Core Glossary
Core Glossary — Jonah (Full Book)
This glossary consolidates every load-bearing term identified in 07_semantic_analysis.md, drawn from every chapter of Jonah (1-4), with proposed additions to the shared translation memory and each term’s assigned risk tier. Per the baseline mandate, terms already recorded in the Romans translation_memory.json are reused exactly (rendering, risk tier, and core rationale) and only extended with Jonah-specific context; they are marked [REUSED]. New terms are marked [NEW — proposed addition] and carry a recommended risk tier using the baseline’s identical three-category drift framework: (1) False-friend drift, (2) Denominational contest, (3) Obsolescence/obscurity.
| Term (English rendering) | Original (Greek LXX / Hebrew note) | Transliteration | Category | Risk Tier | Status | Chapters | Rendering Risk Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lord | κύριος | kyrios | Christology/God | Critical | [REUSED] | 1, 2, 3 | Reuses baseline exactly: “Lord” has faded from everyday English use outside religious/archaic contexts; must restore total, exclusive divine authority. |
| God | θεός | theos | God | Medium (per baseline TM) | [REUSED] | 1, 2, 3, 4 | Reuses baseline exactly; guard against vague “higher power”/“the universe” substitutions; Jonah’s God is the specific, personal, self-revealing God of 4:2. |
| faith / believed | ἐνεπίστευσαν (πιστεύω/πίστις family) | enepisteusan | Faith | High | [REUSED] | 3:5 | Reuses baseline “faith”; here the object (τῷ θεῷ) is explicit — a model instance of faith directed at a specific person, not generic optimism. |
| Gentiles / the nations | Νινευη (representative Gentile city); cf. ἔθνη | Nineuē | Church/Covenant | Medium | [REUSED, contextually extended] | 1, 3, 4 | Reuses baseline “Gentiles” framework; Nineveh is the paradigm case of God’s compassion reaching a specific, historically real Gentile nation, not an abstraction. |
| salvation | σωτηρία | sōtēria | Salvation | Critical | [REUSED] | 2:9 | Reuses baseline exactly; Jonah’s own confession “salvation belongs to the LORD” is a direct doctrinal anchor for the term. |
| righteousness / unrighteousness (injustice) | ἀδικία (antonym of δικαιοσύνη) | adikia | Salvation/Sin | High | [REUSED, antonym extension] | 3:8 | Extends baseline “righteousness”; contemporary “injustice” is now politically coded by social-justice discourse — clarify this is personal moral wrongdoing before God, the same category Romans 1:18-3:20 later universalizes. |
| holy | ἅγιος | hagios | Sanctification | Medium | [REUSED] | 2 | Reuses baseline exactly; “holy temple” (2) shows Jonah’s covenantal orientation even in crisis. |
| works | ἔργα | erga | Salvation | High | [REUSED, cross-book tension flagged] | 3:10 | Extends baseline’s grace/works tension (Rom 4:4-5, 11:5-6); Jonah 3:10 must be explicitly framed as the fruit of repentance, not works-based merit, to avoid contradicting Romans’ “not by works” argument. |
| resurrection (typological link) | κῆτος μέγα; τρεῖς ἡμέρας καὶ τρεῖς νύκτας | kētos mega; treis hēmeras kai treis nyktas | Eschatology/Christology | Critical | [REUSED, typological cross-reference] | 1, 2 | Extends baseline “resurrection”; Matthew 12:40 makes Jonah’s three days in the fish an explicit sign of Christ’s death and resurrection — must be stated explicitly, not left implicit, and must counter the “Jonah and the whale” folklore-trivialization pattern paralleling baseline’s noted “Easter as myth” risk. |
| proclaim / proclamation (preach) | κηρύσσω / κήρυγμα | kēryssō / kērygma | Church/Evangelism | Medium-High | [NEW — proposed addition] | 3:2, 3:4, 3:7 | FALSE-FRIEND/NEGATIVE-CODING RISK: contemporary “preachy” carries negative moralizing connotation; must be distinguished as a specific, divinely mandated message with specific content, echoing baseline’s “evangelism” doctrine note. |
| repent / repentance (human) | μετανοέω/μετάνοια family; ἀποστρέφω (“turn from”) | apostrephō; metanoeō | Repentance and Divine Mercy | High | [NEW — proposed addition] | 3:8, 3:9-10 | OBSOLESCENCE + BEHAVIORAL-REDUCTION RISK: contemporary “repent” risks reduction to mere emotional regret; must be taught as concrete behavioral turning (“turned from his evil way,” 3:8), consistent with Hebrew שׁוּב (shuv, “turn/return”). |
| relent / God’s relenting (distinguished from human “repent”) | μετανοέω/μετενόησεν (applied to God); Heb. נִחָם (nicham) | metenoēsen | Repentance and Divine Mercy | Critical | [NEW — proposed addition] | 3:9-10 | CRITICAL DOCTRINAL RISK: source text applies the same verb family to both God and humans; English must use distinct vocabulary (“relent,” “change his course of action,” “be moved to compassion” for God; “repent, turn” for humans) to avoid implying God sinned or is morally mutable, while affirming a real change in God’s announced course of action in response to genuine human repentance, consistent with God’s unchanging character (4:2). |
| wrath (of God) | ὀργὴ θυμοῦ | orgē thymou | Universal Human Accountability | Critical | [NEW — proposed addition] | 3:9 | FALSE-FRIEND + CULTURAL-AVOIDANCE RISK: contemporary “wrath” survives mainly as literary/dramatic flourish or personal irritation (“avoid his wrath”), and broader therapeutic culture actively resists divine-anger language (paralleling baseline’s “sin” trivialization risk); must be restored as God’s settled, righteous, judicial response to real wrongdoing. |
| calamity/disaster (the “evil” God threatened) | κακία (referring to judgment, not moral evil) | kakia | Repentance and Divine Mercy | Medium-High | [NEW — proposed addition] | 3:10 | Must be distinguished from moral “evil”/wickedness so readers do not conclude God intended or performed something morally evil; κακία here = disaster/calamity, the threatened judgment itself. |
| fasting | νηστεία | nēsteia | Repentance and Divine Mercy | Critical | [NEW — proposed addition] | 3:5 | FALSE-FRIEND DRIFT: dominant contemporary usage is secular health/diet culture (“intermittent fasting”); must be restored as urgent, corporate, mourning-driven abstention before God, not a wellness practice. |
| sackcloth and ashes | σάκκος / σποδός | sakkos / spodos | Repentance and Divine Mercy | Medium | [NEW — proposed addition] | 3:5-6 | OBSOLESCENCE RISK (idiom survives better than the literal referents): the English idiom “sackcloth and ashes” for public penitence is reasonably intact, but the literal garment/ash-mourning practice needs brief explanation. |
| presence of the LORD | πρόσωπον κυρίου | prosōpon kyriou | Sovereignty of God over Creation | High | [NEW — proposed addition] | 1:3 | Contemporary readers may read “presence” as a vague emotional/psychological state (“feeling God’s presence”) rather than grasping the narrative’s claim of inescapable divine omnipresence over all creation, including the sea. |
| great fish | κῆτος μέγα | kētos mega | Sovereignty of God over Creation | Critical | [NEW — proposed addition, shared entry with “resurrection” above] | 1:17/2:1 | Popular “Jonah and the whale” children’s-story framing trivializes the episode into folklore; must be presented as a real, historical, divinely-directed event and the definite basis for Christ’s own resurrection sign (Matthew 12:40). |
| fear (of the LORD) | φοβέομαι φόβον μέγαν | phobeomai phobon megan | Sovereignty of God over Creation | Medium-High | [NEW — proposed addition] | 1:16 | Erosion pattern parallel to baseline’s “holy”: contemporary “fear” defaults to anxiety, not reverential awe; the sailors’ response models proto-faith reverence, not mere terror. |
| Hades / Sheol | ᾅδης (LXX rendering of Heb. שְׁאוֹל, Sheol) | Hadēs | Sovereignty of God over Creation / Resurrection typology | Critical | [NEW — proposed addition] | 2:2 | CULTURAL-COLLISION RISK (same class as baseline’s “Abba”/ABBA pop-group collision): contemporary readers most readily associate “Hades” with Greek mythology or entertainment franchises, not the biblical realm/state of the dead; must be actively distinguished. |
| mercy / compassion (of God) | οἰκτίρμων καὶ ἐλεήμων; ἔλεος | oiktirmōn kai eleēmōn | God’s Compassion for the Nations | Critical | [NEW — proposed addition] | 4:2 | FALSE-FRIEND DRIFT: contemporary “mercy” is dominated by legal/clemency usage or as a mild interjection; must be restored as God’s covenantal, relational tenderness toward the undeserving, related to but distinct from baseline “grace.” |
| slow to anger (God’s patience) | μακρόθυμος | makrothymos | God’s Compassion for the Nations | Medium-High | [NEW — proposed addition] | 4:2 | Resolves apparent tension between the “wrath” of 3:9 and the “mercy” of 3:10/4:2: both flow from the same unchanging divine character; needs explicit reconciling explanation. |
| plant / worm / scorching wind | κολόκυνθα (or κικέων) / σκώληξ / καύσων | kolokyntha/kikeōn / skōlēx / kauson | Sovereignty of God over Creation | Low-Medium | [NEW — proposed addition] | 4:6-8 | Minor textual-history note (disputed plant identity) only; reinforces the creation-sovereignty theme already established with the sea and the great fish in ch. 1. |
| word of the LORD | λόγος κυρίου | logos kyriou | Divine Calling | Low (formula; risk carried entirely by “Lord”) | [REUSED, formulaic] | 1:1, 3:1 | Stable prophetic-commissioning formula; independent risk beyond the already-documented “Lord” component is negligible. |
Summary counts
| Risk Tier | Count | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Critical | 8 | Lord*, God*(TM tier), salvation*, resurrection/great fish (shared), relent/God’s relenting, wrath, fasting, Hades/Sheol, mercy/compassion — *reused from baseline where marked |
| High | 6 | faith*, righteousness/injustice*, works*, presence of the LORD, repent/repentance (human), calamity (kakia) |
| Medium-High | 3 | proclaim/proclamation, fear (of the LORD), slow to anger |
| Medium | 3 | God (per baseline TM tier), holy*, sackcloth and ashes, Gentiles/nations* |
| Low / Low-Medium | 2 | word of the LORD, plant/worm/scorching wind |
*Terms marked with an asterisk in the notes column are reused from the baseline Romans translation memory and retain their baseline risk tier by rule; new tier assignments above apply only to terms newly proposed for addition in this Jonah glossary.
Review routing recommendation (per baseline doctrine_risk_registry.json conventions): all Critical-tier terms above require human theologian review before Phase 2 content generation, with particular priority on “relent/God’s relenting” and “wrath”, since both touch live, sensitive questions about the character and immutability of God that go beyond ordinary lexical drift into substantive systematic-theology territory. High-tier terms require human theologian review; Medium/Medium-High tier terms require native-speaker (general audience) review; Low-tier terms are sufficient for automated review only.
See 07_semantic_analysis.md for full verse-by-verse and chapter-by-chapter argumentation supporting every entry above.
Critical Risk Terms
Lord
Approved rendering: Lord
Transliteration: Lord
Doctrine: Lordship of Christ
Rejected alternatives: boss / master (attempts at modernization that lose the term’s exclusivity and worship-worthiness), a British Lord (the aristocratic title sense, especially salient for British/Commonwealth readers)
Original: κύριος
Category: Christology/God
INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE — core fields copied exactly. Original baseline notes: ‘Lord’ has nearly disappeared from ordinary spoken English outside this specific religious usage; must actively restore its weight (total, exclusive, personal allegiance). JONAH-SPECIFIC EXTENSION: renders κύριος (LXX for YHWH) throughout Jonah — the prophetic commissioning formula ‘the word of the LORD’ (1:1, 3:1) and Jonah’s own confession ‘salvation belongs to the LORD’ (2:9) both depend on this restored weight; the term functions identically here to its Romans usage despite the Old Testament narrative genre.
Salvation
Approved rendering: salvation
Transliteration: salvation
Doctrine: Salvation
Rejected alternatives: being saved (contested denominational shorthand), rescue (too generic a gloss on its own)
Original: σωτηρία
Category: Salvation
INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE — core fields copied exactly. JONAH-SPECIFIC EXTENSION: Jonah’s own confession from inside the fish, ‘salvation belongs to the LORD’ (2:9), names God explicitly as the agent of both his literal physical rescue and, typologically, of ultimate deliverance from judgment. Given that a literal physical rescue really did occur in this narrative, readers are especially tempted to flatten this into the fully secularized generic sense of ‘things worked out’ — this must be resisted.
Grace
Approved rendering: grace
Transliteration: grace
Doctrine: Grace
Rejected alternatives: elegance/poise (the dominant secular sense), a grace period (the dominant legal/financial sense)
INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE — core fields copied exactly. JONAH-SPECIFIC EXTENSION: Jonah does not use ‘grace’ vocabulary directly, but the doctrine of God’s Compassion for the Nations (4:2’s ‘compassionate and merciful’) is closely related to, yet must be explicitly distinguished from, baseline ‘grace’ (unmerited favor apart from merit) — see the new term ‘mercy_compassion’ below, which converges with but is not identical to this entry.
Providence
Approved rendering: providence
Transliteration: providence
Doctrine: Providence
Rejected alternatives: everything happens for a reason (a common contemporary secular folk-spiritual idiom expressing impersonal fate), Providence (the proper noun — the capital city of Rhode Island, USA)
INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE — core fields copied exactly. JONAH-SPECIFIC EXTENSION: Jonah’s Sovereignty-of-God-over-Creation doctrine is better carried by concrete, text-driven images (the LORD ‘hurled’ a great wind, ‘appointed’ a great fish, ‘appointed’ a plant/worm) than by the abstract noun ‘providence’ itself; this curriculum should USE THIS TERM SPARINGLY as a summarizing header only, reserving concrete verbs as primary teaching vocabulary, per the baseline’s already-documented Critical-tier caution.
Fasting
Approved rendering: fasting
Transliteration: nēsteia
Doctrine: Repentance and Divine Mercy
Rejected alternatives: intermittent fasting / a health fast (the dominant contemporary secular sense: a diet or wellness practice for metabolic benefit), a hunger strike (an inaccurate modern political-protest connotation)
Original: νηστεία
Category: Repentance and Divine Mercy
NEW TERM — CRITICAL FALSE-FRIEND DRIFT. Contemporary English ‘fasting’ is now dominated by secular health and diet culture; readers will almost certainly import a self-improvement frame onto Nineveh’s fast (3:5) unless the curriculum explicitly restores the sense of urgent, humbled, mourning-driven abstention before God.
Relent Divine
Approved rendering: relent
Transliteration: metanoeō (applied to God); Heb. nicham
Doctrine: Repentance and Divine Mercy / God’s Unchanging Character
Rejected alternatives: repent (used of God — REJECTED as this curriculum’s primary rendering for God’s action, though it is the KJV’s literal choice, because it implies moral fault-correction and mutability, contradicting 4:2’s revealed unchanging character), change his mind (acceptable secondary gloss, usable alongside ‘relent,’ but not as sole rendering since it risks implying mere unpredictability)
Original: μετενόησεν (μετανοέω, applied to God); Heb. נִחָם (nicham)
Category: Repentance and Divine Mercy
NEW TERM — CRITICAL CROWDED-NEIGHBORHOOD COLLISION. The source text applies the same verb family to both Nineveh’s turning (3:8) and God’s response (3:9-10); English must use distinct vocabulary to avoid implying divine moral fault. Must be explicitly reconciled with God’s unchanging, revealed character (4:2: gracious, compassionate, slow to anger) — a live topic in historic debates about divine immutability and impassibility that this curriculum must address directly, not leave implicit.
Wrath Of God
Approved rendering: fierce anger / wrath
Transliteration: orgē thymou
Doctrine: God’s Wrath and Justice
Rejected alternatives: irritation/annoyance (trivializes God’s response into personal pique), avoid someone’s wrath (the dominant contemporary secular idiom, describing personal irritation, not settled judicial anger)
Original: ὀργὴ θυμοῦ
Category: Universal Human Accountability
NEW TERM — CRITICAL FALSE-FRIEND + CULTURAL-AVOIDANCE RISK, and CROWDED-NEIGHBORHOOD COLLISION. Contemporary English ‘wrath’ survives mainly as literary flourish or personal irritation, and non-judgmental therapeutic culture actively resists divine-anger language. Must also be fenced from Jonah’s own sinful ‘anger’ in chapter 4 — the same English word family must never create moral equivalence between God’s righteous judgment (3:9) and Jonah’s petty resentment (4:1-9).
Great Fish
Approved rendering: great fish
Transliteration: kētos mega
Doctrine: Sovereignty of God over Creation / Jonah as a Sign
Rejected alternatives: whale (a popular but not textually required species gloss, carrying centuries of English idiom baggage and ‘Jonah and the Whale’ folklore association), a legendary sea monster (REJECTED — undermines the historicity this curriculum must defend)
Original: κῆτος μέγα
Category: Sovereignty of God over Creation / Christology
NEW TERM — CRITICAL CULTURAL-TRIVIALIZATION RISK, directly linked to baseline ‘resurrection.’ Popular ‘Jonah and the Whale’ children’s-story framing has reduced this episode to folklore, echoing the baseline’s documented ‘resurrection as myth’ pattern; must be stated plainly as a real, historical, divinely directed event and connected explicitly to Christ’s own resurrection sign (Matthew 12:40).
Three Days Three Nights
Approved rendering: three days and three nights
Transliteration: treis hēmeras kai treis nyktas
Doctrine: Jonah as a Sign Foreshadowing Christ’s Resurrection
Rejected alternatives: a long time (too vague; loses the exact phrase Jesus cites in Matthew 12:40)
Original: τρεῖς ἡμέρας καὶ τρεῖς νύκτας
Category: Christology
NEW TERM. The specific span of time Jonah spends inside the fish (1:17/2:1); the exact phrase Jesus cites in Matthew 12:40 as a prophetic sign of his own burial and resurrection. Must be cross-referenced explicitly, not assumed self-evident from Jonah’s own text alone.
Hades Sheol
Approved rendering: Sheol / the realm of the dead
Transliteration: Hadēs (LXX); Heb. Sheol
Doctrine: Sovereignty of God over Creation / Resurrection Typology
Rejected alternatives: Hades (REJECTED as primary rendering — collides with Greek mythology and entertainment-franchise associations, e.g. film/game villains), hell (imprecise — conflates Sheol’s Old Testament sense of ‘realm of the dead’ with the New Testament’s more developed doctrine of final judgment)
Original: ᾅδης (LXX rendering of Hebrew שְׁאוֹל, Sheol)
Category: Sovereignty of God over Creation / Christology
NEW TERM — CRITICAL CULTURAL-COLLISION RISK, in the same class as the baseline’s documented ‘Abba’/ABBA-pop-group collision. Jonah 2:2 describes his near-death experience as being swallowed into this realm. Use ‘Sheol’ as primary term glossed as ‘the realm of the dead’; footnote ‘Hades’ only when discussing the Greek LXX wording specifically.
Mercy Compassion
Approved rendering: compassionate and merciful
Transliteration: oiktirmōn kai eleēmōn
Doctrine: God’s Compassion for the Nations
Rejected alternatives: a judge showing mercy / mercy killing (the dominant contemporary legal/clemency senses), have mercy! (a mild secularized interjection with no theological content)
Original: οἰκτίρμων καὶ ἐλεήμων
Category: God’s Compassion for the Nations
NEW TERM — CRITICAL FALSE-FRIEND DRIFT. God’s self-description (4:2), echoing Exodus 34:6-7. Related to, but distinct from, baseline ‘grace’ (unmerited favor apart from merit): mercy/compassion here emphasizes God’s tender responsiveness to suffering and need; both converge at 4:2 and should be explicitly linked to and distinguished from the baseline grace entry.
High Risk Terms
Faith
Approved rendering: faith
Transliteration: faith
Doctrine: Faith
Rejected alternatives: faith in humanity / a leap of faith (secularized idioms meaning generic optimism or an unsupported gamble, not trust in a specific person)
Original: ἐπίστευσαν (πιστεύω; cf. πίστις)
Category: Faith
INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE — core fields copied exactly. Original baseline notes: contemporary English has detached ‘faith’ from any specific object. JONAH-SPECIFIC EXTENSION: Jonah 3:5’s ‘the men of Nineveh believed God’ is a rare instance where the object of faith (God) is completely explicit; this precision must be preserved, especially given the narrative irony that pagan Gentiles believe while God’s own prophet resists.
Righteousness
Approved rendering: righteousness
Transliteration: righteousness
Doctrine: Salvation
Rejected alternatives: self-righteous / holier-than-thou (the dominant connotation ‘righteous’ now carries in casual usage — smug, judgmental superiority)
INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE — core fields copied exactly. JONAH-SPECIFIC EXTENSION: Jonah’s text does not use ‘righteousness’ directly but its direct antonym, ἀδικία (‘injustice/violence,’ 3:8), the specific sin named against Nineveh; see the new term ‘unrighteousness_injustice’ below, which extends this entry as its conceptual mirror.
Sin
Approved rendering: sin
Transliteration: sin
Doctrine: Universal Human Accountability
Rejected alternatives: sinfully delicious / my one sin (trivialized marketing and joking usage, e.g. dessert advertising)
Original: ἁμαρτία (thematic; cf. ἀδικία, the specific term used in Jonah 3:8)
Category: Sin
INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE — core fields copied exactly. JONAH-SPECIFIC EXTENSION: Jonah’s narrative names Nineveh’s specific sin as ἀδικία (‘injustice/violence,’ 3:8, cf. 1:2); the baseline’s caution against trivializing ‘sin’ applies with equal force to Nineveh’s real, corporately-owned guilt, which this curriculum must not soften under contemporary non-judgmental cultural pressure.
Resurrection
Approved rendering: resurrection
Transliteration: resurrection
Doctrine: Resurrection of Christ
Rejected alternatives: Easter (the commercialized cultural holiday sense)
Original: ἀνάστασις (typological referent; not itself present in Jonah’s Greek text)
Category: Eschatology/Christology
INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE — core fields copied exactly. JONAH-SPECIFIC EXTENSION: Jonah’s three days in the great fish (1:17-2:10) is not itself a resurrection but is explicitly cited by Christ (Matthew 12:40) as its prophetic sign; the curriculum must state both the connection and the distinction (Jonah did not literally die and rise) plainly, and must counter the ‘Jonah and the whale’ folklore-trivialization pattern paralleling the baseline’s noted ‘resurrection as myth’ risk.
Called
Approved rendering: called
Transliteration: called
Doctrine: Divine Calling
INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE — core fields copied exactly. JONAH-SPECIFIC EXTENSION: underlies the doctrine of Divine Calling and Prophetic Commissioning in Jonah — God commissions (1:1-2) and re-commissions (3:1-2) a resistant prophet; the direction of agency (God calls; Jonah does not self-select) must be actively preserved against contemporary self-actualization readings of ‘calling.‘
Calling
Approved rendering: calling
Transliteration: calling
Doctrine: Divine Calling
Rejected alternatives: finding your calling (the dominant contemporary secular sense: career vocation or personal passion, discovered through self-reflection rather than received from God)
INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE — core fields copied exactly. JONAH-SPECIFIC EXTENSION: Jonah 3:1’s ‘a second time’ underscores that God’s calling persists despite prior flight/disobedience; this is a picture of divine persistence with a resistant servant, not the prophet discovering his own purpose.
Obedience Of Faith
Approved rendering: obedience of faith
Transliteration: obedience of faith
Doctrine: Obedience of Faith
Rejected alternatives: blind obedience / just following orders (negative idioms reflecting contemporary Western suspicion of obedience as servility or complicity)
INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE — core fields copied exactly. JONAH-SPECIFIC EXTENSION: Jonah’s own reluctant, second-attempt obedience (3:3, ‘Jonah went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD’) is a mixed, imperfect example — obedience finally rendered, though grudgingly — that should be handled with nuance rather than presented as a clean positive model.
Covenant
Approved rendering: covenant
Transliteration: covenant
Doctrine: Davidic Covenant
Rejected alternatives: a restrictive covenant (the dominant contemporary legal sense: a binding clause in a property deed, employment contract, or loan agreement)
INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE — core fields copied exactly. JONAH-SPECIFIC EXTENSION: Jonah’s narrative presupposes but does not directly expound Israel’s covenant status; it is relevant chiefly as background for understanding Jonah’s covenant-nationalist reluctance (ch. 1, 4) to see God’s compassion extended to a non-covenant Gentile people.
Proclaim
Approved rendering: proclaim
Transliteration: kēryssō / kērygma
Doctrine: Prophetic Proclamation
Rejected alternatives: preach (carries a negative ‘preachy’/unwanted-moralizing connotation in contemporary English, paralleling the baseline’s documented negative secular coding of ‘evangelism’), announce (too weak; loses a herald’s authoritative, divinely mandated force)
Original: κηρύσσω / κήρυγμα
Category: Church/Evangelism
NEW TERM. Jonah’s task (3:2, 3:4, 3:7) is public, unavoidable proclamation of a specific, divinely mandated message with defined content — not generic moralizing or nagging.
Will Be Overthrown
Approved rendering: will be overthrown
Transliteration: katastraphēsetai
Doctrine: Prophetic Proclamation / Repentance and Divine Mercy
Rejected alternatives: will be destroyed (acceptable synonym, close to NLT’s own wording, but should not be read as more mechanically fixed than the source), a fixed prophecy/prediction (REJECTED framing — this functions as a conditional, relationally responsive warning, not a deterministic decree)
NEW TERM. Theological hinge of the whole book (3:4, resolved at 3:10): contemporary readers may read this as a mechanical, self-fulfilling-prophecy-style prediction rather than a genuine warning that Nineveh’s response actually alters; must be taught explicitly as conditional/relational.
Repentance Human
Approved rendering: repent / turn from evil way
Transliteration: apostrephō; cf. Heb. shuv
Doctrine: Repentance and Divine Mercy
Rejected alternatives: feel sorry / feel guilty (reduces repentance to emotion, losing the concrete behavioral turning the text describes)
Original: ἀπέστρεψαν … τῆς ὁδοῦ … τῆς πονηρᾶς (ἀποστρέφω); cf. μετανοέω family
Category: Repentance and Divine Mercy
NEW TERM. Jonah 3:8 (‘each one turned from his evil way’) describes a concrete behavioral turning, not merely an emotion. CROWDED-NEIGHBORHOOD COLLISION: must be kept lexically distinct from ‘relent’ (used only of God, see below) to avoid implying God sinned when 3:9-10 describes his response.
Calamity
Approved rendering: disaster / calamity
Transliteration: kakia
Doctrine: Repentance and Divine Mercy
Rejected alternatives: evil (REJECTED as primary gloss — risks implying God intended or performed moral wickedness; kakia here names the threatened judgment/disaster itself, not sin)
Original: κακία
Category: Repentance and Divine Mercy
NEW TERM. Must be distinguished from moral ‘evil’/wickedness (3:10) so readers do not conclude God ever intended or performed something morally evil.
Works
Approved rendering: works / deeds
Transliteration: erga
Doctrine: The Behavioral Content of Repentance / Salvation
Rejected alternatives: good deeds earning deliverance (REJECTED — would contradict the baseline Romans grace-apart-from-works argument, Romans 4:4-5, 11:5-6)
Original: ἔργα
Category: Salvation
NEW TERM. Jonah 3:10 (‘God saw their works’) must be framed as the visible fruit of genuine repentance (3:8), never as meritorious cause; Nineveh’s national deliverance from judgment must be explicitly distinguished from the New Testament category of individual eternal salvation by grace through faith.
Unrighteousness Injustice
Approved rendering: injustice / violence
Transliteration: adikia
Doctrine: Sin / Behavioral Content of Repentance
Rejected alternatives: systemic injustice (the dominant contemporary social-justice political framing — should not exclusively replace the text’s category of personal moral wrongdoing before a personal God, though societal wrongdoing is not excluded)
Original: ἀδικία
Category: Sin
NEW TERM, antonym extension of baseline ‘righteousness.’ Contemporary English ‘injustice’ is now heavily coded by social-justice political discourse; must clarify that Jonah 3:8’s ‘injustice/violence’ names personal moral wrongdoing before a personal God, the same category Romans 1:18-3:20 later universalizes.
Presence Of The Lord
Approved rendering: presence of the LORD
Transliteration: prosōpon kyriou
Doctrine: The Sovereignty of God over Creation
Rejected alternatives: feeling God’s presence (the dominant contemporary psychological/emotional sense — REJECTED as primary gloss since it loses the narrative’s claim of inescapable divine omnipresence over all creation, including the open sea)
Original: πρόσωπον κυρίου
Category: Sovereignty of God over Creation
NEW TERM. Jonah 1:3’s flight ‘from the presence of the LORD’ is a narrative claim about inescapable divine omnipresence, not a subjective emotional state.
Fear Of The Lord
Approved rendering: feared exceedingly
Transliteration: ephobēthēsan phobon megan
Doctrine: Reverential Fear of God
Rejected alternatives: panic/terror alone (loses the positive, reverential, proto-faith dimension of the sailors’ response)
Original: ἐφοβήθησαν φόβον μέγαν
Category: Sovereignty of God over Creation
NEW TERM. Erosion pattern parallel to baseline ‘holy’: contemporary ‘fear’ defaults to anxiety, not reverential awe. The pagan sailors’ terrified, reverent response (1:16) models an unexpected Gentile proto-faith reverence, not mere fright.
Slow To Anger
Approved rendering: slow to anger
Transliteration: makrothymos
Doctrine: God’s Unchanging Character
Original: μακρόθυμος
Category: God’s Compassion for the Nations
NEW TERM. Confirms that God’s judgment (3:4, 9) and mercy (3:10, 4:2) both flow from the same unchanging, patient character. Must be taught alongside ‘wrath of God’ and ‘relent’ as one unified character, not two competing moods, resolving the apparent wrath/mercy tension.
Sign Of Jonah
Approved rendering: sign of Jonah
Transliteration: sēmeion Iōna (Matthew 12:39-41)
Doctrine: Jonah as a Sign Foreshadowing Christ’s Resurrection
Rejected alternatives: a symbol (risks implying the great-fish event was merely literary/fictional, undercutting the historicity this curriculum must defend), an omen (introduces unwanted superstition connotations), sign, left unanchored (must always be paired with the specific named phrase ‘the sign of Jonah’ rather than left as a generic secular noun, e.g. a traffic sign, an astrological sign, ‘it’s a sign’)
NEW TERM. This doctrine’s central label is drawn from Matthew’s Gospel, not Jonah’s own text, and must be explicitly cross-referenced (Matthew 12:39-41) rather than assumed self-evident from Jonah alone.
Medium Risk Terms
God
Approved rendering: God
Transliteration: God
Doctrine: Deity of Christ
Rejected alternatives: a higher power (a common, deliberately vague contemporary substitute, e.g. in recovery-program language), the universe (a New-Age-influenced impersonal substitute, e.g. ‘the universe has a plan for you’)
Original: θεός
Category: God
INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE — core fields copied exactly. Original baseline notes: Romans’ God is not a placeholder concept but the specific, personally engaged, self-revealing God. JONAH-SPECIFIC EXTENSION: Jonah 3:5’s Ninevites ‘believed God’ and the king appeals directly to ‘God’ (3:9) with no other name supplied; 4:2 supplies Jonah’s own explicit characterization of God as ‘gracious and compassionate, slow to anger.’ Must not be flattened into a generic ‘higher power’ or impersonal ‘the universe.‘
Holy
Approved rendering: holy
Transliteration: holy
Doctrine: Sanctification
Rejected alternatives: holier-than-thou (negative idiom for sanctimonious superiority), holy cow / holy moly (mere exclamations, entirely secularized)
Original: ἅγιος (ναὸς ἅγιος, ‘holy temple’)
Category: Sanctification
INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE — core fields copied exactly. JONAH-SPECIFIC EXTENSION: Jonah’s prayer references God’s ‘holy temple’ (2:4, 2:7) from inside the fish, showing his ongoing covenantal orientation toward God even in extremity.
Gentiles
Approved rendering: Gentiles
Transliteration: Gentiles
Doctrine: Unity of Jews and Gentiles
Rejected alternatives: non-believers (a common but incorrect modern gloss)
Original: cf. ἔθνη (thematic; Nineveh as representative Gentile city)
Category: Church/Covenant
INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE — core fields copied exactly. JONAH-SPECIFIC EXTENSION: Nineveh functions in Jonah as the paradigm case of God’s compassion reaching a specific, historically real Gentile nation (Israel’s ancient imperial oppressor), not an abstraction; should not be glossed as ‘non-believers.‘
Intercession
Approved rendering: intercession
Transliteration: intercession
Doctrine: Prayer and Intercession
INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE — core fields copied exactly. JONAH-SPECIFIC EXTENSION: relevant to the doctrine of Prayer and Intercession in Crisis (Jonah 2:1-9); Jonah’s prayer from inside the fish is petitionary/confessional rather than intercessory on behalf of others in the strict sense, but the same obsolescence-class low-competing-meaning profile applies.
Prophet
Approved rendering: prophet
Transliteration: prophet
Doctrine: Inspiration of Scripture
Rejected alternatives: a tech prophet / prophet of doom (secular usage for a confident forecaster or a pessimistic commentator)
INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE — core fields copied exactly. JONAH-SPECIFIC EXTENSION: Jonah himself is a prophet in this specific, technical sense; his message (3:4) risks being read popularly as a ‘prophet of doom’ pronouncement (a confident but mechanical forecast) rather than God’s own authoritative, relationally responsive word — this collision should be named directly.
Prophecy
Approved rendering: prophecy
Transliteration: prophecy
Doctrine: Fulfillment of Prophecy
Rejected alternatives: a self-fulfilling prophecy (a common secular psychological/sociological idiom unrelated to divine revelation)
INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE — core fields copied exactly. JONAH-SPECIFIC EXTENSION: Jonah 3:4’s announced judgment risks being read through the lens of the secular ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ idiom or as a fixed, mechanical prediction; the book’s entire theological hinge (3:10) depends on this warning functioning conditionally/relationally, not deterministically.
Power Of God
Approved rendering: power of God
Transliteration: power of God
Doctrine: Power of God for Salvation
INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE — core fields copied exactly. JONAH-SPECIFIC EXTENSION: directly relevant to The Sovereignty of God over Creation — God’s power personally commands the sea, storm, great fish, plant, worm, and scorching wind (1:4, 1:17, 4:6-8), a positive rather than negative use of ‘power’ language, in contrast to the largely negative secular power discourse the baseline documents.
Israel
Approved rendering: Israel
Transliteration: Israel
Doctrine: Unity of Jews and Gentiles
INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE — core fields copied exactly. JONAH-SPECIFIC EXTENSION: functions throughout comparative-theology discussion as the implicit contrast to Nineveh — a Gentile capital outperforming Israel’s own prophet in responsiveness to God, a point noted in both Jewish and Christian reception history.
Jesus
Approved rendering: Jesus
Transliteration: Jesus
Doctrine: Lordship of Christ
Rejected alternatives: Jesus (as a casual interjection/expletive, entirely secularized and disrespectful usage)
INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE — core fields copied exactly. JONAH-SPECIFIC EXTENSION: Jesus is not named in Jonah’s own text but is the direct speaker of Matthew 12:39-41, which supplies the ‘sign of Jonah’ typology; this curriculum must make that cross-reference explicit.
Mission
Approved rendering: mission
Transliteration: mission
Doctrine: Mission to the Nations
Rejected alternatives: a mission statement (the dominant contemporary corporate/organizational sense)
INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE — core fields copied exactly. JONAH-SPECIFIC EXTENSION: Jonah’s entire book is structured around a specific divine mission to a specific Gentile city; contemporary corporate ‘mission statement’ branding language should not flatten this into a generic organizational goal.
Nineveh
Approved rendering: Nineveh
Transliteration: Nineuē
Doctrine: God’s Compassion for the Nations
Rejected alternatives: a foreign city (too generic; loses real historical specificity)
Original: Νινευή
Category: Church/Gentile Nations
NEW TERM. Real, historically attested Assyrian imperial capital and Israel’s ancient oppressor. Contemporary readers typically have no independent historical knowledge of Nineveh/Assyria beyond a vague ‘ancient enemy’ impression; this curriculum must supply that background rather than assume it, the same way the baseline supplies background for ‘David’ and ‘Israel.‘
Sackcloth And Ashes
Approved rendering: sackcloth and ashes
Transliteration: sakkos / spodos
Doctrine: Repentance and Divine Mercy
Original: σάκκος / σποδός
Category: Repentance and Divine Mercy
NEW TERM — OBSOLESCENCE RISK. The English idiom ‘sackcloth and ashes’ survives reasonably well as a figure for public penitence, but most readers will not know it originally denoted an actual coarse garment and literal ashes (3:5-6); needs brief explanation, not active correction.
Low Risk Terms
Thanksgiving
Approved rendering: thanksgiving
Transliteration: thanksgiving
Doctrine: Thanksgiving
INHERITED FROM ROMANS PACKAGE — core fields copied exactly. JONAH-SPECIFIC EXTENSION: Jonah 2:9 (‘but I, with the voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you’) closes his prayer with a vow of thanksgiving even before his physical deliverance is complete — a model of anticipatory gratitude.
Word Of The Lord
Approved rendering: word of the LORD
Transliteration: logos kyriou
Doctrine: Divine Calling and Prophetic Commissioning
Rejected alternatives: a message from God (too vague; loses the technical prophetic-commissioning formula)
Original: λόγος κυρίου
Category: Divine Calling
NEW TERM. Stable, formulaic Old Testament prophetic-commissioning phrase appearing at both Jonah’s original call (1:1) and his second commissioning (3:1); independent risk beyond the already-documented ‘Lord’ component is negligible.
Plant Worm Wind
Approved rendering: plant / worm / scorching wind
Transliteration: kolokyntha (or kikeōn) / skōlēx / kauson
Doctrine: Sovereignty of God over Creation
Rejected alternatives: gourd (one traditional but textually disputed identification, cf. the historic Jerome ‘gourd controversy’), ivy (an alternative disputed identification)
Original: κολόκυνθα (or κικέων) / σκώληξ / καύσων
Category: Sovereignty of God over Creation
NEW TERM. God’s direct, personal governance even of a single plant, a single worm, and the weather (4:6-8), reinforcing the creation-sovereignty theme established with the sea and great fish in chapter 1, now at the smallest possible scale. Exact plant identity is not doctrinally load-bearing.
Referenced passages