5Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city.
The cardinal directions “east” and “west” are easy to translate into Maan here since the language uses “where the sun comes up” and “where the sun goes down.” For “north” the translator had “facing toward the sun rising to the left,” and for “south” she had “facing toward the sun rising to the right.” So the listener had to think hard before knowing what direction was in view when translating “to the north and south, to the east and west.” So, in case all four directions are mentioned, it was shortened by saying simply “all directions.” (Source: Don Slager) Likewise, Yakan has “from the four corners of the earth” (source: Yakan back-translation) or Western Bukidnon Manobo “from the four directions here on the earth” (source: Western Bukidnon Manobo back-translation).
Kankanaey is “from the coming-out and the going-away of the sun and the north and the south” (source: Kankanaey back-translation), Northern Emberá “from where the sun comes up, from where it falls, from the looking [left] hand, from the real [right] hand” (source: Charles Mortensen), Amele “from the direction of the sun going up, from the direction of the sun going down, from the north and from the south” (source: John Roberts), Ejamat “look up to see the side where the sun comes from, and the side where it sets, and look on your right side, and on your left” (source: David Frank in this blog post ).
In Lamba, only umutulesuŵa, “where the sun rises” and imbonsi, “where the sun sets” were available as cardinal directions that were not tied to the local area of language speakers (“north” is kumausi — “to the Aushi country” — and “south” kumalenje — “to the Lenje country”). So “north” and “south” were introduced as loanwords, nofu and saufu respectively. The whole phrase is kunofu nakusaufu nakumutulesuŵa nakumbonsi. (Source C. M. Doke in The Bible Translator 1958, p. 57ff. )
“West” is translated in Tzeltal as “where the sun pours-out” and in Kele as “down-river” (source: Reiling / Swellengrebel).
In Morelos Nahuatl, “north” is translated as “from above” and “south” as “from below.” (Source: Viola Waterhouse in Notes on Translation August 1966, p. 86ff.)
In Matumbi cardinal directions are defined as in relation to another place. “East” for instance typically is “toward the beach” since the coast is in the eastern direction in Matumbi-speaking areas. “North” and “south” can be defined as above or below another place. (Source: Pioneer Bible Translators, project-specific notes in Paratext)
The Hebrew text that gives instructions where to place items in the tabernacle with the help of cardinal directions (north and south) had to be approached in the Bambam translation specific to spacial concepts of that culture.
Phil Campbell explains: “There are no words in Bambam for north and south. In Exodus 26:35, God instructs that the table is to be placed on the north side and the lamp on the south side inside the tabernacle. The team wants to use right and left to tell where the lamp and table are located. In many languages we would say that the table is on the right and the lampstand is on the left based on the view of someone entering the tabernacle. However, that is not how Bambam people view it. They view the placement of things and rooms in a building according to the orientation of someone standing inside the building facing the front of the building. So that means the table is on the left side and the lampstand is on the right side.”
Drawing by Ismar David from H. L. Ginsberg 1969. For other images of Ismar David drawings, see here.
Following is an image of the Jonah Sarcophagus or the 3rd quarter of the 3rd century, housed in the Museo Pio Cristiano (photographed by Richard Stracke , shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license):
Peppard (2024, p. 119ff.) analyzes the sarcophagus (click or tap here to see the analysis):
The textual version of the short story begins with God calling Jonah as a prophet to go east and preach repentance to the Gentiles of the great city of Nineveh (ancient Assyria; modern Mosul, Iraq). On the left the men load a boat, which Jonah has disobediently boarded to sail westward, away from Israel and away from God’s prophetic commandment (Jonah 1). Moving to the right, the men throw Jonah into the sea, in an attempt to quell the raging storm, which they (rightly) interpret has been caused by Jonah’s disobedience to his god. In this artistic version, he dives straight into the mouth of the great fish—portrayed here, as elsewhere, like a sea monster—and prays to God for salvation over three days and three nights (Jonah 2). He is then spit out onto shore and commanded again by God to preach repentance to Nineveh (Jonah 3). He does so but then becomes disgruntled when the Ninevites do repent and God does not enact his planned punishment. Despite having been saved himself, Jonah doesn’t think these others are deserving of God’s mercy. So God teaches him a final lesson (Jonah 4). While Jonah pouts alone outside of the city, God provides a large new plant to grow over Jonah, to protect him from the desert sun. This scene dominates the upper-right register, with Jonah reclining nude under bountiful shade, as if in a blessed afterlife. But as quickly as the plant grew, God sends a worm to destroy it, so that Jonah is again near death—first from a tempest-tossed ocean, and now from a sun-scorched desert. The story concludes with God delivering a prophetic sermon to his reluctant prophet: if Jonah is concerned over the life and death of just one plant that emerged and vanished so quickly, how much more should God be concerned with the fate of the thousands of lives in Nineveh, at that time the largest city in the known world?
The textual version of the story ends, like many prophetic oracles of the Old Testament, with a question. The question hangs in the air for ancient listeners and modern readers, opening up to reflection and discussion about the tension between justice and mercy, about God’s commitment to a chosen people while offering salvation to others, and about the persistent self-centered ways of even God’s chosen messengers. The earliest Christian textual interpreters seized on two aspects of the story. First, as represented by the Gospel of Luke, Jesus interprets “the sign of Jonah” for his generation to be a call toward repentance (Luke 11:29-32). Just as he began his ministry with, “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand,” along with John’s baptismal ritual to enact such repentance, so, too, does he connect his preaching to the universalism of Jonah’s mission. Luke thus emphasizes chapters 3 and 4 of Jonah, but Matthew’s version of Jesus’ teaching draws from the action of chapter 2. Just as Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for three days, “so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights” (Matt 12:40). Matthew includes the same teaching of repentance as Luke but also adds the unique interpretation of Jonah’s “death” and “resurrection” as a foreshadowing of Jesus’ own. This second idea comes to dominate the subsequent reception history. Then, when the apostle Paul describes immersion baptism as a ritualized participation in death and resurrection (Rom 6:3-4), the resources are all present to close the loop on the Jonah cycle. The story of Jonah therefore portrays (for Christians) the necessity of repentance, the salvific role of immersion in water as a death and resurrection, and the universal message of the God of Israel for all people, whether Jews or Gentiles. No matter how wayward a son of Israel has been, no matter how wicked a king of the Gentiles has been, God’s mercy is available and boundless.
The artist of the sarcophagus surrounds the Jonah cycle with other stories to reinforce these meanings for the viewer. Looking closely at the water, between the sea monster and the reclining Jonah, one can see an inset Noah. Depicted in the “Jack-in-the-box” style typical of this era, Noah emerges from the ark to find the dove messenger returning with an olive branch (Gen 8:11), signifying the end of the flood and the salvation of those in the ark.- Early Christian artists often juxtapose various stories of salvation near or through water. One might even read the fisherman on the lower right, whose line casts near to where Jonah comes on shore, as a symbol of Jesus’ first metaphor for preaching and discipleship: “Come, follow me,” Jesus said to Simon Peter and Andrew while they were fishing, “and I will make you fishers of men” (Matt 5:19).
The upper left features Jesus’ raising of Lazarus, a “sign” performed in the Gospel of John that bears obvious connection to the “sign of Jonah” in the Gospel of Matthew. The center of the upper register shows two scenes that are open to multiple interpretations. One possibility is from the Old Testament: here depicts Moses drawing “water from the rock” to satisfy the thirst of the Israelites wandering the wilderness during the exodus (Exod 17 / Num 20); to its right might then be the rebellion of Israelites against Moses (perhaps Num 16).
Another possibility involves a different “water from the rock” miracle, that of Peter summoning a spring of water with which to baptize his repentant jailers. This is a non-canonical story about Peter’s life, but one apparently in very wide circulation, as there are at least 225 examples of it preserved from early Christian art. The scene to its right would thus be the arrest of Peter, another non-canonical but widely depicted story. Either option signifies God’s miraculous provision for salvation through water, whether through thirst-quenching or a new covenant with God. The upper right shows a shepherd guiding sheep out of a mausoleum-like structure, and this calls to mind various biblical images of a shepherd and flock as salvation from death: the “Lord is my shepherd” (Psalm 23), the parables of the lost sheep (Luke 15 / Matt 18), and the “good shepherd” and “gate” for the sheep (John 10), among others. Whoever “enters the gate” of death through Jesus will be saved, say the Gospel of John and the Jonah sarcophagus in unison. Both Jews and Gentiles will be “one flock” with “one shepherd” (John 10:16).
With these details in mind, we can zoom back out to see the big picture one final time. If you allow your eyes to be guided by the overall flow of the shapes and lines, you will see a curved arc of descent and ascent. Begin above the sail of the boat, where there stands in the sky what looks like a person peering through a circular portal in the heavens. In fact, this is the Roman sky god Caelus, who is often pictured this way during the Roman imperial era, with a billowing garment over his head. This personification of the sky or heaven (hence the word “celestial”) was adopted frequently in early Christian art as a way to communicate heavenly realms to the viewer (see also Figure 5.6 below). Some Roman writers even identified the God of Israel (as a sky god) with the Roman god Caelus, so we might imagine him here as a symbol of divine command over the drama below U His gaze looks down along the line of the sail and follows the halyard directly into the snout of the beast. The arc flattens at the center of the sarcophagus and then bends upward through the right-facing snout, upward along the reclining Jonah’s left arm, then his right arm, and above to the plant of his blessed afterlife. From its tiny details to its overall form, this artistic masterwork conjures a treasury of biblical stories and frames the hoped-for arc of salvation from death.
Following is a contemporary Coptic Orthodox icon of Jonah.
Orthodox Icons are not drawings or creations of imagination. They are in fact writings of things not of this world. Icons can represent our Lord Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the Saints. They can also represent the Holy Trinity, Angels, the Heavenly hosts, and even events. Orthodox icons, unlike Western pictures, change the perspective and form of the image so that it is not naturalistic. This is done so that we can look beyond appearances of the world, and instead look to the spiritual truth of the holy person or event. (Source )
In Spanish Sign Language it is translated with a sign that depicts “swallow (by a large fish).” (Source: Steve Parkhurst)
Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Jonah 4:5:
Kupsabiny: “Jonah had left that city and not gone far. He went out to the East side of that city and made a tent/shelter. He sat down in the shade waiting to see what God would do to that city.” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
Newari: “Jonah left the city. He went to sit toward the east of the city. He built a shelter there. Sitting down in the shadow of the shelter, he was waiting to see what would happen to the city of Nineveh.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
Hiligaynon: “Jonas went-out from the city and sat-(down) on its east side. He made a shelter/hut there and went-under-the-shade while he was-waiting (to see) what would-happen to the city.” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
Kankanaey: “Then Jonas went-out of the city and went and made a place-of-shelter located-toward the east (lit. coming-out of the sun). There he sat-down so-that he would wait-for whatever would happen to Nineve.” (Source: Kankanaey Back Translation)
English: “Jonah did not reply. He went out of the city to the east side of it. He made a small shelter in order that he could sit under it and be protected from the sun. He sat under the shelter and waited to see what would happen to the city.” (Source: Translation for Translators)
As noted in connection with 3.5, some (for example, Moffatt) would transpose this verse to follow 3.4. But in spite of the grammatical form, which suggests that the events in this verse follow directly on 3.4, the author may here be using once again the technique of the flashback noticed in earlier chapters (for example, 1.10). The reason for introducing this statement here rather than earlier in the narrative, which would be its logical position, may have been the link between the shelter that Jonah makes for his own protection and the similar action on God’s part described in the next verse. In any case, this verse would be needed as an introduction to verse 6.
If verse 5 involves a flashback, the verbs need to be understood as pluperfects, “Jonah had gone out … He had made….” Grammatically the Hebrew is of the same form as in 1.17, where the meaning of the first verb is also pluperfect.
In a high percentage of languages east is expressed simply as “in the direction of the rising sun,” or even “toward the sun,” or “toward the morning sun.”
The significance of Jonah’s sitting down on the east side of the city may lie in the fact that he had approached it from the west, delivered his message, and then continued through to the far side. Perhaps, however, there is an allusion here to the east wind mentioned in verse 8. The author presumably expects Jonah to be far enough to the east of the city to avoid being involved in any disaster that might overtake it while he waited to see what would happen to Nineveh.
There is a serious contradiction in some languages in translating verse 5 literally, for it would suggest that Jonah sat down and then made a shelter for himself. It would be better, therefore, in a number of languages to translate “Jonah went out east of the city; there he made a shelter for himself and sat down in its shade, waiting to see….”
The nature of the shelter that Jonah constructed is not described, but presumably it was something quite fragile and easily constructed. The word is the same as that which occurs in Isa 1.8 and in the regulations for the Festival of Shelters in Lev 23.42, 43. In a number of languages the closest equivalent of shelter is the type of temporary shelter often built in fields as protection against the noonday sun or as a place where persons may remain while guarding a harvest, equivalent to what is called in English a “lean-to.”
Sat in its shade may simply be rendered as “sat beneath it” or “sat protected by it.”
The addition of “sulking” in Living Bible is not justified in terms of the text.
Quoted with permission from Clark, David J. et al. A Handbook on the Book of Jonah. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1978, 1982, 1993. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .
Then Jonah left the city and sat down east of it: Jonah had left Nineveh, but he only went a short distance from it. Since there were mountains in that direction, Jonah was able to survey the city from the place he had gone to.
4:5b
where he made himself a shelter and sat in its shade: The word translated shelter here is the same word used in Leviticus 23:42–43 for the “(Feast of) Tabernacles.” If you have a word in your language for a temporary shelter constructed in the fields to shelter workers from the sun or to use when guarding the harvest, that would fit well here.
4:5c
to see what would happen to the city: This probably means that Jonah was hoping that the LORD would once more change his mind and destroy the city as he first threatened to do.
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