Wail, O Ships: The Role of the Sea in the Bible

Mention of the sea almost always spells trouble in the Bible. In the seventh chapter of Genesis, the seas burst forth and swallow up all earthly life save Noah, his family, and the animals he gathered on his Ark. The prophet Jonah, having been commanded by the Lord to minister to the ‘evil’ city of Nineveh, attempts to flee by ship into the Mediterranean, but is beset by a storm and swallowed by a great fish. The Apostle Paul suffers three, possibly even four shipwrecks during his travels. Even in Exodus, which tells of the Israeli people’s passage between the watery walls of the parted Red Sea during their escape from Egyptian captivity, it is only by being made into land that the sea becomes traversable. These tales of oceanic peril impart an important truth about the realities of Israeli antiquity. History dictated that the seas — though ever-so-close and always exerting a profound influence on local life by bringing new peoples, goods, ideas, religions, and armies to the region — would never be made subject to Israeli control. Throughout the time period covered in the Bible (both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament) the Hebrews/Jews were surrounded by experienced maritime societies: the Egyptians, the Hittites, the Kushites, the Philistines, the Babylonians, the Greeks, and the Romans. Their access to the Mediterranean was intermittent, as the coast was usually the territory of the Philistines, and the Bible records only a brief time during the reign of King Solomon when Israel possessed a navy. Mastery of the seas forever remained just out of reach. <a href="https://rebeccajanemorgan.medium.com/wail-o-ships-the-role-of-the-sea-in-the-bible-2cecedab880">Visit Now</a>