Posted on 03/19/2025 5:51:08 AM PDT by Red Badger
Who was the king of Assyria during the ministry of Jonah?
This isn’t a question I’ve really heard discussed before. Now, having looked into it, it seems we have a strong candidate. And that in part because of an ancient solar eclipse.
The biblical text of Jonah never names the king who presided over Nineveh during its great repentance, simply calling him “the king of Nineveh” (Jonah 3:6). But the Bible does tell us which king was on the throne of Israel during Jonah’s ministry – Jeroboam II. This king of Samaria ruled from 782 – 753 B.C., during a period of a resurgent Israel. Surprisingly – since we know what’s going to happen in a mere generation or two – this was also a period of Assyrian weakness.
While Israel was retaking territory from its former oppressors, the Arameans, things weren’t going so well for the Assyrians. Famines, plagues, revolts, earthquakes, and conflicts with the Arameans and Urartians threatened to overwhelm them. All the while, the Assyrian kings of this period were also steadily losing power to the governors of their own realm. In fact, during this period there were more kingly proclamations published by these officials than by the emperor himself. We know very little about the Assyrian rulers in these years, again, probably because they were weak and presiding over a realm that seemed to be falling apart.
However, this period of Assyrian decline has turned out to be unbelievably important. This is because it’s the key to orienting the history of the entire ancient world. A near-total solar eclipse occurs in the year 763 B.C., which the Assyrians so helpfully record. This eclipse functions as the solid timeline anchor for all the different dating systems of the ancient Near East. See, these societies didn’t use a dating system like ours that goes back to one great event that signifies a new age, but instead kept track of years relative to the beginning of such and such a king’s reign. For example, “In the twenty-seventh year of Jeroboam, king of Israel, Amaziah, king of Judah, began to reign” (2 Kings 15:1).
When you look back at all of these king lists that only reference themselves or perhaps the neighbors’ king lists, it becomes extremely tricky to align them accurately in world history – unless there is something objective and external, like a solar eclipse, that they can be attached to. This period of obscure Assyrian kings is when we get just such an event upon which we are able to then hook and build out the timelines of Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt, Israel, Judah, and so many others.
The specific Assyrian king ruling when this eclipse happened was not one I’d ever heard of before. His name was Ashur-dan III. In fact, there’s only one surviving inscription from his reign that even mentions him, although he is mentioned in later king lists as well. Crucial for our purposes, there is also a brief record of the eclipse from his reign, “[year of] Bur-Sugale of Guzana. Revolt in the city of Assur. In the month of Simanu an eclipse of the sun took place.” Notice the mention of a revolt in one of the empire’s royal cities hand-in-hand here with the mention of the eclipse. Clearly, this was a rough time to be king.
This same king, Ashur-dan III, is the Assyrian monarch with the greatest overlap between his reign and the reign of Jeroboam II – a full twenty-two years. Thus, this is the man most likely to have been on the throne when a gnarled Israelite prophet with hair and skin bleached by fish stomach acid showed up and started preaching doom. We can’t say this with absolute certainty, but when we compare the book of Jonah with the events of his reign, I think the case for Ashur-dan III is a strong one.
Ashur-dan III’s weakened realm alone gives us one possible answer for why the pagans of Nivevah were so open to Jonah’s message. Their society seemed to be falling apart, teetering from one disaster and uprising to another. Their patron gods Enlil, Ashur, and Ishtar seemed to have abandoned them. Now, add in a near-total solar eclipse, and suddenly the seemingly inexplicable mass repentance of Nineveh makes a lot more ancient Near Eastern sense. To the Assyrians, eclipses meant certain divine judgment. It meant that divine wrath was absolutely coming for them. Hence why it’s so likely that the eclipse played some part in Nineveh’s mass repentance.
If I had to theorize, I’d guess that the eclipse happened just before Jonah arrived in Nineveh. It could have happened while he was there preaching, but it seems the biblical authors would have recorded it like they do the sun standing still in Joshua 10, or the sun moving backward in 2 Kings 20. The Hebrew writers of the Bible are happy to record unusual events in the heavens as being caused by God’s sovereign hand and as an authenticating part of his message of repentance. But in the book of Jonah, we hear nothing about an eclipse. No, instead we merely see a city so ripe for repentance that they even put sackcloth on the cows. And this, at the preaching of a grumpy prophet who really didn’t want to be there. Clearly, this was a people divinely prepared for repentance.
If true, does a ‘natural’ phenomenon like an eclipse somehow nullify God’s direct spiritual involvement in Jonah’s mission? Not at all. Similar to the cosmic air burst that seems to have destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, if these natural events really happened then they merely give us more information about the means of creation God used together with his words of revelation. God is so sovereign that the fullness of the depravity of Nineveh and the ministry of Jonah around 763 B.C. perfectly aligned with a solar eclipse set in motion at the creation of the universe. It might seem fantastical, but God is doing stuff like this all the time, even though it stretches our brains to think about it. He is outside of time, after all.
I’ve always wondered about Nineveh’s repentance. If it was genuine and so widespread, why don’t we hear more about it? Surely an authentic society-wide repentance and turning to the true God of heaven and earth would lead to some kind of transformation, right? Perhaps this is another reason why there are so few records of Ashur-dan III’s reign. To someone like Tiglath-Pileser whose reign (745 – 727 B.C.) led to a revitalized, unified, and aggressive Assyria, the events of Ashur-Dan III’s reign may have been an embarrassment, something to cover up, an example of the kind of weakness and compromise that comes when you’re not devoted enough to the gods that made Assyria strong in the first place.
No, if there was any kind of genuine awakening that took place from Jonah’s ministry it must have been stamped out, replaced by an even more vicious and wicked Assyria whose scarlet-robed armies’ atrocities would go on to traumatize the ancient world so much that much of the later Persian propaganda was basically, “We’re not like the Assyrians.”
Sadly, if we’re honest about history, this is one pattern that does tend to repeat now and then. Sometimes, genuine awakening is followed not by a triumphant ‘Christian Nationalism,’ but rather by an increase in depravity, a demonic counterreaction that takes a society once full of light into places of terrible darkness. The Bible belt of Christian North Africa almost immediately turned to militant Islam. Lutheran Germany gave rise to Nazism. The Korean Pentecost gave way to the modern dystopia of North Korea. And Puritan New England is now one of the darkest places in the US. The Assyrian atrocities we hear so much about in the Old Testament may be in part because there actually was one generation that turned to God with all their hearts. And that repentance provoked even greater rebellion in a future generation. What a sobering thing to consider.
The message and events of the book of Jonah are true even if we don’t know the name of the Assyrian king, and even if there was no eclipse involved. According to Jesus, Jonah really went to Nineveh and Nineveh really repented (Matt 12:41). God’s mercy is not limited to one people but is for all the nations of the earth, even those as wicked as the Assyrians. Amen and amen.
But I find the possibility fascinating that such an obscure and struggling king like Ashur-dan III might turn out, in the end, to be so significant. One note from his beleaguered reign has become the keystone upon which our entire timeline of the ancient world is aligned. And the repentance which he possibly led would go on to be held up as exemplary by none other than the Son of God himself. Nor was any of this because of who he was or his own accomplishments. God sent the eclipse. God sent the prophet and then God granted the repentance. No, it really had nothing to do with Ashur-dan III at all. Instead, it was all of grace.
Just as it is with us.
The Grave of Jonah...
Also a Real Artifact.
My favorite part was always the kikayon tree and the worm and how it demonstrated to Jonah (and us) God’s compassion.
It's too much. A Gourdian knot.
Supposing that some Ninevite had already believed and then prayed for God’s deliverance of his city: imagine his astonishment and delight at the form God’s answer took.
That looks like a fun place to hang about.
Thanks.
OK, you win the thread.
It’s a whale of a story.
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