Carmen De Iona et Ninive

OF THE SAME AUTHOR ON THE PROPHET JONAH. After Sodom and Gomorrah, living funerals for eternity, and penalties marked by the old age of ashes, and fruits born in vain for the eyes of the sun, and the death of sea and salt made alike there: if there is any man preserving punishment with a changed body: almost other fires had shaken off the rains from above, a city was, as the transgression of the just, called Nineveh. For what fear of a subverted mind? All common examples of punishments are empty where error holds sway. But the good and patient Lord, slow to punish, the omnipotent master will hurl no wrath unless he first warns and strikes hardened hearts, stirring up prophets with august mind through presages. For the Lord had commanded Jonah to foretell the destruction of Nineveh because of their merits: but that one, mindful to spare the submissive and to yield punishment after warnings, and easy toward the good, delayed to go, lest he sing vain threats with peace about to yield. Soon flight was his plan: if indeed there is any such power to avoid God and escape the right hand of the Lord, by which the whole trembling world is restrained beneath. Or is there reason in what the prophet does from a holy heart? On the shore of the coast, a city most renowned for its faithful harbor, opposite the shores of the Cilicians, Joppa is tasted. Thence, therefore, Jonah, hastening to Tarsus, boards a ship: God carries out his deeds; nor finally is it a wonder if one fleeing the Lord on land finds him in the waves. For a small cloud had suddenly stained the air, conscious of the wind from a sulphurous seed.

Little by little the cloud merged with the sun, and the deceived day was shut in by a host of darkness. The sea becomes a mirror of the sky: a black ring stains the waves. Sky rushes into darkness and the sea rises. In vain the clouds touch the middle of the waves. The glory of the winds, which every whirlwind mixes. A different fury raged against the fugitive Jonah; one ship was a contest for sky and sea. It is battered from here and there. Every timber trembles under the wave-breaking blow. Below, the spine of the keel is shaken, the yard-arm quivers. The creaking labor shudders from on high. Even the mast itself, hesitating to break, bends. Meanwhile, the sailor’s groan and voice try everything for the ship and for their lives: to entrust the delaying coils, to loop the halyard, to tighten the sheets with effort, and to push the struggling circles with their chests. Some of the crew alternately expel the foul, heavy-smelling bilge water. But others snatch the cargo and all the freight, hurl it overboard, and strive to overcome the perils by losses. There are wretched cries at each fragment of the sea. And they stretch out their hands to the deities of no gods. Those whom the force of sea and sky does not fear: no less do they drown them, hidden in the ships, by the angry whirlwind. The accused himself, unaware of these things, in the hollow vault of the stern, snoring, was echoing sleep with his swollen nostril.

Then in the lord’s sleep, while he was forming a shape, the one who performs the duties of the prow, who together with the waves drives the ship, rebukes him, drowsy in peace and calm, arrogant, striking him: “What,” he says, “in this crisis do you take up the habits of dreams, and in such a whirlwind of the sea do you alone have leisure? Look, the wave covers us; the only hope is in the gods. You too, whoever your god is to you, speak vows and prayers, [needing your father’s aid, suppliant, bend his divine will.]” Then they decide by lot to learn who is nearer to guilt, who is the cause of the storm. Nor does the lot lie about Jonah. Then they ask: “Who and from where among men, who finally among things, from what people, from what seat renowned?” He confesses he is a servant, timid and faithful to the god who raised high the sky, who placed the earth, who poured out the seas; of that same god he reveals himself a fugitive and the reasons. They stiffen with fear: “What fault, then, have we with you? What now shall we do, by what pact shall we appease the sea?” For more and much more the savage straits swelled. [Then the lord’s prophet, with inspired spirit, begins:] “I am the storm, I am the whole madness of the world; in me,” he says, “for you the sky rushes and the sea rises; in me the land is far, death is near, no hope of god. So throw me headlong, lightening the ship and its cause: this one great burden, willing, hurl into the deep sea.” But they strive in vain to turn course toward return; for the helm did not allow turning, nor did the hard yard-arm wish to change its balance.

Finally to the lord: “Do not give us into the gap of death for the sake of one soul, nor wish to be spattered with the blood of a righteous man, if your right hand thus leads.” And already there, rising from the deep from the whirlpool, the whale, unrolling the scaly and shell-covered mass of its body, pressed its own waves, the sea having been stirred, seeking the prey of its own accord, which from the height of the lofty stern, as it was tumbling down, it greedily gulped down with its muddy jaws, and took the living feast into its long belly, and together with the man it devoured the rage of the sky and the sea. The wave of the sea is laid low, the shadow of the air is dissolved; on this side the waves, on that side the winds are returned as friends. And as the peaceful keel marks a safe path, the foaming tracks gleam white in the blue furrow. Then the sailors, joyful, venerate the lord and offer thanks to him: the ship is carried and the prophet in the belly: [the ship sails and the prophet Jonah, received elsewhere, sails] the ship cuts the waves, and beneath the deep waves Jonah is carried, his soul breathing with a beast’s breath. Confined and not wetted by the waters, within the sea, without the sea. Among half-eaten meats and dissolved, rotten bodies by the process of digestion, now learning his own death: but for a sign of the lord, when it would be future, it was not for destruction. But he became a glory of the sky.