Chapter 10: Restoring Tarshish and Jonah’s Journey

2 Chronicles 9:21 KJV For the king’s ships (Solomon’s) went to Tarshish (Ophir) with the servants of Huram (Hiram King of Tyre) EVERY 3 YEARS, once came the ships of Tarshish bringing gold, silver, Ivory and apes and peacocks.

Solomon’s navy traversed far to reach these precious isles of gold – Ophir. One of the other names for this same region of Ophir is Tarshish which is fully and indisputably equated with Ophir in many passages. Is this because the writers of Kings and Chronicles disagree with each other? Not at all for they are the same place generally. In addition to 2 Chronicles 9, there are several scriptures which identify Tarshish especially the ships of Tarshish and they equate it to Ophir. The ships of Tarshish go to Ophir for gold and Tarshish for silver but both in the same area.

1 Kings 22:48 KJV Jehoshaphat made ships of Tharshish to go to Ophir for gold: but they went not; for the ships were broken at Eziongeber.

Jeremiah 10:9 KJV Silver spread into plates is brought from Tarshish…

Ezekiel 27:12 KJV Tarshish was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of all kind of riches; with silver, iron, tin, and lead, they traded in thy fairs.

2 Chronicles 20:36 KJV And he joined himself with him to make ships to go to Tarshish: and they made the ships in Eziongeber.

Tarshish like Ophir is an isle and part of an archipelago of isles. Thus, any theory which places Tarshish anywhere but isles is ignorant of scripture.

Psalm 72:10 KJV The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents: the kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts.

Isaiah 23:6 KJV Pass ye over to Tarshish; howl, ye inhabitants of the isle.

Isaiah 60:9 KJV Surely the isles shall wait for me, and the ships of Tarshish first, to bring thy sons from far, their silver and their gold with them, unto the name of the LORD thy God, and to the Holy One of Israel, because he hath glorified thee.

Notice, Tarshish is known for ships. Some scholars estimate that it may be a wood but in reading 2 Chronicles 9:21 and Jeremiah 10:9 especially, this cannot be the case and we are sure they regret making such an uneducated guess. The ships of Tarshish or Solomon’s navy go to Ophir and Tarshish which you will find is equated by history as well. Tarshish is in the region of Ophir, it is a place known for silver and other resources which we have tested. It is associated with isles just as Ophir and Sheba are. We covered Sheba (Ch. 7) but you can already see the equation with Ophir and Tarshish in these scriptures. However, the largest misunderstanding we read and hear is that of the story of Jonah which in modern theology is absolutely wrong to the Bible geographically.

Correcting the Journey of Jonah

One of the first objections we hear from Pastors and scholars is that

Jonah travelled West to go to Tarshish. However, they are lacking the full context of the time. The Red Sea port was broken by Yahuah just before Jonah’s time in the days of King Jehoshaphat who attempted to replicate Solomon’s trip to Ophir. No such trip occurred and with the port destroyed by Yahuah, there was only one route left for the Ships of Tarshish to return to Ophir from Israel – through the Mediterranean Sea. A much longer journey indeed, they were there and not Eziongeber none-the-less according to Jonah.

1 Kings 22:48 KJV Jehoshaphat made ships of Tharshish to go to Ophir for gold: but they went not; for the ships were broken at Eziongeber.

Psalm 48:7 KJV Thou breakest the ships of Tarshish with an east wind.

Now with proper context we can read the story of Jonah and understand it. Jonah is very direct in supporting that Tarshish is in the East ultimately certainly not in Spain nor Britain which do not fit Tarshish on many levels. Tarshish is in the same place as Ophir, a 3-year round trip journey from the Red Sea to the East and they would both have to prove they are Ophir as well. Notice how deliberate Jonah is in this account. It will make one realize just how brilliantly the Bible is written in fact and how foolish man’s attempts at interpretation can be at times.

Jonah 1:1-3 KJV Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me. But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.

It is true Joppa is on the West Coast of Israel on the Mediterranean Sea and Jonah boarded a ship there which was headed to the Biblical Tarshish. However, since when does the Bible ever disagree with itself? We have found never. All such supposed contradictions are from those

who are challenged in their understanding so let us not blame that on the Bible. They are all easily explained. This is one of those cases. Was Jonah seeking the most efficient route here? Was he a merchant? No. Jonah was running from Yahuah and he wanted to go as far as possible. So, he chose a ship heading to the Far East. Notice, he is going to a physical Tarshish as well and also remember, there is no Red Sea Port option in this era as it was destroyed. Well, fortunately for Jonah, he was stopped in his tracks soon after.

Jonah 1:17 KJV Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

We know in Sunday school we are told this was a whale. However, it says simply great fish. Whatever it was Jonah survived in it’s belly for three days and nights. We have no hesitation in positing a thought on this however. Science has proven a man could not likely survive in a whale’s stomach and it leaves scholars with no answer. So consider this as a theory on this side note. This would have to be a sea creature with the capacity for Jonah to breath while inside it’s inners and large enough to support a man. This stumps the best of scholars if they are honest about it. Our theory is this may have been, and we cannot prove this, Leviathan, the great sea creature recorded in the Book of Job as living at the bottom of the sea but also breathing fire. This requires oxygen within his apparatus and he was massive in size thus it would make sense that Yahuah sent Leviathan over to swallow Jonah. Again, we cannot prove that as we have yet to see Leviathan but it does make sense. No, he is not a spirit nor demon and Yahuah created him according to scripture.

Jonah 2:10-3:3 KJV And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land. And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days’ journey.

Photo: 1532 Grynaeus’s Novus Orbis Regionum Map with our Jonah additions. Jonah must travel around Africa to fit his story. Public Domain.

What many scholars are missing here is that there are two separated three-day periods in the narrative. Jonah survived in the belly of the creature for three days and nights but then once spit up on shore, Jonah preserves this location. Some read this very backwards when they claim that this passage documents the city of Nineveh as being so large that it represented a three-day journey from one end to the other. The challenge with that kind of thinking is it defies the archaeology we have which demonstrates Nineveh as a large city for that day but no where near that size. It was “within an area of 750 hectares (1,900 acres) circumscribed by a 12-kilometre (7.5 mi) brick rampart.” [396] That is not even a day journey whether alone three. It’s walled in so this measure is pretty

accurate. What Jonah exacts in this passage with sagacity preserves the path of his voyage and the location of Tarshish. This is noting a three-day journey from that drop-off point to Nineveh and that perfectly fits only one place on earth. Jonah was ejected on the shores of the Persian Gulf by the Tigris/Euphrates mouth which dumps into the Gulf. If one were to test this, it actually proves itself out quickly. If Jonah was only headed to Spain or Britain, then he would have been swallowed in the Mediterranean Sea which is certainly not known for the severe tempests over the ocean like this. Then, he would be delivered back to somewhere on the East Coast of the Mediterranean. We challenge everyone to review this on a map and you will find there are no great water routes unless you get to the Euphrates but then you still have to get over to the Tigris and the distance is far. To get to the water, one would likely use the camel, which is capable of travelling an average of 30-40 km (18-25 miles) per day. To journey the 191 miles just to get to the Euphrates River, that’s already 7.5 days and you have hardly begun the excursion. Go ahead and triple the speed of the camel and it still cannot work. Once on the river, things would go smoother with 2 days to travel the 424 miles to get to the Tigris River and then another day to travel up the Tigris to Nineveh. That is 10.5 days if all goes smoothly and go ahead and cut it in half assuming our estimate is conservative and still it does not work. Some attempt to inject a sort of transfiguration here in this case and when one does so, they abandon logic burdening a narrative with a massive miracle requirement which Jonah would have no issue mentioning another if it occurred as he was swallowed by a fish and a storm calmed. What’s a little transfiguration? One might as well inject, what if a space ship landed? The reason this does not work is because Jonah wanted us all to know Tarshish is not near the Mediterranean. The ship to Tarshish would have exited the Mediterranean, curved around the coast of Africa all the way into the Indian Ocean and there Jonah would be swallowed. He would be deposited on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates mouth at the Persian Gulf, which is exactly a 3-day journey up the Tigris to Nineveh. How did we miss this for so many years? No matter. Let us restore His Word. As we do, we will all find we can believe it – all of it.

Who is Tarshish?

Genesis 10:2 KJV The sons of Japheth; Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras.

The sons of Joktan – Ophir, Sheba and Havilah are all from Noah’s son Shem. However, Tarshish is from Japheth. How does he enter this narrative of the journey to Ophir? The only Tarshish mentioned in Genesis 10 is this one.

Genesis 10:4-5 KJV And the sons of Javan; Elishah, and Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim. By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations.

Tarshish is the son of Javan, the father of Greece according to history and the Book of Jubilees. Along with his brothers, he inherited the Greek isles very accurately termed the isles of the Gentiles in Genesis 10. However, if we are to follow the supposed history which ignores the Bible and makes unsupported assumptions often times, we would believe no one had ships back in 2200 B.C. We have not found any ships that would credibly date back that far indeed. However, the thinking it would be preserved that long is not reasonable except in extremely rare cases. However, what good would inheriting isles be if you could not travel there. They got to their inheritance somehow and they were not that great of swimmers. We are actually expected to believe that Noah and his sons construct a ship of supertanker complex construction years before this and yet, they all forgot how to build a ship after the Flood especially with a large world ocean to cross now. Of course, they boated and had ships. Tarshish especially found a way to build something to get to his inheritance and this is how he enters the Ophir migration. We are certainly not the first to make such connection.

“And that this was really so, and that the principal settler of these archipelagoes [Philippines] was Tharsis, son of Javan,

together with his brothers, as were Ophir and Hevilath of India, we see in the tenth chapter of Genesis...” –Father Francisco Colin, 1663 [156]

With Tarshish arrived his brothers, the sons of Javan, the mariner family from Japheth as they were all returning to the land of Noah. The territory was given to the sons of Shem in Noah’s division of the Earth which Ophir, Sheba and Havilah were the ones to claim it but they needed ships to get there. Ophir, Sheba and Havilah lived in Meshad, Iran which in 1663, was a territory right adjacent to what was referred to as India (Afghanistan) still by many so it is not inconsistent for Father Colin to identify them so as they did originate in that region. This was not exactly a yachting area and certainly not one possessing vessels which could cross the sea but Tarshish and his brothers had ships. Therefore, Ophir and Sheba needed ships and Tarshish provided them. His payment for this endeavor carrying them back to their homeland would be to inherit a piece of that land logically as he certainly did according to scripture in order to have land in that region especially since Tarshish’s territory is no where near there otherwise but the Greek isles. David mentions ships and kings of Tarshish two times before Solomon’s reign before his navy even began construction (Ps. 48:7, 72:10). Both are prophesies that Tarshish will bring gifts to Messiah with Ophir and Sheba and it’s ships destroyed. Rome did not benefit from this knowledge so easily as this was established by Israel with Phoenicia managing the route. Greece inherited this and, as they represent Tarshish’s family. That makes sense. Tarshish is Mindanao, Philippines as it is mapped as the Greek land of silver, Argyre (The Hebrew Tarshish) especially on the 1492 Portuguese globe of Behaim just South of Luzon/Chryse. Mindanao also tests as the only place in the Philippines which fully aligns with Tarshish in resources especially due to tin.

REVIEW OUR SOURCES:

Download our complete, comprehensive Sourcebook at: www.thegodculture.com.