From: "Andrew Bollen" 
Subject: (urth) Sign from the fish's belly
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 2003 00:36:10 +1100

I asked this:

--- Marble prophesies for Horn regarding the community (at the beginning of
OBW): "The city searches the sky for a sign, but no sign shall it have but
the sign from the fish's belly."  Anybody have an explanation for this?

I think the answer is:

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[Matthew 16]
The Pharisees and Sadducees came to Jesus and tested him by asking him to
show them a sign from heaven. 2 He replied, 'When evening comes, you say,
`It will be fair weather, for the sky is red,' 3 and in the morning, `Today
it will be stormy, for the sky is red and overcast.' You know how to
interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of
the times. 4 A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a miraculous sign,
but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah.'
----------------------------------------

Or repeated:

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[Matthew 12:38-40]
Then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, 'Teacher, we
want to see a miraculous sign from you.' 39 He answered, 'A wicked and
adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it
except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40 For as Jonah was three days and
three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three
days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
----------------------------------------

So it seems clear that "sign from the fish's belly" = "sign of Jonah". (I
take it that Marble is repeating a phrase from the Chras writings here.)

Googling reveals a whole bunch of varied ravings about the meaning of the
sign of Jonah, but maybe this:

- Jonah's  3 days in the belly of the fish as a prefigurement of Jesus'
death & resurrection. So should we think of Horn's time in the pit on the
island, or should we scrap the 3 days & nights and think of this as a
prophecy of SilkHorn's return to straighten things out in New Viron - Horn
having "died" and been "reborn"?

- After he is disgorged by the whale, Jonah goes to preach repentance to the
heathen city of Nineveh. Suprisingly, all 120,000 of them immediately do so,
covering themselves with ashes & sack-cloth etc. (Jonah is pissed, because
he was hoping Yahweh would do some serious smiting, Nineveh being an enemy
to Israel.) So the imagery is maybe the conversion of all a whole nation to
righteousness, after the "death" and "resurrection" of the prophet.




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