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LXX Jonah

Septuagint

About this book
Chapter 1

1 Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, 2 Rise, and go to Nineveh, the great city, and preach in it; for the cry of its wickedness has come up to me.⁠ 3 But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. And he went down to Joppa, and found a ship going to Tarshish: and he paid his fare, and went up into it, to sail with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. 4 And the Lord raised up a wind on the sea; and there was a great storm on the sea, and the ship was in danger of being broken. 5 And the sailors were alarmed, and cried every one to his god, and cast out the wares that were in the ship into the sea, that it might be lightened of them.⁠ But Jonah had gone down into the hold of the ship, and was asleep, and snored.⁠ 6 And the shipmaster came to him, and said to him, Why do you snore? arise, and call upon your God, that God may save us, and we do not perish.⁠ 7 And each man said to his neighbor, Come, let us cast lots, and find out for whose sake this mischief is upon us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah. 8 And they said to him, Tell us, for whose sake is this mischief upon us? what is your occupation, and from where do you come, and of what country and what people are you? 9 And he said to them, I am a servant of the Lord;⁠ and I worship the Lord God of heaven, who made the sea, and the dry land. 10 Then the men feared exceedingly, and said to him, What is this that you have done? for the men knew that he was fleeing from the face of the Lord, because he had told them. 11 And they said to him, What shall we do to you, that the sea may be calm to us? for the sea rose, and lifted its wave exceedingly. 12 And Jonah said to them, Take me up, and cast me into the sea, and the sea shall be calm to you: for I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you. 13 And the men tried hard to return to the land, and were not able: for the sea rose and grew more and more tempestuous against them. 14 And they cried to the Lord, and said, Forbid it, Lord: let us not perish for the sake of this man's life, and do not bring righteous blood upon us: for you, Lord, have done as you would. 15 So they took Jonah, and cast him out into the sea: and the sea ceased from its raging. 16 And the men feared the Lord very greatly, and offered a sacrifice to the Lord, and vowed vows.

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Compare Jonah 1:9 and LXX Jonah 1:9

Hebrew Bible · Septuagint

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Summary

In the Hebrew version of Jonah, when the prophet is asked who he is, he identifies himself by nationality as a Hebrew. In the Greek Septuagint, Jonah calls himself a servant of God, changing his answer from his national identity to his role as prophet.

Passages

Jonah 1:9

Hebrew Bible
8 They said to him, “Tell us, whose fault is it that this disaster has overtaken us? What’s your occupation? Where do you come from? What’s your country? And who are your people?” 9 He said to them, “I am a Hebrew, and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” 10 Hearing this, the men became even more afraid and said to him, “What have you done?” (The men said this because they knew that he was trying to escape from the Lord, because he had previously told them.)
300–201 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Jonah

LXX Jonah 1:9

Septuagint
8 And they said to him, Tell us, for whose sake is this mischief upon us? what is your occupation, and from where do you come, and of what country and what people are you? 9 And he said to them, I am a servant of the Lord; and I worship the Lord God of heaven, who made the sea, and the dry land. 10 Then the men feared exceedingly, and said to him, What is this that you have done? for the men knew that he was fleeing from the face of the Lord, because he had told them.
100–1 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in LXX Jonah

References

... instead of having Jonah label himself a “Hebrew,” the Septuagint has him admitting, doulos kuriou ego eimi, “the Lord’s servant am I.” This statement could only have resulted from a paraphrase of 2 Kings 14:25 (see above), where we are told that Jeroboam II succeeded in enlarging Israel “according to the word of the Lord, Israel’s god, who spoke through his servant [ʿabdô] Jonah the son of Amittay, the prophet who hailed from Gath Hepher.” We need not suppose that the Septuagint is the “original” reading from which the Hebrew swerved, because the versions as well as all of the Hebrew copies consistently presume or preserve ʿbry (Trible 1963: 23–24). In truth, it is doubtful that there ever was a single, pristine, “original” Jonah text that the Septuagint translators could learnedly improve. Rather, during their time, there probably were many Jonah copies, some of which apparently read *ʿbdy where Hebrew now has ʿbry ...
Jack M. Sasson, Jonah: A New Translation with Introduction, Commentary, and Interpretation (New York: Doubleday, 1990), 116.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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