I907.] HAUPT— JONAH'S WHALE. 163 



introduced the sea-monster (or giant-sperm-whale) of Joppa in 

 order to transport the disobedient prophet as speedily as possible 

 from Joppa, the sea-port of Jerusalem, to Alexandretta, the ter- 

 minus of the shortest route from the Mediterrenean to Nineveh. 



The grotesque idea that the prophet composed an elaborate 

 poem in the belly of the whale must not be credited to the author 

 of the story. Even Luther said, Jonah hardly felt so well as to 

 sing so fine a song.^ This psalm is a later insertion, just as the 

 Song of Hannah (in the Books of Samuel)^ and Moses's Song 

 of Triumph (in the Book of Exodus)."* The editor wdio inserted 

 the psalm in the Book of Jonah misunderstood the metaphorical 

 expressions sea, ocean, surge, and billows, which are used in 

 Hebrew for disfj'ess, disaster,^ and which refer here especially to 

 the Syrian persecution at the time of Antiochus Epiphanes (about 

 i68 B. c.).^ This Maccabean poem, which has no connection what- 

 ever with the legend of Jonah, may be translated" as follows :^ 



A i 2 When in distress I called, 



Jhvh responded ; 

 From depths of Sheol I cried; 

 My voice was heard. 



That is, w^henever Israel was in distress, Jhvh heard their prayers, 



^ The theory that the great fish which swallowed Jonah was a cachalot 

 was advanced by Quandt, Jonas dcr Sohn Amithai (Berlin, 1866) cited 

 (but rejected) by Paul Kle inert in J. P. Lange's Bibekverk, part XIX. 

 (Bielefeld, 1868) p. 28, below. 



2 Sowohl ist ihm nicht gcwescn, dass er hatte mogen solch cin fciiics 

 Liedlein singen. 



''See my paper The Prototype of the Magnificat in the Journal of the 

 German Oriental Society, Vol. LVIII (Leipzig, 1904) p. 617. 



■* See my paper in the American Journal of Semitic Languages, Vol. XX., 



P- 154- 



^Shakespeare says: deep-drenched in a sea of care and ix.'hat a tide 

 of woes Comes rushing on this woeful land at once! 



^ See n. 23 to my translation of the Book of Nahum in Vol. XXVL of 

 the Journal of Biblical Literature (p. 17). 



^ Lines and words omitted in the present translation represent subsequent 

 additions; see my restoration of the original text in the American Journal of 

 Semitic Languages, Vol. XXIIL, p. 256. 



^The rhythm of my translation has been much improved in a number 

 of passages by the kind assistance of the distinguished coeditor of the Poly- 

 chrome Bible, Horace Howard Furness. 



