Jonah 3

The calm submission of Jonah, and his instant recognition of the hand of God, plainly indicate a mind intensely alive to moral truth, and ready at once to sacrifice self to the declared will of God. We cannot, therefore, for one moment entertain the idea that Jonah was an apostate in any sense of the word. When the prophet himself was summoned to avert from that great enemy of Israel the anger of God, the effect upon his mind was to produce a conflict between patriotic feeling and conscience, which he could not silence. The conflict was quite natural; but the grievous mistake was, that Jonah listened to his own thoughts instead of to the voice of Jehovah. He reasoned that if Nineveh should be destroyed a great danger would be removed from the prospects of his own country, a great opoppressor of humanity would be justly punished, and the Divine righteousness would be exemplified. If he went and preached to the cruel city, the probability was the punishment would be remitted, and after a time the Ninevites would fall back into their old state of violence. But what had a prophet to do with such calculations? The question for him to ask was simply: “What am I commanded to say and to do?” It was a confusion in his mind of the political and the religious, which in such a man was inexcusable. He was lacking in faith, in enlightenment, in moral courage, in simplicity of trust in God, in broad sympathy with mankind and interest in the welfare of souls; but he was not an apostate, and had no intention of ultimately rejecting the commands of God. Hence he was entirely brought back to implicit obedience by miraculous preservation, which plainly said to him, “Thou art the chosen servant of God; even against thine own will thou shalt be the Divine messenger; spite of thy fears thou shalt by strong, and shalt be a sign unto all the world of the grace of God.” On the whole, in the flight of Jonah we trace the main feature of his character. He was a true prophet, a man of God, a devout man, waiting for the word of God, but he leaned too much upon his own understanding, and was lacking in faith. The purpose of the book is to show how such a character, with its infirmity and narrowness and proneness to error, is led by the gracious discipline and interposition of Jehovah from the position of a mere Israelitish prophet to that of the messenger of a universal love to the world. Radford.

3:1, 2 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. And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. And the people of Nineveh believed God; and they proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them. And the tidings reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he made proclamation and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: but let them be covered with sackcloth, both man and beast, and let them cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. Who knoweth whether God will not turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not? And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, which he said he would do unto them; and he did it not.

Chap. 3. Commanded a second time, Jonah goes to Nineveh and proclaims its approaching ruin. The people and their king humble themselves and repent before God; He turns from His purpose and spares the city. H. C.

1-3. Jonah obeys the second commission to go to Nineveh. From Gath-hepher the distance to Nineveh exceeded five hundred miles. Nineveh was (as hinted by the Hebrew superlative here used, “great to God,” or divinely great) the largest city of the world, and was the capital of the mightiest empire then existing, the Assyrian. This empire existed from 1500 to 600 before Christ. In its flourishing state, Nineveh was greater than Babylon. Its walls were a hundred feet high and of great breadth, having fifteen hundred towers each two hundred feet high. The compass of the enclosed city was sixty miles, or three days’ journey. Great heaps of ruins at vast distances apart lie within the quadrilateral wall, which “may still be recognized, marked by a series of mounds in a regular line scattered over the plain.”

The mission of Jonah had two other beneficent purposes beside that of impressively warning Israel. God meant to bless the Ninevites themselves. Christ says, not only that Jonah’s strange experience was a sign or type of His own, but that through his experience Jonah was a sign unto the Ninevites. His experience of God’s judgment in his temporary burial, and of God’s mercy in his resurrection, specially qualified him to preach judgment and mercy. His own story of disobedience and punishment, told to the Ninevites, was a sign or embodied lesson to them. A still further purpose of God’s mercy now offered to the chief city, and therefore the representative of the Gentile world, was to convey a prophetic intimation of His future calling of the Gentiles, the offering of Christ and His accomplished redemption to all nations. B.

1. The second time. It is clear, from the fourth chapter, that Jonah’s inward feeling still revolted against the spirit of his message, as aiming at the good of the Ninevites; and so far the prophet was still wrong. But, on the other hand, his waiting for the renewal of the commission, before proceeding to execute it, was the dictate of a just humility. If, after the rebuke which he had incurred, he had gone forth at once as Jehovah’s messenger, as if he had done nothing to forfeit his high function, his conduct might have savored of presumption rather than of obedience. B. C.

We are not told when the second time was, but probably it was not long after the miracle. Weeks, possibly months, might elapse. But Jonah’s deliverance was, meanwhile, being proclaimed—certainly in his own country, probably elsewhere. The seamen might speak of it where they went. The miracle was assuredly a new revelation to the prophet. He was now better prepared for his mission. He might have been rejected. The new call was a sign of forgiveness and acceptance. Redford.

2. Jonah was not only to go as commanded, but he is specially charged to preach to that great and proud city what God should bid him preach—a charge certainly full of suggestions to all who are ever called of God to preach in His name. What have they to do to preach out of their own heart, to subserve some supposed interest of their own, other than that for which God sends them? H. C.

“Go, and preach,” says God, “the preaching that I bid thee”—that is, (1) “the preaching that I did bid thee when I first ordered thee to go thither; go and cry against it, denounce Divine judgments against it; tell the men of Nineveh that their wickedness is come up to God, and God’s vengeance is coming down upon them.” Or (2), “The preaching that I shall bid thee, when thou comest thither.” This was an encouragement to him in his undertaking, that God would go along with him, that the Spirit of prophecy should abide upon him and be ready upon him, when he was at Nineveh, to give him all the further instructions that were needful for him. H.

The more simply he repeats the stern, plain, short message, the more likely it is to impress. God’s word, faithfully set forth, will prove itself. The preacher or teacher of this day has substantially the same charge as Jonah had; and the more he suppresses himself and becomes but a voice through which God speaks, the better for himself, his hearers and his work.

Speak it as if it were what it is—the Word of God, which liveth and abideth forever. Speak it as if you were what you are, neither its inventors nor its discoverers, but only its messengers, who have but to “preach the preaching which He bids” you. And to all the widespread questionings of this day, filmy and air-filling as the gossamers of an autumn evening, to all the theories of speculation, and all the panaceas of unbelieving philanthropy, present the solid certainties of our inmost experience, the yet more solid certainty of that all-loving name and all-sufficient work on which these repose. “We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness. And we know that the Son of God is come.” Then our proclamation, “This is the true God and eternal life,” will not be in vain; and our loving entreaty, “Keep yourselves from idols,” will be heard and yielded to in many a land. A. M.

3. The principal utterances respecting Assyria, and Nineveh, its capital, are found in the narrative and prophecy of Jonah, whose connection with Nineveh is still commemorated in the name given to one of the mounds opposite Mosul, Nebbi Yunus (the tomb of the prophet Jonah). It is from this narrative that we derive the historical description of the size of Nineveh—viz., as a city of three days’ journey, and the notice respecting its population. H. W. Philpot.

The most probable sense is that which, from the days of Jerome, has been generally given it—viz., a city of three days’ journey in circuit. This agrees with the notion of enormous size suggested by the preceding words, “a city great unto God.” We have a further notice of its magnitude in chap. 4:11, “wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand,” which affords ground for estimating the whole population at some seven hundred thousand; while the additional specification, “and much cattle,” points to there being within the circuit of the city large space for their keep. B. C.

Layard says (“Nineveh and its Remains,” p. 195): “If we take the four great mounds of Nimroud, Kouyunjik, Khorsabad and Karamles as the corners of a square, it will be found that its four sides correspond pretty accurately with the four hundred and eighty stadia, or sixty miles, of the geographer.” Investigations made upon the site of the ruined city confirm, in the most remarkable manner, the statement of Gen. 10:11, 12, that “the great city” was made up of the aggregation of four places originally distinct—Nineveh, Ir Rehoboth, Calah and Resen. Nineveh, in the narrower sense, was but one quarter or district of what came to be called Nineveh in its larger sense; just as the city proper is but a small part of what now goes under the name of London. S. S. T.

4. A day’s journey. One day’s journey.

Not, perhaps, going straight on, but moving about among the more frequented streets, the market-places, or other places of concourse to be found among the scattered population. Before he could finish one day’s journey, the impression made by his words among the people was so great, that he had no need to go farther. B. C.—In this great city Jonah went one day’s journey, a distance of twenty miles, repeating his single text, that after a respite of forty days Nineveh would be destroyed. He may have uttered his cry for many days consecutively, till his voice had reached all parts; or rumor may have carried his words whither he had not penetrated himself. The narrative does not dwell upon this, but tells us that within the stipulated time Nineveh had repented, and that its heathen people found grace and mercy. R. P. S.

The substance of Jonah’s preaching. Into the vast city Jonah journeyed for a single day, preaching as he went to the accumulating crowds. His text only is given us: “Nineveh shall be overthrown after forty days!” Of Jehovah, the true God, of His power and holiness, of His justice and grace, we know that He spake. But his words were warning words. He uttered no direct promise, and gave no special assurance to the people of Nineveh. He spoke only of the punishment that would follow their guilt, while he simply acquainted them with the great compassion and mercy of God. Only in the illustration of God’s mercy by his own marvellous story of deliverance, he gave them ground to infer that they too might be forgiven and saved from destruction. And they, wiser than the people of Israel, upon whom mercies and promises and warnings had been continuously showered for centuries, heeded the warning, instantly accepted and acted upon the inference. B.

There is an element of threatening in God’s most merciful message, and that the appeal to terror and to the desire for self-preservation is part of the way to preach the Gospel. Plain warnings of coming evil may be spoken tenderly, and reveal love as truly as the most soothing words. The warning comes in time. “Forty days” of grace are granted. The Gospel warns us in time enough for escape. It warns us because God loves; and they are as untrue messengers of His love as of His justice who slur over the declaration of His wrath. A. M.

We are not told that he used the miracle of his own deliverance as a credential of his mission, but we must admit that it is at least possible that he did so; nor is there any great improbability in the supposition that the fame of that miracle preceded him at Nineveh, and that it became the common accepted sign which God sent to the whole Semitic family of peoples about that time. And it must not be forgotten that the miracle is quite in harmony with the course of revelation, with those that had preceded it in Israel, and with the spirit of the time. Coming soon after the ministry both of Elisha and of Elijah, and being first sent to the same part of Palestine, it seems quite fitting that such a work should be wrought. The miracles of Elisha were of a wider scope than those which had hitherto been sent among the people. So this miracle is more adapted to strike the minds of the heathen than if it had been performed strictly within the limits of the chosen race. Redford.

There is no more striking proof of the moral grandeur of the religion of Jehovah than this mission of a solitary prophet from the petty kingdom of Israel to warn the great monarch of Western Asia that he and his city should perish unless they repented before God. P. S.

5-9. How the people of Nineveh responded to the warning message of Jonah. They received it as the warning of God. Led and directed by their king, to whom the words of Jonah were reported, they united in a national act of humiliation and confession before God. They abstained utterly from food and drink, from all toil and pleasure. From the monarch to the slave, they exchanged their customary garments for the rough and unseemly covering of goat’s-hair cloth, as a fitting token of their inward self-mortification. To deepen the visible impression, even the animals that were used to splendid trappings were covered with the same emblem of humiliation and grief. Nor was this outward demonstration all; else had no result of mercy followed. To fasting and sack-cloth king and people added importunate entreaty to Jehovah, and a “turning every one from his evil way.” Their natural conscience and the prophet’s teaching told them that the heart must be humbled, and its evil confessed, deplored and forsaken; that the heart must be cleansed and forgiven; that the heart must be turned with trust and desire to God, must seek and hope in His mercy. That they understood all this, though dimly, appears from the touching question which concludes the royal decree: “Who can tell but that God will turn away from His fierce anger, that we perish not?” There is faith in this question, joined as it is with their previous humiliation, prayer and turning from evil. God had shown His disposition to save by sending one to warn them. Surely He would have mercy if they heeded and rightly improved His message. And their heart was humbled, its evil confessed and forsaken, before God. Christ assures us (Luke 11:32) that “they repented at the preaching of Jonah.” And He applies the fact as a most impressive warning to the Jews He was addressing. B.

5. Believed in God. The phrase being the same as in Gen. 15:6. There is a certain pathos in the choice of the expression “believed in God,” rather than “believed what Jonah said.” It seems to betoken admiration for the simplicity of their faith, not without oblique reference to Israel’s unbelief. B. C.

God sent many prophets to Israel, and those well known among them to be mighty in word and deed; but to Nineveh he sent only one, and him a stranger; and yet they repented, but Israel repented not. Jonah preached but one sermon, and we do not find that he gave them any sign or wonder by the accomplishment of which his word might be confirmed; and yet they were wrought upon, while Israel continued obstinate, whose prophets chose out words wherewith to reason with them, and confirmed them by signs following. Jonah only threatened wrath and ruin, and yet they repented; but Israel persisted in impenitence, though the prophets sent to them drew them with cords of a man and with bands of love, and assured them of great things which God would do for them if they did repent and reform. H.

The change wrought will better be comprehended if we bear in mind the great susceptibility of Oriental races to emotion, the awe of one Supreme Being which is peculiar to all the heathen religions of Asia, and the great esteem in which soothsaying and oracles were held in Assyria from the earliest times. The appearance of a foreigner, who, without any conceivable personal interest, and with the most fearless boldness, disclosed to the great royal city its godless ways, and announced its destruction within a very short period with the confidence so characteristic of the God-sent prophets, could not fail to make a powerful impression upon the minds of the people, and this would be all the stronger if the report of the miraculous working of Israel had penetrated to Nineveh. Keil.

6. It does not appear that the king heard from Jonah’s own lips; but the word came to him through his servants. They testified to the deep, pervading conviction of the people, and the king at once believed God as his people had done. This record of him may well rebuke many an ungodly monarch who plants his foot upon the very idea of “a higher law of God,” and scornfully repels all authority higher than the mandates of his own will.

8. Nor beast. It strikes our minds as a piece of barbaric enthusiasm, showing, however, its passionate intensity, that the decree associates with the self-affliction of man the compulsory affliction also of all such animals as stood in close connection with man; but, like the mention in the next verse of sackcloth being put upon man and beast, it is a feature more likely to have been introduced into the narrative because of its being true to fact, than to have been merely invented by a writer of fiction. In reference to the beasts which are here alluded to, probably those animals only are contemplated which were wont to wear harness, such as horses, asses, mules, camels and draught oxen. In all ages men have been wont, on occasion, to put upon such animals trappings suited to the particular season, whether in rejoicings, or (as among ourselves) at funerals. B. C.

It is important to notice that the command to put sackcloth on their beasts and flocks, and make them fast, is a strong argument for the authenticity of the book. No such custom existed among the Jews; but it was a heathen practice. When Alexander had become barbarized, he commanded the horses and mules to be shorn as mourning for the death of Hephaestion; and Herodotus tells us that the Persians bewailed the death of Masistius in a similar way. R. P. S.

The proclamation also specially enjoins on all men to “turn every one from his evil way and from the violence that is in their hands.” So manifest is it that the law of justice and right is everywhere in the human mind, and that no heathen can be so blind as not to see it. This also is a stinging rebuke to men, who, under far clearer light than theirs, yet labor to extinguish this light, or, in the more fit and expressive words of revelation, “put darkness for light and light for darkness.”

9. The form of this question suggests that the king of Nineveh did not know that God would always forgive a penitent people. He had heard less of God than we have. But he could say, “Who can tell” (literally, “who knows”) “whether He will turn and repent, that we perish not?” On this assumed possibility he bases his call to humiliation, fasting, prayer and reform. H. C.

The description of the repentance of Nineveh has all the traits of truthfulness in it. It is just such a proclamation as Assyrians would make, bearing the marks of Eastern despotism and extravagance. And yet there is no attempt to represent the change as anything else than it was—repentance for the sake of averting Divine wrath. “Who can tell if God will turn and repent and turn away from His fierce anger, that we perish not?” Had it been the main object of the writer to present the heathen in a favorable point of view, one would have expected much more to be said about Nineveh and its adoption of Jonah’s religion. We are left to conclude that while Divine wrath was averted, yet it was more because God had pity on the great city than because they were converted from heathenism to anything like an acceptance of the Jewish faith. So in the whole book there is no attempt to paint up a narrative with historical exactness, as there would be in a fiction, because the spiritual intention of the book is uppermost in the prophet’s thoughts. There is enough of history to give the air of truthfulness to the narrative, and yet not enough to divert attention from the main substance of the whole, which was the prophet’s mission, and God’s revelation of Himself and His purpose through him. Redford.

They know not the issue, yet they neglect not repentance. They are unacquainted with the method of the loving-kindness of God, and they are changed amid uncertainty. They had no other Ninevites to look to, who had repented and been saved. They had not read the prophets nor heard the patriarchs, nor benefited by counsel, nor partaken of instruction, nor had they persuaded themselves that they should altogether propitiate God by repentance. For the threat did not contain this. But they doubted and hesitated about this, and yet repented with all carefulness. What account then shall we give, when these, who had no good hope held out to them as to the issue, gave evidence of such a change, and thou, who mayest be of good cheer as to God’s love for men, and hast many times received many pledges of His care, and hast heard the prophets and apostles, and hast been instructed by the events themselves, strivest not to attain the same measure of virtue as they. Chrysostom.

Our Lord said, Matt. 12:41: “The men of Nineveh shall rise up in judgment with this generation and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.” The example of the Ninevites could only serve to abash impenitent Jews on the supposition that they were real persons, who really acted in the way described. It is plain that our Lord felt the repentance of Nineveh to be a piece of true history, and as standing in this respect on the same footing as the journey of the queen of the south, referred to immediately after. But if the repentance of the Ninevites was an actual fact, the other occurrences related in the same book must be understood as being of the same character; for there is not a shadow of reason for supposing that the repentance of Nineveh was known to the Jews of our Lord’s time through any other channel of information; and, therefore, if it was to be believed that the Ninevites repented at the preaching of Jonah because the Book of Jonah affirms it, the same reason requires it to be also believed that Jonah actually went through all that experience which the book records. From the use which our Lord made of this particular part, we may certainly infer that He Himself regarded those other portions, to which He referred, as likewise strictly historical. H. C.

10. The result of their faith and repentance. The same that follows all genuine repentance and reformation toward God. The threatened evil of destruction was withheld. Their repentance changed, not the principles or purposes of God, but His actual dealings. God’s acts must change when His principles of action, which are immutable, require the change. The word repent, as applied to God, refers solely to His change of act consequent upon men’s change of heart. Here the removal of the threatened judgments was only the carrying out of His principles, which have ever been to show mercy and give deliverance to the humble and contrite. Let it be always carefully noted that God’s promises and threatenings are based upon the principles of mercy and judgment which govern His dealing with men. They are always and necessarily conditional upon men’s treatment of them. The promises are fulfilled and the threatenings withheld when men repent and believe; while the promises are annulled and the threatenings fulfilled when men remain unrepentant and unbelieving. B.

“God saw,” not their professions, nor merely their prayers, but “their works, that they turned from their evil way.” Of course, when they changed their moral attitude before Him, He changed His plan; turned from His purpose and spared the city. So He always deals with the nations of the earth. Works meet for repentance will infallibly secure the reversal of threatened and impending doom. God’s immutability is that of principle, not of plan and action. He immutably hates and punishes sin; hence, when a sinner becomes a penitent, God turns from threatened vengeance to free pardon. H. C.

This is ever God’s manner, when men change their deeds to change His doom; when they renounce their sins to recall His sentence; when they repent of the evil they have done against Him, to “repent of the evil that He had said that He would do unto them.” Search the Scriptures, and say if things run not thus as in the most ordinary course: God commandeth and man disobeyeth; man disobeyeth and God threateneth; God threateneth and man repenteth; man repenteth and God forbeareth. Nineveh, prepare for desolation; for now but “forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown;” but Nineveh fasted, and prayed and repented; and Nineveh stood after more than twice forty years. Generally God never yet threatened any punishment upon person or place, but if they repented He either withheld it, or deferred it, or abated it, or sweetened it to them; for the most part proportionably to the truth and measure of their repentance, but always, so far as in His infinite wisdom He hath thought good, He hath remitted somewhat of the threatened severity and rigor. Bp. Sanderson.

Among men, a good father, a just master, will treat son or servant according to their works and their state. When they wickedly transgress he is grieved and angry. When they repent and reform he is glad and pleased. Such a man is not called fickle and changeable in nature on account of those changing states. Because he has integrity and love in his nature as unchanging principles, therefore, as the ever-varying facts and scenes of life arise and pass before him, as the different acts and moral states of men are perceived, there are emotions corresponding with them excited in his mind. And are we to suppose that what constitutes a special perfection in the moral character of a man is an imperfection in God? Surely not. His mind is the one perfect mirror, reflecting, without the least distortion or refraction, every object, act, state, being, in the universe, just as it is. This is the heart and core of what we are now saying—that God morally regards us at any one moment just as we are. If we repent of all sin and grow into all goodness, His thought and feeling will rise with us; and as, repenting, He spared Nineveh, so He will spare us, and we shall live and not die. Raleigh.

So we might almost say that the purpose of this Book of Jonah is to teach the possibility and efficacy of repentance, and to show how the penitent man, heathen or Jew, ever finds in God changed dealings corresponding to his changed heart. The widest charity, the humbling lesson for people brought up in the blaze of revelation, that dwellers in the twilight or in the darkness are dear to God and may be more susceptible of Divine impressions than ourselves, the rebuke of all plumbing ourselves on our privileges, the boundlessness of God’s mercy, are among the other lessons of this strange book; but none of them is more precious than its truly evangelic teaching of the blessedness of true penitence, whether exemplified in the renegade prophet returning to his high mission, or in the fierce Ninevites humbled and repentant, and finding mercy from the God of the whole earth. A. M.

As to the point that there is no confirmation of such a change in the evidence of history, it is met by the fact that as yet we are quite unable to speak, with any degree of confidence, on details of Assyrian history. Moreover, as is well said by Prebendary Huxtable (in “The Speaker’s [Bible] Commentary”): “We need not be disappointed or staggered if no traces of the event be found. The staple subjects of the inscriptions, so far as they have hitherto been deciphered, are campaigns, conquests, sieges, building of palaces and the like; matters of barbaric interest, in which a merely moral or religious element is not to be looked for.” We may also lay some stress on the analogy which Prebendary Huxtable refers to: “That an outward profession of national repentance was treated by Jehovah as a ground for remitting the threatened overthrow, notwithstanding that it was both superficial and short-lived (cf. 1 K. 21: 27-29), was in accordance with the pedagogic character of the old dispensation, wherein external shows were very commonly made use of to represent in vivid symbol the actings of God’s justice and mercy, and thus to draw men on to that true spiritual repentance which it is the object of all Divine revelation to bring about.”

“Why should it be thought a thing incredible with us” that a heathen city should understand enough of the Divine character to believe that if they turned from their evil ways and cried out to Heaven for mercy, the threatened destruction would be averted? That such a fact should be put into God’s Book is itself a sufficient reason for the whole history. It has helped to produce repentance in many minds. It remained age after age both as a witness to

Divine forbearance, and as a warning to those to whom the Word of God came, lest “they who repented at the preaching of Jonah should rise up in the judgment and condemn them.”

The conversion of Nineveh, or rather the temporary reformation of the people and their rulers, was a great sign. It had an incalculable spiritual worth at that period. It coincided in time with the commencement of written prophecy. It gave the keynote to all the subsequent messages to Judah and Israel, and through them to the world. Is there anything improbable in miracles being included in the striking of that keynote? Was it not the case that at each important new departure in the history of revelation there were miracles? Miracles attended the deliverance of Israel from Egypt. Miracles surrounded the people in their settlement in the promised land. Miracles characterized the ministry of the two great prophets, Elijah and Elisha, who were preeminently the rebukers of idolatry and the restorers of the broken covenant. And when prophecy, during the latter part of the ninth century before Christ, came forth afresh, in a new form, as a direct appeal to the degenerate tribes of Israel, to fulfil their function as the witnesses of Jehovah to the world, when it commenced a succession of inspired messages which should be preserved to all generations as the voice of God to His people, what would be more in harmony with the whole method of revelation than such a narrative as that of Jonah, in which Divine sovereignty and grace were set forth with unmistakable distinctness and emphasis? Redford.

We see here the Divine Agape crossing the borders of Israel and offering salvation to “the ends of the earth.” This is an early voicing of the command, “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.” It anticipates the adoption of the Gentiles; it declares that the minister of God is a messenger of compassion to all men, and that the Church of God is a “holy catholic Church.” It sounds the note of Christian missions far down the ages, and lays deep in the very character and commands of God that noble zeal for evangelizing the world which in these latter days so largely possesses the Church. McCook.

The whole history of Jonah teaches—the book itself seems placed in the canon of Scripture to teach: 1. That from the earliest ages all races of men have been beneath God’s loving care, and that true repentance will always and everywhere be met by forgiveness. Jonah, the first of the prophets, was charged with this distinct lesson. The Jews of his own day greatly needed it, and we recognize it now as a prophecy and pledge of that larger mercy which in our day is offering the Gospel to all the nations of heathendom. 2. We see also the method of God’s mercy to the heathen. It is to send them living missionaries. The “word of the Lord” is not now to Jonah alone; it is to all the Church. And it is not, “Arise, go unto Nineveh;” it is, “Go ye and teach all nations.” 3. The history illustrates the great expectations which we may rightly cherish concerning the hardest fields of the heathen world. 4. We are instructed also in the religious use of fear. Its work is only preparatory, but it is often indispensable. Neither Jonah nor Nineveh would ever have done their duty if it had not been for God’s red-hot coals of fear. Yet even their fear brought hope. If God had mercy to warn them, they well argued that He might have mercy to spare them should they repent. 5. Read also in the record of Nineveh’s repentance the moral power of leaders, whether social or political. It was the example, the call, of the king and his nobles which hastened, extended and confirmed the repentance of the people. The humiliation, the prayer was made national, and God in answer gave mercies of national extent. 6. And, last of all, let us learn Christ’s own lessons from this history: “The men of Nineveh shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, a greater than Jonah is here” (Luke 11:32). Christ teaches in these words:

1. The survival of the soul. Nineveh has been in ruins for two thousand years, but “the men of Nineveh,” after the lapse of centuries, are still alive.

2. The prospect of a general judgment. In that last great court the men of the most widely separated ages shall meet face to face.

3. The Saviour’s standard of guilt. The guiltiest nations are those that have had the most abundant light, but have refused to turn from their national sins. It is the same with individuals. The deepest perdition is for those souls who have been warned and besought by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but have refused to believe God, to repent and pray. Consider the contrast between the privileges of the men of Nineveh and ours. They could say no more than this: “Who can tell?” They repented on a bare chance of mercy. We have all God’s promises, His invitations, His persuasions, His holy oath, His sure and celestial rewards. To us the messenger is God’s own Son, and the arguments of that messenger are His own love and blood and tears. Arthur Mitchell.

Other personal truths. 1. As God did with Jonah, He continues to do with imperfect disciples. In our disobedience, from wilfulness or prejudice or a fretful, repining spirit, He will in some way pursue us with kind chastening. And when the chastening has had its intended effect of submission, He will try us again on the points of previous failure or neglect. He will give us the opportunity to take up the work which we once declined, or from which we shrank. So He will restore our faith and strength and courage. 2. There is a limited period to God’s forbearance with every human soul. While the warning is heard, while the least sensibility remains, that solemn limit is not yet reached. But as sensibility becomes impaired, the soul more and more swiftly reaches that fearful limit which the Holy Ghost vividly describes in the words: past feeling! B.