BibleProject - Jonah and the…Chaos Dragon? – Chaos Dragon E10

Episode Date: October 2, 2023

The story of Jonah employs all the major motifs of the theme of the chaos dragon: chaotic waters, a servant of God who rebels against him, and a great sea monster. But the story doesn't call it a sea monster—the story calls it a great fish! Join Tim and Jon as they discuss Jonah, thrown into the deep abyss and swallowed up by death, and the reality that even the belly of the beast is no match for Yahweh.View more resources on our website →Timestamps Part one (00:00-11:21)Part two (11:21-28:00)Part three (28:00-45:04)Part four (45:04-58:59)Referenced ResourcesJonah (Brazos Theological Commentary), Philip CaryBerit Olam: Twelve Prophets: Volume I: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Marvin A. SweeneyLiddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon by Henry George Liddell, Robert ScottThe Iliad, HomerInterested in more? Check out Tim’s library here.You can experience our entire library of resources in the BibleProject app, available for Android and iOS.Show Music “Defender (Instrumental)” by TENTSAll music breaks are from “Lay Them Straight” by Everett Patterson with additional sound design by Tyler BaileyShow produced by Cooper Peltz with Associate Producer Lindsey Ponder, Lead Editor Dan Gummel, and Editors Tyler Bailey and Frank Garza. Mixed by Tyler Bailey. Podcast annotations for the BibleProject app by Hannah Woo.Powered and distributed by Simplecast.

Hey, this is Tyler at Bible Project. I record and edit the podcast. We're currently exploring the theme called the Chaos Dragon, which is a huge theme. And so, we decided to do two separate question and response episodes about it. Right now, we're taking questions for the second Q&R and would love to hear from you. Just record your question by November 1st, 2023, and send it into us at infoabiboproject.com.

Let us know your name and where you're from. Try to keep the question to about 20 seconds, and please transcribe your question info at BibleProject.com. Let us know your name and where you're from. Try to keep the question to about 20 seconds and please transcribe your question when you email it in. That's a really big help to our team. We're so looking forward to hearing from you. Here's the Bible. In today's episode, we come to a story that employs all the major motifs of this theme.

It's got chaos waters, it's got a great sea monster, except the story doesn't call the creature a sea monster. The story just calls it a great fish. That's right, today we're talking about the story of Jonah thrown into the deepest swallowed up by death. Even the belly of the sea beast can become a vehicle for God's redemptive purposes in the world. The story of Jonah as a twist on the themes that we've been talking about. We've seen spiritual beings become chaos dragons. We've seen humans become dragons.

But now, Jonah is the chaos agent. The story of Jonah is a way of exploring in the tale of one rebellious Israelite, Israel's failure to truly be a mouthpiece for God's character and purpose among the nations. And the violent Assyrians who oppressed Israel, the people we thought were the chaos monster, they end up repenting. And the actual sea monster in Jonah, the great we thought were the chaos monster, they end up repenting.

And the actual sea monster in Jonah, the great fish in the deep abyss, it becomes a vehicle of God's redemption. Jonah flips the script and makes us ask, What if our enemies end up repenting? God's really insistent that monsters can get turned into glorious images of God. They can be recreated, re-bur, and rescued. They can be redeemed. Today, Tim McE and I are talking about the Chaos Monster in the Skrull of Jonah. I'm John Collins and you're listening to Bible Project Podcast. Thanks for joining us. Here we go.

Hi. Hey, John. Hi. Here we are. We're talking about the Dragon. We're talking about dragons. But, you know, it we are. We're talking about the dragon. We're talking about dragons, but you know, it's the way into really talking about the prince of the power of the air turns out. It turns out. Whatever that means.

Yeah, so in this series of conversations, we started, oh, with Genesis 1, and noticing that pre-creation state is a realm of disorder and desolateness described as a wilderness and as chaotic, undulating waters. And how can it be both a wilderness and chaotic waters? The great question, the contradictory images. That have the same symbolic meaning of realms that are devoid of human life and that are in ancient imagination impossible for humans to establish thriving.

Communities there. And there's a third realm that's also associated which is the realm of darkness. The darkness. That darkness was over the deep waters. Okay. So there are three there. Yep. Desert, darkness, deep waters. All in Genesis 1, verse 2. Yeah. This is the state in which life cannot exist. Yeah. It's the opposite of order, life, goodness, beauty, community.

We're talking about it in terms of realms, realms of chaos. Mm-hmm. And this theme isn't about the realms of chaos But if this was a theme about the realms of chaos. Yeah, that theme ends the story of the Bible ends With those realms being destroyed, right? Yeah, or having passed away Because the ending image is of a mountain of dry land. Yeah, no more sea of a mountain of dry land. Yeah, no more sea. That's right. Being so permeated with God's own light

that the sun and the moon are no longer necessary. There's no more night. And then it's a garden on top of the mountain, a cosmic garden. Yeah, no more wilderness. Great. You know, that's interesting. Let's just spend a few minutes reflecting on,

the story of the Bible begins with God separating those realms so that life can flourish. And then it's good. The separation is good or the realms, the realms are good. Yeah, God separated light from dark and he's... Because the light good. Yep.

Okay. God saw the light that it was good. Now, I think one way to think about Genesis 1 is God creating kind of a perfected ending state. But what it feels like we're saying, it was a beginning state. The separation was just the beginning. The end state is when you no longer need. Yeah, that's right. The darkness is gone. The waters is gone. The wilderness is gone. Begins with the separation.

Now life can flourish, but the separation has to be completed so that one realm goes away and only one realm exists. Yep, that's right. And the garden is a pocket, a little seed of heaven in the middle of the chaos, surrounded by chaos. Right? The desert out there, the sea is surrounding the land, the darkness that comes every while. The yeast of the day. The dears, yeah. But Yahweh has determined that the garden that is infused and sourced by God's own divine life will eventually spread into all reality.

But what slathers into the garden? Hmm. But a creature of the wilderness. That's right. That wants to confuse and deceive humans who God wants to use to spread the garden and to not trusting God. It's this agent of chaos. Yeah.

And so that brings us to the theme that we've been exploring, which is the creatures of the chaos realm, the chaos creatures. Yep, that's right. And each of those three realms has its own associated kind of iconic chaos creature. The sea has the sea dragon. The desert has a variety of creatures, but prominent among them is the snake, but also lions and scorpions and jackals. That's green, like banshees, and then also deviant stars above. Yeah. Now we could talk about the origin or the reason why there's chaos creatures in the first place. And when it comes to the

stars above, we know that they were put in place to be rulers of the sky, ordering the cosmos on God's behalf, reflecting God's light, and that when they wanted to not stay within their domain, and rebel, they were not happy with the position that God gave them. Yeah. There was some sort of fall. Those creatures had some sort of heavenly fall. Yeah. Both Genesis 3 and Genesis 6, the story about the sons of Elhem, and Genesis 11 with Babylon all feature in some way, explicitly or implicitly, the fall of the heavenly rulers. Now the Sea Dragon. Yeah. The origin story of the Sea Dragon is God just puts him in the paniquat. Yeah, that's the origin of the snake too, in the wilderness. It's one of the creatures that God made. But somehow the Sea dragon becomes a creature that God has to destroy.

And I think that's where there's a little bit of confusion in my mind. Just a little? Yeah, how did that happen? It feels to me like it was just a creature that God created. You know, God created lions and created all sorts of creatures that I should be afraid of. And there's this idea of a monstrous sea serpent. I feel like the Bible wants me to have a category of like it's okay. It's out there in its own domain. You don't have to be scared of it. It like can praise God. It can like be aligned with God, but at some point it becomes something that I do have

to deal with. Yeah. Well, we're that you need to know about and fear and hope that God will deal with. Well, it has to deal with it in that I will confront it in front of me. Yeah, exactly. Yes. Yeah. So I think I'm pretty sure this is how it works.

That the dragon is introduced on day five of Genesis. It's in the waters. It's the chaos creature in a chaos realm. Then you're introduced to a snake of the wilderness that crawls into the garden, and then you're told about the downfall of that snake, a decision that it makes that leads to the ruin of the human images of God and to its own

self. I think we are to see the backstory of the dragon in the story of that snake. In other words, that's how the snake becomes God's enemy is the story of the Garden. Because once you go forward, the snake or the dragon can be interchangeable, and then even the words for the dragon or the snake, the Hebrew words, tannin or nakhash, can be swapped interchangeably later in the Bible. And as we leave the garden, later biblical authors can either bring up the imagery of snakes and their destiny or the sea dragon and its destiny and they are I think two ways of talking about the same thing. And so sometimes the biblical authors will downsize the importance of the dragon or snake relative

to God's purposes in the world. So you get Psalm 104 that's just like, ah the dragon, it's just out there playing. And you have other poems where in Isaiah, the new creation is described as a place where babies will play with cobras. There's like the fangs have been removed. Yeah. But other times, when the biblical poet really wants to emphasize God as the victor over the sea dragon, there you get the arm of the Lord, smashing dragon heads,

like in Isaiah 51 or... Yeah, spill in the sea dragon. There you get the arm of the Lord, smashing dragon heads like in Isaiah 51 or Yeah, spill in the dragon blood. Yep, that's right. And those are all places where the dragon is viewed in its kind of cosmic sense There's been this other major thread that we've been following That goes from the garden story where the snake is right there as a voice in the year, but then in the cane and able story, you don't see a snake. You just hear that there's something called sin that wants to consume cane and that if he doesn't rule it, he apparently doesn't because he murders his brother. And then the rest of the biblical story, you can talk about violent,

human rulers as dragons, agents of the dragon, so to speak. And that's the kind of the twin thread we've been tracing. And also the stars. Now what we are going to do is turn our attention to the book of Jonah, which is a really interesting twist on all of these themes. Okay, so the book of Jonah, oh my gosh. It's just next level, next, next level. You know how when we were kids and the Simpsons came out, it was like, I was really brilliant and clever, both because as a kid, it entertained me.

But then also what I noticed was like, all these adults really liked it too. And they got all of the pop culture culture references to like and but also ancient history references. Yeah. And that's kind of what Simpsons. What Simpsons was brilliant at was every joke it made was really two or three jokes. Yes.

Working at multiple layers. Multiple layers. Yes. And I think that was even a mantra within the Simpsons is like never just tell one joke. Every joke has to be at least two or three jokes. Yeah. By means of cultural hyperlinks, right? Yeah. I think it's a way to think about it. A joke would make sense on the very simple childish level of like, oh, that was funny, slapstick-y, kind of funny. Yeah. So that's the joke. But then the joke is another layer of, actually,

it's telling me something about the stupidity of humanity, you know? Yeah, yeah. Like, and I'm thinking about just the pride and arrogance or just the buffoonery of humans. Actually, no, the joke is actually about culture and about like something happening at a societal level that we're all wrestling with. And it'll be doing all three things at single time. Yeah, it's brilliant. Okay, this is Jonah. This is Jonah. This is exactly how Jonah works.

Jonah is simultaneously working at the all humanity and God storyline from Genesis 1 through 11. Lots of hyperlinks to that. It is also working with the story of Israel and its covenant, stories, mythic symbols of Israel's neighbors in Babylon, Assyria, and Canaan, and Egypt. It's just, it's doing all of it. It's really a remarkable piece of work. And of course, what's great about this kind of conversation is that the thing that we want to focus on in the story of Jonah is the thing that

the story's most famous for. The great whale. The big thing that consumes Jonah in the waters. So first let's just give context real quick. It's a story about an Israelite prophet named Dove, son of my faithfulness, or namely Jonas, son of Amitai. His name's Dove? Yona, yeah, means Dove, son of and then Amitai means my faithfulness. Which is ironic in the extreme, because he's absolutely unfaithful, almost every step of the story. So he's called to go to this city, Nineveh, the capital city of the Assyrian Empire, which in the narrative setting of when he lived, oh, because Jonah's reference one time in the Book of Kings, and in this time period when Assyria was on the rise. So go to the capital city of the biggest baddest empire

on earth at the time and the city that's going to destroy you and your family and everyone and everything you care about in a few generations. Like go to that city and cry against it because its wickedness has come up before me. So the whole story is going to be how Jonah doesn't want to do that. So God throws a storm at him as he tries to flee on a ship. And then when Jonah finds his way off that ship into the waters, he finds a huge sea beast to transport him to the place where God is calling him. And then he prays his famous prayer in the belly of the beast. And it vomits this response to his prayers that vomits him up onto dry land. And he goes to Nineveh and he

preaches a five-word sermon. And the whole city ends up like repenting of their sins and turning to God. And it makes Jonah so mad he becomes suicidal. And so he goes out to the desert to sit in a tent in the heat of the sun and bring curses on himself and on God. He would rather die than have to live in relationship with a God who wants to redeem and forgive his enemies. Because let's us forget, Ninevah, that's a capital city of Assyria. Yes, yes.

These are the guys that will come and take out Jerusalem. Yeah, that's exactly right. These are, and all the northern tribes of the Northern Kingdom of Israel as well. Yeah. And with violent warrior kings. Exactly right.

These guys are the serpent. They are they're the dragon This is the dragon. Yeah, this is God's hand going and preach to the dragon. That's right. Yeah The atrocities of Nineveh are well known and described in ancient literature and depicted even So that's the basic storyline Yeah, the iconic scene is that Jonah rises up from God's call and he flees and he goes to the west. And where he starts going is all of these places that are associated with images or ideas of the Garden of Eden. Tarshish was a place from which gold and apes and peacocks were imported when Solomon was building up Jerusalem in the temple. He goes down to the

town of Japa, which in Hebrew is Yafo, but it's the word beautiful. And there's many other little Eden echoes. So he's trying to, instead of going to the place that for him is like the worst place on Earth, he's trying to go to find a little ideal Hawaiian paradise somewhere, and let the world go to hell and hand basket all be on the beach with my slushy cocktail drink or whatever, that's kind of the scene here. Yeah, which kind of, you know,

let's be sympathetic with that. I mean, we read the Psalm, hey, the raging sea below, go up to the mountain. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, let them let them fight it out. Yeah, and destroy themselves. Yeah. Go find refuge in paradise. Yeah, which I suppose if your call was to go to paradise, but his call was to be that of the suffering role of Israel's prophets. God's... Go to the chaos.

Go, yeah, go into the mouth of the beast. Well. So he doesn't, and so God brings a storm. And what he meets on the ship in the storm are all of these non-Israelite sailors who are like so in tune with the will of God? Even so that when they roll dice to see who's fault it is on the ship, it turns out that Jonah's name rolls up, so to speak.

So he tells them to kill him by throwing him in the waters. So Jonah doesn't know he's going to get swallowed by a fish. There's no way that would be in his mind as like a way out of this situation. So he's pretty certain, like he's giving up his life. So it's the first little sign you could say, oh, maybe, this is the first noble thing he does in the story, maybe. The men don't want to do it, but they eventually do it. They throw him over.

So here's our prophet getting thrown into the storm the chaos waters. Mm-hmm, right? Mm-hmm. And there in the chaos waters we read chapter 1 verse 17 Yahweh appointed a huge fish to swallow Jonah and Jonah was in the innards of that fish three days and three nights. Great fish. The great fish. The name for fish in Hebrew is dog. Really? No joke. Yeah. It kind of makes it easy to remember. It's like, well, it's an

animal. Yeah. So, dog, just dog. Yeah. With a A sound, which I guess if you spelled it, DAG in English, you would say, I want to say DAG, that's not. That's for that dog. That's for that dog. Dog. And then the word great, so word Godol, it's used 14 times in the short story of Jonah.

The city of Nineveh is great. The wind is great on the sea. The storm is great. The fear of the sailors is great. The fish is this word just means huge. Huge fish. Then Nineveh is a huge city. Oh, Jonah has huge displeasure at God's mercy. Greatly displeased. Then he has huge happiness about the little plant that grows up over him. So the word huge is used a lot in the story. This is just a huge fish.

And it swallows him up. And it's so huge that apparently he can, you know. Living it for a little bit. Yeah, or he's in a state of living death as a were, you know. Living it for a little bit? Yeah, or he's in a state of living death as a were, you know? That mean, to be slowly ingested over the course of days and nights in the innards of a huge fish, it's not a... I mean, you don't read that sentence and you go, oh this guy's golden, he's good.

You read like, oh that's a bad way to go. When you finish that sentence. But then, from the belly of the beast, Jonah prays. It's where he prays his prayer, and when he finishes his prayer, which is essentially like, I cried for help when I was going down. Ooh, look at this. You cast me into the deep. That's the deep abyss from Genesis 1 verse 2. It's a chaos realm. That's home. Mm-hmm. Into the heart of the seas, the currents engulfed me.

From the depths of the grave, you heard my voice. Yeah. Oh. He's going down into the... Yeah, the chaos realm. Yeah, the underworld. Yeah, the underworld. But even from there, you, O Lord, heard my prayer in your temple.

He's not thinking about Jerusalem, from the depths of the underworld. To the highest heights. You heard my prayer in your holy temple. And so he vows a new vow of dedication to God. And God's response, Yahweh commanded the fish and it vomited, which you're surely supposed to chuckle. The vomiting is the means of spewing out. He swallowed up and then spewed out by the sea, by the sea beast. So it is the word fish. It's not the word dragon. Yeah, it's not a tannine, it's not a Leviathan.

No, it's a dog. It's a big dog. A huge sea dog. It's a huge sea dog. It's just so kind of friendly. Yeah. So, naturally, this has become a whale in the popular imagination and popular retelling in our day.

What is really fascinating is, okay, well, first, what's fascinating is this thing became a lot more in the history of art. It's only in the modern period that people have imagined this as a whale. So what we need to remember are the two aspects of the dragon taming strategy in the Hebrew Bible. Sometimes the big sea dragon to show that it's not a threat to God's power will be to depict it as just another sea creature, just like those fish. Just another sea creature just like those fish. So Psalm 104 praises God for all of his works that are in the sea and

swarms without number animals small and huge even the viathin which you form to play in it. So it's just a just another beautiful sea creature. And then there are other set of strategies to use the dragon's laying myth, so popular in Israel's culture and the surrounding cultures, to depict Yahweh as bashing the head of the sea dragon, to make the same basic point

that it poses no ultimate threat to Yahweh's power or purposes. We also talked about how God can use the Sea Dragon for his own means. Yes, yes. He used it as Babylon to destroy other nations. That's exactly right. Yeah. So, more than once, Imperial leaders of the ancient world, a Syria, Egypt, and Babylon, are described as dragons in biblical poetry.

Jeremiah even described Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, as a dragon that swallowed up Israel into its stomach and spewed it out. It's like the same imagery and even vocabulary as the book of Jonah. So that's interesting. This imagery of Israel being swallowed up just

by its enemies is an image that appears in Lamentations. Chapter 2, 16, which reads, all your enemies have opened their mouths wide against you. They hiss and gnash their teeth. They say, we swallowed her up. In Hosea, chapter 8, Israel is swallowed up among the nations as a way to refer to the northern tribes of Israel being taken out by a Syria. So getting swallowed by enemy nations is another way of activating the Sea Dragon image. So I think what's happening, well actually I don't think a lot of people think what's happening is that in Jonah, the story of Jonah is a way of exploring in the tale of one rebellious Israelite. It's a way of reflecting on Israel's botched vocation to be a kingdom of priests among the nations. In other words,

it's a way of reflecting on their failure to truly be a mouthpiece for God's character and purpose among the nations. And so Jonah's journey, where his rebellion leads him into the belly of the beast only to be spewed out and then to do a partially okay job, but yet to have the nation's respond with ultimate praise is going to force God's chosen one into a conundrum. Like what if the role of Israel in the storyline actually succeeded? Right? Like, what if the role of Israel in the storyline actually succeeded, right? Storyline of the Bible. Yeah, what it would mean is the salvation of all these nations. Oh, that Israel's kind of bummed on. That have been trampling on the covenant people for centuries.

Oh. I think that's what's being explored. I see. And so... What if Nineveh or Babylon? Yeah. What if they started to praise Yahweh? Yeah, what if our enemies end up repenting? What if the vision of Isaiah of all the nations at peace? Yeah

bringing their gifts and praising Yahweh that actually came to be Yeah, and then all of a sudden at the end of the book Jonah is depicted like Cain be. Yeah. And then all of a sudden at the end of the book, Jonah is depicted like Cain. Literally with Cain hyperlinks, because he gets angry, hot with anger, about God showing favor to these others. And so that's what the book of Jonah as a whole is about. And so it really, there are strong resonances with Jonah getting swallowed up by a beast and then spewed out with the storyline of what the role of Babylon swallowing up Israel and exile and then Israel getting spit back out on the other side. So if all of that is in play, then what's the logic of downgrading the sea dragon to that of a huge fish?

Oh, interesting. Okay. That's intentional. Well, you have to say the word was right there to use. Yes. Tannin or Leviathan. All the pieces are there. A storm, raging stormwater.

Yeah. Or what are associated with the dragon. Okay. A huge sea beast swallowing up a human. Uh-huh. And you're like, all you had to do was say, Tannin or Leviathan. And it would click into place. But instead, it's just a huge fish.

Big fish. Exactly right. So one of my favorite commentaries on the story of Janna, it's by scholar Philip Kerry. He's just a great writer too. So this is his take on why the author of Jonah uses the first dragon-taming strategy, which is just to downgrade the dragon to a big fish.

Correct. He says it this way. He says the great fish is a comic version of an ancient nightmare. The great monster of the deep that represents chaos and destruction, the flooding and undoing of the world, in bearing witness to the power of the God of Israel, scripture often reckons with the nightmares of ancient Near Eastern mythology

and puts the image to its own uses. And Jonah, the nightmare, turns into a comedy. We talked about this, I think, in the last conversation that these are the ancient horror stories. Yes, these are the nightmare stories. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, it's exactly right. Okay. The creature that swallows up Jonah is not one of the terrible monsters of the deep.

It's just a great big fish. Call it a monster if you wish. It's no big deal. Wherever you go in the world, Yahweh who created it is there before you, and can prepare a way for you, even if that way, is a great big fish. So what he detects here is that you're both downgrading the dragon, but then you're also saying that even the belly of the sea beast can become a vehicle for God's redemptive purposes in the world. So the sea dragon, if the seadragon represents the disorder of creation itself. Then even the undoing of creation can become a place where God's purposes are carried through to their next step. And what that next step is, actually, is the next important step and something I'll point out.

But that's the first step. Like, why have I been dragging into a fish? Okay. Now, one of the dragon-taming strategies is that God can use the monster for some purposes. And that seems to be employed here too. That's right. Yeah, it's good. God is using the sea monster to rescue Jonah. Yeah, it's interesting because normally you think this is like a punishment. Mm-hmm. And it kind of is. It's the consequences of those choices of lead him here. It is. It's like, if Jonah's thrown into the ocean, like him descending into the ocean, the deepest place of the ocean is the belly of the monster of the ocean.

Yeah, he calls it the grave. Yeah, he's in the grave. But it actually becomes a place where he can be safe until he spit back out. And that's interesting. But when I just think of like God saying, I'm gonna use Babylon to take out other corrupt nations, crept leaders. But then I'm gonna deal with Babylon. take out other corrupt nations, corrupt leaders, but then I'm gonna deal with Babylon. Yeah, yeah.

That's in my mind too, it's like, okay, great, it's a fish, but it's still the sea monster and God's still gonna deal with it. But right now, God's like employing it. Yeah, that's right, yep, so that's, we're both downgrading the dragon to a fish. Yeah. And we are making it the, yeah, the agent of God's purpose as he deals with his servant is rebellious servant. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. That's the image.

So he is in the innards, usually translated stomach, but it's the maim, the inner parts, guts. Intestines. Yeah, three days and three nights. That's going to be a little stinky. Yeah. So, three days and three nights, along with 40 days, or 40 years, 40 and three are common periods of time associated with stories in the Bible where somebody faces a choice. It's going to test their faithfulness to God or not.

A trial. Yeah. And what we see is during his test, he recognizes that if it weren't for Yahweh, all that would be left for him is death itself. But that Yahweh left for him is death itself. But that Yahuas delivered him. That's the last line of his prayer is deliverance, rescue. Salvation is from Yahuas.

And then he gets vomited out of the innards, of the fish. So the fish ends up turning into a, like Philip Kerry said, the way through death. It's as if it's like a... a vehicle of death becomes a way through death. Yes, yes. So there's a deep meditation here that the death of God's chosen one actually is the vehicle of him turning in to this witness to the nations, which is what Jonah goes on to do. Okay, so check this out.

Like, you can't make this stuff up. In Jonah, chapter one, verse 17, when the fish is first mentioned, he's called dog godol. Dog is fish. Godol is Hebrew. Dog goal is what? Godol.

Godol is huge. Huge. Yup, huge. So that word fish, I mean, you can see it over here. Dog. Dog. It's a noun, common meaning masculine. It's a masculine noun.

Hebrew like many languages in the world have grammatical gender. Nouns are feminine or masculine. So the first time it's in its common or masculine form. But then when it says, then Jonah prayed to Yahweh his God from the innards of the fish, inexplicably, this word fish is daggah. And now Ah is the feminine ending. So very explicitly, it shifts to a feminine noun. Now it's a big mama fish. It's giving birth to him. With a living creature in its belly.

Hmm. Oh well. Do you sound like what's that about? What is that about? Exactly. So one thing is certainly is not, is an accident. Like it's very intentional. And it has to be connected to this, the way that the C-dragon is being repurposed here as a fish that can actually carry out the rebirth of God's rebellious chosen one. So once again, this is from a commentary by a Jewish commentator, Marvin Swini on Jonah, and he says this. He says, interpreters have noted that the Hebrew term for fish changes from masculine form to the feminine form, Hatagat. Although the shift remains problematic, in other words, what's why is it doing it that way? Jonas Presence in the belly of a fish suggests the imagery of pregnancy for the fish and the new birth or the new creation of Jonah or another scholar, James Ackerman, in a really

great essay on satire and symbolism in Jonas poem. He shows how Jonas poem could be read as a genuine confession of repentance, or he shows that it could be read as a total upside down satire of thanking God for death, and that his death is the salvation from having to do the will of God. Interesting. In other words, rescues being rescued from God's will, so that I don't have to do it. Yeah. Well, because that's, and that's why he jumped in the water. Exactly. Yeah. Yes.

He's, he's just like fine. Yeah. I'm gonna die. It's really, in other words, the whole poem could be read to have the complete opposite meaning. Every word in the poem could, yes, just brilliant. He says it this way, he says, the male fish that ate Jonah now becomes a female fish for Jonah once he enters her entrails. The point is forced upon us further as we hear Jonah from the belly of a female fish, sing a misguided song from the womb of Shaol, namely the grave. So if that's what's going on, and it seems

like it is, then this seed dragon fish belly becomes a womb out of which is born a whole new Jonah who then goes on to do the will of God. And he reluctantly. Reluctantly, totally. And you have to carry on that ambiguity in this character through the rest of the book. But I mean, you can track through Isaiah and Jeremiah and they both talk about whatever the new version of God's covenant people will be on the other side of exile.

It's gonna have to involve a new birth. And they use birth imagery to talk about the new seed and the new family that God will bring about. Jonah just, his story just fits right into that ark, but the belly of the sea beast becomes the womb that re-births him. That's the suggestive imagery of why the fish changes from a masculine to a woman. That's interesting. Okay. Well, and to the degree that the sea monster represents death itself, which we've meditated on, God says, I'll swallow up death when he's talking about slaying the Leviathan, then being swallowed by the sea monster is the most,

is a very graphic visceral image of dying. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And being in the belly of a sea monster is like the ultimate death. Yeah. But then for it to become a place where you can then actually live for three days and then be reborn.

Suddenly, the belly is, like you said, a womb. And so death loses its horrific, just sting, you know. Yeah, that's right. And now becomes the seed bed of new creation. That's really. It's a very suggestive creation. That's really. It's a very suggested image. Very suggested. And it is no coincidence then why Jesus drew upon precisely this image from the story of

Jonah. Was it when this is the story he's in the temple and he's like, the only sign I'll give you is the sign of Jonah? Well, so Jesus go to Matthew 12, and Matthew's like, the only sign I'll give you is the sign of Jonah. Well, so Jesus go to Matthew 12 and Matthew's version. He's still up in Galilee. He was just in a synagogue. And but there are Bible nerds, scribes and Pharisees there, which are, represent the religious leadership of Israel. And then he exercised a demon cast a little mini dragon out of a guy.

And that's my paraphrase. And they accuse him of being in league with bells of all, that is the Prince of demons, the ruler of death forces. You must be in league with the dragon to be able to drive out many dragons. So to speak. And he says, well, that's a stupid thing. I'm not the mama dragon. Yeah, can a dragon drive out a dragon? Or was he says, can the Satan cast out the Satan?

Wouldn't his kingdom crumble if he's divided against himself? No, no, no, no. I'm in partnership with the Spirit of God. So then he has a bunch of things to say about that. And then what the Bible nerds and Pharisees say to him is like, okay, now do a miracle. Do a sign for us. Then we believe in you.

And what he says is, an evil and adulterous generation, which is what Moses, it's exactly what Moses called Israel in his final poem to them. He calls them evil and adulterous generation, craves for a sign, and no sign will be given to you. Well, except this one. It's such a good line. You won't get me sign. Okay, I'll get you a sign. Except a sign. The sign of Jonah.

Just like Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of, and what's interesting is he does not use the Greek word for fish. He uses the Greek word Ketas, which I have pulled up here, the ladiddell and Scott, classical Greek, Lexicon, which is the word for sea monster. It's not dragon. Nope, it's not dragon, so it's not dragon. But it's Ketas.

Yeah, in, let's see, it's used in the Iliad and the Odyssey for sea monster, Homer's Iliad and Osir, of the monster to which Andromeda was exposed. Andromeda? Do you know that? I don't know that story. That's a Greek myth. Oh yeah. Greek mythology, Andromeda's, the daughter of the King of Ethiopia.

Oh Poseidon sends the Seamonster. Oh, big sea dragon. Yeah. Yeah. Kateus. Seitas? So, Kateus is the word. Kateus. Oh, the Seamonster's name is Kateus. Yeah, the Seamonster satis? So, kitas is the word.

Kitas. Oh, the sea monster seems kitas. Yeah, the sea monster is called the kitas. Okay. So, Jesus seems to see in that fish, something more than just like... Jesus calls it the sea monster. He calls it the... Isn't this a great twist?

Oh, okay. In the Jonah story? Well, I didn't realize it. So, just like three days and three nights in the belly of the monster. So will the son of Adam be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth in the underworld? And death. Yeah, death. So you want to sign? The sign will be that through death life will emerge. Yeah, I think first of all is you're gonna kill me. Here's the sign, you're gonna kill me.

Okay, okay. Yeah, because then he'll go on to contrast them with the people of Nineveh and say, listen, the people of Nineveh turned to God when Jonah came. And I'm telling you, somebody greater than Jonah is standing right here. It's me. Yeah. And you're not listening to me.

So the first part of the sign is you're gonna kill me. That's your first sign. And then implicit in that is through the three days and three nights is that. You're gonna unleash the same monster on me and kill me. Yep. But what we learn from the story of Jonah, one of the meditations of story of Jonah is that what you think is the agent of death could become the womb of life.

And so that's, that feels like the deepest part of the sign. Yeah, you're going to kill me. But you're going to unleash life. Yeah. Whoa. Yeah. You think that, that this is also a caned and able moment here because the Bible nerds of Israel are being depicted

as looking on Jesus as this undeserving rebellious younger brother who's leading Israel astray. And they are going to, right, conclude that it's right to kill this innocent man. And they are going to, right, conclude that it's right to kill this innocent man. So within that frame, the gospel stories show Israel's leaders, some of them, the ones with power, partnering with the snake to spill innocent blood in the land. And Jesus lays on top of that the imagery of Jonah's story that they will step in league with the semonster to kill me, but God will use even that sad act of violence and death to turn it into a vehicle of rebirth and life, not just for Jesus himself, but actually for Israel and for all the nations, which is true of the story of God. That was very strange. It was very weird.

You are. So, the story of Jonah God sentenced the Seamonster. In this story, you get the sense of like they're sending the Seamonster. In this story, you get the sense of their sending the Seamonster. Yeah, it's good. It's good. And when we talk about Babylon coming and ravishing nations, the prophet Isaiah can think of that as, well actually that's God sending the Seamonster. But another way to think of that is like that's Nebuchadnezzar and his arrogance sending the

Seamonster. And there seems to be like an ambiguity here that maybe it's back to one of the things that you love to point out often is the phrase from Joseph, what? Oh, humans intended for evil. Yes, scheme for evil, God scheme for good, the saving of many lives. Yeah. And that does seem like the story here of you would think the story of Jesus would be to go and cut off the heads of the sea monster, right? Yeah, yeah. But what we're going to find is the story of Jesus is being swallowed up by the sea monster. Yeah. And then letting the sea monster kill him. Yeah. Yeah. But then

being reborn, spit back out into a new life. And then there's going to be an epic battle with the sea monster. Yeah. But who sent the seaster? Yep. Nah, these are classic questions. We addressed a few conversations ago in this series about the way the biblical authors through symbols talk about God's agency or causation in the world because you could say well God allows Babylon but that's God allowing Babylon. So in a way what God allows is what God causes in one sense. And that's what the Joseph story is exploring too, is that, well, you, my violent brothers, did this.

But God had a bigger purpose at work. And all of a sudden we're talking about a classic tension in Jewish and Christian conceptions of God's agency, which is God's authority, power and sovereignty, and will, and then human power, sovereignty and will. In Protestantism, this is Calvinism and Armenianism, but that's just a Protestant version of a much older conversation going back even into ancient Judaism. Right. I think you could even chase this kind of, this tension back to why did God create this? Yeah. The CMOS are the first place. Yeah, that's right. I mean, John, this is what the book of Job is all about. The book of Job is about this. Right? Because you read the opening, what's it, we'll... That's what we'll go next.

Uh, we're going to do the Psalms and Job next. Okay. Yeah, in our next conversation. Together? No, separate. Although the Psalms are going to pose this question too, because the Psalms are going to say, aren't you the one who slayed the dragon in the past?

So, have you given, did you retire? Saying, this to God. Yeah you given, did you retire? Saying at this to God. Yeah, yeah, are you done? Because there's more dragons. And they're eating us. And what are you doing about it? You're doing nothing.

That's a summary of Psalm 74 and 89. So do something. In the book of Job, we'll just say, yes, sometimes the dragon is unleashed and the people who get hurt by it never know why. And what are they going to do? How are they going to relate to God if that's the situation? Whereas Jesus is operating from a mindset to say, yeah, the dragon is coming for me. And you are going to be his agent and it's okay because there's something coming out the other side of that the God has planned through me for the whole world.

So maybe to this part were to the fact that the Bible is a collection with a unified story but the perspectives that it offers on these complex matters is not they're not all the same. There's different perspectives within the same collection within the same story. Meaning is the chaos dragon gods opponent that will be defeated in the end? Yes. To the degree that the chaos dragon is the manifestation of death itself. And chaos itself. Yeah. Yes, that needs to be put to an end. That's right. Is the Chaos Dragon in God's world for a time during the stage of the story where heaven

and earth are existing in tension with each other? Yes, that's what Job is about. And can God use the chaos dragon for a purpose? Yeah. In which case, saying, does God allow it? Or does God use it? You know, these are meaningful distinctions, sometimes in these conversations. But so we'll talk about that when you get to Job. But one thing the Bible doesn't give is a simplistic answer to this. Where's the problem of evil, John? That's where we are. Yeah.

Right. Why did God create the chaos, dragon? Yeah. Or why is he allowing this long interval between subduing the chaos and bringing about full, new creation. Why this long interval of tension? The long interval of tension is, yeah, where we're at and so yeah, just stop it. Yeah. You have the power, God, just put it into it.

Yeah. So there's that. But I do still wrestle with why create creatures of chaos in the first place. Oh, well, okay, so here we're back to the question of, well, but is the chaos creature itself essentially chaotic and evil? And I don't think the biblical authors thought of it that way. No, in fact, importantly, I think they didn't think of it that way, which is why Leviathan the monster is sitting there on day five and called part of God's good creation. I still get hung up here because I get that so in the same way the stars post of heaven they are created as

Creatures that are good displaying God's authority to rule the cosmos, displaying God's light, but they could also turn. But I think the tension I'm feeling is, they're also associated with the realms of chaos. Yes, that's right. And so to that degree, there is something about being a creature of the realm of chaos that is a little

suspect to begin with. So even if it begins good, it's not really a surprise that the creature in the realm of chaos becomes the chaos monster. It's what's that all about. So in other words, we have an image for the opposite of creation, the sea, the wilderness, the darkness. God could have put no creatures in those realms. That's right.

Yeah, he could have, but that's not what he did. Okay, so that's what I want to understand. So, why populate realms of chaos with creatures? With creatures. You know, it's interesting. It's kind of associated with my whole hang-up with, why create humans to rule the cosmos with God? Creatures. You know, it's interesting. It's kind of associated with my whole hang up with why Create humans to rule the cosmos with God. That's a that was a kind of a dumb move. Yeah, right?

Like it's certainly a move that's created a lot of complexity and pain. It's created a lot of complexity and pain Yeah, but we're not creatures of the chaos realm. We're dirt creatures of like the good realm. Yeah, sometimes. Right? Well, we can inhabit both and often do. Yeah. I don't just mean literally that we can be awake at night and like do stuff at night. But my current way of understanding it has been that those good creatures of the dark and the wilderness and the sea,

they're associated with chaos realms because they are often agents, the main agents, of taking God's good creatures and dealing out death and pulling them back into the nothingness from which they emerged. But does that mean that they are essentially in their nature, evil and chaotic? And I don't think the monoclesist convictions of the biblical authors will allow them to say that that's true. Because if it is a creature, then it is in its essence, a creature may it out as an expression of God's goodness. Like all reality is.

And so if it's currently an agent of evil or death in the world, that's because it has deviated from God's purpose for it. Now but in this realm that we're imagining, new creation, there's no more chaos waters, so there's no more chaos creature. There's no more serpent of the sea. You can't exist in new creation. So the rule, even though you want to make a distinction saying he's not bad the way we think of it's evil,

he doesn't have a place in new creation. Yeah. But neither do liars and adulterers and murderers and, right, like at the list at the end of, in the revelation. So in other words, agents of chaos and death have no place in the new creation. Yeah. Because they actually don't, they're not even a part of reality if we mean God as the ground of all reality. Who is a community of eternal self-giving love? So anything that's not in on that party won't participate in the new creation. However, God's really insistent that monsters can't get turned into glorious images of God. They can be redeemed,

they can be re-created, re-birth and rescued, and that is the story of so many of the characters in the Bible. Now, is it the fate of just a few? Is it the fate of many? Is it the fate of all? That's a big debate. Well, and is it just the fate of humans, but we also have this image of the cobra in nucleation? Exactly. Yeah. What's that about? Yeah. That's exactly right. All right. And there's one cobra getting, like, being the pet of a baby. And then there's another snake that's eating dust eternally. You know, I say 65. Dust will be the serpent's food. So, It is 65 dust will be the serpent's food. So, huh.

You know, it's interesting. These are questions that I've been in the last couple of years trying to read a lot more in early, the earliest Bible nerds of church history. And these are all the questions they were jamming on having to work out. Talking about like early church fathers. Yeah, yep. Second, third, fourth, fifth century origin and Gregory of Nissa and cyral of Alexandria.

They were all, all these questions about like, well, could a demon ever repent and participate in the new creation? Hmm. And these, when you just read it, they're asking that question. You're just like, what? Weird question to ask. But what they're really probing is the stuff we're asking right now.

What's the nature of evil? And what's the nature of chaos? And is it possible that darkness can be turned into light? Because the biblical authors speak in a primarily symbolic key, it requires a lot of meditation. I'd like to figure out exactly what they are and are not saying. Yeah.

Okay, cool. There you go. There you go. Jonah and the mom of fish. Hahaha. Cool. Yeah. Thanks for listening to this episode of Bible Project

Podcast. Next week, we're going to summarize where we've been talking about the chaos dragon. The chaos dragon is not arrival to God, but it is arrival to the inhabitants of creation because it's the opposite of creation, which is order. Today's episode is brought to you by our podcast team, producer Cooper Peltz, associate producer Lindsay Ponder,

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