Landes, George M. “The Kerygma of the Book of Jonah: The Contextual Interpretation of the
Jonah Psalm.” Interpretation, 21 no.1 (January 1967): 3-31
Scholars have debated on whether the Jonah psalm in Jonah 2:2-9 was originally a part of the book or a later insertion. George Landes in The Kerygma of the Book of Jonah: The Contextual Interpretation of the Jonah Psalm argues persuasively that the psalm fits contextually into the prose narrative and therefore is a feasible part of the original work, and not inevitably an interpolation from a later editor. He explains that we have no textual evidence that the book “ever circulated without the psalm” (10), though he admits that the earliest known text (from the late third century B.C.) still permits sufficient time for interpolation to occur. He then brings to our attention the unifying function of the psalm: that it includes two prayers, rather than one, allows it not only to “describe Jonah's anguish after having been cast into the sea” and his “plea for deliverance” but also his “grateful praise for a past deliverance” (15). He concludes that Jonah’s personality in the narrative is not in disharmony with his personality in 2:2-9.
One of the things that caught my attention is Landes’
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This is very noticeable in the comparison Landes makes between Jonah chapters 1 and 2 and chapters 3 and 4. The sailors and Ninevites who are pagan and do not have much knowledge of God cry out to Him and He hears and answers their prayers. This reveals to me God’s overwhelming love and compassion for mankind. Regardless of who we are, whether we are believers or not, when we call upon the name of the Lord, and the key here is in sincerity, God will hear and answer the prayer. Yet again, we see God’s grace revealed to those who ideally do not deserve