The biblical character of Jonas is an eloquent ex ample of the scope of reformed poetics in the 16th century. While Jonas is still typologized as a harbinger of Christ and the redemption, his prayer gives rise to lyrical retellings which are at once a personal and a collective appropriaion of the figure of the man chosen for salvation, within a new form of biblical hermeneutics combined with poetics inherited from Marot and Beza. Jonas is equally celebrated as the bearer of the Word of God, and as the foremost prophet of penitence. Aubigné succeeded in transforming the Calvinist scheme of divine voca tion, with a prophetic function that the chosen one first chal lenges then faces up to, into a complex human portrait which is both original and typically reformed, in which God’s chosen prophet is also a poet with a preaching mission.