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Nineveh and Tyre, Part II




Friday, I shared some thoughts about Rudyard Kipling's poem RECESSIONAL. 

I quoted especially this verse:

Far-called, our navies melt away;
  On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
  Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

Today I would like to talk briefly about the two Biblical references, Nineveh and Tyre. 

Nineveh figures in the story of Jonah. Jonah was ordered to deliver God's wrathful message of impending destruction to Nineveh, a city near the one we know as Mosul. 

Jonah is reluctant to do his duty, and in the course of his flight he is swallowed whole by a large sea creature.  Everybody remembers that bit. What they might not remember is that eventually Jonah gets to Nineveh.  He cries out that in forty days God will destroy the city.  But Nineveh reforms its ways. God sees this and relents. Nineveh is not destroyed.

The biblical resonance of Tyre is a bit stranger.

In the book of Ezekiel, the prophet of that name declares that Nebuchadrezzar (Nebby, let us call him) will soon attack and destroy Tyre. Three chapters later the same prophet declares that God has decided that Nebby will not destroy Tyre after all, but will take over Egypt instead. In point of historical fact, Nebby neither conquered Egypt nor destroyed Tyre.

The God of the Hebrews at the time of the composition of Ezekiel was not omniscient. He did not have a lot of "omnis" to Him in general. Heck, He was not even sure of His own near-future plans. "Hmmmm, yesterday I told Ezekiel I was going to have Nebby take over Tyre. Today, you know, I'm just not into that plan anymore."

Josephus describes a siege of Tyre by Nebby that lasted 13 years. But Tyre seems to have survived it -- and the city lasted until it was eventually destroyed by Alexander of Macedonia, long after the book on Ezekiel's prophecies had closed. This doesn't seem to be a matter of saying "the people of Tyre repented and so they were spared." God simply developed other plans, for Tyre and/or for Nebby.

So: Kipling's reference to Nineveh and Tyre in the lines above have some ambivalence to it. Yes, both cities are now (in Kipling's world and ours) archaeological sites rather than cities. But Kipling could have picked any number of Biblical place names to make THAT point. ... "our pomp of yesterday is one with Babel and Sodom." He didn't do that. In both of the cases Kipling actually does cite there was within the canonical time-frame, a divine targeting followed by a divine relenting.

This lends an optimistic tinge to the somber words of Kipling's poem.

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