[4] Both Taylor and Mapple fused Biblical imagery and colloquial language to deliver "anecdotal sermons to rough sailor congregations while perched theatrically on an elevated pulpit decorated with ship gear and backed by a wall painting of a seascape."
[6] In chapters 7-9, Ishmael, a sailor about to sail for Nantucket where he will embark on a whaling voyage with Captain Ahab on the Pequod, goes to the Whaleman's Chapel in New Bedford.
"[8] Jonah, Mapple begins, refuses God's commandment to go to the city of Nineveh and prophesy against rampant sin but instead tries to flee by taking passage on a ship.
The sailors know from merely looking at him that Jonah is some sort of fugitive: "Jack, he's robbed a widow;" or, "Joe, do you mark him; he's a bigamist;" or, "Harry lad, I guess he's the adulterer that broke jail in old Gomorrah, or belike, one of the missing murderers from Sodom.
How being an anointed pilot-prophet, or speaker of true things ... Jonah, appalled at the hostility he should raise, fled from his mission, and sought to escape his duty and his God ...
In addition to the twelve quotations from the book of Jonah which appear in the first part of his sermon, he uses Biblical idioms such as "cast him forth", and "spake unto the fish.
[10] "The ribs[a] and terrors in the whale, Arched[b] over me a dismal gloom[c], While all God's sun-lit waves rolled by, And left me deepening down to doom[d].
"With speed he flew to my relief, As on a radiant dolphin[h] borne[i]; Awful, yet[j] bright, as lightning shone The face of my Deliverer God.
2 Death, and the terrors of the grave, Spread over me their dismal shade; While floods of high temptations rose, And made my sinking soul afraid.
While some of the changes are purely stylistic improvements, the whole exercise demonstrates the author's "ability to keep within the framework of his source while substituting particularized relevant material.
"[13] While adhering to the meter and rhyme scheme of the original, the second stanza (the hymn's first stanza), is almost completely rewritten to reflect Jonah's situation as stated in the King James Version of the Book of Jonah, especially 2:3: "For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves passed over me."
[2] Nathalia Wright emphasizes Melville's general use of Biblical rhetoric and tone, and that his "prophetic strain" is most distinct in Father Mapple's sermon.