Jonah’s Sailors and Their Lot Casting: A Rhetorical-Critical Observation * All readers are agreed that the book of Jonah is a work of high literary artistry 1. Even those approaches that do not focus on literary features cannot resist remarking on them or citing studies that have made much of them. Among these meaningful and oftentimes delightful literary aspects is the parallel or diptychal structure of the book. According to P. Trible, Jonah lays out neatly into two scenes, each with four episodes: Scene One (1,1–2,11) Episode One (1,1-3) Episode Two (1,4-6) Episode Three (1,7-16) Episode Four (2,1-11) Scene Two (3,1–4,11) Episode One (3,1-4) Episode Two (3,5-10) Episode Three (4,1-4 and 5) Episode Four (4,6-11) 2. There is both symmetry and asymmetry at work in this two-part, four- episode structure, but what is significant is how much the “external design” of Jonah reveals close correspondence between the book’s constituent parts 3. For the purposes of the present study, we will focus on the verses * I thank B.T. Arnold, J.K. Mead, and the Editors of Biblica for their comments and critique. A classic study remains J. MAGONET, Form and Meaning. Studies in the 1 Literary Technique of the Book of Jonah (Sheffield 21983). The most thorough rhetorical-critical analysis in the stylistic mode of J. Muilenburg is P. TRIBLE, Rhetorical Criticism. Context, Method, and the Book of Jonah (GBS; Minneapolis, MN 1994). See also her commentary “The Book of Jonah. Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections”, NIB VII, 461-529. A recent study focusing on chap. 1 is C. LICHERT, “Par terre et par mer! Analyse rhétorique de Jonas 1”, EThL 78 (2002) 5-24. In addition to a very thorough analysis, he offers a comprehensive summary of previous studies of Jonah’s rhetorical structure. See Appendix A in TRIBLE, Rhetorical Criticism, 237-244. Versification 2 here and throughout follows MT. See TRIBLE, Rhetorical Criticism, 111-120 on symmetry and asymetry. 3