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Gerstein, Mordecai. Jonah and the Two Great Fish (Simon and Schuster, 1997). Amazon.com |
The feminine form does not always refer to a feminine fish, as we see it used to denote the collective noun in Exodus 7:18 ("And the fish in the river will die..."). Clearly that doesn't seem to be the case here, however. Or perhaps it is an elegant form, as we find it in Mishnaic Hebrew.
While entire shelves could be filled with children's books entitled 'Jonah and the Whale,' or 'Jonah and the Big Fish,' the one I like best is Mordicai Gerstein's Jonah and the Two Great Fish, in which he follows this Midrashic account of Jonah's life, including the Ninevites laughing at him (which I discussed in a previous post). Not only is it well-written and illustrated, it demonstrates the variety of the traditions concerning Jonah (as do his books about Noah, Moses and Esther).
References:
- Gerstein, Mordecai. Jonah and the Two Great Fish (Simon and Schuster, 1997)
- Bob, Steven M. Go to Nineveh: Medieval Jewish Commentaries on the Book of Jonah Translated and Explained (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2013)
- Simon, Uriel, and Lenn J. Schramm. Jonah = [Yonah] : the Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS Translation (Philadelphia, Pa: Jewish Publication Society, 1999)
Isaac M. Alderman
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