1,13) suggest that the evangelist was a Hellenized Jew who lived outside of Palestine.

Re: The author of Mark

The Gospel appears to address a mixed audience of Jews and Gentiles who faced persecution because of their devotion to Jesus of Nazareth as the long-awaited Jewish messiah.

Re: Mark

Early church tradition saw ties to the Christian community in Rome, where Nero punished Christians as scapegoats for the fire in 64 ce, which raged for nine days and devastated much of the city (see Tacitus, Annals 15.44). Most scholars today opt for a different context in the same time period. They argue that specific details in Mark 13.9–13 are better suited to a setting in Syria-Palestine, where Jesus's followers may have been hated by both Jews and Gentiles for not taking sides, in the Jewish War (66–72 ce).

The Gospel may be outlined as follows: I. Prologue: Jesus's Baptism and appearance in Galilee (1.1–15) II. Jesus's messianic mission: word and deed (1.16–8.26) A. Jesus in and around Galilee (1.16–4.41) B. Across the sea and back (5.1–6.52) C. Jesus among the Gentiles (6.53–8.26) III. Jesus's messianic mission: sacrifice (8.27–15.47) A. The way of the cross (8.27–10.52) B. Jesus's destiny in Jerusalem (11.1–15.47) IV. Epilogue: Jesus's resurrection (16.1–8) and appearance [16.9–20]

Re: Mark

Mark begins and ends abruptly, omitting several episodes and teachings found in the other Gospels (e.g., Jesus's birth; the Sermon on the Mount; postresurrection appearances).

In its first half, Mark emphasizes Jesus's miraculous powers more than his teaching. Its second half pivots toward the “way of the cross,” as the story aligns Jesus's destiny in Jerusalem with that of his followers.

The Gospel is constructed around the unifying message announced at the beginning: the “good news” that God's kingdom has drawn near (1.14–15). Both Jesus's deeds of power and his destined suffering expose the contours of that divine reign taking root on earth through Jesus and, by extension, through those he gathers as its subjects. Indeed, the Gospel's original ending at Mark 16.8 leaves readers, implicitly rather than explicitly, to continue Jesus's messianic mission by trusting in God's sovereign power over evil in the postresurrection age.

Lacking the content and polish of the other NT Gospels, Mark was often neglected. Only a few papyrus fragments survive from the period before the fourth century. Augustine thought that Mark was an abbreviation of Matthew.

Since scholars generally agree that Mark is the earliest written Gospel, it may include facets of Jesus's historical ministry that have been reshaped by later evangelists.

Mark often tells a “story within a story” (a technique called “intercalation”) to sharpen thematic contrast (14.1–11) or emphasize important motifs (5.21–43).

To be sure, Mark still appears problematic to many readers: Jesus utters confounding teaching (4.11–12), suppresses his identity (1.34; 3.12; etc.), and even seems to question God (14.36; 15.34). For their part, his disciples misunderstand Jesus's message again and again (4.13; 6.52; 8.17–21; etc.) and disappear when he faces death (14.27,50).

Increasingly, interpreters find that Jewish apocalyptic writings offer a helpful lens for reading Mark's story as a showdown between human and divine sovereignty. In his healings, exorcisms, and nature miracles, Mark's Jesus acts as authorized agent of the divine power emanating from God's coming kingdom; in his conflict with human authorities—religious and political—he exposes the nature of that divine power, which operates in restorative, vulnerable solidarity with the weak.

Mark emerges as a story that establishes the contours of God's kingdom and elicits allegiance to it. If that allegiance entails persecution, and even death, Mark's apocalyptic message ends with the hope that redemption still awaits, since the risen Lord will “go before” (14.28; cf. 16.7) the faithful as God's kingdom takes root on the earth.

1 The beginning of the good newsa of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.b 2As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,c “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,d who will prepare your way; 3the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’”

Isa 40:3, Ex 23:20, Mal 3:1

10And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. 11And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved;b with you I am well pleased.”