Jonah 1:1-17 Part I. THE MISSION OF JONAH. HIS AND . Jonah 1:1-3 § 1. Jonah is sent to Nineveh to cry against it; but he tries to avoid the mission, and to this end takes ship to Tarshish. Jonah 1:1 Now; or, and. Some have argued from this commencement that the Book of Jonah is a fragment, the continuation of a larger work; but it is a common formulary, linking together revelations and histories, and is continually used in the Old Testament at the beginning of independent works; e.g. Joshua 1:1; Judges 1:1; 1 Samuel 1:1; Esther 1:1; Ezekiel 1:1. Jonah the son of Amittai (2 Kings 14:25). (See Introduction, § II) Jonah 1:2 Nineveh, the capital of the kingdom of Assyria, is first mentioned in Genesis 10:11, as founded by Nimrod. It stood on the left bank of the river Tigris, where it is joined by the Khosr, opposite to the present town of Mosul. The Assyrians had already become known in Syria. In B.C. 854 Shal-maneser II. had defeated at Karkar twelve kings confederate against him, among whom is reckoned Ahab King of Israel. Long before his time, Tiglath-Pileser I. had made a great expedition to the west, captured a town at the foot of Lebanon, and reached the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Jehu was compelled to pay tribute to the Assyrians; and Rimmon-nirari, who reigned from B.C. 810 to 781, held the suzerainty of Phoenicia, Samaria, Edom, and Philistia. Jonah, therefore, knew well what his country might expect at the hands of this people. That great city. It is thus called in Jonah 3:2, Jonah 3:3; Jonah 4:11; and the epithet is added here in order to show to Jonah the importance of his mission. The size of Nineveh is variously estimated according to the sense attached to the name "Nineveh." This appellation may be restricted to Nineveh proper, or it may comprise the four cities which lay close together in the immediate neighbourhood of each ether, and whose remains are now known as the mounds of Kouyunjik, on the southwest, directly opposite to Mosul; Nimrud, about eighteen miles to the southeast; Karamless, twelve miles to the north; and Khorsabad, the most northerly, about the same distance both from Karamless and Kouyunjik. Khorsabad, however, was not built till some hundred years after Jonah’s time. These cities are contained in an irregular parallelogram of some sixty miles in circumference. The following account of Nineveh proper is derived from Professor Rawlinson, ’Ancient Monarchies,’ 1:252, etc.: "The ruins consist of two principal mounds, Nebbiyunus and Kouyunjik. The Kouyunjik mound, which lies nearly half a mile northwest of the others, is very much the more considerable of the two. Its shape is an irregular oval, elongated to a point towards the northeast. The surface is nearly flat; the sides slope at a steep angle, and are furrowed with numerous ravines worn in the soft material by the rains of some thirty centuries. The greatest height above the plain is ninety feet, and the area is estimated at a hundred acres. It is an artificial eminence, computed to contain 14,500,000 tons of earth, and on it were erected the palaces and temples of the Assyrian monarchs. The mound of Nebbi-yunus is at its base nearly triangular, and covers an area of nearly forty acres. It is loftier, and its sides are more precipitous than Kouyunjik, especially on the west, where it abutted on the wall of the city. The mass of earth is calculated at six and a half millions of tons. These two vast mounds are both in the same line, and abutted on the western wall of the city, which was some two and a half miles in length. Anciently it seems to have immediately overhung the Tigris, but the river has now receded to the west, leaving a plain of nearly a mile in width between its bank and the old rampart which evidently once followed the course of the river bank. The western wall is joined at fight angles by the northern rampart which runs in a straight line for seven thousand feet. At its other extremity the western wall forms a very obtuse angle with the southern, which impends over a deep ravine, and runs in a straight line for about a thousand yards, when it meets the eastern wall, which is the longest and the least regular of the four. The entire length of this side is sixteen thousand feet, or above three miles. It is divided into two portions by. the Stream of the Khosr-su; which, coming from the northwest, finds its way through the city and then across the low plain to the Tigris. The town is thus of an oblong shape, and the circuit of its walls is somewhat less than eight miles, and the area which they include is eighteen hundred acres. This, at the computation of something less than one hundred inhabitants per acre, would ascribe to Nineveh a population of one hundred and seventy-five thousand souls" (Rawlinson, ’Anc. Men.,’ 1. Jonah 1:1-17). Cry against it. The message is given in Jonah 3:4. Thus the knowledge of the true God is made known among the Gentiles. Their wickedness; i.e; as Pusey notes, their evil doing towards others, as in Nahum 3:19 (see Introduction, § I). Is come up before me, and appeals for punishment, as Genesis 4:10; Genesis 18:20, Genesis 18:21; Septuagint, Ἀνέβηἡκραυγήτῆςκακίαςαὐτήςπρὸςμέ, "The cry of its wickedness is come up unto me." Jonah 1:3 Tarshish; probably, Tartessus, a Phoenician city on the south coast of Spain, and therefore in the opposite direction to Nineveh. He was sent to the far east; he flees to the distant west. From the presence of the Lord; literally, from the face of Jehovah. This may mean, from God s special presence in Jerusalem or the Holy Land, as banishment from Cannaan is called "casting out of his sight" (2 Kings 17:20, 2 Kings 17:23; 2 Kings 23:27); or, from serving the Lord as his minister (Deuteronomy 10:8), Jonah preferring to renounce his office as prophet rather than execute his mission. The former seems the most natural explanation of the phrase. Kimchi says that Jonah supposed that the spirit of prophecy would not extend beyond the land of Israel. He could never have thought to escape from God’s all-seeing eye. His repugnance to the duty imposed upon him arose partly from national prejudice, which made him loth to interfere in Gentile business, and partly, as he himself says (Jonah 4:2), because he feared God’s compassion would spare the Ninevites on their repentance, and that thus his prediction would be discredited, and mercy shown to heathens already inimical to Israel, if not known to him as the future conquerors of his people. Joppa. This is the modern Jaffa (called Japho in Joshua 19:46), a town on the seacoast thirty miles in a northwesterly direction from Jerusalem. "Jaffa," says Dr. Thomson, "is one of the oldest cities in the world. It was given to Dan in the distribution of the land by Joshua, and it has been known to history ever since. It owes its existence to the low ledge of rocks which extends into the sea from the extremity of the little cape on which the city stands, and forms a small harbour. Insignificant as it is, and insecure, yet, there being no other on all this coast, it was sufficient to cause a city to spring up around it even in the earliest times, and to sustain its life through numberless changes of dynasties, races, and religions, down to the present hour. It was, in fact, the only harbour of any notoriety possessed by the Jews throughout the greater part of their national existence. To it the timber for both the temples of Jerusalem was brought from Lebanon; and no doubt a lucrative trade in cedar and pine was always carried on through it with the nations who had possession of that goodly mountain. Through it, also, nearly all the foreign commerce of the Jews was conducted, until the artificial pert of Caessarea was built by Herod … . The harbour, howewer, is very inconvenient and insecure. Vessels of any considerable burden must lie out in the open road-stead—a very uneasy berth at all times; and even a moderate wind will oblige them to slip their cables and run out to sea, or seek anchorage at Haifa, sixty miles distant … . The road-stead is liable to sudden and unexpected storms, which stir up a tumultuous sea in a very short time … . The landing also is most inconvenient, and often extremely dangerous. More boats upset, and more lives are lost in the breakers at the north end of the ledge of rocks that defend the inner harbour than anywhere else on this coast." Went down into it; ἀνέβη [ἐνέβη, Alex.] εἰςαὐτό, "went up into it". Went on board; or, as Jerome says, sought a hiding place in the ship (comp. verse 5). With them. With the crew. Jonah had told them (verse 10) that he was flying from God’s service, but, knowing and earing nothing about Jehovah, they took him on board when he paid his fare, and thought nothing of his private reasons for joining them Jonah 1:4-10 2. Jonah’s foolish flight is arrested. In the midst of his fancied security God sends a great storm, and the ship is placed in imminent jeopardy. The crew try all means to save the ship, and at length cast lots to discover by this means for whose sake the tempest has been sent. The lot points out Jonah as the guilty person. Jonah 1:4 Sent out; Septuagint, ἐξήγειρε, "raised;" literally, cast forth, or hurled, a great wind, like the Euroclydon of Act 27:14, and what is called nowadays a Levanter. Pusey quotes Josephus’s account of the harbour of Joppa and the neighbouring sea, which, he says, is rendered very dangerous by the sudden rise of "the black north wind" (’Bell. Jud.,’ 3.9. 3). Here we see wind and storm fulfilling God’s word (Psalms 148:8). As Tertullian says— "Si Dominum in terris fugiens, invenit in undis." "Flying the Lord on earth, he found him in the sea." Was like to be broken; literally, thought to be dashed in pieces. Wordsworth contrasts the living consciousness and apprehension of the ship with the lethargy of the prophet now lying fast asleep in the hold (Acts 27:5). Septuagint, ἐκινδύνευετοῦσυντριβῆναι, "was in danger of being broken up." Jonah 1:5 The mariners (mallachim). Those who have to do with the salt sea. The word is used by Ezekiel (Ezekiel 27:9, Ezekiel 27:27, Ezekiel 27:29). Cried every man unto his god. They were either Phoenicians from different localities, or men of various nations; hence the multiplicity of their gods. The heathen are represented throughout the book as devout and sincere according to their lights. They cast forth the wares; Septuagint, ἐκβολὴνἐποήσαντοτῶνσκευῶν, "cast out the furniture, or wares," as Acts 27:18,Acts 27:19; Vulgate, miserunt vasa. They threw overboard probably both all spare tackling and movables, and the cargo. The freight may have been corn, which was exported in considerable quantifies from Joppa (comp. Ezekiel 27:17), or manufactured articles from Tyre, which were exchanged with Spain for silver and other metals. To lighten it of them; literally, to lighten from against them; i.e. to ease the ship of its burden, or to ease them of their trouble, is Exodus 18:22. The LXX. takes the former interpretation, τοῦκουφισθῆναιἀπαὐτῶν, "that it might be lightened of them;" Vulgate, ut alleviaretur ab eis. The sides of the ship. The innermost parts (interiora, Vulgate) of the ship; τὴνκοίλην; "the hold". Jonah hid himself there before the storm arose. The Hebrew word for "ship" (sephinah) is found nowhere else, and, probably from its derivation (saphan, "to cover"), implies that the vessel was decked. He lay, and was fast asleep; ἐκάθευδεκαὶἔρεγχε, "was asleep and snoring,"; dormiebat sopore gravi (Vulgate). The word used implies a very deep sleep, as that of Sisera (Judges 4:21) or of the Assyrians (Psalms 76:6). He was fatigued and worn out with mental anxiety, and now being, as he thought, secure, and longing for solitude, he lay down to sleep, unconscious of danger. Contrast this sleep in the storm with that of Christ (Mark 4:38), and that of the apostles who slept for sorrow (Luke 22:45). Jonah 1:6 The shipmaster; literally, the chief of the ropemen; Vulgate, gubernator; Septuagint, ὁπρωρεύς, "the look out man." The captain. What meanest thou, O sleeper? How canst thou sleep so soundly when our danger is so imminent? If thou canst help us in no other way, at least ask the aid of Heaven. It was the duty of a prophet of the Lord to take the lead in prayer; but here the prophet’s stupor is rebuked by the heathen’s faith. Call upon thy God. The sailors’ prayers had not been answered, and they arouse Jonah, noting something special about him, perhaps his prophet’s dress, or observing that he was an Israelite, and therefore a worshipper of Jehovah, of whose power they had heard. If so be that God will think upon us. They use the word "God" with the article, ha Elohim, as if they had, in spite of their Polytheism, a dim notion of one supreme Deity. Vulgate, Si forte recogitet Deus de nobis; Septuagint, ὅπωςδιασώσηὁΘεὸςἡμᾶς, "that God may save us." From the apparent use, of the Hebrew word (ashath) in Jeremiah 5:28 in the sense of "shining," some translate here, "if perchance God will shine upon us," i.e. be favourable to us. But the meaning given in the Anglican Version is best supported. So the psalmist says, "The Lord thinketh upon me" (Psalms 40:17), implying that God succours and defends him. Jonah 1:7 Finding the storm still violent, the crew come to the conclusion that it is sent by Heaven in punishment of some crime committed by one on board; and they proceed to cast lots to discover the guilty person. Jonah doubtless had meantime complied with the captain’s request, but, as the sailors saw, without visible effect. The belief that temporal calamities are often connected with the presence of culprits, and are sent in judgment, is found in classical authors. Thus Plautus, ’Rudena,’ 2:21— "Pol minume miror, navis si fracta est tibi, Scelus te et sceleste parta quae vexit bona." "Little I wonder if the ship is wrecked Which carries thee and thy ill-gotten wealth." The misfortune of the Israelites at Ai was consequent on the sin of Achan (Joshua 7:1-26). Let us cast lots. Jerome says here, "The fugitive was taken by lot, not by virtue of the lots, especially of the lots of heathen men, but by the will of him who guided the uncertain lots." For whose cause; Septuagint, τίνοςἕνεκεν. The unusual nature of the tempest showed them that it was sent in judgment. Commentators cite the story of Diagoras told by Cicero (’De Nat. Deor.,’ 3.37). The lot fell upon Jonah. Proverbs 16:33, "The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord". Jonah 1:8 The mariners having, as they supposed, discovered the culprit, proceed calmly to investigate his guilt; amid the roaring of the tempest and the peril that surrounded them, they give him every opportunity of clearing himself or confessing his crime. For whose cause. Some manuscripts of the Hebrew and the Greek omit this clause as unnecessary; but, as Keil remarks, it is not superfluous, the sailors thereby wishing to induce Jonah to confess his guilt with his own mouth. In their excitement they crowd question upon question, asking him about his business, his journey, his country, his parentage. Jerome notes the pregnant brevity of these inquiries, and compares Virgil, ’AEneid,’ 8.112, etc.— "Juvenes, quae causa subegit Ignotas tentare vias? quo tenditis? inquit. Qui genus? unde domo? pacemne huc fertis an arma?" "Warriors, what cause constrained you thus to tempt A path untrodden? Whither are ye bound? What is your race? Where dwell ye? Peace or war, Come ye to bring?" (Comp. Hom; ’Od.,’ 1:170) What is thine occupation? His occupation, they thought, might have been one to excite the wrath of the gods; or his country and family might have been exposed to the hatred of Heaven; hence the succeeding questions. Jonah 1:9 I am an Hebrew. This is the name used by foreigners in speaking of Israelites, or by Israelites in speaking of themselves to Gentiles (see Genesis 14:13; Genesis 39:14; Genesis 41:12; Exodus 1:16; 1 Samuel 4:6, for the former use; and for the latter, Genesis 40:15; Exodus 2:7; Exodus 3:18). Convinced that God had miraculously pointed him out as the culprit on whose account the storm was sent, and goaded by the stings of conscience, Jonah loses all his previous indecision and spiritual stupor, and in a manly and straightforward way confesses the truth without disguise. The LXX; reading differently, renders, ΔοῦλοςΚυρίουεἰμὶἐγώ, "A servant of Jehovah am I." This makes a tautological statement with the next words, and leaves one of the sailors’ questions unanswered. I fear the Lord. I worship, reverence Jehovah, who is not a local deity like the false gods whom you adore, but the Creator of heaven and earth, the Maker and Ruler of sea and dry land. So Abraham calls the Lord the God of heaven (Genesis 24:7), and Daniel (Daniel 2:37, Daniel 2:44) uses the same expression (comp. Psalms 96:5; Jeremiah 10:11). Jonah 1:10 Exceedingly afraid. They understand now the greatness of Jehovah and the terrible risk incurred by one who offends him. There was a widespread acknowledgment of the power of Jehovah among the heathen (see Exodus 15:15; Joshua 5:1; 1 Samuel 4:7; and comp. Judith 5:21). Why hast thou done this? better, What is this that thou hast done? (Genesis 3:13). This is not a question of inquiry, for he had already told them that he had fled from the presence of the Lord; but rather an exclamation of horror and amazement at his folly and sin. That one who worshipped the Almighty Creator should disobey his command seemed to them outrageous and inexcusably criminal. The prophet does not spare himself in giving the history of the transaction. To be thus rebuked by heathen sailors must have added to the poignancy of his remorse. The presence of the Lord (see note on Jonah 1:3). Jonah 1:11-16 § 3. On hearing. Jonah’s confession, the sailors appeal to him, as a worshipper of Jehovah, to tell them what to do to him that the storm may cease. He bids them cast him into the sea, which, after some demur and after renewed efforts to escape, they proceed to do. Upon this the storm immediately abates. Jonah 1:11 What shall we do unto thee? They recognize that the tempest was sent as a judgment on account of Jonah’s sin; at the same time, believing him to be a prophet of Jehovah, under whose wrath they were suffering, they ask his advice in this emergency; if it was a crime to receive him, what shall they do to him to expiate the offence and to appease the anger of God? That the sea may be calm unto us; literally, may be silent from upon us, so as no longer to bear down upon us. Wrought, and was tempestuous; literally, was going and was tempestuous; Septuagint, Ἐπορεύετοκαὶἐξήγειρεμᾶλλονκλύδωνα, "The sea was moving and lifting the surge still more;" Vulgate, ibat et intumescebat. That is, according to the Hebrew idiom, "grew more and more tempestuous" (comp. Exodus 19:19; Proverbs 4:18). Jonah 1:12 Jonah, brought to a better mind, perhaps divinely inspired, pronounces his own sentence. "I know," he says, "that the fault is mine, and deserves death, therefore take me up, and cast me forth into the sea." He will not he his own executioner, but will patiently bear a death righteously inflicted by others, whoso safety he was endangering by his continued presence. Jonah 1:13 The generous sailors, however, are loth to execute this sentence on a prophet of the Lord, and make a supreme effort to reach the land, and thus obviate this severe alternative. Rowed hard; literally, digged (Job 24:16; Ezekiel 12:7); Septuagint, παρεβιάζοντο, "used violent efforts." They endeavoured to force their way through the waves with oars, as the use of sails was impracticable. The expression is like the classical phrases, infindere sulcos, scindere freta, arare aquas, and our "to plough the main." To the land; to get them back to land. The wind was off shore, and they had taken down the sails, and tried to row back to the harbour. Τοῦἐπιτρέψαιπρὸςτὴνγῆν, "to return to the land". The sea wrought (see note on Jonah 1:11). Jonah 1:14 They cried unto the Lord. They prayed no longer to their gods, as before (Jonah 1:5), but unto Jehovah, the God of Jonah. Let us not perish for this man’s life. Let us not incur death for taking this man’s life. They seem to know something of the Noachic law that punished murder (Genesis 9:5, Genesis 9:6). Lay not upon us innocent blood. Charge us not with the guilt of shedding innocent blood (Deuteronomy 21:8). For thou, O Lord, hast done as it pleased thee (1 Samuel 3:18). The whole affair has happened according to thy will. The tempest, the lot, the sentence, are all the working of thy providence. The prophet throughout brings into prominence the contrast between the behaviour of these heathen and his own, and would teach his nation a lesson thereby. Jonah 1:15 They took up, with a certain reverence. Ceased from her raging; literally, stood from its anger; Septuagint, ἔστηἐκτοῦσάλουαὐτῆς, "stood from its tossing." The sudden cessation of the storm showed that it had been sent on Jonah’s account, and that the crew had not sinned by executing the sentence upon him. Usually it takes some time for the swell to cease after the wind has sunk: here there was suddenly a great calm (Matthew 8:26). Jonah 1:16 Feared the Lord. They recognized the supernatural element in the transaction, and conceived an awe and fed, of Jehovah, who had wrought these wonders Offered a sacrifice unto the Lord. Many commentators think that they sacrificed on reaching shore, as they had thrown the cargo overboard, and would have had no animal to offer. The Chaldee renders accordingly, "They said that they would offer sacrifices." But the text implies that they sacrificed immediately on the cessation of the storm. They may naturally have had some animal on board fit for offering. And made vows. Vowed to make other offerings when it was in their power. Henderson compares Virgil, ’AEneid,’ 3.403, etc.— "Quin, ubi transmissae steterint trans aequora classes Et positis aris jam vota in litore solves." "And when thy fleet hath safely crossed the seas, And, raising altars on the shore, thy vows Thou shalt perform." It has been supposed that these sailors embraced Judaism and became proselytes. At any rate, they showed themselves in the light of believers on this occasion. Jonah 1:17 § 4. Cast into the sea, Jonah is swallowed alive by a great fish, is whose belly he remains unharmed three days and three nights. Had prepared; Septuagint, προσέταξε, "appointed;" so in Jonah 4:6, Jonah 4:7, Jonah 4:8 (comp. Job 7:3; Daniel 1:10, Daniel 1:11). The fish was not created then and there, but God so ordered it that it should be at the place and should swallow Jonah. The prophet seems, from some expressions in his psalm (Jonah 2:5), to have sunk to the bottom of the sea before he was swallowed by the fish. A great fish; Septuagint, κῆτος (Matthew 12:40). There is nothing in the word to identify the intended animal, and to call it "a whale" is simply a mistranslation. The white shark of the Mediterranean (Carcharias vulgaris), which sometimes measures twenty-five feet in length, has been known to swallow a man whole, and even a horse. This may have been the "great fish" in the text. Was in the belly of the fish. God used the natural agency of the fish, but the preservation of Jonah’s life in the animal’s belly is plainly supernatural. It is, indeed, analogous to the life of the child in its mother’s womb; but it has besides a miraculous element which is unique, unless it was an actual death and revivification, as in the ease of Lazarus. Also God ordained this transaction as a type of the resurrection of Christ. Three days and three nights; i.e; according to Hebrew usage, parts of the days and nights; i.e. one whole day, and parts of the day before and after this. Jonah was released on the third day (comp. Matthew 12:40 with 1 Corinthians 15:4; and Esther 4:16 with Esther 5:1). The historical nature of this occurrence is substantiated by Christ’s reference to it as a figure of his own burial and resurrection. The antitype confirms the truth of the type. It is not credible that Christ would use a mere legendary tale, with no historical basis, to confirm his most solemn statement concerning the momentous fact of his resurrection. A city’s sin. By its very nature sin is individual, personal; for it is the estrangement of the spiritual being and life from God. Yet, as men live in communities, and as these communities possess moral qualities and habits determined by the character of the component units, there is such a thing as the sin of a tribe, of a city of a nation. This is more obvious when it is remembered that states are personified in their rulers and representatives, whose words and actions must be taken as those of the community at large. The Scriptures, from the record of the Tower of Babel downwards, exhibit national responsibility as connected with national error and unfaithfulness. Among the lessons of this Book of Jonah, this lesson regarding a nation’s moral life and accountability is not the least valuable. I. A CITY’S SIN IS WITH ITS . Nineveh was "that great city." It was situated upon the noble river Tigris; it boasted a splendid and ancient history; it was of enormous extent, being, according to the historians, eighteen leagues in circumference; it had a population reckoned by hundreds of thousands; in short, it was one of the greatest and most famous of the cities of the ancient East, and was the capital of one of the most powerful of kingdoms. Recent discoveries have familiarized us with the civic life of the population of the city of Nineveh. Yet the wickedness of Nineveh was great. Magnitude, population, wealth, luxury, splendour, power,—all are, alas! consistent with forgetfulness of God, and with rebellion against his authority who is King of kings and Lord of all the nations upon earth. How signally was this the case with pagan Rome! And are there not cities in professedly Christian lands, the abodes of power and of pleasure, whose sin cries aloud unto God? II. A CITY’S SIN IS OFTEN BY HUMAN , AND EVEN BY RULERS. The citizens take pride in their "gorgeous palaces," their "solemn temples," in magnificent public works, in stately ceremonies, in all the complicated apparatus of civilization, luxury, refinement, and enjoyment. The men in authority are content if outward order is observed, if regulations of police are respected, if the reports of health are satisfactory, if trade flourishes. But it is often forgotten that beneath this outward show of prosperity there may exist moral corruption and religious indifference, or even defiant infidelity. God may not be glorified; he may be hated and disobeyed. And yet no concern may be awakened, no contrition felt. III. A CITY’S SIN IS BY THE ALL-SEEING GOD. What graphic language is this, "Their wickedness is come up before me"! Under this old Hebrew idiom a great religious truth is discernible. Nothing escapes the notice of him who searcheth the hearts of the children of men. Not only so. God looks upon the sins of the citizens, not as a statistician or a politician might look. He is grieved with men’s irreligion; he is "angry," i.e; "with the wicked every day." We must not attribute to the Deity any emotions which would be unworthy of a human ruler. But it is not derogatory to God, it is honouring him, to think of him as distressed and dissatisfied with human rebellion, and to remember that his regard is that of a wise and righteous Ruler, who is concerned for the spiritual state of those whom he rules for their own good and for his glory. IV. A CITY’S SIN MUST BE MET BY A , REBUKE, AND WARNING. It must not be forgotten that men’s sins are often attributable to evil example, to common custom, to the force of habit, to forgetfulness and carelessness. For this reason is it needful that the preacher of righteousness should exhibit a just and lofty standard of national and individual virtue; that he should faithfully expose and denounce prevailing errors, follies, and injustice; and that he should remind men of their amenability to the tribunal of an Omniscient and Almighty Ruler. There is too little of this frank and fearless treatment of social corruption; the pulpit is to blame for this; and it is to be desired that Christian preachers should hear the Word of the Lord bidding them go and "cry against" the wickedness of great cities, and warn the citizens of the ruin they are bringing upon themselves. And above all is it important that the wicked should be summoned to repentance, and that the penitent should be directed to that Saviour who is the assurance of Divine pity, and the channel of Divine forgiveness, to all who come to him with contrite sorrow and with lowly faith. Fleeing from the Lord. There is something wonderfully simple in this language, and something wonderfully childish and naive in the action here described. Yet when Jonah, who should have gone eastward, turned his face towards the west, when he went down to the port of Joppa and took ship for Tarshish, though he was acting in a way sinful in itself and most disastrous for him, he was teaching for all time and for all readers of Scripture a lesson of human infirmity which is to us chiefly precious as preparing the way for a lesson of human repentance and of Divine forgiveness and acceptance. I. THE MOTIVE WHICH LEADS MEN TO WISH TO FLEE FROM THE OF THE LORD IS BAD. There are various impulses which may tend to drive men away from the all-searching eye of the Supreme. Some, like Jonah, may wish to avoid a service to which they cherish repugnance; for which, perhaps, they feel personally disqualified. Others may wish to hide their sins from One who, they know well, must regard them with displeasure. In any case, though the degree of culpability may vary, the motive is unworthy. The child should hide nothing from the Father; the Christian should never ask—Where shall I hide from thy presence? but should rather rejoice in the nearness, the interest, the favour, of his Maker and Saviour. II. THE METHOD WHICH MEN ADOPT IN ORDER TO FLEE FROM THE OF THE LORD IS ABSURD. Change of place cannot take us out of the territory of the Omnipresent King. Jacob found that when at Bethel; the Lord was in that place, though he knew it not. Jonah learned that God’s hand held in its hollow the raging sea; the same hand that fashioned the dry land from which he fled. It is now more common for those who would flee from God to betake themselves to the society of the profane, the licentious, the ungodly; thus they seek at least to banish the thought of God, if they cannot escape from his all-regarding eye. III. THE OF FLEEING FROM THE OF THE LORD IS OBVIOUS. That is to say, obvious to all who reflect upon the nature and the attributes of the Eternal. And it is well that all who are tempted to wish that relations between themselves and their Creator were suspended should reflect upon this impossibility. In God we live and move and have our being. We may forget him, but he does not overlook us. We may be out of harmony with his highest purposes, but we cannot cease even for one moment to be subjects of his kingdom, whether contented or discontented, loyal or rebellious. IV. THE OF TO FLEE FROM THE OF THE LORD ARE . In his favour is life. It is well to walk in the light of the Lord. They who depart from God forsake their true happiness. The presence of the Lord of all is necessary in order to strength and success in our work. A messenger from God above all men needs the consciousness of the Divine favour; for him to flee from God is to sacrifice his life, to throw up his vocation, and, except God have mercy upon him, to destroy his spiritual prospects. V. GOD’S AND MAY BRING BACK THOSE WHO TRY TO FLEE FROM HIM. The narrative tells not only how Jonah. fled, but how God followed him; how God did indeed chasten his servant, but did not forsake him; how Providence overruled his sinful conduct and secured his spiritual good. We need not despond, even if we have, as it were, turned our back upon God. "He restoreth our soul." He so reveals his grace that, instead of fleeing from his presence, we come to find in that presence fulness of joy. Nature and God. There is a Hebrew directness and energy in this language describing the storm which overtook the unfaithful prophet. Some would be satisfied to say that we have here simply a poetico-theological expression descriptive of a natural phenomenon. But surely the Hebrew idiom here employed is the vehicle of a great truth. The Lord does send the wind and raise the tempest; and the Lord also calms the waters and stills the storm. I. THE VIEW IS THAT NATURE IS A REALITY AND GOD A FICTION. Many scientific, and non-scientific, readers too will say—The storm did arise, but this was in accordance with natural laws, and there is no room and no need for the hypothesis of a Deity. Facts are facts, and regularities and uniformities are undeniable; but with explanations, with personal agencies, we have nothing at all to do. II. THE PAGAN VIEW IS THAT NATURE IS THE OUTWARD OF THE AND OF DEITIES. According to the heathen, the sea and the land, the woods and the fountains, had their several deities, whose actions accounted for all changes. In the tempest, Jonah’s fellow voyagers cried every man unto his god. The mood of the deity might vary, his purpose might change. III. THE VIEW lS THAT NATURE IS OF GOD, BUT IS VISITED BY A DIVINE . When all things proceed in an even course, it is supposed that there is no need to presume a Divine presence. But when anything happens which is unusual, this is taken to be an evidence of the interposition of a superior Power. The calm is Nature’s work, the storm is God’s. A capricious, arbitrary Providence is the superstitious man’s deity. IV. THE AND VIEW SEES GOD IN AND BEHIND NATURE IN ALL HER CHANGES. God is the Author of Nature’s laws. "The sea is his, and he made it; and his hands formed the dry land." Divine purpose, intelligence, wisdom, benevolence, are to the thoughtful and pious mind manifest in all the scenes and operations which Nature presents to us. We need not be pantheists, and identify God and Nature, in order to see and to glorify God in all his works. Danger and devotion. The conduct of the seamen, who themselves, when encompassed ’by danger and when threatened by death, both called upon their gods and besought Jonah to imitate their prayers and vows, may have been superstitious in its accessories, but it was certainly right in principle. I. DANGER REMINDS US OF OUR OWN . In the presence of the great forces of nature—the hurricane, the earthquake, the volcano—man feels his own physical feebleness and helplessness. He is mightier than all these forces in that he can think and feel, purpose and act, whilst they blindly and unconsciously work out a higher will. But in his body he is incapable of resisting, of measuring himself against, these tremendous powers. II. DANGER REMINDS US OF THE AND BREVITY OF HUMAN LIFE. By some "accident" from without, or by some "disorder" within, the life of the body will certainly be brought to a close. The lightning may smite or the waves may swallow up the healthiest frame—may close the most useful and beneficent life. The treacherous sea, as in this narrative, threatens to engulf the mariner and the passenger. To thee the love of woman has gone down, Brave hearts and true are gathered to thy breast? III. DANGER DRIVES THE SINNER TO SEEK GOD’S MERCY. To many the hour of peril is the only hour of prayer. Lips that have only used the name of the Eternal Majesty in ribald profanity, when white with fear utter that name in earnest entreaty for pity and for deliverance. When human help is vain, then the godless call upon the great Helper, God. How worthless such prayer often is experience sadly teaches. "The river past, the saint forgot." Yet it is well that men should be awakened, however rudely, from their self-sufficiency and false security. IV. DANGER DRAWS FORTH THE AND THE PRAYERS OF THE PIOUS. How many are the records of shipwreck which tell of the peace and trust, the fortitude and hope, of the true Christian, when those around have abandoned themselves to despair l He who believes the gospel knows that God "thinks upon him," and knows that he so thinks upon his own for good. It may be that an unexpected deliverance will be wrought; but it will be the case that, whatever the Father above may suffer to happen to the body, the soul shall be safe in heavenly keeping unto life eternal. A good confession. What an insight this story gives us into the life and habits of travellers in ancient times! Curiosity is always entertaining; but the inquisitiveness of these seamen bound for Tarshish, as they questioned their passenger regarding his occupation, his race, and his religion, is a revelation of their character, and affords an opportunity to the prophet to avow his religious faith. Jonah was not willing to obey God; yet he was not slow to confess God. There is much to admire in his language. I. IT WAS AN . God is to many little more than a name; religion merely a form of words. There are those who are satisfied to name the name of their hereditary deity. Jonah’s acknowledgment was accompanied by statements which prove his faith to have been something more than traditional. He described the Jehovah whom he worshipped as the God of heaven, the Maker of the sea and of the land. The words remind us of the opening of the Apostles’ Creed. To confess God truly is to recognize his attributes and his method of dealing with the sons of men. It is not enough to utter mechanically a form of words. II. IT WAS A BOLD . Instead of being alarmed by the dangers of the deep, the prophet seemed now to recover the self-possession which he had lost. In the presence of the angry elements and the anxious sailors, and above all in the presence of the Lord of nature and of man, Jonah confessed his God. Was there in this conduct something of the spirit embodied in the words, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him"? III. IT WAS A . "I fear the Lord;" i.e. revere, worship, and honor him. They who know him aright may well offer to him the veneration and adoration which angels delight to present. Who would not fear his great Name? Alas! that the name of God should ever pass irreverent lips! IV. IT WAS, HOWEVER, A WHICH WAS WITH THE PROPHET’S CONDUCT, AND WAS HIS . How was it that he, who so honourably confessed his God in the tempest, had fled from that God, and disobeyed his plain commands? Could he use this language and not feel that it censured himself for so acting as he had done? It is well that we should verbally acknowledge God, that we should sincerely confess his right over us. But it may be that when we recite our Creed, and make our confession, we shall learn to think of our frequent inconsistencies with the profession which we avow. The knowledge of God may bring us to the knowledge of ourselves; and confession may lead to penitence, and so to reconciliation. Self-sacrifice. Whatever difficulties the facts of this narrative may occasion in the mind of the reader, it must be admitted that it abounds with principles of the deepest interest and value. How could the lesson of self-devotion, of self-sacrifice, be more impressively taught than in the language of Jonah recorded in this verse? The unquestionable realities of federal human life, and of substitutionary suffering and sacrifice, are brought before us in a vivid and impressive form. I. DIVINE THAT THE WRONG DOING OF MEN SHOULD INVOLVE TO THEIR FELLOW . "For my sake," said Jonah, "this great tempest is upon you." No observer of human life can doubt that the greatest sufferers are not always the greatest sinners; they are often those who are brought into trouble, sorrow, and affliction through the conduct of those connected with them. The child suffers for the father’s sins; the wife, for the husband’s improvidence; the people, for their rulers’ selfishness and negligence. We may not be able to explain this fact, we may not be satisfied with explanations of it which other people accept; but it would show an ignorance of human life to question its reality. II. THE SAME THAT BY MEN SHOULD BE THE MEANS OF BENEFIT TO OTHERS. "Cast me forth," said Jonah, "into the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you." Here again we are brought into contact with an undoubted fact in human society. The sufferings, hardships, and self-denial of parents are the means of comfort, culture, and well being to their children. Great men benefit society by means of their labours, their self sacrifice. Few persons reap a harvest of gladness and peace and prosperity, the seed of which has net been sown with toil and with tears. It is the highest exercise of patriotism to devote one’s self to death for the country’s weal; and the highest exercise of benevolence, when called upon by duty, to die for the welfare of humanity. III. BOTH THESE ARE MOST IN THE OF OUR DIVINE . 1. The sins of men brought Jesus to the cross of Calvary. 2. The sufferings of Jesus bring men to the enjoyment of the Divine favour. "By his stripes we are healed." Jonah 1:13, Jonah 1:14 Effort and prayer. It has always been acknowledged that there was in the conduct of these heathen sailors something peculiarly generous. Although they believed themselves to have been brought into danger by the companionship of Jonah, although he himself invited them to cast him overboard and so secure their safety, this they would not do until they had exhausted every means of deliverance. I. IN TIMES OF AND DANGER WE ARE TO EXERT ALL OUR POWERS FOR OUR ESCAPE AND . There is a false piety which is true fatalism, which is content with prayer and indisposed to effort. But such is not the piety sanctioned in Scripture. Courage, effort, perseverance,—these are the qualities which are always mentioned with commendation. In fact, effort is the use of the natural powers with which our Creator has endowed us, the employment of the means which Providence has put within our reach. In striving for safety and for success men are honouring God. Endeavours may be unsuccessful, but it is better to fail while doing our very best than to fail by sloth and negligence. II. IN TIMES OF AND DANGER THERE IS NO SO PROPER AND SO AS PRAYER. The conduct of these heathen sailors, as here described, is beyond all praise. What they did was to put forth every effort for their own and their fellow voyager’s safety, and then to commend themselves to the guidance and the mercy of the Most High. With their slender knowledge they could not have prayed with much intelligence; but they prayed with much good feeling towards man, with much submission towards God; and with much fervour. The lesson is obvious. Whilst we can work it is well to work in a prayerful spirit, with dependence upon God. When we can no longer work, when human effort is of no avail, then it is well to call upon God and to leave ourselves entirely in his hands. Fear, sacrifice, and vows. Times of danger are often times of devotion; but times of deliverance are not always times of thanksgiving. It is to the credit and honour of these seamen that when the storm ceased they acknowledged Jehovah as the Author of the calm, as the God of salvation. Three aspects of religious exercise are here presented to us. I. . We cannot say that there was no superstition in the feelings and the conduct of these mariners. Probably the piety of most good men has an element of superstition. In any case, they feared the Eternal, feeling themselves to be in the presence and at the disposal of him who holds the waters in the hollow of his hand. II. . It was a thank offering, no doubt, which they presented. If they were sincere, this sacrifice was a symbol of the consecration of their whole nature, their whole life, unto God. III. Vows. Mercy experienced in the past should lead to the expectation of mercy in the future. The season of deliverance is a suitable season for resolutions and for vows. But be it remembered, "Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay." BY J.E. HENRY A despicable deserter. "God looketh on the heart." And none but God can. It is an obscure and tortuous place—"deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" Its chaos and darkness, transparent to the Divine Spirit, are impenetrable to any creature’s eye. Even the new heart is not all new. Persistent among the grace germs are bacteria of sin, inseparable and morbific. In Jonah this baneful combination is obvious. He neither loved God supremely nor his neighbour as himself. If he had, the action here recorded could never have been done, nor the feelings which prompted it have found a home in his heart. To fly from God’s service because it involved the helping of men is a course consistent it may be with grace, but only with grace alloyed, inchoate, and overlaid with the mind of flesh. I. IN GOD’S ARMY IT IS EITHER OR DUTY. "Jonah rose up, to flee from the presence of the Lord." There was a Divine presence from which Jonah was not so ignorant as to attempt escape. He shows familiarity with the Book of Psalms (Jonah 2:2-9), and doubtless knew with the psalmist (Psalms 139:7-10) that there was no place outside God’s omnipresence. But there was a special presence of God in the land of Israel. He was present in gracious hearts, and in the ordinances and offices of the Church. This special and gracious presence Jonah, like Jacob (Genesis 28:16), seems to have considered peculiar to the Holy Land. He had a notion probably that the institutions arising out of it were purely local also, and that flight to heathen Spain would break the spiritual connection and void his prophetic office. His flight was "not from God’s presence, but from standing before him as his minister … he renounced his office" (Pusey). And the act was logical in one aspect, however criminal. Enlistment in God’s service means something. It is not playing at campaigning. It is not a kind of spiritual antumn manoeuvres, which merely give spice to a periodical outing. It incurs responsibility and involves obedience. "I slept, and dreamed that life was beauty. I woke, and found that life was duty." That all must find who are spiritually awake. There is work for all, and his task for each. And it has got to be done. In the Divine code stand the regulations of the service, and they are not to be trifled with. Idleness is out of the question; insubordination is not to be named. Jonah felt this. "He rose up to flee." He could not point blank refuse, and stand his ground. Do something he must, when the word went forth. He will not preach, and so he has got to fly. It is so always. A man cannot remain at his post and strike work. The eye of the Master would look him through, and his presence compel obedience. The mutineer is in the same hour a deserter. He can maintain the one character only by adopting the other. Our spiritual duties arise out of our spiritual relations, and are at the same time their necessary expression. The alternative with us is "both or neither." Refuse God’s work, and you put yourself out of his service. II. BIGOTRY IS AN OF THE MORAL SENSE. Some think Jonah refused to summon the Ninevites to repentance for fear they might take him at his word. Their reformation just now would not have suited his views. As heathen he disliked them, and as wicked he could use them as a foil for wicked Israel. Nineveh penitent, on the other hand, after one Divine warning, would have contrasted strongly with Israel impenitent after centuries of prophetic appeal, and he dreaded the repentance which would have been the occasion of such a damaging comparison. But this is clearly an exaggeration of Jonah’s reeling in the matter. No prophet of God, no servant of God, could connive at sin against God in order to the destruction of men. To do so would be incompatible altogether with the religious character. Still, Jonah would have been more or less than a Jew if he had not been a bigot. He would not wantonly have compassed Nineveh’s ruin. But being a bigot, and an egoist as well, he was so indifferent to the fate of the heathen city as to be ready to sacrifice it rather than risk the lowering of his own prophetic reputation, in all this we see the tokens of a weakened moral sense. Bigotry is an unequalled hardener of the heart. It is narrow, cold, sour, and carping. It denies or belittles all good outside its own ecclesiastical circle. Whilst blind to extern religious excellence, it is indifferent to extern religious attainment. It takes covert pleasure in the sins and weaknesses of rival Churches; it would regard their failure and collapse with mean complacency; and it would almost as lief see men remaining in sin as reformed by effort not its own. The tendency to look every man and Church on our own things is a natural one, and grows. And it necessarily involves the other tendency, its universe, to look away from the things of others. This is the very antipodes of the "mind of Christ." That believes in the dignity of man as man. It sets a unique value on human life. It regards the question of a human destiny as one of stupendous interest. It makes the securing of it a personal concern. It never asks, "Am I my brother’s keeper?" for the fact is with it an axiomatic truth. Loving its neighbour as itself, its moral attitude inspires its active one—"do good to all." It regards life as wasted if not lived for men, and the time as lost in which it does not "save some." III. DUTY IS MOST IN DANGER OF BEING LEFT UNDONE. Jonah had an idea how his mission would end. As a prophet, he knew that Nineveh would repent, and on repentance be spared, his prophecy to the contrary notwithstanding (Jonah 4:2). And the prospect was humbling to his self-love. The affair could bring him little credit. He was simply to deliver an empty threat, a threat the utterance of which would serve God’s purpose, and so prevent the necessity of carrying it out. How was he to get up a prophetic reputation by performing such a task? Warnings heeded and predictions fulfilled are the chief credentials of a prophet. The first is both in itself and in its practical results, by far the more important. But the second is more of a personal interest to the prophet as involving his credibility more directly. Hence in proportion as he is "yet carnal" and self-seeking it will bulk more largely in his regard. A Paul could say, "We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord," and mean it thoroughly. But the perfect self-sinking of the apostolic rule was an unscaled height to the egotistic prophet. He wanted a name and official distinction more than the exhibition of God’s mercy and the reformation of wicked men. Accordingly, he refused to assume an equivocal position, although he knew, and because he knew, it would lead to these prime results. And servants his counterparts are still found in God’s work. The men who "do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame" no doubt exist. But the blushes traceable to this source are a small proportion of the blushes current. He has reached a high spiritual level who no lives to God that personal considerations are as nothing in his work. Position and visibility, to say nothing of considerations more sordid still, are elements in the situation, hard to keep subordinate, harder still to ignore, when the Christian worker is making choice of fields. A place in the most distant mission field may single out a worker from the crowd, and the missionary pioneer finds temptations to pose before the Church as strong as beset the brightest metropolitan star. The large giver, moreover, or the great organizer, has as many temptations to self-seeking as either. It is so through all departments of activity and in all the walks of life. The work that brings fortune and fame will have thousands competing for a chance to do it. The only duty in practical danger of being shirked is the duty to be followed into obscure places, and done with only the eye of God to note our faithfulness. IV. RETREAT FROM GOD IS , AND AIMS AT ENTIRE . Josiah started at a run. He evidently meant to get away, and threw all his energy into the effort. He went, too, in a direction exactly the opposite of the one in which he had been sent. God had said, "Go northeast," and he went southwest. He set out. moreover, for the remotest place he knew of, Spain being the "far West" of those early times. He went about it also in the most business-like way, going to Joppa, the great seaport, and booking a berth on one of the. great ships of Tarshish, to break which was the magnum opus of the east wind (Psalms 48:7). All which things are no doubt an allegory. The sinner’s drawing near to God is done at a snail’s pace. Loving this sinful world, he hangs back long before he starts. Answering feebly as yet to the drawing of grace, and breaking cord after cord in the tearing of himself away, the motion toward God at first is show and painful, like that of a weak oarsman against a rapid stream. But like a stone down hill, and drawn by mighty gravitation, the motion away from God is by leaps and bounds (Romans 7:19, Romans 7:22, Romans 7:23). You have seen at the docks the seamen straining at the windlass, as, after minutes of strenuous effort, they have pulleyed a bale of merchandise high in air. And you have seen, when they let go the winch, how swiftly the handle flies and, as the rope unrolls, the bale comes rushing down. And such is retrogression in contrast to progress in the religious sphere. So much more quickly do men fall than rise, that a few days’ backsliding is enough to neutralize the growth of years. Then so opposite to God is the sinful heart that its departure from him is absolute turning back. Swerving would be bad, aberration would be worse, but regression is worst of all; and such is religious backsliding. It is spiritual tergiversation. The renegade turns his back on right, and takes a way the very opposite. He obeys Satan and follows sin, the antipodes respectively of God and good. If God’s way be light, his is darkness; if upwards, his is downwards infallibly Then there is no spiritual half-way house. God in his mercy may arrest him on the way, but the renegade starts for Tarshish, the spiritual remotest point. A stone detached from the house top has no stopping place short of the ground. Turn your back on God and heaven, and Satan and hell are, humanly speaking, your destination. Moreover, defection from God is not an aimless drifting, but intelligent and of purpose. It is a course wittingly taken and studiously kept. The deteriorated moral nature presses head and hand into its service, to survey and construct the road by which it would reach the shrine of its chosen idol. At the Joppa of occasion, advisedly sought, is chartered the ship of ways and means, to bring us to the Tarshish of accomplished sin, the goal of our godless hearts. V. A MAN WILL ALWAYS FIND TO THE COURSE HE HAS TO TAKE. Jonah found a ship about to sail to his destination, got accommodation on board, and had the means to provide a berth. Things seem as if arranged on purpose to facilitate his flight. Had it been otherwise, we sometimes think the prophet’s "Hegirah" might have been stopped earlier, and a good deal of suffering saved. But that would be a shallow philosophy of human action. Physical surroundings cannot thus shape our moral course. Intelligence makes its own use of them all. Purpose is formed; action is decided on; and then the circumstances are examined to see what mode of action they can most easily be made to help. The ship, the berth, and the passage money to Tarshish were available to many besides Jonah, yet he only prostituted them to the purpose of shirking duty. They lent themselves to his project, because the project had, in the first place, been adjusted to them. So if a thief finds an open window, and no policeman in sight, the circumstances are said to favour a burglary. If a would be murderer finds the same state of things, then we say the circumstances favour assassination. But if a man who would neither kill nor steal finds them so, they favour no project of his, and so are either put right or passed unheeded. Circumstances favour neither good nor evil particularly, but each man makes use of those that fit his own purpose, and passes the others by. We hear often of wicked men who are the victims of circumstance. And there are some such, no doubt. But the cases are fewer and logically weaker than you might think. Here are two country youths apprenticed in town among a godless set. One turns out a profligate, and friends pity him and say, "He got into bad hands: what bettor could we expect in such a place?" But the other, with the Same surroundings exactly, turns out, as often happens, an honest tradesman and a godly man. And if you examine you will find that he has honest men for his friends, and Christian people for his associates, and enjoys beneficial influences in every relation of life. In other words, ha is in a new set of circumstances altogether, favourable to the religious life, and which his own conduct has drawn around him. The circumstances have not made the men, but the men have practically made the circumstances. And so we reason out the truth which God reveals, "To the pure all things are pure," etc. (Titus 1:15). We are greater than our environment. "Each man creates his own world The soul spreads its own hue over everything; the shroud or wedding garment of nature is woven in the loom of our own feelings. This universe is the image and counterpart of the souls that dwell in it. Be noble minded, and all nature replies—I am divine, the child of God; be thou too his child and noble. Be mean, and all nature dwindles into a contemptible smallness" (Robertson). "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." To you and me the world will be a new world when we are new creatures in Christ. It is not what it was, but a transfigured thing, when we view it "the eyes of our understandings being enlightened," and make all its elements tributary to a new life in Christ.—J.E.H. An effective hue and cry. We see here a man who ought to run for God endeavouring to run away from him, and also how he speeds. The flight was illogical, a fatuous attempt to get outside the sphere of omnipresence, as much of our sin is a practical endeavour to get, or imagine ourselves, beyond the cognizance of omniscience. And it was made in the blindness of egoism and carnal self will—the qualities which are generally to be found at the bottom of ministerial unfaithfulness to the message of God. A lorry off the lines attracts attention, when a whole train on them might pass unnoticed. A large proportion of the heterodoxy extant originates in or is exaggerated by a desire to catch the public eye. The evil it does to the souls of men will go on so long as there are nominal servants who have a private interest dearer to them than the Master’s work. And the personal disappointment and suffering and failure of the prophet are the experiences bound to be repeated in all cases of spiritual renegadism like it. I. THEY RUN HARD WHOM GOD’S CANNOT . Jonah scarcely hoped to get away from God. But he did expect to get away from his work. It lay northeast, and he went southwest. He was determined not to be near the place where duty lay, lest by any chance he should be compelled to do it. In this he succeeded for the time, and he succeeded still more fully in getting morally and spiritually away from the Most High. Not depths of sea or wilds of desert could have taken him so far from God as the moral elements implied in that flight. But he found that desertion, however possible, can never be satisfactory. God’s authority is not to be run away from. He makes storms his artillery, and thunders after the runaway. He makes heathen sailors his officers, and captures him in his flight. He makes a fish’s belly his dungeon keep, and puts him in durance there, Do not for a moment dream of evading God. If you run away from his spade, you run against his sword. You can run away from sobriety, but not from the white liver and empty purse and premature grave that drunkenness brings. You can run away from purity, but not from the debilitated frame, and the cloyed appetite, and the hell of a strengthening lust with failing power to feed it. You can run away from charity, but not from the heart hardness and bitterness and gnawing unrest of all loveless souls. Disobedience accomplished means judgment on the way, and judgment on the way means judgment ahead of the transgressor, and waiting for him as the angel for wretched Balsam (Romans 2:3). II. THE SENT AFTER THE GUILTY OFTEN FALL ON THE AS WELL. "Sin," says Chrysostom, "brings the soul into much senselessness." It brought Jonah to think that he could play off nature against its God, and escape him by the help of his own winds and tides. It brought him to pit one of the great ships of Tarshish—the East Indiamen of that time—against God’s east wind (Psalms 48:7). But mighty merchantman or tiny skiff, it is all one to the hurricane’s blast. The prophet, so far from getting out of trouble himself, got others into it (verses 4, 5). The sailors suffered fatigue and alarm; the ship owners suffered loss of freight; other vessels near suffered dilapidations; indeed, many interests were harassed before Jonah himself was reached. That is the rule with all sin. In almost every offence against the second table of the Law our neighbour suffers first. Then, after the offender begins to suffer, his suffering in turn involves the family and social circles in which be is. The spendthrift’s poverty, the debauchee’s disease, the felon’s disgrace, go down infallibly to children, and it may be children’s children. Sinning against God you are indirectly sinning against man, and sinning against one man, you are practically sinning against all his friends and all your own. Such a following of evils does the transgressor drag after him in an ever-lengthening train. III. THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN THE OF GREAT PUBLIC EVIL ARE OFTEN THE LEAST ABOUT IT. Jonah was the coolest man on board while the big storm was raging. It was due to him, sent after him, meant to arrest his thought and step, and yet, when hardy sailors were frightened, and ignorant heathen were driven to pray, the erewhile God-fearing landsman was making himself comfortable below, and curled up fast asleep. So the men who provoked the Flood were cool and calm about it, even when Noah and his family were flying to the ark. To the Sodomites also righteous Lot, preparing to fly the coming doom, seemed but as one that mocked. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/pulpit-commentary/ Jonah 2:1-10 Part I. JONAH’S PRAYER AND . Jonah 2:1-9 1. Jonah, in the belly of the fish, offers a prayer of thanksgiving for his rescue from death by drowning, in which he sees a pledge of further deliverance. Jonah 2:1 Then Jonah prayed. These were his feelings when he sank in the waters and while he lay in his mysterious prison; he may have put them into their metrical form after his deliverance. The grammatical arrangement, and especially the language of verse 7, seem to speak of a deliverance already experienced rather than of one expected. As this "prayer" does not suit an allegory, and as no cue but Jonah could have known its substance, we have here an argument for his authorship. It is rather a thanksgiving than a prayer—like that of Hennas (1 Samuel 2:1). When he realizes that he was saved from drowning, he uttered his gratitude, and saw that he might hope for further rescue. How he passed the three days we cannot tell; some have thought he was unconscious; but thin is, perhaps, hardly consistent with the notice of his praying, and with the action of his great Antitype, who, during his sojourn in the unseen world, "preached to the spirits in prison" (1 Peter 3:19). His God. He acknowledges Jehovah as his God. He had proved himself his by inspiration, by chastisement, and now by mercy (Pusey). The following prayer contains ample reminiscences of the Psalms, which would be familiar to a devout Israelite. Those quoted are mostly what have been considered to belong to David’s time. if their date is really ascertained. But it is a matter of controversy, incapable of settlement, whether Jonah or the psalmist is the original. Jonah 2:2 He introduces the prayer with the tact that he cried to God in distress and was heard. By reason of mine affliction; better, out of my affliction. This may be a reminiscence of Psa 120:1 or Psalms 18:6; but from such coincidences nothing can be established concerning the date of the book. Like circumstances call forth like expressions; and the writers may have composed them quite independently of one another. Hell (Sheol). The unseen world (Ezekiel 32:21). He was as though dead when thus engulfed (comp. Psalms 18:5). Cried I (Psalms 28:1, Psalms 28:2). Thou heardest my voice (Psalms 130:1, Psalms 130:2). Jonah 2:3 He describes his danger and distress. Thou hadst cast; rather, thou didst cast, the sailors being the agents of the Divine will. Septuagint, ἀπέῤῥiψας. The deep; βάθη, "depths"; Exodus 15:8. In the midst; literally, in the heart; Septuagint, καρδίαςθαλάσσης: galore, in corde maris. This defines more closely the previous expression. The floods; literally, the river. This may mean the current (as in Psalms 24:2), which in the Mediterranean Sea sets from west to east, and, impinging on the Syrian coast, turns north; or it may have reference to the notion, familiar to us in Homer. which regarded the ocean as a river. All thy billows and thy waves; πάντεςοἱμετεωρισμοίσουκαὶτὰκύματάσου "all thy swellings and waves"; omnes gurgites tui, et fluctus tui (Vulgate). The former are "breakers," the latter "rolling billows." The clause is from Psalms 42:7, Jonah transferring what is there said metaphorically to his own literal experience, at the same time acknowledging God’s hand in the punishment by speaking of "thy billows" (comp. Psalms 88:6, Psalms 88:7). Jonah 2:4 Jonah confesses that he at first fully expected death; but faith and hope soon triumphed over despondency. I am cast out of thy sight. This was his thought when what is mentioned in verse 3 happened unto him. The words are a reminiscence of Psa 31:22, altered somewhat to suit Jonah’s circumstances. The psalmist says, "I said in my haste." Jonah says simply, "I said," without any limitation; and for "I am cut off," Jonah uses, "I am cast out." Septuagint, ἀπῶσμαι—a strong term, implying banishment with violence. Out of thy sight; literally, frown before thine eyes; i.e. from thy protecting care. He who had fled from the presence of the Lord in Canaan fears that he has forfeited the favour of God. Yet I will look again toward thy holy temple. I will turn in prayer to that holy place where thou dost manifest thy presence. The Jews were wont to turn towards Jerusalem when they prayed. Some think that Jonah expresses a hope of worshipping again in the temple; but the turn of expression in the text hardly warrants this. Others refer the term to the heavenly temple, as they do in verse 7; Psalms 11:4; Psalms 18:6. Jonah 2:5, Jonah 2:6 In parallel clauses, Jonah describes still more vividly the horrors that surrounded him. Jonah 2:5 Compassed me about. Not the same word as in Jonah 2:3. Septuagint, περιεχίθημοι "was poured around me." Even to the soul; so as to reach his life (comp. Psalms 18:5; Psalms 69:1, Psalms 69:2; Lamentations 3:54). The depth closed me round about. The verb is the lame as in Jonah 2:3, translated there, "compassed me about" Vulgate, abyssus vallavit me. The weeds (suph); seaweed. Jonah sank to the bottom before he was swallowed by the fish. The LXX. omits the word. The Vulgate gives pelagus, which is probably derived from the fact of the Red Sea being called "the Sea of Suph," the term being thence applied to any sea. Jonah 2:6 The bottoms of the mountains; literally, the cuttings off, where the mountains seem to be cut off by the ocean floor; the roots of the mountains. Εἰςσχισμὰςὀρέων, "the clefts of the mountains"; Psalms 18:15. The earth with her bars; as for the earth, her bars were about me; return to it was shut out for me; the gate by which I might return was locked behind me. He adds, forever, as it was to all appearance, because he had no power in himself of returning to earth and life. Yet; in spite of all, I am preserved. From corruption (shachath); as Job 17:14; de corruptione (Vulgate); so the Chaldee and Syriac; Septuagint, Ἀναβήτωἐκφθορᾶςἡζωήμου (Alex), Ἀναβήτωφθορὰζωῆςμου (Vatican), "Let my life arise from destruction;" or, "Let the destruction of my life [i.e. my destroyed life] arise." Jerome refers the word to the digestive process in the fish’s stomach; it is probably merely a synonym for "death." The marginal rendering, "the pit," i.e. Sheol, is also etymologically correct (comp. Psalms 30:3). My God. He thankfully acknowledges that Jehovah has proved himself a beneficent God to him. Jonah 2:7 His prayer was heard. When my soul fainted within me; literally, was covered—referring, says Pusey, to that physical exhaustion when a film comes over the eyes, and the brain is mantled over. The clause is from Psalms 142:3 or Psalms 143:4. I remembered the Lord. That was his salvation (Psalms 119:55). He turned in thought to thine holy temple (Psalms 143:4), the sanctuary where God’s presence was most assured, like the psalmist in the wilderness (Psalms 63:2). or like the exiles by the waters of Babylon when they remembered Zion (Psalms 137:1-9). Jonah 2:8 Jonah contrasts the joy and comfort arising from the thought of God with the miserable fate of idolaters. They that observe (Psalms 31:6); court, pay deference to, reverence. Lying vanities; Septuagint, μάταιακαὶψευδῆ, "vain things and false." Idom (comp. Jeremiah 18:15; Hosea 12:11; 1 Corinthians 8:4). Their own mercy; i.e. their state of favour with God—the mercy shown to them, as "the mercies of [shown to] David" (Isaiah 55:3); or God himself, the Fountain of mercy and goodness (Psalms 144:2). Henderson translates, "forsake their Benefactor." Jonah 2:9 But I—who know better than idolaters, and who have learned a new lesson of trust in God—I will sacrifice. Pusey notes that the Hebrew denotes rather, "I fain would sacrifice," as it depended, not on him, but on God, whether he was able to worship again in the Holy Land. His sacrifice of thanksgiving (Leviticus 7:12, etc) should be offered with prayer and praise (Psalms 42:5). That which I have vowed (Psalms 1:1-6:14; Psalms 66:13). Salvation is of the Lord. This is the conclusion to which his trial has brought him, the moral of the whole canticle (Psalms 3:8; Psalms 118:14, Psalms 118:21; Revelation 7:10). The LXX. and the Vulgate join this clause to the preceding, thus: "That which I have vowed I will pay to the Lord for my salvation." This is tame, and not in strict accordance with the Hebrew. Jonah 2:10 § 2. The fish casts up Jonah alive on the shore Spake unto the fish. The punishment having done its work, the fish is impelled by some secret influence to eject Jonah on the dry land, on the third day after he was swallowed (Jonah 1:17). Some, who regard the Book of Jonah as an historical allegory, see in these three days an adumbration of the period of the Babylonish captivity, during which Israel was buried in darkness, and from which she rose to a new and happier life. They compare, as referring to the same transaction, Jeremiah 51:34, Jeremiah 51:44 and Hosea 6:1, Hosea 6:2. Upon the dry land. Probably on the coast of Palestine, whence he had started. Out of the depths. Never surely was prayer offered in so strange a place as this! Men have often prayed upon the sea, but Jonah is represented as praying from the ocean depths. I. NO PLACE IS FOR PRAYER. It is well to pray in stately cathedrals and in consecrated chapels, in the humble meeting house and at the "domestic altar." But the persecuted have prayed upon the remote hillside, and in "dens and caves of the earth." And let it be remembered, that God’s will is that "men should pray everywhere, lifting holy hands" to heaven. In the thronged street, the busy market, the legislative hall, the court of justice, in the field of battle, and upon the island where the shipwrecked mariner finds a refuge,—in every place God may be sought and found. If Jonah cried "out of the fish’s body," and was heard, is there reason for silence, for refraining from prayer, in any spot where we may find ourselves? II. PRAYER FROM . There are those who have never prayed before, who have been driven to supplication by their needs. And many, whose prayers have often been formal, have learned to pray in earnest when they have been plunged into the overwhelming ocean of affliction. None ask so urgently as those who are in want; and one purpose of Providence in permitting men to suffer need may well be this—to call forth entreaties and supplications which shall be sincere, profound, and urgent. III. PRAYER IS THE OF A MIND. Rebellion, and even murmuring, are incompatible with a prayerful spirit. It proves that Jonah was not wholly bad that, in his affliction, he did not resent the Lord’s treatment, he did not "kick against the goad." He rather behaved and quieted himself as "the weaned child." It is well to acknowledge that justice and mercy are in all the Lord’s dealings with his people. Many have been taught by experience to say with the psalmist, "Before I was afflicted,! went astray;" "It is good for me that 1 have been afflicted." Trouble is not designed to lead God’s people to cry against the Lord, but unto the Lord. To complain is both foolish and sinful; but they are happy who endure. IV. PRAYER IS THE OF FAITH AND HOPE. Even in the depths of the sea Jonah did not lose his faith in the oversight, the care, the goodness of the Lord. He believed that the Lord had overwhelmed, and that the Lord could rescue him. He who brought him into the depths could bring him out of the depths. The believing prayer which the prophet is recorded to have offered in his extremity is a model to all those who because of their iniquities and transgressions have been afflicted. Have faith in God, and hope in his mercy—such is the lesson which this verse teaches. V. PRAYER FROM THE DEPTHS IS HEARD IN THE HEIGHTS AND . Jonah’s subterraneous, subaqueous dungeon became a temple. God was present when his servant prayed. When submission and faith took the place of disobedience and rebellion, the Most High was willing to deliver the captive, to pardon the sinner, to employ again the unfaithful fugitive. Jonah 2:2, Jonah 2:3 Affliction and prayer. Doubtless the language of this psalm of thanksgiving was the result of subsequent meditation, for it is evidently a studied composition, resembling in passages several of the sacred Hebrew odes. But the sentiments were those actually experienced by the prophet when in the most humiliating position. In his experience was much which may prove very instructive and helpful to ourselves. I. DEEP . The language of Jon 2:3, literally descriptive of Jonah’s state and sufferings, is tinged with poetical feeling, and, like similar passages in the Psalms, is emblematic of the afflictions which, at some periods of human life, are the appointed experience of God’s people. The deep waters of trouble must be passed through; the mighty billows must roll over the spirit. Sorrow submerges and apparently overwhelms even the child of God; how much more the impenitent and disobedient! II. EARNEST PRAYER. How, indeed, can prayer be other than earnest, if it be offered from "the belly of hell"? Those afflictions are, indeed, a blessing which prompt such supplications as those which came from Jonah’s lips. Far from human succour, and perhaps from human pity, the afflicted lift their voice, and cry, by reason of their afflictions, unto the Lord. There is something very instructive in the language used by Jonah, attributing his affliction to the Being upon whom he was calling, "Thou hadst cast me into the deep,… thy billows and thy waves passed over me." In this way the distressed may learn the lesson which the wisdom and the love of God would teach. III. . When in Scripture it is said that God hears, we may usually understand more than is expressed. He hears to answer, to rescue, to save. The Omnipresent did not lose sight of his servant even when he was beneath the waves of the ocean; and the All-gracious was not inattentive to his supplication, though offered from the depths where weeds were about the suppliant’s head. If there are those who fear lest their situation or their circumstances should shut them out from the regard and interest of the Supreme, they may well take courage when they think of the experience of the prophet, who called upon the Lord from the depths, and was heard and was delivered. Looking toward the temple. It is remarkable that in two passages of this prayer the prophet should allude to the temple. Although he was from Northern Palestine, and lived whilst Judah and Israel were distinct kingdoms, it does not seem open to question that his allusion is to the sacred edifice at Jerusalem, where Jehovah manifested his presence and favour, and received the worship of his people. Yet the temple must have been referred to, not so much as a material edifice, as in the light of the symbol of the manifestation of the presence and the favour of the Most High. I. TO LOOK TOWARD THE TEMPLE IS TO BE OF THE OF GOD. As the sight of a house may remind us of the friend who dwells there, as the sight of a palace may lead us to think of the king,—so to look toward the temple is to look to God. Jonah may have been tempted to say, "There is no God;" or, "If there be a God, he regards not me." When he turned in heart to the temple, such thoughts vanished, and God’s existence Became a reality to him. II. TO LOOK TOWARD THE TEMPLE IS TO SEEK THE FAVOUR OF GOD. The temple was the place where sacrifices were offered and accepted; where God showed himself to be gracious to his covenant people, where sin was pardoned, and the penitent sinner was received into acceptance. And Jonah knew, even from the very commission he was unwilling to fulfil, that God delighted in mercy, and was long suffering and compassionate. He had incurred Divine displeasure, but he began to feel that he was not beyond the reach of Divine commiseration and help. III. TO LOOK TOWARD THE TEMPLE IS TO EXPECT THE DIVINE AND . The pious Jews sought Jehovah in his house, consulted the oracle, invoked guidance, implored blessing. And when Jonah directed the gaze of his heart towards the dwelling place of his God, it was with the well formed expectation that, however impossible it was for him to make a way of escape for himself, God would surely do this upon his behalf. There is no depth from which he cannot lift us; no recess from which he cannot draw us forth; no sorrow of which he cannot relieve us; no sin which he cannot pardon. Of how many of God’s people may it be said, "They looked unto him; and were lightened, and their faces were not ashamed"! Remembering the Lord. The circumstances in which Jonah was placed were such as give very peculiar value and interest to this declaration. And it appears that this act of recollection was the turning point in his experience; for hitherto his troubles had increased, whilst henceforth his prospects began to brighten. I. THE OF THIS . 1. External adversity may have prompted him to a kind of remembrance which in his prosperity he had not cultivated. 2. Mental exhaustion and distress caused him to realize his helplessness, and the vanity of expecting human aid. When his "soul fainted within" him, then he called to mind the God whom he had disobeyed. II. THE OF THIS . 1. Jonah, no doubt, remembered God’s commands and his own rebellion. 2. He must also have remembered the revelation of Divine mercy which had been vouchsafed him. And whilst the former recollection must have awakened penitence, this may well have shed into his soul a ray of hope. III. THE FRUIT OF THIS . 1. It prompted to prayer: They who forget God will not call upon God; but they who remember his promises may well lift up their hearts to him. 2. It was thus the means of securing the Divine regard and the Divine deliverance. God heard the prophet’s cry, though uttered from the ocean’s depths, and when he heard, he came to the rescue of his servant, "The Lord is mindful of his own." We may for a time forget his faithfulness, but when we call to mind his nearness and his grace, he remembers us even in our low estate. The vanity of idolatry. Jonah had been brought into association with idolaters in the person of the mariners of the ship but of which he had been cast. It may be that this fact accounts for the reference in this passage to those who worship other gods than the Lord. The more he experienced the faithfulness and goodness of Jehovah, the more was he convinced that there was none other entitled to reverence, confidence, and prayers. I. THE HERE GIVEN OF . They are such as "observe lying vanities." The Hebrews, whether pious or not, were monotheists, and regarded with contempt the idolatrous superstitions of their neighbours. The language of irony occurs in several places of Old Testament Scripture when allusion is made to the impotence of the gods of the nations. Yet it may be profitably remembered by ourselves, who may have no immediate connection with professed idolaters, that whatever men substitute for God, as the law of life and the object of devotion and trust, will surely deceive all those who put their faith therein. II. THE FATE HERE OF . Their "mercy," their "goodness," is the God whom they forget, and to whom they are so infatuated as to prefer the "lying vanities" here censured. They who quit the Lord prepare for themselves a terrible fate. In God is salvation; out of him is destruction. There is something appalling in the doom which is here described as overtaking those who, when the Saviour may be found, turn their back upon him, in order to seek and to serve other gods. Such are said to "forsake their own mercy." They act against their highest interests; they refuse the richest blessing; they abjure their truest Friend. Piety triumphant. The remarkable fact connected with this sublime hymn of confidence and adoration is this—it was uttered while deliverance was yet in the future. The prophet sings of God’s goodness while he is still experiencing God’s chastisement, and promises offerings whilst the favour which they are to acknowledge is as yet in the future. In these closing words of the hymn there is a tone of exultation and of triumph, which evinces singular confidence and singular hope. I. . There are some circumstances which render gratitude natural and easy. But it is a triumph of faith when the afflicted can acknowledge the good hand of God, when they can discern mercy in chastening, when they can see the hand of a Father in the hand that smites. One thing is certain—whatever be our position, our experience, we owe gratitude as a debt due to him who is ever forbearing and gracious. II. . According to the religious customs of his country and his age, the prophet vowed to offer an outward expression of his loyalty and gratitude to God, by presenting a sacrifice in the temple or at some consecrated altar. His life had been spared; his deliverance was near; he looked forward to an opportunity of "offering burnt offerings" upon the altar of Jehovah. The spiritual reality of which such an act is the symbol is the consecration of heart and life unto the God of all grace and salvation. III. PRAISE. Thanksgiving looks mainly to the benefits received; praise, to the Bestower. "Salvation unto the Lord!" such is the joyful and adoring cry with which this hymn is brought to a close. It is well, when we have acknowledged favour and long suffering enjoyed, to turn away from ourselves, and to fix our thoughts, our sentiments of affectionate and adoring devotion, upon him whose attribute is mercy, and whose work is salvation. BY J.E. HENRY Jonah 2:1-4 A unique oratory. "Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God," etc. The keynote of this passage is struck in the first verse. It is the fish, by God’s hand made Jonah’s preserver instead of his destroyer, that inspires the praise prayer of the whole chapter. God did not come to help till the prophet had, in imagination, raced the worst; but still he came in time. In the very moment of imminent death he stepped in a Deliverer. And he delivered in his own inimitable way. Natural laws cannot serve his purpose, and he accomplishes it against them. "The ravens furnish Elijah’s table; the lions are tame and quiet while Daniel is in the den; the violence of fire is gone when believers are in the furnace; the sea, which acts according to its nature towards Pharaoh and his host, is a wall on the right hand and on the left to Moses and to Israel; and the devouring shark preserves Jonah’s life" (Rev. Thomas Jones, in loc). And now the prophet realizes that God, after all, is his Friend. He is bringing life out of the jaws of death, converting the voracious seamonster into a kind protector. And thus, by judgment and mercy in turn, the obdurate heart is broken, and the sturdy apostate brought to his knees and the praise song of the restored. We see here I. HOW OPENS THE MOUTH WHICH SIN HAD SHUT. Jonah’s defection was deliberate and persistent. Not for a trifle would be cry, Peccavi! Not by an ordinary obstacle would he be arrested in his course. He seceded most determinedly. He kept his purpose in unabated strength, through a forty-mile tramp on foot. He overcame difficulty with resourceful energy. He slept calmly, going on his way, amidst the crash of an appalling hurricane. He sat sullen and made no sign when even heathen sailors called upon their gods, and wondered at his self-composure. But flesh is flesh, and at length the word came true, "In their affliction will they seek me early." God has weapons that pierce even armour of proof. The invasion of fiery serpents did it for incorrigible Israel (Numbers 21:7). The cut of the Assyrian slave lash did it for graceless Manasseh (2 Chronicles 33:12, 2 Chronicles 33:13). The death of Bathsheba’s child did it for David, after a great crime and a whole year of impenitent hardness (2 Samuel 12:13, 2 Samuel 12:16). The Babylonish exile did it for Israel, as Isaiah expresses, "Lord, in trouble they have visited thee; they poured out a prayer when thy chastening was upon them." And the experiences of a shark’s interior did it for Jonah. He would not surrender sooner, but resistance is out of the question now. The victory rests with God. The fires of his judgment have softened the apostate’s iron will. Yet not the Divine severity only, but severity and goodness together have operated here as "the medicine of the mind." It was not imminent death alone but this with miraculous life out of death that broke the hideous spell, and opened the lips so stubbornly scaled. It is a wrong way of looking at things to contrast, where both have operated, the value of severity and goodness as motive powers in the religious sphere. Neither probably would be effective by itself. The severity before the goodness did not conquer, and neither, probably, would the goodness, had not the severity gone before. The effect does not flow from the last of the series of its causes, but from the series as a whole. II. HOW A FAITH CAN TRIUMPH OVER SENSE. To sense the prophet’s was desperate. On the platform of natural laws the circumstances forbid hope, and would logically shut the mouth of prayer. Yet their effect is directly the reverse. The prophet only begins to pray at the moment when all seems past praying for. And this is the paradoxical but characteristic way of faith. It triumphs over sense, reverses its verdict, overbears its testimony, realizes in actual possession its theoretic impossibility. "Take the case of Abraham and the character and commendation of his faith. ’Against hope he believed in hope.’ Appearances were all against him. Sensible realities all contradicted, and in themselves alone destroyed, his expectation. Had his hope rested on sense, on reason, on nature, on time, it must have failed and sunk forever. But he did not rest on nature. He did not argue. He believed; and his faith destroyed the hope-destroying power of sense". It is the business of your faith and mine to do likewise. We are surrounded by influences and circumstances altogether adverse to the attainment of our soul’s salvation. Lusts are strong. Tempers are violent. Habits are tenacious. Example is corrupting. Toil is engrossing. Pleasure is ensnaring. The world, alike when it smiles and frowns, is our soul’s foe. But faith is there—keen-eyed conquering faith. It sees through opacity and discovers the invisible. And it knows things very different from what they seem. Beneath the currents of sense, whose trend is away out to sea, it discerns the tidal wave of unseen influence moving in steady flow toward the celestial shores (2 Corinthians 1:9; 2 Corinthians 4:8-11). God, in his wise and stimulative dealing, "may clothe all circumstances and all his dispensations towards us with appearances of opposition and hostility, in order that we may flee to the anchor of his pure and simple Word, and lean on it without any other help, or rather against all adverse power" (Martin). III. HOW PRAYER CLOTHES ITSELF IN THE WORDS OF . Jonah’s prayer was original in the sense that the thoughts called forth the words. But the words themselves are largely borrowed from the Psalms. Most of these had then been written, and, as the Church’s Psalter, would be familiar to a prophet of God. And naturally his devotional feelings appropriate their inspired and so fitting words. His prayer "is the simple and natural utterance of a man versed in Holy Scripture, and living in the Word of God" (Keil). What Scripture says is best said. It contains at once the warrant and the definition of prayer, and the actual words in which it was offered by holy men of old. What more natural or fitting than that a man should use these for himself as at once unerring and appropriate! "Let the Word of God dwell in you richly." There is nothing else can support faith, or so well formulate its prayer. And then as to the Psalms, where in Scripture is there to be found such a concentrated wealth of devotional matter as there? "They appear to me a mirror of the soul of every one who sings them" (Athanasius). "The Psalter deserves to be called the praise of God, the glory of man, the voice of the Church, and the most beneficial confession of faith" (Ambrose). "Not without good grounds am I wont to call this book an anatomy of all parts of the soul, since no one can experience emotions whose portrait he could not behold reflected in its mirror" (Calvin). The artist goes to the Louvre, and the scholar or antiquarian to the British Museum, because he finds there the objects he studies in greatest variety and profusion. And so the pious, in search of devotional materials of the most precious kind, resorts inevitably to the Book of Psalms. There are found portrayed, as from the life, the hopes and fears, the moods and frames, the faith and ardour, of their own soul. There they find words that interpret their case and express the very spirit of their aspiration. And so in all time, and over all the world, the saintly praise and pray and vow "with the words of David and Asaph the seer." IV. HOW GOD BY IT. Jonah was a spiritual deserter. He struck work, abandoned his post, and so practically vacated his office and abjured God’s service. He seemed resolved to have done with the whole thing. And he succeeded but too well, as now to his cost he feels. God has taken him at his word. Figuratively speaking, he has got the "Chiltern Hundreds." He is no longer prophet of God, or servant, or companion. His punishment rises on him in the likeness of his sin. He has fled from God, and now he complains of the separation. "I am cast out of thy sight," i.e. banished from covenant territory, the sphere of God’s protection and care. So with Peter. He says, "I know not the Man," and he is virtually and formally a stranger from that moment. Only after three times confessing the Lord whom he had three times denied is he spiritually reinstated, restored to forfeited office, and authorized to feed the sheep. This is a terrible aspect of spiritual renegadism. God accepts it as an accomplished fact. You break away, and are let go. You forsake God, and he casts you off. It is a fearful power this you have of putting a whole infinity between yourself and God, between your sin and his righteousness, between your want and his gifts, between your desolate heart and his everlasting consolations. Yet it is a power proper to a moral being, a power it is of the insignia of your manhood to have, and yet an utter renunciation of it to use. V. HOW THE OF A FORMER HELPS TO DRAW BACK TO GOD. Jonah could look back to a gracious state and consciousness. He had walked in the light of God’s countenance. He knew the joy of his presence and the life in his favour. As part of the thought, "I am cast out frown before thine eyes," these things would come up to mind. He must remember their quality in bewailing their loss. And they were a fragrant memory, the very cream and flower of the goodness he had tasted. Would they not hulk large among the influences drawing the wanderer back? "As newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the Word,... if so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious." Yes! there is the secret. If a man has come and tasted, he will be moved to come back and feast. The final apostasy from God of a true believer would be against the nature of things. "His seed remaineth in him." The life that has had God in it once can never be without him again. The void would be intolerable. And so, like the child that for a time has left its mother’s knee, the backslider has survivals of precious memories that bring him back to God. VI. HOW THE TEMPLE IS THE CENTRE OF THE ’S REGARDS. (Verse 4) The temple was the national meeting place with God the spot which "he had chosen to place his Name there." "There was the mercy seat, the ark of the covenant, and the Divine presence; there the tribes of Israel met to worship the Lord, and there the God of Israel came to meet and bless his people. No wonder Jonah’s eyes should be fixed on this house, which was the glory of all lands, the sun in the world of mercy, and the centre of true worship" (Jones, in loc). In the spiritual sphere worship underlies work. When Jonah ceased to labour, he had already ceased to pray. As in every case of suspended animation, it was failure of the heart’s action that had paralyzed his hand. And now the converse process begins, and first of all pulsation is re-established. The heart resumes its normal action and beats for God. To approach him in worship, and resume fellowship with him in his holy ordinances, is the first sacred exercise to which his hope springs. It is so always. The stay at home Christian is never a worker for God. No heart for the sanctuary, no hand for the plough. The very breath of the religious life is to say, "My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God; when shall I come and appear before God?" 1. Wherever you are, God has placed you. Jonah says, "Thou hast cast me into the deep … thy billows and thy waves passed over me." Privilege and calamity are both God’s. He sends them, and bounds them, and is revealed in them. Judgments viewed as accidents have no disciplinary value and no moral aspect. The rod is reforming only when we see it in our Father’s hand. 2. You cannot be in anyplace where it is not fitting you should seek God. Jonah cried out of "the belly of hell." What pit, then, is so deep, what lull so low, what evil case so desperate, that in it and from it we may not call on God? "Is any afflicted, let him pray; Whosoever shall call on the Name of the Lord shall be saved." 3. God is again "my God" in the thought of the returning penitent. (Verse 1) With the child’s reawakened love comes back the revived filial instinct. God is "my Father" to the prodigal from the moment he comes to himself. Blessed be his gracious Name, that such things can be! If you have renounced the life for self, you may call God your own this hour. The thought is a new backbone to faith. God "waits to be gracious." He is with you the moment you wish it, and for you the moment you submit, and yours in present possession the moment the soul’s appropriating hand is stretched forth. "O Saviour, precious Saviour, Whom yet unseen we love; O Name of might end favour, All other names above: We worship thee, we bless thee, To thee alone we sing; We praise thee and confess thee, Our holy Lord and King." J.E.H. Jonah 2:5-10 Deliverance waiting on the assured hope of it. It is an obvious remark that all men are ingenuous with God. There is no thought of trying to mislead his judgment or escape his lidless eye. They know that he knows them, knows them truly, knows them thoroughly. Accordingly, when religious profession is false and religious converse is suppressive, and other religious acts are hollow and formal, secret prayer, if it be, offered at all, is both honest and open. Only tell us what a man says into the secret ear of God, and you have told us all that is in his heart—have revealed what microscope could not detect, nor scalpel lay bare. It is in this way that our text is apocalyptic. It unveils for us the inner life of Jonah as this is done by no other portion of his book. And the revelation raises him not a little in our estimation. It shows him at bottom a regenerate and saintly man. It reveals a beaten path between his soul and God’s throne, a path unused during a wayward hour, but resorted to instinctively when disaster has come and has sobered him into thought. Learn here— I. THE OF . (Verses 5, 6) We find matter around us of different degrees of density, from the light volcanic ash to the heavy metallic ore. But men of science tell us that no material substance is absolutely solid. In the closest-grained rock, in the diamond itself, the ultimate particles are not in actual contact. They approach each other inconceivably close, but when attraction has brought them thus far, a mysterious repulsion intervenes and forbids that they should altogether touch. This fact of the material world has, no doubt, its counterpart in the world of spirit. There is an individuality about the soul that cannot be destroyed. We may be united to others by the closest ties. We may be of one mind, and one heart, and one taste, and one aim. We may thus approach men and be approached by them on many sides, and feel in union, and, to many effects and purposes, be in union with each other. But it is plain that we never coalesce, never actually touch. The shock of personal disaster proves this. Then all ties seem loosened and fall away. Friends drift apart. We are thrown in upon ourselves. Others cannot follow us into the depths. We are in a relation to the event into which no one else can come. In the last appeal we have to meet it alone. It was so with Christ (John 16:31, John 16:32). Disciples, friends, kinsmen,—with none of them could the Redeemer share the pangs of death. He had to die alone. Even the earlier thought, "I am not alone, the Father is with me" gave way in the hour of mortal agony to the question of sore amaze, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" It was so with Jonah. He was pressed by a feeling of utter isolation. The depths closed over him. The earth with her bars Was about him. This he felt, and in proportion as he felt it did he realize that he was cut off from his kind, engulled in the horrors of a living grave, and left to face them all alone. "I shall die alone." "Yes; and alone you live. No soul touches another soul except at one or two points, and those chiefly external—a fearful and lonely thought, but one of the truest life. Death only realizes that which has been the fact all along. In the central deeps of our being we are alone" (F.W. Robertson). II. THREE IS AN POWER IN ALL TRUE FAITH. (Verses 7, 9) Jonah’s prayer has really no petition in it. It becomes in the offering a song of praise. Still m the shark’s maw, with the sea grass around his head, and going down through the deep sea caves to the foundations of the mountains, he speaks as a man delivered, and knowing only occasion of thanks. This is the grand attitude and achievement of faith. It sees the end from the beginning. It expects the end because them has been a beginning. It anticipates the end at the beginning, and deals with it as an accomplished fact. "Thou hast brought up my life from corruption, O Lord my God." "I know nothing more sublime in all the range of recorded human utterances. What could dictate assured and triumphant language like this, but marvellous, miraculous faith? His deliverance is not yet come; yet faith speaks of it as if it were. O noble faith! it is in thy power to bring in the deliverance that is still future, with the sweetness of that which is already present, and the sureness of that which is already past". This quality of Jonah’s faith appeared also in that of Paul. Crying for deliverance from indwelling sin, he forestalls the event, and prepays the thanks (Romans 7:24, Romans 7:25). So surely is prayer answered, so infallibly does needed help accrue, that from an adequate faith the gratitude may go up when as yet the blessing has not come down. And there is this prophetic realizing power in all faith. It "is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." It carries in its head the jewel of hope; and where the one reaches the other shines. Faith trusts God that he can do all things, and hope looks for the doing of them. The potential deliverance seen by faith becomes actual deliverance in the eye of hope. And so to the believing soul "the things that shall be" already are, and the present is bright with the borrowed light of not yet risen suns. III. IT IS JUST IN THE MOMENT OF THAT THE THOUGHT OF GOD COMES TO A SOUL. (Verse 7) Jonah, as is evident, had up till now forgotten God. Not only so, but he had deliberately driven and persistently kept him out of his thoughts. The bursting of a fearful storm impressed him so little that, if left alone, he would have slept it through. The rude piety of the sailors, calling every man upon his god, sent no responsive thrill through him. The captain’s reproachful summons to arise and pray was disregarded or ignored. Even the ominous lot casting, on the issue of which his life hung, was watched with apparent calm. His self-possessed and iron obstinacy died hard. But it died. Angry Omnipotence will not be denied; and God took measures that not even Jonah’s hardihood could survive. The prophet broke down. Flesh and heart failed together. And then he came back to first principles, and remembered God. God, if they knew it, is the one need of human hearts. "Every finite spirit is inherently related to the Infinite, in him to live, and move, and have its being. It wants the knowledge of God, the society of God, the approbation of God, the internal manifestation of God, a consciousness lighted up by his presence, to receive of his fulness, to be strong in his might, to rest in his love, and be centred everlastingly in his glory" (Horace Bushnell, D.D). But the natural man has no idea of this. Conscious of incompleteness, he knows not in what it consists. And he prescribes at random for his own case. He absorbs himself in business, he struggles up the path of ambition, he plunges into mad indulgence, he runs breathless from sensation to sensation, seeking rest and satisfaction, and finding none. Everything gets stale and tiresome, and the soul finds itself unprovided for and orphan still. Not seldom the man spends his days thus in feverish search of good, and dies unsatisfied and unfed at last. But sometimes, in the providence of God, disaster comes at this stage. He is losing his idol. He is being robbed of all he loved, or abandoned of all he trusted in. He is being brought to the grave’s mouth by a resistless Providence. It becomes with him a question of God’s help or none. And shut up to it thus, he chooses it, albeit only as a last resource. "I cried unto the Lord with my voice. In the day of my trouble I sought the Lord" (Psalms 116:3, Psalms 116:4). This is the natural history of the soul’s resort to God. It is the last resort. All other help has been tried and found wanting before the sinner turns to him. What grace, that he waits till then! that while every conceivable earthly nostrum is being tried, the Balm of Gilead is kept in store, and is available in the extremest hour! Truly a God "long suffering and slow to wrath, and plenteous in mercy," is our God, who wearies not at our long wandering, and welcomes even the latest return. IV. THE SIGHT OF GOD AND THE SIGHT OF SIN INVOLVE EACH OTHER. (Verse 8) Jonah had lost sight of Cod and of his own guiltiness together. In his conduct up to this point we see the most astounding oblivion of both. And now the two matters come to mind together, suggesting a logical connection between them. And so there is. Sin is a conscious offence against God. Its antagonism to him is its essential element. Accordingly, the sense of it will come and go with the thought of God, and will be adequate as this is adequate. You cannot remember the offence and yet forget the offended Being. Neither can you realize God as near and cognizant without a consciousness of your moral attitude toward him. The thought of sin and the thought of God, in fact, bring up each other. And not only is the fact of sin, but the extent and evil of it are revealed in the revelation of God. Contact with the plumb line betrays the curve in the bowing wall. So, side by side with God’s ideal holiness, sin looks itself and looks its worst (Job 42:5). When a man sees his sinfulness, he has also, as the condition of it, got a glimpse of God. To Jonah his late conduct seems nothing now but the pursuit of lying vanities. He had no fruit in It. Every promise of good it held out had been falsified. He had not escaped. He had not improved matters in any way. He had only intensified existing evils and involved himself and others in new troubles. And that is a true picture of sin the world over and all history through. It is a following of delusive phantasies, and a running away from our own mercies. Its prospective blessings burst like bubbles in our hands—the hands that, but for it, would have been full of the choicest gifts of God. V. THE OF GOOD IS BY A DESIRE TO MAKE SOME RETURN. (Verse 9) Gratitude is a universal duty, and ought to be a universal grace. All men receive blessing from God, and as a consequence owe him thanks. Of the gratitude due, however, they fall tar short. Some good things come incognito, and are thus received unthankfully. Other good things, God’s free gifts, are traced to some earthly source, and so produce no thankful feeling. And then the multitude of life’s mercies, so obviously Divine, are yet so common that their origin is forgotten, and they are received as a matter of course. But spiritual gifts can never be ungratefully received. They are too conspicuously gracious to be taken as a matter of right. They are too immeasurably great to be lightly deemed of. They involve the gift of a new heart itself, in which gratitude is a native growth, because grace has made it God-like. There are no thankless Christians. Ingratitude possibly means the spiritual nature absent or in abeyance, and points, where we find it, to previous spiritual deforcement. Such deforcement Jonah had suffered during the continuance of his rebellious freak. Now that religious principle had resumed the sway in his soul, the gratitude is restored that had been exiled during the spiritual interregnum. And everywhere and always the heart that has been blessed to saving effect is one in which infallibly is mooted the question of making grateful return. VI. DIVINE IS ALWAYS TIMED TO ARRIVE WHEN THERE IS FOR IT. (Verse 10) Deliverance any sooner would have been too soon. It would have anticipated repentance, and so have left the erring prophet unreclaimed. It would, in fact, have defeated the object for which the entire disciplinary course had been adopted. It could not therefore occur in a divinely ordered life history. God’s providence never counterworks his scheme of grace. The one is adjusted to the other. His backsliding Jonahs are converted before his disciplinary whales vomit them forth. See you to the repentance, and God will see to your relief. Refining silver, at a certain stage the molten metal becomes for an instant so still and bright that the refiner can see his image in it as in a glass. And this, it is said, is the moment to pour it out, to anticipate which or delay beyond it is to spoil the whole experiment. In the visitations of his hand, God sits, we read, "as a refiner and purifier of silver," to "purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver" (Ma Jonah 3:3). No fear that he will spoil the process by taking you out of the fire a single moment out of date. He will keep you under discipline till he sees his image in your purified soul, and in that moment precisely will remove his hand. "He that from dross would win the precious ore, Bends o’er the crucible an earnest eye, The subtle searching process to explore, Lest the one brilliant moment should pass by When, in the molten silver’s virgin mass, He meets his pictured face as in a glass. "Thus in God’s furnace are his people tried, Thrice happy they who to the end endure. But who the fiery trial may abide? Who from the crucible come forth so pure That he whose eyes of flame look through the whole May see his image perfect in the soul?" (J. Montgomery) BY W.G. BLAIKIE Jonah 2:1-7 De profundis: distress and prayer. "Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish’s belly," etc. Unexampled position of Jonah—no details given, and hints somewhat obscure; evidently he retained measure of consciousness, but for how long we know not—seems to have been conscious of moving through the water before being swallowed by the fish—miracle of his preservation corresponds to that of the three Hebrews in the furnace (Daniel 3:27), or of the burning bush (Exodus 3:2, Exodus 3:3)—element of apparent destruction becomes supernaturally element of preservation—this record of his feelings composed after his deliverance—a record of the conflict of sight and faith—to sight, the situation desperate—faith pierces to the unseen, finds support, and finally triumphs. The prayer is a singular combination of midnight darkness and noonday light. I. THE . Described in many expressions, some of awful intensity: "By reason of mine affliction;" "out of the belly of hell;" "in the deep, in the midst of the seas;" "The floods compassed me about, all thy billows and thy waves passed over me;" "out of thy sight;" "The depths closed me round about, the weeds were wrapt about my head;" "I went down to the bottom of the mountains, the earth with her bars were about me forever." Situation seemed absolutely hopeless—physical surroundings the most frightful ever known—each, too, appeared a token of Divine displeasure—apparently as little hope for the soul as for the body. II. ITS SOURCE—FROM GOD. For it was not a chance that had befallen Jonah; it was all God’s doing: "Thou hadst cast me into the deep; all thy billows and thy waves passed over me." God had pursued him ever since he turned his back on him; raised the storm against him; caused the lot to fall on him; cast him into the deep; entombed him in the fish; shut him up, as it were, in despair. Yet he utters no word of reproach; God is justified when he speaks, and clear when he judges (Psalms 51:4). III. OF HIS SOUL. The first effect was to paralyze him. "I said, I am cast out of thy sight;" "My soul fainted within me." Horrors of his situation unexampled, escape impossible; shut up a helpless prey to the most appalling forms of destruction—Omnipotence itself crushing him: "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." IV. THE DAWN. "When my soul fainted within me I remembered the Lord." The darkest hour of night is that which precedes the dawn—out of the very depths of helplessness and desolation faith begins to rise. Far more beautiful than the fabled sight when the goddess of beauty rose from the ocean foam is the sight of Jonah’s faith rising from the depths, both literal and spiritual. The moment of utter helplessness is often the turning point in spiritual experience—at first, in justification (Romans 3:19, Romans 3:21), afterwards in recovery from backsliding (Hosea 2:14), and in sanctification (Romans 5:20). "Nothing in my hand I bring; Simply to thy cross I cling; Naked, come to thee for dress; Helpless, look to thee for grace; Foul, I to the fountain fly; Wash me, Saviour, or I die!" 1. In "remembering God," Jonah recognized him as "the Lord his God;" his by national covenant, by personal choice (the fruit of Divine grace), and by his prophetic call and consecration; his, though he had attempted to flee from his presence, for does he not say, "Turn, O backsliding Israel, and I will heal your backsliding" (Jeremiah 3:12, Jeremiah 3:22)? The God who first chose him in all his unworthiness must have an interest in him still. So the psalmist cried; so Jesus afterwards in the like spirit, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" 2. He looked towards God’s temple. Why? Because of the promise virtually given to Solomon (1 Kings 8:38). He builds on God’s word, "Remember the word unto thy servant, upon which thou hast caused me to hope" (Psalms 119:49). He thinks of the temple, the sacred ark, the mercy seat, the overshadowing cherubims, the promise to Moses, "There I will meet with you, and I will commune with you from above the mercy seat" (Exodus 25:22). He takes hold of this—steadies his soul upon it—shaking off the impression of his horrible surroundings, and enters into peace. What a change!—the belly of hell turned into the gate of heaven, the how! of despair changed into the hallelujah of delight. See here an encouragement to spirit of faith—in Jonah all lights extinguished except faith—in lowest depths, "let Israel hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption." Even when we are the authors of our own troubles, when we are in the depths by reason of sin, nil desperandum! "O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself, but in me is thy help."—W.G.B. Jonah 2:2-10 Triumph, thanksgiving. "And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice," etc. This is one of the most striking instances in all Scripture of the benefit of believing prayer. "Lord, what a change within us one short hour Spent in thy presence will prevail to make! What heavy burdens from our bosom take! What parched lands refresh as with a shower! We kneel, and all around us seems to lower; We rise, and all, the distant and the near, Stands forth in sunny outline, brave and clear. We kneel, how weak; we rise, how full of power! Why therefore should we do ourselves this wrong, That we are ever overborne with care? That we should ever weak or heartless be, Anxious or troubled, when with us in prayer, And joy, and strength, and courage, are with thee?" (Trench) In the brighter part of Jonah’s prayer we notice his— I. OF PRAYER AS . (Verses 2, 7) Happy effect of certainty as to this. There are grounds for such certainty: 1. When prayer is offered trustfully, poured as lute the ear of a Father, who has promised to hear such prayer. Answer to be expected, since God is true and never can deceive us. 2. When the evil dreaded is actually averted, or the benefit asked is sent. Unbelief says it would have been so at any rate; faith says, "My prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple." 3. When the heart is filled with a sense of the goodness and love of God and his trustworthiness even before the answer comes, it may be felt that the prayer is heard. Confidence in God as Hearer of prayer is a most valuable Christian grace ever associated with deep humility—infinitely removed from presumption and boasting. II. HUMBLE OF PAST GUILT AND FOLLY. (Verse 8) "They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy." This is what he had done. Human devices contrary to will of God are "lying vanities;" empty, they bring no satisfaction; lying, they promise peace and safety, but bring misery and horrible troubles. So Eve found, so Pharaoh, so Israel when they went after ways of heathen. So Jonah himself. So all who forsake Fountain of living waters and hew out to themselves broken cisterns that can hold no water. Worldly devices to get happiness apart from God are indeed "vanity of vanities." Soul of man cannot be satisfied with husks. For God’s servants to follow them is to forsake their own mercy. It is for prodigal son to change father’s house for society of rioters and harlots: "Many sorrows shall be to the wicked: but he that trusteth in the Lord, mercy shall compass him about" (Psalms 32:10). The way of duty is ever the way of safety, peace, and comfort; neglected duty is a sure forerunner of trouble; an evil conscience can never be the harbinger of sweet content. III. PUBLIC OF AND . (Verse 9) Sacrifice—thanksgiving—vows. This is to be done openly and publicly at the proper place. No concealment by Jonah of what had taken place. He would at once proclaim his own guilt, and declare himself a monument of God’s grace. Genuine repentance carries spirit of self-abasement, conscious indebtedness to God—eagerness to be more consecrated to him. The spring of this feeling—"salvation is of the Lord." God’s saving mercy keeps alive in redeemed hearts the sense of infinite obligation, and prompts to every suitable recognition. No other spiritual dynamic like this—all active obedience, all the labour of love, all patient endurance spring from this; whatever our mercies, we have the duty of grateful remembrance of them. and active consecration to God in connection with them. Jonah is disentombed (verse 10). "And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land." At length the purpose of the chastisement is served, therefore it is removed. The great fish continues under God’s control, and having carried Jonah safely through the deep, deposits him on the dry land. "As you see the foamy track the creature leaves behind gradually melting into the quiet green of the sea; as you turn and look at the prophet, washing himself from the filth of his living grave, and then standing upon the shore, inhaling the fresh breeze, rejoicing in heaven’s blessed light, and—to prove and feel himself alive, to make sure that all was not a dream—shouting, perhaps, in a loud voice, ’Salvation is of the Lord,’ say, ’God helping me, I shall never despair. Never. For! see that the heaviest judgment may ripen into mercy. The darkest night may have a morning. The deepest grave has a resurrection portal. A voyage wrapped in whirling storm, and horrible with engulfing dangers, may yet end in safety on a sunny shore’" (Raleigh). Jonah a sign: 1. To the Ninevites. His history a twofold picture lesson to them. (1) Of the consequence of spurning the authority of the God of the Hebrews; for he is no local deity, but Lord of earth and sea, of all creatures and all their actions, and has showed he could signally punish and humble Jonah on the very element to which he had betaken himself for safety from this God. It was before this God the iniquities of Nineveh had come. How must he view these? (2) Of the pardoning, restoring, and preserving mercy of God to the penitent—God not inexorable—if Nineveh should repent, it, like Jonah, would experience God’s mercy. 2. To the men of Christ’s generation. (1) In his humiliation. The Jews asked of Christ a sign (Matthew 12:40)—some great display of power in the heavens. He refused; the only sign to be given would be precisely opposite, viz. that of Jonah—a sign not in heaven, but beneath the surface of the earth. As Jonah suffered humiliation for his own sin, so Jesus would suffer humiliation for the sin which he bore. Reality of his Messiahship was to be shown in his death and burial, and continuing for the same period as Jonah under the power of death. Divine, saving power of Jesus is connected with his humiliation as Sin bearer. As if Jesus had said, ’The signs which are to discover themselves in me are to grow darker, and not brighter: they are to be derived, not from the heavens above, but from the depths beneath—from the very chamber of the dead; yet am I not less on that account the Ambassador of Heaven; yea, surpassing Jonah in the depth of my humiliation, I still more surpass him in the dignity of my character; and the inhabitants of the heathen city, which repented at his preaching, will assuredly rise up in judgment to condemn the impenitent of this generation’" (Fairbairn). (2) In his exaltation. This view is rather implied than expressed by our Lord. Jonah escaping from the fish is a type of Christ rising from the dead. The Ninevites were moved to repentance by means of the type; they must have heard Jonah’s history and been greatly impressed by it. The Jews had the antitype—the literal resurrection of Christ from the dead, but were not moved by it. Herein is a great lesson for all—listen to the Divine Messenger, who liveth and was dead, and is alive forever, and hath the keys of hell and of death! "Though our Lord’s pointing to the sign of Jonah, with the assurance that no other would be given them, might at first seem to betoken only trouble and disaster to his mission, yet the more thoughtful and discerning minds would not fail to discover, on further reflection, that there was also couched under it a promise of encouragement and success far beyond anything that had hitherto appeared. He was to become to the world the sign that Jonah was to Nineveh only when he entered on the resurrection life, and in his Name repentance and remission of sins were preached to the people. And hence the great stress laid upon the fact of the resurrection by the first heralds of the gospel, and the wonderful effect produced by it upon those who heard them, not simply on account of the proof it afforded of the truth of Christ’s pretensions to be the Son of God, but also, and still more, for the impressive attestation, the living witness it gave of the placability of God, and of the holy earnestness of his desire that sinners would repent and live. Precisely as in the case of Jonah, though in a manner unspeakably more solemn and affecting, the things that had befallen Jesus and the condition in which he now presented himself through his ambassadors to the people, were seen to be a singular and most magnificent provision of love on the part of God to reach their consciences, and to avert, ere it might be too late, the doom of condemnation which Divine justice had suspended over their heads" (Fairbairn).—W.G.B. BY G.T. COSTER The value of affliction (as seen in Jonah’s prayer). It: 1. Brings the man to himself. To soul consciousness, to God consciousness. When "in the shadow of a great affliction, the soul sits dumb." Chastened, he feels his need of chastisement, and knows from whom it comes. "Thy waves;" "thy billows." 2. Brings the consolation of Scripture to the man. From various psalms of sorrow (now remembered) Jonah quotes. By sorrow he enters into the sorrows of others. Affliction "opens up the mine of Scripture, before seen only on the surface." 3. Brings the man to God. He "cries" to him. He comes to him. He feels that "sorrow’s crown of sorrow" is in being "cast out of God’s sight." 4. Brings the assurance of salvation to the man. Thus, divinely blest, affliction is good. The soul, then, triumphant over trouble, can exclaim, "Salvation is of the Lord;" "O Lord my God."—G.T.C. Lying vanities. 1. Vanities. Vanities are vain things—things that deceive. Such are idols. All things are idols that men trust out of God. Jonah had his idol—it was his false love for his country. How many idols!—ambition, pride, strength, wealth, influence, self, self-will. And men observe them as gods. But they are all "lying." They deceive. Their promises fail. One only is "faithful who has promised" us happiness. 2. The consequence of observing these lying vanities. Men who observe them "forsake their own mercy." How much they leave! Mercy! It is to all; but not to all alike. "Their own." In turning to any idol, men forsake God, "whose property is always to have mercy."—G.T.C. Thankfulness. "Thankfulness opens the door of mercy, sets God’s goodness free to be good to us, prepares us to receive blessing." It should be cultivated. It should be expressed. "The voice of thanksgiving." Jonah was thankful. He had strong reason indeed to be. He paid the vows he had made. "Be ye thankful." Every mercy is an incentive to thankfulness. And God’s mercies, "new every morning and repeated every evening," and pauseless in their coming, "cannot be reckoned up." And all crowned by the gift of Christ. "Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable Gift." "Thanksgiving is thanksliving." "Let never day nor night unhallow’d pass, This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/pulpit-commentary/ Jonah 3:1-10 Part III. JONAH’S IN NINEVEH; THE OF THE . Jonah 3:1-3 § 1. Jonah is sent a second time to Nineveh, and obeys the command. Jonah 3:1 The second time. He is forgiven and restored to his office, and the commission formerly given is renewed. Commentators have supposed that he went up to Jerusalem to pay his vows, and that the word of the Lord came unto him there. But all unnecessary details are omitted from the account, and we know nothing about this matter. The beginning of the next verse, "arise," seems to imply that he was then in some settled home, perhaps at Gath-hepher. Jonah 3:2 That great city (see note on Jonah 1:2). Preaching; rendered "cry" in Jonah 1:2; Septuagint, κήρυγμα. This time the proclamation is unto it, as interested in the message, not "against it," as doomed to destruction (Pusey). Jonah 3:3 Arose, and went. He was now as prompt to obey as formerly to flee. Was; i.e. when Jonah visited it. Nothing can be argued from the past tense here as to the date of the composition of the book. It is a mere historical detail, and cannot be forced into a proof that Jonah wrote after the destruction of Nineveh. An exceeding great city; literally, a city great to God; πόλιςμεγάλητῷΘεῷ; great before God—in his estimation, as though even God must acknowledge it. So Nimrod is called (Genesis 10:9) "a mighty hunter before the Lord;" and Moses, in Acts 7:20, is said to have been" beautiful to God." The expression may also mean that God (Elohim, God as Governor of the world) regarded this city with interest, as intended in the Divine counsels to perform an important part. For he is not the God of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles (Romans 3:29). Of three days’ journey; i.e. in circumference—about sixty miles (see note on Jonah 1:2). Or the writer may mean that it took Jonah three days to visit the various quarters of this huge place. The area of the vast quadrangle containing the remains of the four cities comprised under the name Nineveh is estimated by Professor Rawlinson at two hundred and sixteen square miles. We ought, however, to omit Khorsabad from this computation, as it was not founded till Sargon’s time, B.C. 710. Jonah 3:4 § 2. Jonah, undeterred by the danger of the enterprise, executes his mission at one, and announces the approaching destruction of the city. Began to enter into the city a day’s journey. Jonah commenced his day’s journey in the city, and, as he found a suitable place, uttered his warning cry, not necessarily continuing in one straight course, but going to the most frequented spots. At the time of Jonah’s preaching the royal residence was probably at Chalah: i.e. Nimrud, the most southern of the cities. Coming from Palestine, he would reach this part first, so that his strange message would soon come to the king’s ears (verse 6). Yet forty days. "Forty" in Scripture is the number of probation (see Genesis 7:4, Genesis 7:12; Exodus 24:18; 1 Kings 19:8; Matthew 4:2). The LXX. has, ἔτιτρεῖςἡμέραι, "yet three days" owing probably to some clerical error, as writing γ instead of μ. St. Augustine (’De Civit.,’ 18.44) endeavours to explain the discrepaney mystically as referring to Christ under different circumstances, as being the same who remained forty days on earth after his resurrection, and who rose again on the third day. Shall be overthrown. This is the word used for the destruction of Sodom (Genesis 19:25, Genesis 19:27; Amos 4:11). The prophet appears to have gone on through the city, repeating this one awful announcement, as we read of fanatics denouncing woe on Jerusalem before its final destruction (Josephus, ’Bell. Jud.,’ 6.5. 3). The threat was conditional virtually, though expressed in uncompromising terms. In the Hebrew the participle is used, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh overthrown," as though he saw at the end of the specified time the great city lying in ruins. One sees from Isaiah 36:11, Isaiah 36:13, that Jonah could readily be understood by the Assyrians. Jonah 3:5-9 § 3. The Ninevites hearken to the cry of Jonah, believe in God, and repent. Jonah 3:5 Believed God; believed in God, which implies trust and hope; Vulgate, crediderunt in Deum. They recognized Jonah as God’s messenger; they recognized God’s power as able to execute the threat, and they had confidence in his mercy if they repented. This great result has seemed to some incredible, and has occasioned doubts to be east upon the history. But, as we have seen in the Introduction, Jonah’s mission occurred probably at a time of national depression, when men’s minds were disposed to expect calamity, and anxious to avert it by any means. Other considerations led to the same result. They had heard much of the God of the Hebrews, much of the doings of his great prophets Elijah and Elisha; and now they had in their midst one of these holy men, who, as they were informed, had been miraculously preserved from death in order to carry his message to them; for that it was thus that Jonah was "a sign unto the Ninevites" (Luke 11:30) seems most certain. They saw the Divine inspiration beaming in his look, dictating his utterance, animating his bearing, filling him with courage, confidence, and faith. The credulity with which they received the announcements of their own seers, their national predilection for presages and omens, encouraged them to open their ears to this stranger, and to regard his mission with grave attention. Their own conscience, too, was on the prophet’s side, and assisted his words with its powerful pleading. So they believed in God, and proclaimed a fast. Spontaneously, without any special order from the authorities. Before the final fall of Nineveh, the inscriptions mention, the then king ordered a fast of one hundred days and nights to the gods in order to avert the threatened danger. Put on sackcloth (comp. Genesis 37:34; 1 Kings 21:27; Joe 1:13). The custom of changing the dress in token of mourning was not confined to the Hebrews (comp. Ezekiel 26:16). Jonah 3:6 For word came; and the matter came; ἤγγισενὁλόγος, "the word came near". The tokens of penitence mentioned in Jonah 3:5 were not exhibited in obedience to any royal command. Rather, as the impression made by the prophet spread among the people, and as they adopted these modes of showing their sorrow, the news of the movement reached the king, and he put himself at the head of it. The reigning monarch was probably either Shalmaneser III. or one of the two who succeeded him, Asshur-danil and Asshur-nirari, whose three reigns extended from B.C. 781 to 750. His robe (addereth); the word used for the "Babylonish garment" in Joshua 7:21. The magnificence of the Assyrian kings attire is attested by the monuments. Sat in ashes (comp. Job 2:8; Esther 4:3). Jonah 3:7 He caused it, etc.; literally, he caused proclamation to be made, and said, i.e. by the heralds. The decree. The word used here (taam) is an Accadian term, which had become naturalized in Assyria, Persia, and Babylonia, and was applied to a mandate issued with royal authority. It is found in Daniel 3:10, Daniel 3:29; Daniel 4:6; Ezra 4:8, etc. Jonah introduces it here as being the very word employed in describing the proclamation. And his nobles. The monarchs of Assyria were absolute; and if the king in the present case associated the magnates with himself, he did it in an humility occasioned by alarm, and because he saw that they were of the same mind as himself (comp. Daniel 6:17). Saying. The decree extends from here to the end of verse 9. Man nor beast; i.e. domestic animals, horses, mules, distinct from herd and flock. These great cities contained in their area immense open spaces, like our parks, where cattle were kept. The dumb animals were made to share in their masters’ fast and sorrow, as they shared their joy and feasting; their bleating and bellowing were so many appeals to Heaven for mercy; the punishment of these innocent creatures was a kind of atonement for the guilt of their lords (comp. Hosea 4:3; Joe 1:20; and note how the brute creation is said to sham in the happiness of paradise regained, Isaiah 11:1-16). The commentators quote Virgil, ’Ecl.,’ 5:24, etc; where, however, the point is that the grief of the shepherds hinders them from attending to the wants of their flocks. Herodotus (9:24) mentions an instance of the Persians cutting the manes and tails of their horses and mules in a case of general mourning. Jonah 3:8 Let man and beast be covered with sackcloth. As we put trappings on horses in funerals. The LXX. wrongly makes this verse give an account of the execution of the edict instead of being part of the edict itself; thus: "And men and beasts were clothed with sackcloth," etc. Cry mightily; i.e. let man cry mightily; Septuagint, ἐκτενῶς, "with intensity;" Vulgate, in fortitudine. Let them turn every one from his evil way (Jeremiah 25:5; Jeremiah 36:3, Jeremiah 36:7). The edict recognizes the truth that outward acts of penitence are worthless without moral reformation—a truth which the Jews themselves had been very loth to admit (see Isaiah 58:1-14). And from the violence that is in their hands. The acts of violence that their hands have committed (Job 16:17; Psalms 7:3). This is the special sin of the Assyrians, always grasping after empire, oppressing other nations, and guilty of rapine and avarice at home (see Isaiah 10:13, Isaiah 10:14; Isaiah 37:24, etc.; Nahum 2:11, Nahum 2:12; Nahum 3:1). Jonah 3:9 Who can tell? (2 Samuel 12:22). An expression of hope that the Divine, wrath may be averted by the timely repentance. It is the same form of words as in Joe 2:14, "Perhaps God would thereby indicate that he had himself put it into their mouths" (Pusey; comp. Jeremiah 18:11). If God; i.e. the one God, whom the king and his people now acknowledge as supreme, like the idol worshippers at Carmel, when they fell on their faces, crying, "Jehovah, he is the God" (1 Kings 18:39). Jonah 3:10 § 4. God accepts this repentance, and the threatened destruction is averted. God saw their works. There is no notice in the inscriptions of this "repentance," or of any change in the polytheistic worship of the Ninevites. But the existing records of this period are singularly meagre, and show a state of calamity and depression, of internal commotions and famine. Nor is it usual in the monumental history to find mention of any events but wars and the execution of material works; moral reformations are not recorded. God repented of the evil (Exodus 32:14). This is an anthropopathical mode of speaking; God acted as if, taking man’s view of the transaction, he repented. The sentence was conditional, as Jonah well knew (Jonah 4:2), in accordance with the great principle laid down in Jeremiah 18:7, etc; viz. that if a nation against which sentence is pronounced turn from its evil way, the sentence shall not be executed. God does not change, but he threatens that man may change (see note on Amos 7:3; and observe the same principle applied to individuals, Ezekiel 33:8, Ezekiel 33:13-16). He did it not. The evil day was postponed. This partial repentance, though it was not permanent and made little lasting impression on the national life, showed that there was some element of good in these Assyrians, and that they were not yet ripe for destruction. It has been considered to be a proof of the unhistorical character of the Book of Jonah that no mention of any of the incidents is made in the Books of Kings and Chronicles; but there is nothing strange in this. Those records never touch external politics except as closely connected with Israel’s fortunes; and, derived as they were from national annals, it would have been unnatural for them to have narrated events happening so far away, and not likely to be introduced in the documents on which their history was founded. City preaching. In Palestine there were no great cities. The population was scattered through pastoral regions or gathered in small and unimportant towns. This fact gave a character to the national life of the Hebrews and to their national religiousness. It was a strange experience for a Jew like Jonah to be brought into contact with city life upon a grand, colossal scale. We modern Englishmen are more familiar with, this development of human existence and activity. We need to study the relations of religion to city life, its occupations, temptations, and opportunities. I. THE IN A GREAT CITY NEEDS TO HAVE HIS AND HIS HEART FILLED WITH AN OF ITS AND . In the view of the Almighty all things earthly may well seem diminutive; yet Jehovah is represented as commissioning Jonah to preach unto Nineveh—"that great city." The population, the wealth, the industry, the political importance of a metropolis should be pondered by one who is required to discharge a public ministry among its inhabitants. Thus he will be more likely to rise to the due height of seriousness, of sympathy. He who labours in "an exceeding great city" needs to fill his soul with a conviction of the spiritual necessities and the spiritual possibilities of such a population. II. THE IN A GREAT CITY NERDS TO FULFIL A OF WITNESS. "Cry unto it the cry." Such is the exact language in which Jehovah commissioned his servant. In the university, the private chapel, the select and cultivated congregation, there may be room for argumentative, emotional, poetical, or philosophical preaching. What a great city needs is a voice, a cry, a preaching, in the proper sense of that word. A plain and powerful witness to man’s sin and need, to God’s grace and power to save, a summons to repentance and surrender,—such is what the population of a great city for the most part needs. III. THE IN A GREAT CITY NEEDS AN DIVINE AND MESSAGE. "The preaching that I bid thee,"—such was to be the burden of the prophet’s utterances. It is only the Word of the Lord which should be proclaimed by the minister of religion in any position, in all circumstances. But when standing in the midst of a great metropolis, how can a man, justly sensible of his own ignorance and powerlessness, proceed in his ministry, unless he is assured that the Lord has sent him, unless he can commence his testimony with the preface, "Thus saith the Lord"? National repentance. No doubt repentance is an individual exercise of heart; yet when the bulk of a community is pervaded by similar sentiments, it may be a national exercise also. Such seems to have been the case with the population of Nineveh; Jonah’s witness was believed by one and by another, until belief became general; and, as penitence, fear, and supplication spread from man to man, the city seemed moved by one common impulse, leading the whole population to the feet of God. I. SUCH BEGINS IN FAITH. The inhabitants of the great city credited the message of the Hebrew prophet; that is, they believed that the Supreme Ruler and Judge was displeased with them because of their sinfulness; that they wore liable to the punishment which the godless, the vicious, the criminal deserve; and perhaps also that, notwithstanding their dangerous condition, there was some hope for them in the Divine mercy, if they would but turn unto God. Certainly the gospel of Christ does not ask the sinner to yield his belief merely to the tidings of God’s justice and holiness; it invites him also to give credence to its offers of salvation. II. SUCH ITSELF IN AND IN ALL THE SIGNS OF SINCERE REGRET AND BECAUSE OF SIN. There is something very affecting in the spectacle of a nation mourning and lamenting because of a great bereavement, when an honoured sovereign, a trusted minister, a mighty warrior, passes away. But the pathos and the moral significance of that national mourning are far greater which is prompted by a general consciousness of sin, by a conviction of national wrong doing, by humiliation before an omniscient and righteous God. The tokens of such contrition, as recorded in the text to have been displayed in Nineveh, were appropriate to that time and community, and accorded with the customs of the East, But whatever be the manifestations of sorrow, the first essential is that it be real, as in the sight of the heart searching God. III. SUCH THE WHOLE . In most cities are individuals who sigh and cry for the abominations done by the people. Even a few are as salt to preserve the mass from corruption. For the sake of a very few a city may be spared the doom deserved. But a nation in mourning for sin is a sight as sublime as it is affecting. Nineveh is in this respect an example to other sinful cities. The king led the way, and his subjects followed. Even the least, the lowest, joined in the solemn act of penitence. Such repentance is indeed repentance unto life; it cannot be unheeded or unrewarded by Heaven. A king’s contrition. It is an illustration of the power of truth, of the commanding majesty of the faithful and fearless preacher, which we witness in this narrative. An unknown Hebrew, with nothing to recommend him, nothing to enforce attention, comes to a foreign city, passes through the public places, reproaches the citizens for their sins, denounces destruction upon the inhabitants as the punishment due to them because of their wickedness. And what is the result? Is it neglect, or derision, or incredulity? On the contrary, the people feel the justice of the rebukes, acknowledge their ill desert, humble themselves before God, and entreat mercy, forbearance, pardon. What a testimony to the reality of the moral law, to the authority of conscience! Jonah preaches, and the king of a mighty empire divests himself of the insignia of power and rule, abases himself before God in sackcloth and ashes! I. KINGS ARE THE LEADERS OF THEIR PEOPLE IN SIN. Surrounded by everything that can minister to selfish gratification, beset by flatterers, possessed in some instances of absolute power, it is not to be wondered at that the occupants of thrones are often the foremost in cruelty, in vice, in self-indulgence. They may blame, but in a just estimate their perilous circumstances will be considered. Their temptations are many, and their faithful friends are few. II. KINGS ARE FOR THE OF THEIR . When royal ambition has led to culpable warfare and slaughter; when headstrong purposes have issued in national disaster, impoverishment, and disgrace; when luxury in palaces has entailed hunger upon the occupants of hovels;—in such cases sovereigns have a terrible account to render to him who is no respecter of persons, who is King of kings and Lord of lords. III. KINGS ARE IN HEADING EVERY AND . Happily there are many examples of such conduct on the part of those occupying the very highest stations. Institutions and agencies for imparting knowledge, for refining life, for relieving suffering, are better deserving the "patronage" and the attention of royalty than schemes of pleasure or methods of destruction. IV. WHEN KINGS AS WELL AS HAVE SINNED IT BECOMES ALL TO UNTIL IN OF AND IN VOWS OF , The frank, dignified, fight-minded conduct of the King of Nineveh raises him in our esteem. No man is disgraced by admitting his faults. And every man, even though he be a king, is in his right place when low on his knees in penitence and in prayer. Jonah 3:7, Jonah 3:8 Ceremonial and moral repentance. It must have been a striking and picturesque spectacle that was presented by Nineveh when the decree of the king and nobles was carried out, when a general fast was observed, when sackcloth and ashes were worn by man and beast, and when general prayer ascended in a mighty cry to Heaven. But to the reflective mind it must have been still more interesting to observe the population turning from their evil ways and refraining from acts of violence. I. THE OUTWARD SIGNS OF AND ARE GOOD WHEN, AND ONLY WHEN, THEY ARE THE OF GENUINE FEELING AND PURPOSE. We feel this to be the case with reference to ordinary human sorrow. The mere garb and semblance of mourning, being but conventional, is of little value. It is felt to be appropriate when the mourner can say— "I have that within which passes show, These but the trappings and the signs of woe." How much more do the religious interest and value of "sackcloth and ashes," "fasting and prayers," depend upon the sincerity of the emotions thus expressed! II. TO REFORM AND AMEND ARE THE BEST OF THE AND OF . It is very much to the credit Alike of the prophet and of those to whom he preached, that the Ninevites should have felt and expressed the absolute necessity of moral amendment in order to the enjoyment of forgiveness, favour, and acceptance with God. There must have been something searching in Jonah’s preaching, and something very responsive in the heart and conscience of the Ninevites, to have produced such a state of mind as that here indicated. It is especially observable that the citizens turned "every one from his evil way." The ways of sin are devious, numerous, and varied; sinners have turned every one to his own way; true repentance shows itself in a resolve on the part of each individual offender to forsake his own sins. "Violence," whether proneness to national schemes for attacking other peoples, or assaults upon peaceful citizens, seems to have been the prevailing sin; for of this, it is said, the people chiefly repented. . The whole nature, body and soul, is implicated in sin; and the whole nature accordingly should concur in repentance. Hoping for mercy. The pathos of this question is increased as we call to mind the ignorance of the Ninevites regarding the true God. Their own religion was as likely to conceal as to make known the real character of the Deity. And what they had heard from Jonah was but very slender ground upon which to proceed in their approaches to Heaven. Hence the uncertainty, the commingling of fear with hope in the language they employed: "Who can tell," etc.? I. THE NEED OF MERCY. This appears from considering (1) human sin; (2) Divine justice; and (3) the express threatenings of the Divine Word. All this was very apparent in the case of the Ninevites, and accounts for their attitude of contrition and supplication. But the same holds good of men of every nation and in every state of society. II. THE GROUND OF HOPE. 1. With the Ninevites this could have been nothing but some instinct in their own heart. A Creator who has implanted pity in the Breasts of his creatures cannot surely be destitute of that quality himself. 2. With those to whom the gospel is preached the case is otherwise; they have not to ask, "Who can tell?" for the Lord of all has made himself known to them as delighting in mercy, and has given his own Son to be the Mediator and the Pledge of mercy. III. THE OBJECT OF . 1. With regard to God, the aversion of his anger. Applying human language to the infinite God, the suppliants hoped for his turning and repentance. 2. With regard to themselves, the suppliants desired that they might not perish, that the doom deserved and threatened might not come upon them, that, in a word, they might be saved. It is not easy to form any judgment as to the measure in which desire for spiritual blessing entered into the prayers of the men of Nineveh. But enlightened Christians are constrained to feel that the salvation which they seek is not merely release from suffering and penalty, but restoration to the favour and the obedience of God. Man’s repentance and God’s. The simplicity with which this great fact is recorded is quite in accordance with the usual style in which the Old Testament is written. Inspired men wrote of God as they would have written of a great king. Thus only, indeed, can we receive or communicate intelligible ideas regarding the Supreme. It is easy to criticize such statemants as that of this text by nailing them "anthropopathic;" but the fact is that it is not degrading but exalting the conception of God to attribute to him, not merely reason and will, but the capacity of the highest, purest, and tenderest emotions. I. HUMAN THE OF THE DIVINE. 1. Repentance involves the turning with loathing from the paths of sin. Yet this is very difficult to account for. How, why, should those who have addicted themselves to sin, because of its pleasantness or its profitableness, regard it in a quite different, a contrary light? 2. Repentance involves an apprehension of the majesty and justice of the moral law. Whilst men look earthward they will never repent, i.e. of sin itself; but when they direct their gaze heavenward, and perceive the splendour and beauty of an eternal, an inflexible law of right, thou, by comparison with that, their own sin seems odious and degrading. II. DIVINE IS THE TO THE HUMAN. 1. The repentance attributed to God does not involve any real change in the character or the purposes of God. He ever hates the sin, and pities and loves the sinner; this is so both before and after the sinner’s repentance. 2. Divine repentance is therefore the same principle acting differently in altered circumstances. If the prospect of punishment answers the same purpose as that intended by the punishment itself; there is no inconsistency in its remission; for punishment is not an end, it is only a means to goodness, to the reign of the law of righteousness. 3. Divine repentance is apparent in the forgiveness and acceptance of the contrite sinner. 4. And also in the moral influence which it exercises over the hearts of those who are reconciled. Gratitude is excited, love is awakened, consecration is elicited, obedience is confirmed. . It is to be observed that these great principles of the Divine government are exhibited in all their power in the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the cross God summons mankind to repentance; in the cross God shows how he himself can repent. BY J.E. HENRY Peremptory reiteration and prompt obedience. We see Jonah entering here on the second stage of his strange career. And it is adjusted logically to the first. His recent experiences and their resulting sentiments form an obvious preparation for the duty next to hand. He has sinned and suffered and repented. He has deserted, and been captured and surrendered unconditionally. He has prayed, and been forgiven and set free. And it is natural that duty should be faced from a different standpoint henceforward. He is in another mind now, and ready for a new departure in personal effort and official tactics. And the opportunity to make it is promptly furnished. I. THE ’S RETURN IS BY HIS RE-. Jonah had discarded much and been stripped of more. He had refused to act, and had ipso facto forfeited his commission. Now with a return to his right mind there is reinstatement in his lost calling, and re-employment in his forsaken work. We account for this on the principle that: 1. There is forgiveness with God, that he may be feared. There is a forgiveness that only encourages transgression. Such is weak forgiveness, implying a want of firmness in the forgiver, on which there is the temptation to make further aggressions. Such is careless forgiveness, that takes no hostages for the future, nor even makes terms. Such is inequitable forgiveness, in which principle is ignored, and the offence hushed up without regard to the claims of justice. But the Divine "more excellent way" of pardon is at once equitable and defined and strong. Amends for the past and amendment for the future are both exacted sternly. God forgives when he has punished, and on the unbending condition that the offence cease. Then punishment is mingled with so much of mercy, and requirement is sweetened by such]promise of grace, that gratitude mates with reverence, and obedience is the firstborn issue of the happy tie. The insubordinate, mutinous Jonahs having been ironed and subdued, are at length released, that in after action they may exemplify obedience unquestioning and without a semblance of the old self-will. 2. Spitual office attaches to existing spiritual relation. The Divine government is paternal God’s officers are first, of all his children. Their fitness for the discharge of spiritual functions is due to their previous endowment, with spiritual gifts. If unspiritual men and whilst unspiritual they may be formally in office, but are incapable of spiritual work. When Jonah fell for the time being out of the spiritual connection, he ceased to be a prophet of God. He could not be at once a recruiter and a deserter, an ambassador and a rebel. Now he has come back, and in resumed spiritual relations he finds the condition of restored religious functions. He may again speak for God now that again he is on God’s side. No man goes legitimately on God’s errand who cannot do it con amore. Spiritual officers are to be sought exclusively by promotion from the spiritual ranks. Every true shepherd has been first of all a sheep in God’s fold, and to each relation has come in by Christ, the Door. II. GOD’S IS , ELSE MAY CHANGE. (Verse 2) God has not changed, although Jonah has. The prophet’s mutinous outbreak has not moved him a hairbreadth from his purpose. What he meant at first he means still, and will have. So the prophet is brought back exactly to the point at which he had broken away, and told to begin where he had left off. 1. God is moved still by the same compassion for the doomed. "That great city." The repetition of these words on each occasion of the mention of Nineveh is significant. It shows that God had regard to the tact of its size; that all through the arrangement of measures for its warning he was moved by the thought of its teeming population given over to death. Hence it is styled in verse 3 "a great city to God," i.e. in his estimation, and in Jonah 4:11 the Divine compunction is directly connected with the existence of its hundred and twenty thousand children, not yet responsible, but bound to perish with it. The Divine compassion is a glorious factor in human life. Its attitude is catholic. It embraces in wide paternal arms the heathen that knows not God, the infant that could not know him if revealed. Its outflow is unstinted, averting myriad evils altogether, softening the inevitable, indemnifying the past by the amends of rich compensatory good. Believe in God’s pity. It is a splendid fact. It is hunger’s provision, and pain’s anaesthetic, and misery’s comforter, and humanity’s good Samaritan in the darkest reaches of its Jericho journey, and the most calamitous experiences by the way. 2. God’s prescribed step remains the fitting one to take. What other methods it was within the resources of Divine omnipotence to use for the conversion of the Ninevites, we cannot tell. What we know is that the proclamation of the truth was the ordinary method, and that God keeps to it. "The sword of the Spirit," with which he pierces the soul and kills its sin, is the "Word of God." "The foolishness of preaching" is that special presentment of the Word by which in all ages it has pleased God to save them that believe. And there is, if we could see it, the perfection of fitness in this ordinance. Truth is light revealing things as they are and as they ought to be. Truth is motive, presenting considerations that move intelligence to seek that better state. Truth is force, conveying to the soul and constituting in it the Divine omnipotent energy in the strength of which the new man arises, and the new life is lived. Truth is comfort, unfolding the soul rest and joy of the free which climb the throne of being when the new regime of righteousness begins. Then truth preached with the living voice and personal element is all this and more. To the influence proper to the abstract truth is added its influence as concreted in a human life. As light it is intensified by the added ray of an illustrative experience. As power it is reinforced by the impulse of a cooperant human will. As comfort it is at once confirmed and sweetened by personal testimony and fellow feeling. There is no conceivable substitute in the enginery of grace for the personal preaching to sinners of the word of life. 3. Repentance is best proved by obedience in the matter at which there was stumbling before. Jonah had passed through a severe discipline for the conquest of his self-will. Whether or not it was really overcome, this reiterated commission would test. And there was a needs be that the point should be settled. All judgment is "unto righteousness;" to bring us to it if afar from it, to restore us to it if we have strayed. And it is this not in the general, but in the particular. It is to check particular faults and produce the opposite virtues. In this object God will see that it succeeds... He cannot fail as men fail. His chains must bind. He gives no disputable instructions, nor moves to their observance by futile action. In tow of his disciplinary privataeers when they return to port, will be formal, as a prize of war, every skulking craft that had been trying to do the enemy’s work. The proof that his measures have not been nugatory is the circumstantial realization of their purpose. The iniquity he visits with the rod he must see put away. The forsworn task he enforces with the strong arm he must see done. "God looks upon men when he has afflicted them and has delivered them out of their affliction, to see whether they will mend of that fault particularly for which they were corrected; and therefore in that thing we are concerned to see to it that we receive not the grace of God in vain" (Matthew Henry). III. THE SERVANT IS AN SERVANT. (Verse 3) The stern discipline has done its work at last. The rebellious fit is over, and the unruly servant is pliant to his Master’s will. What evils of terror and pain and agony he might have escaped if he had only done this at first! But God bends all things to his purpose, and Jonah’s rebellious freak among the rest. His message to Nineveh is not only done, but better done than it could possibly have been at first. 1. Jonah is better prepared for it than he was. He has sinned and been forgiven, has suffered and been delivered, has prayed and received an answer. And each experience is of the nature of a qualification for the better doing of his work. "Rejoicing in the sweetness of a fresh and full reconciliation; lightened in spirit by tasting in God a mercy larger than he could formerly have thought of; cleansed from the darkness that brooded over his soul, and the countless images of terror and of evil which rose up before him while be was fleeing from his God in rebellion, and his God was pursuing him in wrath" (Martin), he would approach his Master’s work as never before. Reverence for a God so great and good, and gratitude to a God so merciful and kind, would spring together and work together the new mind and way. Affliction, moreover, had left its mark on him. He was subdued and chastened. He knew experimentally his impotence and God’s omnipotence. He could speak by book of the terrors of the Lord, and the fatuity of hoping to defy him and escape. And his preaching would have a reality and vividness about it attainable only by way of his late experience. Then "he had called upon the Lord in circumstances almost fitted to shut out the possibility of hope." If there be a case on record pre-eminently fitted to confirm the declaration, "Men ought always to pray, and not to faint," it is his. Would he not resume his post with livelier loyalty and implicit sense of duty, when he could resume it with the blessed protestation, "I love the Lord, because he hath heard the voice of my supplication: because he hath inclined his ear unto me, I will call upon him as long as I live"? (Martin). 2. He does it implicitly. (Verse 3) "So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh: Submission is now as thorough as at first self-will was resolute. The change is excellent, and its occurrence a vindication of the treatment that has brought it about. An infinitely wise and holy will is God’s. The ideal of a man’s life is to believe in that will, and will it, and find his joy in doing it. From irreconcilable variance to absolute harmony with that ideal is Jonah’s change, a change that means his spiritual readjustment. It will mean no less to us all "The felicity of heaven greatly consists in perfect submission in all things to the government of Jehovah the Saviour. The misery of this world is the want of that temper of mind; the very end and desert of grace is to restore us to it; and so far as we are under the influence of the grace of life, we are brought back to it; the more grace the more submission; and grace will not cease its operation in the saints till every thought is brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ" (Jones). A man following absolutely the lines of the infinitely perfect will; a man moving thereon with fullest faith and sympathy and zest; a man starting therein as a child starts for the haven of a mother’s arms; a man incapable of other thought than following them to the highest good, and till his life’s end;—that is a man in the highest sense, and to the highest spiritual effect. 3. He goes closely by his instructions. (Verse 3) According to the word of the Lord. This terse record is instinct with suggestiveness. He went because he was told, and where he was told, and when he was told, and as he was told, and to do the thing he was told, and in the way he was told. His conduct now was exemplary as before it was intolerable. And his case is typical. His instructions were the preacher’s instructions for all lands and times. "Preach the preaching that I bid thee." It was this Moses preached (Deuteronomy 18:18), and Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:7), and Paul (1 Corinthians 11:23), and Christ himself (John 7:16; John 12:50). It is this we must preach. What else is worth preaching, or can or dare be preached? As to the substance of his message, the preacher has no discretionary power. He is not to preach science, nor philosophy, nor sentiment, nor his own notions, nor human knowledge. He is rightly to divide the Word of life. That is all, "There is not the greatest minister, not the most learned or acute, But must observe this rule; not James, not John, not Peter, not all the troop of the apostles, my once vary from this: he who shall bring other doctrine, let him be accursed by us; he who speaketh of himself, let him be refused by us; howsoever godly or holy he do pretend himself, yet if he decline that word which should be his direction, let him be declined by us" (Abbot). Here is an admirable maxim for universal use, "according to the Word of the Lord." It is good, and wise, and true, and pertinent to every case, the key to every puzzle of life. Are you a sinner? there is salvation for you, full, and free, and present, and "according to the Word of the Lord." Are you a seeker? expect to find, for salvation is in Christ, and of those that come to him there are none cast out, "according to the Word of the Lord." Are you a saint? then fight and persist and hope; for that you are "kept by the power of God," and will yet "reap if you faint not," is "according to the Word of the Lord."—J.E.H. Jonah 3:4-10 A heathen city in sackcloth. Let us try to realize the scene. An Eastern city sleeps in the rosy morning light. Its moated ramparts tower a hundred feet in air, and, dotted with fifteen hundred lofty towers, sweep around it a length of over sixty miles. Already the gates are open for the early traffic, and conspicuous among the crowd a stranger enters. The stains of travel are on his dress, and he looks with curious awe at the figures of winged colossal bulls that keep silent symbolic guard over the gate by which he passes in. Within, things new and strange appear at every step. The houses, sitting each in its own grounds, are bowered in green. The streets are spanned at intervals with triumphal arches, whose entablature is enriched by many a sculptured story. On every eminence is a palace, or monument, or idol temple, guarded by symbolic monsters in stone, and adorned in carving of bas-relief with sacred symbols. The markets fill, the bazaars are alive with multifarious dealing, soldiers and war chariots parade the streets, and the evidences of despotic power and barbaric wealth and heathenish worship, with their inevitable accompaniments of luxury, corruption, and violence, abound on every side. The stranger is deeply moved. Surprise gives place to horror, then horror warms into righteous indignation; and with trumpet voice and dilating form and eye of fire he utters the words of doom, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be destroyed." Through street, and park, and Barrack, and bazaar the direful message rings. There is momentary incredulity, then swift alarm, then utter consternation. Like wildfire the news, and with it the panic spreads. It reaches the nobles in their palaces. It penetrates to the king upon his throne. It moves society to its depths. And the result is the scenes of mourning and self-abasement our text records. I. COMES READILY TO MINDS. Never did preacher see better or speedier fruit of his labours than Jonah did in heathen Nineveh. By a single sermon but a few sentences long he sent the entire city into penitence and sackcloth. Granted that there was much to account for this in the preaching itself. It was bold and oracular and explicit, and spoken with the conviction that is most of all contagious. It was enforced by such a narrative of his own recent history as made him nothing less than a sign to the men of Nineveh (Luke 11:1-54:80). Granted too "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 very earhest times" (Keil). Yet still the repentance, so widespread, so real, so sadden, has in it something phenomenal in the religious sphere. Not thus did the prophets and their utterances move the Jews. They "beat one, and killed another, and stoned another," and disregarded all as a general rule (Matthew 21:35). A greater than Jonah, the Truth himself, spoke to them, and spoke in vain (Matthew 12:41). Unbelieving and lengthened contact with truth had no doubt produced the exceptional hardness of the Jewish nature. The works done in vain in the gospel hardened Chorazin or Bethsaida would, as we know, have Brought Tyre and Sidon to repentance in dust and ashes. Even filthy Sodom would have cleansed its way, and been spared on earth, had it seen the mighty works by which Capernaum was yet utterly unmoved (Matthew 11:20-24). So when the soil of the Jewish nature, plied with the truth seed till trodden hard by the sowers’ feet, refused utterly to produce, the apostles found a fertile seed bed in the virtu soil of the Gentile mind (Acts 13:44-48). An analogous fact is the success of Christ among the common people (Mark 12:37), when the scribes and Pharisees, who were more familiar with revelation, remained uninfluenced almost to a man (John 7:48, John 7:49). It would seem as if Divine truth, like potent drugs with the body, is effective most of all in its first contacts with the soul. Lengthened and frequent contact with truth, if it does not regenerate, only thickens the spiritual skin, and much hearing means little heeding as a general rule. II. IMPLIES A RELIEF OF THE TRUTH. (Verse 5) Belief of the truth is a logical first step to every religious attainment (Hebrews 11:6). Truth is the revelation of things as they are—of character, of destiny, of duty. Until that has been received there can be no spiritual beginning. While not only danger but the disease itself is disbelieved in, the patient will take no step toward cure. "He that cometh to the Lord must believe that he is." This is the least modicum of knowledge conceivable in any intelligent comer. So he that comes away from sin must believe that sin is. Unless he does, and until he does, he has no reason for moving. He that comes by repentance and faith, moreover, must believe in the propriety and dutifulness of these acts. Forecasting the possible result of Timothy’s ministry in the turning of the wicked, Paul says, "If God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth." This aspiration brings out the point exactly. Repentance and the acknowledging of the truth imply and involve each other. Impenitence is largely the result of incredulity. If a man really believed what God says about sin—its demerit, deformity, and destroying character—the grief and hatred and turning which constitute repentance must arise. The impenitent man either does not believe God at all, or he gives him a weak and heedless credence that is never acted on, and so is practical disbelief. Let God’s word of dogma, God’s word of promise, be truly and adequately believed, and God’s word of precept will be infallibly obeyed. A man may contemplate his sin indifferently and commit it with even pulse, but the power to do so means that the Scripture testimony against it has been silenced, or the witness put out of the court of conscience altogether. "It is to be observed that faith operates differently according to the matter believed, When faith looks to the redeeming love of Christ, faith worketh by love. ’We love him who first loved us.’ When faith looks to the infinite wrath of God, faith worketh fear, and we ’flee for refuge to the hope set before us.’ When faith looks at Christ, beating in his love the wrath from which he calls us to flee, faith worketh by grief; and, ’looking on him whom we have pierced, we mourn.’ And all these operations of faith—love, fear, grief—enter into that repentance unto salvation which true faith produces" (Martin). III. IS AT ONCE BY FEAR AND BY HOPE. The Ninevites feared to "perish" through the "fierce anger" of God, yet hoped he might "turn away" from it and "repent." Fear is a rather ignoble emotion, but it is not without its place and power in the religious sphere. A man’s life, in the widest sense, is his most precious trust. To gain the whole world would not compensate for the loss of it. Hence the universal instinct of self-preservation. "All that a man hath will he give for his life." And by appealing to this instinct, as it so often does, the Scripture assumes its lawfulness (Luke 13:3; Matthew 10:28). The less of soul and body in hell is a loss unparalleled and irreparable, and which it would be madness not to fear. The Ninevites feared it. Their dread of it was a chief cause of the penitence they showed. And naturally so. To a man as yet unspiritual, the bearing of his sin on his own fate is the supreme consideration. When he becomes better he will be amenable to higher motives, but fear as opposed to carnal security, is always a prominent factor in the early stages of the religious life. But the Ninevites repentance did not spring from fear alone; it based on hope as well. "Who can tell," etc.? (verse 9). The hope here was far from assured. It was a mere glimmer in the soul Yet still it was hope. Escape was deemed not impossible,—that was all And there was a shadow of ground for hope, which the keen eye of the doomed did not fail to detect. They had an intuitive idea that God would make some difference between a penitent city and an impenitent one. Then the catastrophe was not to come for forty days, and, in the granting of so long a respite, they would see the door left open for a possible change before its close. Besides, Jonah’s own deliverance in s more dire extremity still, and of which he evidently told them in his preaching (Luke 11:1-54:80),would suggest the possibility of a like escape to them with like repentance. If the preacher had been saved in tits very moment of imminent death, the fact was ground of hope to the people who had forty days’ reprieve. Thus the faith in which the Ninevites’ repentance originated "wrought by fear and hope combined. The evil dreaded was sufficient to break and humble all their pride. And the hope they entertained was sufficient to prevent their fear from turning into mere despair" (Martin). It is the element of hope in it that marks off the sorrow which worketh only death from the sorrow which worketh repentance to salvation. There is a persuasion of men which bases on the terrors of the Lord, and a beseeching of them also by the mercies he has shown. And what is this but to make fear and hope the limbs of a stable arch to carry the repentance "that needeth not to be repented of"? IV. GRIEF FOR THE PAST AND FOR THE FUTURE. The Ninevites "put on sackcloth," etc; and "turned them every one from his evil way." There was Compendious logic in this. Sackcloth and ashes were the conventional livery of abasement and grief (2 Corinthians 7:9, 2 Corinthians 7:10), and these have a distinct place in the spiritual connection (Joe 2:13). But they must be spiritual. Not the result of wounded pride, or baffled purpose, or ruined prospects. These things are utterly carnal. They involve no sense of sin’s demerit, no horror of its impurity. They are merely aspects and expressions of selfishness. Every detected rogue can see that he has blundered in his sinuing, and from that standpoint grieves. Saul does it, exclaiming, in the bitterness of failure, "I have played the fool exceedingly." But the sorrow "after a godly sort" is a radically different thing, and done in a different spiritual atmosphere altogether. And David crying with contrite and humbled spirit, "I acknowledge my transgression, and my sin is ever before me," is a perfect moral contrast. His is a sorrow that has God in it. Sin is viewed in its relation to God, from God’s standpoint, and with feelings like to God’s. Job sorrowed thus with God when he said, "Now mine eye sooth thee; wherefore I abhor myself," etc. Such sorrow has hope in it, and so "the promise and potency" of a reformed life. Under its impulse the Ninevites "turned every one from his evil way." Reformation is the work meet for repentance—the crystalline form revealing the genuine metal. "Numbers will do everything in religion but turning from sin to the Saviour; and where this is not done, all the rest is lost labour—their religion is hypocrisy, their hope is mere delusion, and their latter end is bitterness and woe; for all who refuse to depart from sin must perish in sin. In vain shall we fast for sin, if we do not fast from sin; and what blessings can all our prayers bring down while we refuse to turn from our evil ways?" (Jones). V. CRIES TO GOD IN PRAYER. The words of Jonah were like an earthquake in the vast city. From king to beggar there was consternation and dismay. The destroying armies of heaven were at hand. Men can neither disbelieve, nor doubt, nor resist, nor fly, nor survive. What remains but to submit and beg for mercy—the last resort of the sinner, but the very first command of God? And so the king descends from his throne, and the beggar rises from his straw, and a stricken universal cry for help goes up in the ear of Heaven. In such an exercise true repentance is at home. Prayer is the spontaneous, the instinctive expression of the soul’s new found need. A true sense of sin, together with an apprehension of God’s mercy in Christ which all genuine repentance includes, leads logically to prayer. Given a sick man thoroughly alarmed, and a willing physician accessible, and the application for help will infallibly follow. "On bender knees, replete with godly grief, See where the mourner kneels to seek relief; From his full heart pours forth the gushing plea, God of the lost, be merciful to me!’ The light of life descends in heavenly rays, And angels shout and sing, ’Behold, he prays!’" VI. IS TO BE WHEN THE SIN IS . The Ninevites’ was a "public, general, royal fast." So when the Divine judgments menaced Jerusalem in the reign of Jehoiakim, all the people proclaimed a fast (Jeremiah 36:9). Then it was observed by all the people in accordance with a royal edict. So Jehoshaphat "feared and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah" (2 Chronicles 20:3) when Moab and Ammon invaded the kingdom. In the nature of the case, the repentance must correspond to the transgression. The people must repent who have sinned, and in the character and relations in which the sin has been committed. That their action in the matter was suggested and shaped by royal edict detracted in nothing from the value of the Ninevites’ repentance. The obligations of religion rule every relation of life. Each community ought to be religious, and the rulers of each to consider their office sacred to the accomplishment of this result. Monarchs should reign for the glory of God, and they do so when they "take order" for the observance of religious worship with due regard to the prerogatives of the Church, and to the right of private judgment. "It is an evil and dangerous principle that would exempt the rulers of a kingdom from being in subjection in their public capacity to the Word of Christ, and from being under obligation in their government to rule for the promotion of his kingdom. It strikes at the root of all family as well as national religion; and while it would confine Christ to the separate consciences of individual men, it would refuse him the right to govern the households and communities into which in Providence they are combined" (Martin). The practical lesson of this is read to us by Jesus Christ (Luke 11:32). The existence of saints in the world is a virtual condemnation of all the sinners. With similar privileges and opportunities, why are these spiritually changed, and those not? Unless the believers have done more than their duty, the unbelievers have fallen woefully short. Every saint in a Christian congregation will stand up in the judgment a silent but damning witness against its unconverted members who remain so under equal inducements to repentance. And the case is worse when the balance of privilege was on the unbelievers’ side. It was so as between Nineveh and Israel. The one was brought to repentance by means incomparably less than those which had proved entirely inoperative with the other. It will be so as between each of them and us, if we are blind to our greater light, and insensible to our more potent spiritual agencies. "A greater than Jonah is here"—greater in person, greater in office, greater in power, and greater in influence. Have we resisted him? Have we withstood his mightier striving? Then who so inexcusable, who so hopeless, as we? What guilt so deep, what condemnation so great, as ours (Hebrews 10:28)?—J.E.H. BY W.G. BLAIKIE Jonah 3:1-4 Jonah’s second call. "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," etc. I. OF THE PROPHET. "The word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time." Jonah’s rebellion had had a twofold effect on his relations to God—broken up his personal fellowship with him, and suspended his official function as a prophet. God’s grace restored him both personally and officially, as afterwards in the case of Peter; but, as in this case, the restoration of the first did not necessarily include that of the second. Servants of God who have fallen need a second call to public service; it needs to be shown that God trusts them with his work again. It is natural for ministers who have been publicly dealt with and censured to desire to be reponed; but this cannot be rightly done without some token that God again calls them. II. THE NEW . "Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee." We know not where Jonah was—where he had been landed—what had happened in the interval. Imagination can picture the prophet on the shore making for Gath-hepher, and probably arriving there. Again the message is preceded by the word of stimulation, "Arise;" brace thyself, prepare for arduous work; and this time it would bring a lesson of warning—remember how easily you were turned aside before! The work was not to be made easier out of regard to the prophet’s proved weakness, but the prophet must seek a higher strength. The greatness of Nineveh is again dwelt on—"Nineveh, that great city"—"an exceeding great city, and great unto God" (verse 3). "Think of a whole vast city, full of this humanity, of this God-breathed life; and is it surprising that a great city should be great unto God? What flashings of intellectual lights in one day!—as many almost as the separate rays of the sun. What throbbings of moral or immoral purpose, the moral faculty acting in each! What a sighing of wandering spirits, unconsciously or blindly seeking the lost portion! What a swell and heave of the great tide of animated life composed of the blended individual streams I London is like a great and wide sea of life. The daily agitations which stir in her bosom are felt in feebler pulsings even in far off shores; and in multitudes which no man can number her thoughts and acts, and in these her checkered moral history, are going up to God’s heaven. Such was Nineveh of old, and for such reasons as we have named, it was still, as at first, a city great to God" (Raleigh). The message is somewhat different from before: "Preach the preaching literally, ’cry the cry’] that I bid thee." This may either mean, "the cry that I will bid thee at the time," or "the cry that I already bade thee." Either Jonah was to go, like an admiral, with sealed orders to be opened at a certain place; or he was to say what he had been ordered to say before, but had shrunk from saying. The latter view is probably correct—a further trial of Jonah’s sincerity and submissiveness—in the very matter which had dissatisfied him before, he was called to place himself in God’s hands, and to engage to do precisely as God would direct. In all cases, true preaching is "the preaching that I bid thee." It is a simple message from God; it becomes effectual when it is given as such. All very well to be able to reconcile it with reason and commend it to the conscience, and to set it forth with the enrichments of learning and, the embellishments of art; but there is danger lest its true simple nature be thereby disguised; nothing should be allowed which prevents it from being presented as a simple message from God: "the preaching that I bid thee." "How often did our Lord disclaim the authorship of all that he said, and assign it continually to the Father! ’Jesus answered them, and said, My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me; the words that I speak unto you, I speak not of myself’ (John 7:16). Himself personally cognizant of all truth, he acts as the Church’s Teacher under the responsibility and within the exact limits of his office. Officially ordained the Father’s Ambassador, he confines himself to a declaration of the Father’s words … . Exactly as the Father had said unto him, so he speaks" (Martin). III. THE OF THE PROPHET. "So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord." "How different every way from what he was when he fled to Tarshish? We see him no more consulting with flesh and blood, but yielding prompt obedience to the heavenly call. No more running away, but asking, ’Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? Here am I; send me.’ The Lord saith, ’Go to Nineveh;’ he instantly goes without gainsaying or resistance" (Jones). "In the present case, Jonah would resume his commission with a new obedience; with a meekness, a faith, a courage, to all of which his punishment and pardon had been the signal means of disciplining him. He would resume his work and mission with another spirit— (1) as a sinful man, whose sin had been eminently forgiven; (2) as a prayerful man, whose prayer had been eminently answered; (3) as an afflicted man, whose affliction had been eminently blessed" (Martin). "The Word says, ’Arise,’ and Jonah arose; the Word says, ’Go,’ and Jonah went. It is beautiful It is grand. We must not indeed exaggerate. For we know that there is something dark and bitter in this man still, which will break out again. But meantime, and in this act of obedience, so far as we see it, there is a grandeur like that of an angel—a simplicity like that of a child" (Raleigh). IV. THE MESSAGE . "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." Jonah in Nineveh—what a contrast to Gath-hepher, Joppa, or even Jerusalem! What temples! what tombs! what monuments!—what new impressions of its vastness and power! Perhaps new impressions of its horrible treatment of those who opposed themselves to it. It was no uncommon sight to witness a row of prisoners, each impaled alive on an iron spike; or men of mark flayed alive; or captives, with hooks in nose, dragged by halters, carrying the bleeding heads of their kings or nobles. Anyhow, pictures of such things abounded. They made no undue impression on Jonah. "Strong in faith," he went boldly forward and delivered the message. "He cried, and said"—lifted up his voice like a trumpet—under the windows of the rich, in the resorts of the poor—before the proud military array—before nobles and judges and all His message was more specific and startling than before. Stern, but faithful and honest preaching; no flattery; no shrinking from exposure of the true mind of God. They might do with him as they pleased; he had not a single friend in that vast multitude—no protection but God’s—nevertheless, he would proclaim the message. As John Knox said long afterwards, "I am in the place where I am commanded of God to speak the truth; and the truth I will speak, impugn it whoso list." Contrast the feeling of Jonah now and when he fled to go to Tarshish. His soul tumultuous and agitated then, in peace and serenity now. "He that sayeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." Acknowledge the reality of Divine protection and strength—sense of peace and proof of it, for, after all, fidelity to God is the true policy. "Them that honour me, I will honour" (1 Samuel 2:30).—W.G.B. The repentance of Nineveh. "So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them," etc. Here is Jonah in Nineveh alone against the world. Oh, the moral grandeur of the sight!—resting on God alone—"according to his faith it was to him"—marvellous success of his preaching, through Divine power working in him and through him. Observe the contrast to Noah and to Lot. He is like John the Baptist—a torch, setting all on fire. We notice the effects of his crying the cry which God bade him. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/pulpit-commentary/ Jonah 4:1-11 JONAH’S AND ITS . Jonah 4:1-4 1. Jonah is grieved at the sparing of Nineveh, the expectation of which had led to his former flight, and complains of God’s clemency. Jonah 4:1 It displeased Jonah exceedingly; literally, it was evil to Jonah, a great evil. It was more than mere displeasure which he felt; he was vexed and irritated. The reference is to what is said in the last verse of the preceding chapter, viz. that the predicted destruction was not inflicted. How the knowledge of this reprieve was conveyed to the prophet we am not informed. It probably was made known to him before the expiration of the forty days by Divine communication, in accordance with the saying in Amos 3:7, "Surely the Lord will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets" (see Amos 3:5). Various reasons have been assigned for this displeasure. (1) Personal pique, lest, his prediction having failed, he should be liable to the charge of being a false prophet. (2) Zeal for the honour of God, whose knowledge of the future might be discredited among the heathen, when they saw his own servant’s words unfulfilled. (3) Because he saw in this conversion of Gentiles a token of the ruin of his own people, who remained always hardened and impenitent. (4) A mistaken patriotism, which could not endure to find mercy extended to a heathen nation which had already proved hostile to Israel and was destined to oppress it still further. This last seem to have been the real ground of his annoyance. So deep was this, that he would gladly have seen the sentence executed even after the city had repented (comp. Amos 3:11, "Should not I spare Nineveh," i.e. which thou wouldst have me even now destroy?) He was very angry; Septuagint, συνεχύθη, "was confounded." His vexation increased unto anger. Jonah 4:2 He prayed. He carried his complaint to God, and was prepared to submit it to him, even while he questioned the wisdom of his clemency. I pray thee (anna); Vulgate, obsecro. A particle of entreaty, "Ah! I pray thee." Was not this my saying? Was not this what I said to myself, viz. that God would spare Nineveh if it showed signs of repentance? My country. Palestine, where the original message reached him. I fled before; literally, I anticipated to fly; Septuagint, προέφθασατοῦφυγεῖν, "I made haste to flee;" Vulgate, praeoccupavi ut fugerem. I hastened to fly before I should be reduced to seeing my mission rendered nugatory. For I knew. Joel knew the character of God, and how that he threatened in order to arouse repentance, and that he might be able to spare (see Exodus 32:14; Exodus 34:6, Exodus 34:7). The description of God’s mercy agrees with that in Joe 2:13 and Nehemiah 9:17. Jonah 4:3 Take ... my life from me (comp. Jonah 4:8). Jonah throughout represents himself as petty, hasty, and self-willed, prone to exaggerate matters, and easily reduced to despair. Here, because his word is not fulfilled, he wishes to die, though he will not take his own life. In a different spirit Moses (Exodus 32:32) is ready to die for his people’s sake, and Elijah asked for death because his zeal for God had apparently wrought no effect (1 Kings 19:4). Jonah 4:4 Doest thou well to be angry? Septuagint, Εἰσφόδραλελύπησαισύ; "Hast thou been greatly grieved?" Vulgate, Putasne bene irasceris tu? The English Version is doubtless correct. God bids him consider with himself whether his anger is reasonable. The version of the LXX; however grammatically permissible, is somewhat pointless. Jonah 4:5 § 2. Jonah, not yet abandoning his hope of seeing the city punished, makes for himself a hut outside the walls, and waits there to see the issue. Went out of the city. It is best so rendered, and not in the pluperfect. It must have been before the end of the forty days that Jonah perceived that Nineveh would escape. And now, from God’s expostulation with him in verse 4, he seem to have conceived the expectation that some catastrophe would still happen; as though God had told him that he was too hasty in his judgment, that he could not know the mind of God, and that because he did not strike immediately he was not to conclude that he would not strike at all. On the east side of the city. The opposite side to that by which he had entered, and where the high ground enabled him to overlook the town, without necessarily sharing in its destruction. A booth. A tent constructed of branches interlaced, which did not exclude the sun (Leviticus 23:42; Ne:14, etc). What would become of the city. He still expected that some calamity would befall the Ninevites, perhaps with the idea that their repentance would prove so imperfect and temporary that God would punish them after all. Jonah 4:6, Jonah 4:7 3. God causes a plant to spring up in order to shade Jonah from the sun; but it is made soon to wither away and leave him exposed to the scorching rays. Jonah 4:6 Prepared (Jonah 4:7, Jonah 4:8); appointed (see note on Jonah 1:17). A gourd; Hebrew, kikaion (here only in the Old Testament); Septuagint, κολοκύνθη," pumpkin;" Vulgate, hedera; Aquila and Theodotion, κυκεών. Jerome describes this as a shrub called in Syriac elkeroa, and common in the sandy regions of Palestine. It has large leaves and grows to a considerable height in a very few days, so that a mere shrub becomes quickly a small tree. The scientific name of this plant is Ricinus communis; in Egyptian, kiki; in Assyrian, kukanitu. A drawing of it is given in Dr Pusey’s ’Commentary,’ p 260. It is also known by the name of the Palma Christi, and from its seeds is expressed "castor oil." But it is very doubtful whether this is the plant intended. Certainly the ricinus is never used in the East as a protection against the sun, for which its straggling, open growth renders it unsuitable; while the gourd, as Mr. Tristram testifies, is used universally to form trellises for shading arbours and summer houses, and affords a most effectual screen. "Orientals," says Dr. Thomson, "never dream of training a castor-oil plant overs booth, or planting it for a shade, and they would have but small respect for any one who did. It is in no way adapted for that purpose, while thousands of arbours are covered with various creepers of the general gourd family." With this testimony it is well to be satisfied. Whatever the plant was, its growth was abnormal in the present ease, though the rapidity with which it developed was merely a quickening of its ordinary powers, in due accordance with its nature and character. From his grief; Septuagint, ἀπὸτῶνκακῶναὐτοῦ, "from his evils;" Vulgate, ut … protegeret eum. The Hebrew word is the same as in Jonah 4:1, and it refers, not so much to the physical discomfort occasioned by the heat, but rather to the condition of his mind, the vexation and disappointment under which he was suffering. We exceeding glad; literally, rejoiced a great joy; ἐχάρηχαρὰνμεγάλην. The candour and simplicity of the writer throughout are very remarkable. He may have seen in this providential shelter an intimation that God approved of his intention to wait and see the issue. Jonah 4:7 Prepared (see note on Jonah 4:6). A worm. Either a single worm which punctured the stem and caused the plant to wither, or the word is used collectively, as in Deuteronomy 28:39, for "worms." A single warm night, with a moist atmosphere, will suffice to produce a host of caterpillars, which in an incredibly short time strip a plant of all its leaves. When the morning rose. At the very earliest dawn, before the actual rising of the sun (comp. Judges 9:33). Jonah seems to have enjoyed the shelter of the gourd one whole day. The withering of the plant came about in a natural way, but was ordered by God at a certain time in order to give Jonah the intended lesson. Jonah 4:8-11 § 4. Jonah grieves bitterly for the loss of the gourd; and God takes occasion from this to point out the prophet’s inconsistency and pitilessness in murmuring against the mercy shown to Nineveh with its multitude of inhabitants. Jonah 4:8 A vehement east wind; Septuagint, πνεύματικαύσωνι (James 1:11) συγκαίοντι "a scorching, burning wind;" Vulgate, vento calido et urenti (Hosea 13:15). The word translated "vehement" is also rendered "silent," i.e. sultry. Pusey and Hitzig rather incline to think it may mean the autumn or harvest wind. Either interpretation is suitable, as, according to Dr. Thomson, there are two kinds of sirocco, equally destructive and annoying—the violent wind, which fills the air with dust and sand; and the quiet one, when scarcely any air is stirring, but the heat is most overpowering. Beat upon the head. The same word for the effect of the rays of the sun as in Psalms 121:6 and elsewhere. Trochon quotes Ovid, ’Metam,’ 7.804— "Sole fere radiis feriente cacumiua primis." "The sun with earliest rays Scarce smiting highest peaks." Rich, ’Koordistan,’ 1.125, "Just as the moon rose, about ten, an intolerable puff of wind came from the northeast. All were immediately silent, as if they had felt an earthquake, and then exclaimed, in a dismal tone, ’The sherki is come.’ This was indeed the so much-dreaded sherki, and it has continued blowing ever since with great violence from the east and northeast, the wind being heated like our Bagdad sauna, but I think softer and more relaxing. This wind is the terror of these parts." "Few European travellers," says Layard, "can brave the perpendicular rays of an Assyrian sun. Even the well seasoned Arab seeks the shade during the day, and journeys by night unless driven forth by necessity or the love of war" (quoted by Dr. Pusey, in loc). He fainted (see note on Amos 8:13, where the fame word is used of the effects of thirst: comp. Jonah 2:7). His position on the east of the city (Psalms 121:5) exposed him to the full force of the scorching sun and wind. Wished in himself to die; literally, asked for his soul to die; Septuagint, ἀπελέγετοτὴνψυχὴναὐτοῦ, "despaired of his life" (1 Kings 19:4). The expression implies that he asked God to grant him his life to do with it what he liked. In his self-will and impatience he still shows his dependence upon God. He may have had in his mind the precedent of his great master Elijah, though his spirit is very different (see note on Psalms 121:3 above). Better for me to die. His wish for death arose from his now assured conviction that God’s mercy was extended to the heathen. He argued from the sudden withering of the gourd that he was not to stay there and see the accomplishment of his wishes, and, in his impatience and intolerance, he would rather die than behold Nineveh converted and saved. Jonah 4:9 God said. Keil and others have noted the variety in the use of the names of God in this passage (Jonah 4:6-9). The production of the gourd is attributed to Jehovah-Elohim (Jonah 4:6), a composite name, which serves to mark the transition from Jehovah in Jonah 4:4 to Elohim in Jonah 4:7 and Jonah 4:8. Jehovah, who replies to the prophet’s complaint (Jonah 4:4), prepares the plant as Elohim the Creator, and the worm as ha-Elohim the personal God. Elohim, the Ruler of nature, sends the east wind to correct the prophet’s impatience; and in Jonah 4:10 Jehovah sums up the history and teaches the lesson to be learned from it. Doest thou well to be angry? The same tender expostulation as in Jonah 4:4. I do well to be angry, even unto death. I am right to be angry, so that my anger almost kills me. Deprived of the shelter of the gourd, Jonah is immediately depressed, and in his unreasoning anger defends himself against the reproaches of God’s voice within him. Septuagint, Σφόδραλελύπημαιἐγὼἑωςθανάτου "I am greatly grieved even unto death," which reminds one of our Lord’s words in the garden (Mark 14:34). Jonah 4:10 The Lord. Jehovah. closing the story, and driving home the lesson with unanswerable force, the prophet himself being the judge. Thou hast had pity; thou on thy part hast spared; Septuagint, σὺἐφείσω. For the which thou hast not laboured; Septuagint, ὑπὲρἦςοὐκἐκακοπάθησαςἐπαὐτήν, "for which thou sufferedst no evil." The more trouble a thing costs us, the more we regard it, as a mother loves her sickly child best. Neither madest it grow. As God had made Nineveh into a "great city." Which came up in a night, and perished in a night; literally, which was the son of a night, and perished the son of a night. The allusion, of course, is to the extraordinary rapidity of the growth and destruction of the gourd. Jonah 4:11 Should not I spare Ninevah? The contrast between the feeling and conduct of God and those of the prophet is very forcible. Thou hast compassion for a plant of little worth, in whose growth thou hast had no concern, to which thou hast no right; should I not pity a great city which is mine, which I have permitted to grow into power? Thou hast compassion on a flower which sprang up in a day and withered in a day; should I not pity this town with its teeming population and its multitude of cattle, the least of which is more worth than any senseless plant, and which I uphold daily with my providence? Six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; i.e. children of tender years, who did not know which hand was the strongest and fittest for use; or, metaphorically, who had no knowledge between good and evil" (Deuteronomy 1:39), at present incapable of moral discernment. This limitation would include children of three or four years old; and, taking these as one-fifth of the population, we should set the inhabitants at six hundred thousand in number. The multitude of these innocent children, who must needs perish if the city were destroyed, is an additional reason why it should be spared. A still further claim for compassion is appended. And also much cattle. God’s mercy is over all his works; he preserveth man and beast (Psalms 36:6; Psalms 145:9), and as man is superior to other animals, so are cattle better than plants. The book ends abruptly, but its object is accomplished. Jonah is silenced; he can make no reply; he can only confess that he is entirely wrong, and that God is righteous. He learns the lesson that God would have all men saved, and that that narrow-mindedness which would exclude heathen from his kingdom is displeasing to him and alien from his design. "For thou hast mercy upon all; for thou canst do all things, and winkest at the sins of men in order that they should repent. For thou lovest all the things that are, and abhorrest nothing that thou hast made; for never wouldst thou have made anything if thou hadst hated it But thou sparest all; for they are thine, O Lord, thou Lover of souls" (Wis. 11:23, etc). Jonah 4:1-3 Repining at God’s mercy. A more mixed character than Jonah’s it would not be easy to imagine. God’s treatment of him, God’s language to him, prove that he was regarded as a servant, as a prophet, of the Lord. His own prayers and thanksgivings indicated a nature in happy fellowship with the Eternal. Yet how lacking in human charity, in true submissiveness, in unselfishness! True to nature, the portrait is one very suggestive to the thoughtful reader, who is anxious to escape self and to serve God. I. THE CAUSE OF . 1. Jonah’s fear was realized. 2. Jonah’s plans were defeated. 3. Jonah’s self-importance was wounded. His sin lay here—he thought little or nothing of the Ninevites, much or altogether of himself. So devoted was he to his own dignity, so filled with a sense of the importance of men’s estimate of himself, that he had no pity, no thought, for those to whom he was commissioned. The real explanation is here hinted of much of the repining, murmuring, discontent, which prevail among those professedly religious. Men would complain less frequently and bitterly, did they think less of themselves and more of their fellow men, were they more ready to forget themselves in desiring and seeking the welfare of others. II. THE FRUIT OF . 1. Anger and displeasure. 2. Vexation and dejection. Moses and Elijah, before Jonah, had asked that life might be taken away. Ardent souls, when disappointed, are prone to despondency. But it is one thing to despond because labour is unsuccessful; another thing to despond because men are saved. Because Nineveh was spared, Jonah fain would die. Had Nineveh perished, he would have been willing to live. III. THE SIN OF . This appears from the fact, so plainly stated by Jonah himself, that the Divine forbearance and mercy were made the ground of dissatisfaction and complaint. If men murmur at the exercise of God’s most gracious attributes, they can have no clearer proof of their want of sympathy with what is best, and no plainer indication of the urgent duty of repentance and humiliation. The long suffering of God. The magnificent description of the Divine character is given in language familiar to the pious Hebrews, as is apparent from its almost exact coincidence with other passages of Old Testament Scripture. Nothing could more conclusively contradict the common impression that the old covenant was one of justice only and not of mercy. The language, occurring as it does in close connection with the repining of the prophet, appears strangely out of place. It is surprising that Jonah could have spoken thus of God without feeling himself reproved and silenced. How could he have reflected upon the mercy and kindness of God, and have continued to cherish regret because his threats were not fulfilled, because a great city was spared? I. THE OF GOD. By a redundancy of language, testifying to the depth of appreciation felt, the Lord is declared to be: 1. Gracious. 2. Merciful. 3. Of great kindness. II. THE ACTIONS IN WHICH GOD HIS . 1. He defers the execution of his just indignation against sinners. The narrative gives an impressive instance of this; but it is the lesson of all history. 2. He changes his purposes of wrath into purposes of mercy. Such was the case with Nineveh. Such is the case with humanity at large. Anger rebuked. The Prophet Jonah was a singularly complex being. On the one hand, he evidently reverenced and trusted she Lord.; yet, on the other hand, he acted disobediently, and he cherished feelings which were in the highest degree discreditable to one who enjoyed his opportunities of knowing the Divine character and purposes. The inquiry, the expostulation, of the text indicates God’s displeasure with his servant; yet the form in which it shapes itself shows that God wished rather that Jonah should rebuke himself, that his conscience should be awakened to condemn the attitude which he had assumed. I. ANGER IS IN ITSELF AN EMOTION WHICH MAY BE EITHER GOOD OR EVIL. God himself is represented in his Word as having been angry with the wicked; and a righteous anger or indignation with wrong doers is now and again in the Scripture narrative mentioned, with approval. Indeed, a nature to which anger is foreign cannot but be lacking in moral fibre. On the other hand, into how many sins have men been led by giving way to foolish anger?—i.e. to anger either altogether unwarranted or unjustifiable in the degree in which it has been cherished. An angry man can seldom decide with justice or act with consideration. II. ANGER IS NEVER WHEN BY THE ACTION OF A AND GOD. Now, Jonah saw that the Divine Ruler was "slow to anger" with the Ninevites; yet he himself was quick to indignation and wrath. Anger like Jonah’s questions the justice of the Divine proceedings. He who is angry with the plans and purposes of the Eternal sets himself up as a judge of that Being who is Judge of all. There may be occasions for anger with fellow men; but anger with the Creator and Ruler of all is never defensible or excusable. It evinces a sad lack of modesty and of true submissiveness. III. ANGER IS ALWAYS WHEN IT IS BY THE RELIEF AND OF MEN. The plain truth concerning Jonah’s anger is this—it arose because the Ninevites were not overwhelmed with destruction. If the city had perished, the prophet would have felt satisfaction in contemplating such a fate. Because the city was spared, and (as he thought) his authority was discredited, he gave way to wrath. A more selfish and unamiable temper has never been exhibited. IV. THERE IS ALWAYS REASON TO SUSPECT THE JUSTICE OF ANGER WHEN IT SOME OR OF SELF. Plainly Jonah thought more of himself than of those to whom he ministered, or he would not have given way to anger because his word of prophecy was not literally fulfilled. Men sometimes endeavour to deceive themselves, to persuade themselves that their wrath is stirred by some infraction of right, when, all the time, the true secret of their anger is to be found in personal mortification. A lesson this of the importance of being upon our guard against the insidious temptation to vanity and self-importance. The withering of earthly consolation. If Jonah’s vexation and anger were due first to the sparing of Nineveh, and the mortification of his self-importance, similar emotion was excited within him by the deprivation of personal comfort which was appointed by Divine providence. I. IN TIMES OF TROUBLE GOD DIVINE FOR HIS PEOPLE. The gourd, or palmcrist, which the Author of nature caused to grow up over Jonah’s booth, was "for a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief." Such a refuge, shelter, shadow, Providence often appoints for those who are in distress. Some unexpected provision for want, some gracious alleviation of suffering, some marvellous deliverance from impending danger, reveals the thoughtful and loving care of the Most High. II. GOD IN HIS MERCY THUS TURNS SORROW INTO . "Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd." It was itself beautiful to behold, and its cool shelter was refreshing, and it was a pleasant and welcome emblem of Divine care and kindness. Many have been made glad according to the days in which they have been afflicted, to the years in which they have seen evil. Of many once storm-tossed and imperilled it may be said, "They are glad because they be quiet." It is right to rejoice when Eternal Mercy rescues and delivers those who are in trouble and distress. III. ARE OFTEN SHORT-LIVED AND . The caterpillars which smote the palmcrist in a few hours robbed Jonah of his comfort, so that his new, dawning joy was overcast with clouds of gloom. And this withering was an emblem of the transitory nature of all earthly happiness and prosperity. The comforts which God sends he takes away, lest we should set our hearts upon created good. Health fails, property is lost, friends die, bright prospects are clouded, hopes perish- Nothing continueth in one stay. "This world is all a fleeting show, For man’s illusion given; The smiles of joy, the tears of woe, Deceitful shine, deceitful flow: There’s nothing true but heaven." IV. THE OF EARTHLY IS TO LEAD MEN TO SEEK THEIR HIGHEST GOOD IN GOD. Such discipline does not, indeed, produce this effect upon all men; many are hardened, some are driven to despair, by adversity. But with regard to the truly pious, it may be said that, when the gourd withers, the Giver is as firmly trusted and as warmly loved as when the shelter was thick and green. "Though vine nor fig tree neither Their wonted fruit should bear; Though all the field should wither, Nor flock nor herd be there; Yet God the same abiding, His praise shall tune my voice; For while in him confiding, I cannot but rejoice." Desire to die. Deep was the mortification, the disappointment, the dejection, which, more than once, found expression in this wish. It is not an uncommon thing for those whose hearts are blighted, whose prospects are clouded, for whom life has but few attractions left, to wish rather to die than to live. I. THE OF THIS WISH. 1. The burden of bodily suffering or weakness, or of mental anguish, may be such as is very hard to bear; and men may wish to lay it down even though with it they lay down the load of life. 2. The memory of trouble, calamity, disaster, may be so distressing that even annihilation has been desired rather than an ineffaceable record of woe. The Christian cannot desire extinction of being, but he may hope that, in passing hence, he may steep his soul in Lethe’s oblivious waves. 3. The apparent hopelessness of the earthly prospect tempts men to wish to die. To many who are advanced in life, crippled in body, ruined in circumstances, disappointed in life plans, this earthly existence seems to present no prospects; death seems a relief. II. THE OF THIS WISH. 1. It implies a habit of discontent and of murmuring. Our circumstances are appointed or permitted by a kind Providence; to wish to escape them is to wish to avoid the discipline ordained for us by our heavenly Father. The Christian pilgrim should be prepared cheerfully, or at least patiently, to finish his path, even to the journey’s end. 2. It implies an undue desire for rest. Men’s notions of heaven are often carnal and selfish; they look forward to release from labour and service; and sometimes they wish to die that they may enjoy the sweets of repose. But it should be the desire and expectation of all Christians, that they may serve God day and night in his temple. Surely one attraction of the future state for the holy nature is this—it will afford opportunity for higher and purer service. III. THE TO THIS WISH. This is to be found in perfect submissiveness to the holy and perfect will of God. Whilst he has work for his people to do on earth, earth is the best place for them; when he wishes them to enter upon heavenly service, he himself will call them hence. Jonah 4:10, Jonah 4:11 The breadth of the Divine piety. The close of this very remarkable book is deserving of attention and admiration, as evidently gathering up and exhibiting the purpose for which this composition was designed. Of all things apprehensible by us nothing is equal in interest to the character of the Supreme Ruler and Lord. This is depicted in this closing passage of the narrative and prophecy in the most attractive, encouraging, and glorious colours. 1. GOD’S PITY WITH MAN’S AND . Jonah, though a prophet of the Lord, would have witnessed the destruction of Nineveh with equanimity and even satisfaction. It might have been supposed that a sinful and fallible being would have been more compassionate. But for the supreme illustration of pity we must look to the Father of all. II. GOD’S PITY IS EXCITED BY THE OF A GREAT AND IN DANGER OF . Nineveh was at the other end of the scale, so to speak, from the palmcrist which grew up and perished in a few hours. It was an ancient, vast, populous, powerful, famous city. "Should I not spare," asked God of Jonah, "Nineveh, that great city?" There is in this language something which appeals to our heart. God is represented in the most amiable and attractive light. Such sentiments as these will be cherished by God-like men, by those Christ-like hearts that sympathize with him who beheld Jerusalem, and wept over it, III. GOD’S PITY IS BY THE OF LITTLE EXPOSED TO . By those who are described as unable to discern between their right hand and their left we may well understand babes and young children who had not sinned. Yet these were in danger of being overtaken by the one common calamity and ruin. The tender heart of the All-Father was touched by the possibility of such a catastrophe. And when it was possible to avert it—in harmony with the principles of the Divine government, and so as not to endanger the spiritual interests of humanity—it was a joy to the heart of God to spare the city and the babes of the city’s household. . 1. Let the hearers of the gospel take advantage of the sparing mercy of the Lord. 2. Let the preachers of the gospel proclaim the sparing mercy of the Lord. 3. Let all Christians sympathize with, delight in, and imitate, the sparing mercy of the Lord. BY J.E. HENRY A misanthrope’s case against Divine benevolence. It takes a good deal to make a man of God perfect. After a whole life’s discipline the old man of sin will sometimes show his baleful features at the window of the soul. Jonah has just been figuring to our mind as a changed character, returned to his allegiance, going God’s errand promptly, and doing his work with faithful zeal. But here he forfeits our good opinion, almost before it has had time to form. The patient’s cure has been only seeming, or else he has suffered a bad relapse. At any rate, the narrative leaves him on a spiritual level as low or lower than it found him. He began by quarrelling with a particular command of God, and he ends by quarrelling with his moral government as a whole. If there be a point of religious progress scored at all in connection with the matter, it is the exceedingly minute one that at first he tried to defeat the Divine purpose, and at last, and with an ill grace, he submits to its execution as inevitable. And it may be noted, as a qualifying consideration, that sanctification is the work of a lifetime; and therefore we can look for no very material change in the few days which the narrative of the book covers. I. A MAN WHO HAS FOUND MERCY HIMSELF MAY YET GRUDGE IT TO OTHERS. Misanthropy is Satanic. The devil hates men utterly and intensely. And the man, if there be such, who hates men instinctively, and would destroy them unprovoked, is less human than diabolical Jonah was not such a man. There were considerations, and paltry ones, for which he would have sacrificed all the souls in Nineveh, but, apart from these, he wished them no ill. 1. One of these considerations was supplied by egoism. As the prophet and mouthpiece of God, he had predicted the destruction of the city, even to the naming of the day, and his credit required that the event should now occur. If it did not, his prophecy failed, and his reputation as a prophet suffered, both with the Ninevites and with his own people. The prospect of this he could not stand. In his miserable and guilty self-seeking he preferred the destruction, soul and body, of a million people, to the possible discrediting of his prophetic claims. Such heartlessness in a believing man seems well nigh incredible. But it is far from unparalleled. Every Christian worker approaches it who works for his own credit or advantage, and not for the salvation of men. He may not be conscious of the fact, or he may fail to realize the significance of it, but he virtually and practically prefers that men should perish rather than that he should be deemed a failure. His reputation as a Christian worker, and his success in that character, is more to him than the salvation from sin of all to whom his words may come. 2. Another consideration sectarianism provides. To Israel in its wickedness a whole line of prophets had preached, with no result whatever, save their own extermination (Acts 7:52), and the announcement of inevitable doom on the obdurate race (Amos 5:27; Amos 7:17). The Ninevites’ deliverance, establishing as it would the genuineness of their turning from sin, would bring into unfavourable contrast the obstinate impenitence of Israel, would emphasize the needs be of her approaching ruin, and would amount to the preservation and encouragement of the very heathen power by which she was to fall. Then the overthrow of Nineveh by an angry God would have been a terrible example to quote to Israel, and a rod to conjure with when calling on them to fly the wrath of God; whilst its escape the prophet’s careless countrymen might wrest to their own destruction, and from it argue that the vengeance denounced would likely never fail. There is an attitude of indifference toward the perishing, into which an analogous spirit of sectarianism sometimes causes believers to fall The question of their salvation gets mixed up with some question of denominational loss or discredit. We desire their conversion, and desire to be the means of it. But we don’t desire it supremely or disinterestedly. We don’t desire it apart from all denominational considerations. The idea of their remaining a while longer in sin would be almost as tolerable to us as that some rival sect should win their gratitude and adherence by helping them into the kingdom. This is, at bottom, the spirit of Jonah exactly. It is putting an earthly and narrow interest. before the eternal life of souls. It is a spirit unworthy the Christian character, and a shameful stigma on the Christian name. 3. A further consideration may be found in the surviving misanthropy of a half-sanctified nature. God desires infinitely the highest well being of men (Ezekiel 33:11). And men, in proportion as they are God-like, desire it too (Romans 9:1-4). The sinful nature, which is largely selfish, is being taken away, and the gracious character, which is essentially benevolent, is being inwrought. But neither process is complete on earth, and the missionary spirit, which is their joint issue, is proportionally weak. It was so with Jonah. He shows the old nature strong still in pride and petulance and ingratitude, and why not in lovelessness, its characteristic vice? Such a man is incapable of understanding the tender and gracious heart of God, which loves men absolutely and infinitely, and acts in every respect in character. He is incapable of desiring supremely the highest good of men, for he has never climbed to the high spiritual level in which to apprehend his own. A half-sanctified man is considerably more than half-selfish, and a good deal less than half benevolent. If we would know what it is to travail for men’s salvation, we must rise to a love of God baptized into the likeness of the Divine love out of which it springs. II. GOD’S IS , ELSE MAY CHANGE. . And the supposition is strengthened by the fact that, whilst he gives literally the clauses that speak of God’s mercy, he leaves out the clause that speaks of his justice (Exodus 34:7), and substitutes for it a sentiment of his own. But justice and mercy met in the whole transaction. The Ninevites were mercifully spared, yet not unjustly. They might in justice have been destroyed, but not in mercy (Isaiah 55:7; Jeremiah 31:20). Therefore Jonah absurdly makes it a charge against God that he is what he had always gloried in declaring himself to be. So blind and stupid can a sulky servant be. God need not overact his merciful character in order to offend such people; it is his mercy itself with which they have a quarrel. 2. The prophet himself affirms the Divine consistency. "God," we are told, "repented of the evil," etc.; and Jonah says, "I knew that thou art a gracious God... and repentest thee of the evil." The thing that Jonah knew he would do he did. His action was normal and entirely consistent—such action as he has always taken, and will take, in a like case. He repented, in fact, yet did not change. He did what it would be a change to cease from doing in the circumstances. He threatened Nineveh sinning, as he threatens all, and then he spared it turning, as he spares men in every age. His repentance, so called, is his method coordinating itself with the changing conditions of life, and is simply an aspect of his immutability. III. THE PRAYER OF THE SELF-SEEKER IS OF ILL-ADVISED. (Verse 3) Jonah’s prayer was bona fides. It is as a believer he prays. His spiritual instinct brings him in his unhappiness to a throne of grace. "He does not seek a refuge from God. He makes God his Refuge" (Martin). He shows a surly sincerity in unreservedly stating what is working in his mind; and "so long as all can yet be declared unto the Lord, even though it be your infirmity, there integrity still reigns" (Martin). Yet, barring the quality of sincerity, this prayer lacks almost every other element of acceptable worship. 1. It is inappropriate in its matter. (Verse 3) It is not absolutely and necessarily wrong to pray for death. Paul, persecuted and afflicted, had "a desire to depart and be with Christ." It is easily conceivable that a believer, broken down and prostrated with incurable disease, should pray for death as the sole available release. It would be nothing unbecoming if a ripe saint, whose life work is done, and who longs for rest, should make its early coming a matter of prayer. But Jonah was neither past living usefully nor, in his present temper, ready to die. His death, if allowed, would have advanced no interest either of his own or of others. His work was, humanly speaking, far from being done, and his life, if he put a noble interpretation on it, might be of great importance in the world. He was stupidly wanting to fling away from him, instead of prizing and using it, one of God’s most precious gifts, and his own most sacred trust. The desire to die, which some consider the cream of all piety, is as often mistaken as appropriate, and far less often a duty than a sin. In such cases men "ask and receive not, because they ask amiss." 2. It is improper in spirit. One can easily see that Jonah was in no praying mood. He was angry and insolent. His prayer was really a contentious manifesto—the joint issue of arrogance and discontent. As such it was utterly offensive to God, and itself a new sin in his sight. The spirit of it, however, made it harmless, as it secured the refusal of its mischievous request. Our union with Christ is a condition of successful prayer (John 15:7). The guarantee of its acceptability is our dwelling in Christ: the cause of its fitness is his Word dwelling in us. The Spirit helps the believer’s infirmities, and in these qualities we have the outcome of his work (Ro very gist of prayer is a leaving of ourselves in the hands of God. Its inquiry is, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" and its request is, "Lord, here am I; send me." Such a request is offered in terms of our Father’s will, and, being offered in Christ, is ideal prayer to God. But the prayer of wilfulness, of fretfulness, of carnal suggestion in any shape, is lacking in every element that God regards or can accept. "For let not such a one think that he shall receive anything of the Lord." IV. GOD ANSWERS A FAULT-FINDING PRAYER BY THE SPIRIT OF IT. The rule is that believing prayer is answered (Mark 2:24). It is a special qualification of the rule that the answer comes in the form of things agreeable to God’s will. Jonah’s prayer had enough of faith in it to secure an answer, and yet enough of folly to necessitate an answer very different from the one desired (verse 4). There was wonderful condescension here. Jonah makes an insane request, and it is mercifully ignored. He makes it in a sinful way, and gets the thing he was most in need of—an admonition. The words imply: 1. Are you angry on sufficient grounds? An enumeration of the antecedents of his anger would have covered Jonah with confusion. His contemptibly egotistic refusal to prophesy, as it was his business to do, had not so much been punished, as forcibly overcome, and then forgiven. His life, jeopardized, in the natural course of events, by his own infatuate conduct, had, by a miracle of mercy, been given back to him from the grave’s mouth. His recent ministry so tardily exercised had been blessed beyond a parallel, to the saving of a mighty city and the glorious illustration of the mercy and grace of God. These grounds of feeling are the only grounds which, as a servant of God, he could consistently regard. The others, which bore on possible results to his own official prestige, and Israel’s moral attitude and fate, were purely speculative, might prove unfounded altogether, and whether or not should have no place in a spiritual mind. A true prophet is a man who speaks for God unquestioningly, who acts for God undauntedly, who is in fullest sympathy with his gracious purposes, and who knows no personal considerations in his work. Well might God ask, "Art thou wiser than I?" "Is thine eye evil because I am good?" If a servant may have an interest antagonistic to his masters; if a man "may make his own narrow capacity the measure by which to judge of the Divine wilt and the Divine procedure" (Martin); if the salvation of a million strangers is nothing in the balance against a possible hurt to a few of our own friends;—then Jonah was fitly angry, and we, in a like case, may fitly be angry also. The words also imply: 2. Is your anger itself a right thing? The will of God is the ultimate reason of things. The way of God is uuchallengeably right. The office of censor over him does not exist, There is no provision in his scheme of government for our being angry, and no place in the chain of cause and effect at which it could come in. We do it solely on our own responsibility, in violation of the Divine harmonies, and at our own risk and loss. It settles nothing outside ourselves, influences nothing, and has no right of way across the field of providence. God is supreme, and men are in his hands, and all duty in relation to his government is, "Thy will be done." The question of men’s salvation is God’s question in the last appeal. He sits at the helm. He settles who shall be saved, and whether any shall be saved (Romans 9:11, Romans 9:16, Romans 9:22, Romans 9:23). The conversion of sinners is hut the evolution of his purpose; the glorification of saints the realization of his plan. Is not this good tidings for the lust? Seeking God as he thinks with all his heart, the anxious sinner fancies sometimes that the is willing and God is not, and that the question to be solved is the question of overcoming a certain Divine inertia, and getting God’s consent to his entrance into life. The idea is a delusion of Satan, and has ruined more lives than could be told. "Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life." That is Christ’s way of it. "As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live." That is God’s gospel, the glorious and precious truth. God’s willingness to save is infinite. He waits to be gracious. It is you that are not willing. You think you are, and you may be in some respects. But you are not willing perfectly and all round. There is a secret reservation lurking somewhere. Search well and see. If you had ever been wholly willing for a single instant, you would that instant have been across the threshold and in the kingdom. If you are wholly willing now, it is the golden hour of your life, for it is the beginning of the new life in Christ.—J.E.H. Jonah 4:5-11 Divine mercy formulating its own apologetic. God is patient and persistent to a marvel. He sticks to men whom we would unhesitatingly cast off, and bears with them when, to our mind, patience has ceased to be a virtue. His keen eye sees ground for hope where we should utterly despair; and he goes on dealing with cases that we should regard as quite beyond treatment. The case of Jonah was one in point. He displayed a mulish obstinacy, and a tenacious and assertive self-will, on which anything short of the strong arm seemed only labour thrown away. Yet God is neither disgusted nor discouraged. He does not cease to strive; neither does he restart to the violence that would seem so fitting. His mildly suasive measures go on, and go on calmly and confidently, as to infallible success. Verbal expostulation has failed, but that is only one agency of exhaustless Divine resource. The symbolic method of teaching still remains, and may prevail, and God mercifully tries it on the refractory prophet before he will either say, "Cut him off!" or, "Let him alone!" We learn here— I. HOW A SERVANT OF GOD MAY CLING TO A PROJECT. (Verse 5) Jonah’s leaning toward the destruction of Nineveh was not mere caprice. It was largely selfish. That event would have been to him equivalent to a new credential of office, The heathen abroad and Israel at home he could have referred to it as a miraculous authentication of his word, and a new feather in his official cap. Accordingly, his preference went and his influence tried to work in that direction. In this mind he left the city. He would not mingle with the people. Their abject attentions while dreading death, and their possible ridicule if it did not come, would be alike distasteful. His mission, moreover, was practically fulfilled, and he had no very definite business to detain him longer; whilst there would be a natural desire to be out of the city when its fateful hour should arrive. There was, however, a reason for his departure a good deal less to his credit than any of these. He went to see "what would become of the city." Here was watching for souls in hideous, baleful travesty. He was watching for their salvation, it is true, but watching for it in protesting anger and fear. He cannot bring himself to believe that it will take place; and he climbs the hills overlooking the city from the east to watch developments with a mind divided between anger, curiosity, and misgiving. And here he displayed the deliberation and resource that we observed on other occasions. Anticipating inconvenience from the burning heat, he built himself a rustic arbour in which he could sit in the pleasant shade and comfortably await the end. It is humiliating to think that questions of earthly interest, questions even of personal convenience, will compete successfully at times with the question of men’s salvation, for the first place in the attention of God’s people. Words have, for some paltry personal consideration, been left unspoken, interviews unsought, measures unattended to, on which, humanly speaking, the question of some one’s eternity hung. Those who know God and speak for him want to realize that their doing so is the paramount consideration, with which there is no other matter that may for a moment come into competition. A Paul "counts not his life dear unto him that he might finish the ministry received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God" (Acts 20:24). On no lower level can we, as regards the perishing, "walk in love as Christ also loved us." II. HOW GOD IN BLESSES SINNERS AGAINST HIS GRACE. (Verse 6) Jonah had just complained of the great lenity of God. But he is only quarrelling with his own mercy. He is the very first, as he was the very last, to profit by that lenity himself: The God who offended him by pitying penitent Nineveh gave him unmingled gratification by pitying his rebellious self, and bringing him in his self-made discomfort prompt relief. And the gourd that grew so timely and served so well may be taken as a type of the Divine compensatory arrangements in connection with human life. 1. These always come. God does not forget his people, and cannot disregard their troubles. He heeds and he helps them. Wherever there is the burning sun of calamity there is the gourd of some ameliorating circumstance. They do not intermit; if they did our well being, our very life, would intermit also. They do not fluctuate with our allegiance; if they did they would be at the ebb perpetually. They flow down in a continuous steady stream. "No father like God; none feel for his children like him; none so forgiving and ready to relieve; when none else will pity them, he will; and in the face of manifold provocations the Lord remembereth mercy. When they become sufferers, the Father’s bowels of compassion melt over them. We have a High Priest that is soon touched with the feeling of our infirmities" (Jones). 2. They always suit. Appropriateness must characterize a "good and perfect gift," such as all God’s are. They are not at right angles to our need, but along the line of it. There is a destroying angel to rout a besieging army (2Ki to quench a dying woman’s thirst (Genesis 21:19), an earthquake to shake open prison doors (Acts 16:26), and "sufficient grace" to make a thorn in the flesh endurable (2 Corinthians 12:8, 2 Corinthians 12:9). In fact, God’s helpful action bears directly on our sufferings and their alleviation. We get sometimes what we ask for, and always what we need. And we get it too at the moment we need it most. "The sea is opened when Israel is hemmed in on every side; the manna comes down when they have no bread; and the water flows from the rock when they are ready to die with thirst (Psalms 27:10)" (Jones). 3. They do for us what our own skill and contrivance have failed to do. Jonah’s booth proved insufficient shelter, and in the hour of its proved inadequacy the gourd grew. God allows us to build our own booth first. We try our hand at improving our earthly lot, to find that we cannot command success. We lay deep plans and put forth stupendous efforts, and then flounder and stick fast. At last, God, who has been awaiting such a juncture, steps in, and, by some unthought of incident, the blocked path is opened, and the thing is done. The testimony of God’s people everywhere has been that, not their own brain or arm, but "the good hand of the Lord," has opened their path and made their life’s prosperity. 4. They are often appreciated without being traced to their source. "Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd." And well he might. It intercepted the broiling sunshine, and converted physical distress into luxurious ease. Yet he rejoiced in its grateful shade without considering it to be God’s gift or a blessing to thank him for. It is so that many of our mercies are received. They are welcomed and prized and rejoiced in. We are exceeding glad of them, and more than enough are exercised about them. "I become exceeding glad of my gourd. My heart entwines around it. This pleasing prospect; this budding hope; this successful movement; this welcome visitant, the golden-haired little one within my earthly home, crowing in my arms, searching my eye for the kindling glance of joy and love, and dancing gleefully on finding it;—ah! in many a form my gourd may grow; and I am exceeding glad of my gourd, even when I quarrel with God" who gives it (Martin). But our best of blessings we do not trace to their heavenly source. We take them unheeding as to whence or where they come. It is a fault of our life, and a chief cause of our ingratitude and lack of love, that God’s gifts are treated often as our own gains, and so are godlessly enjoyed. They are understood only when God is seen in them, and rightly used when used as from his hand; but, received with the dry eye of ingratitude, or with the shut eye of insensibility, they are deforced of their Divine element, and to us are God’s gifts no longer. III. HOW GOD CONFERS SOME GIFTS ONLY TO TAKE THEM AWAY AGAIN. (Verse 7) Jonah got his time of the gourd, but it was a short time.. For one day he reclined luxuriously beneath its shadow; the next came the worm, and his shelter was gone. It is so with many comfortable earthly things. God gives them in mercy, and seeing them either inappreciated or idolized, he in further mercy takes them away. They "perish in the using." At best they could only last a lifetime; often they do not last so long. They are flowers that only bloom to wither, mists that melt away as soon as the sun is risen. And, whilst this is true of them as a class, it is specially true of some varieties. "When things come to us in haste, they as hastily part again; when riches come too quickly they quickly take their flight; sudden glories decay suddenly; the fruit which is soonest ripe is found to be soonest rotten" (Abbot). There is in the sudden removal of valued blessings a needful assertion of the Divine control. The things we have are not our own. We hold them at God’s pleasure. And he emphasizes this fact occasionally by taking away the thing or the good of it, when we are just settling down for a whole life’s enjoyment. Then we make idols of our mercies sometimes. We put the gift into the Giver’s place. The most effectual cure for this is to be left without it. Our Father bestows his favours "not with a view to make man happy in the possession of them, but to win upon man, and to allure his heart w himself by his gifts. Abraham’s servant did not bestow the jewels of silver and jewels of gold and raiment on Rebekah to make her joyful in a heathen land, but to win her heart to Isaac" (Jones). IV. SHOWS MEN HOW BADLY THEY COULD DO WITHOUT GOD’S GIFTS. (Verse 8) The withering of the gourd and the rising of the hot sirocco were timed to synchronize. And there was disciplinary value in the adjustment. The loss of a gift becomes a lesson by emphasizing what and how much it means. Had the gourd remained, the heat would have been little felt. Had not the sirocco followed, the withered gourd might never have been missed. The concurrence of the two events and their obvious adjustment to each other reveal the hand of God, and point the lesson of the providence beyond mistaking. So misfortunes often march on us in companies, and support each other. One trial prepares the way of another, and lays bare the breast for its darts to penetrate. The discipline of grace is a lengthened process, and advances stage by stage to its lofty end of lust killed and a transfigured life. V. FROM OUR TOWARD OUR LOVED OBJECTS WE MAY ARGUE UP TO GOD’S TOWARDS HIS. (Verses 10, 11) Our creation in the Divine image involves this, and all parabolic teaching takes it for granted. The soul is a miniature of God. and the order of coming to pass in it is "after God." Hence the unanswerableness of the question with which the parable and the book both close. 1. The things we love are paltry. A gourd against a city, a worthless plant against half a million of immortal souls. Such is a sample of the contrast between the objects of God’s Compassion and of ours. May we not argue that the compassion itself in the one case and the other is in still profounder contrast? God’s love and mercy have reference to a lost race. Ours, unless in so far as we are God-like, refer to some trifling earthly object. Let the fact be realized, and the lesson is learned—a lesson of admiration and awe, and lowly gratitude and love. 2. We have but a limited interest in the things we prize. The gourd did not belong to Jonah. He "did not make it grow." He got the use of it for a while, but that was all. So the things we have are not our own. They are left with us as a loan, and held as a brief trust. Our attachment to them has no element of ownership in it, and is therefore destitute of a fundamental excellence. But God loves souls as his property and portion, and with a view to the fruition of them through all eternity. His is indeed a sublime affection—a "love which passeth knowledge." 3. We have done but little for them. (Verse 10) "For which thou hast not laboured." We love what costs us something. It is to the sickly child, which has cost her years of anxiety and care, that the mother’s heart cleaves in most intense affection. Labour and sacrifice for an object bind us to it by a special tie. Created by our skill and effort, it is our offspring in a sense, and dear accordingly. This tie was absent in the case of Jonah. He had not produced, nor contributed to the production of, the much-lamented gourd. But what had God not done for Nineveh? His were the lives forfeited, his the blessings menaced, his the repentance which led to the reprieve. In pitying Nineveh God was pitying the work of his own hands, an object in which he held, as a vested interest, all that he had done for it and meant to do. 4. They are of brief endurance. "Which came up in a night, and perished in a night." The time element is an important one in all attachments. The longer they have been growing the firmer they are. Jonah’s gourd was lost almost as soon as found, and could not have been the object of any settled regard. But Nineveh had been in God’s heart since before the world began, and many in it were to be his joy after time had ceased to be. His love had in it the incomparable strength of continuance, an aspect of "the power of an endless life." What an overwhelming argument for acquiescence in the Divine purpose of mercy! And how often, in the giving and taking away again of some form of earthly good, does God press home the argument on men who are quarrelling with his will! My gourd, like Jonah’s, may have grown and flourished, "to the end, perhaps, that it may wither and droop and die; and that my heart, untractable, may at last, by losing it, be taught to feel that, if the object which my poor foolish love fastens on be hard to part with, how infinitely wrong in me to desire God to abandon those purposes which his infinitely wise will hath cherished from eternity, and which he hath bound in with and wrapt around my destiny at once to bless and train me!" (Martin). Learn from this how to conceive of the value of the souls of men. They are the priceless things. God’s masterpieces as to their origin, they are unparagoned as to intrinsic excellence; whilst, as to their place and function, they are the crown jewels of Christ, and the objects for which all heaven is a place prepared. Let saint and sinner mark this well To barter away our soul is a transaction which will not profit us, though we "gain the whole world" instead. To love our neighbour as ourself, and in doing so supremely to love his soul, is "more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices." To love God supremely is to combine in ideal ratio the love of self and the love of souls. They are the "children of the Highest," whose hearts are the home of such affection, and they have in its presence the fruition of their inheritance begun.—J.E.H. BY W.G. BLAIKIE Verses l-4 Jonah’s displeasure. "But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry," etc. This is not a wholly unexpected manifestation of character in Jonah. His was evidently a strange character, full of contradictory elements. A prophet of the Lord, who can yet run away from his work—influenced by high considerations in the main, yet yielding to a low desire for personal comfort—can sleep in a storm while pagans are at prayer—yet susceptible of profound contrition and repentance—frankly owns himself the cause of the storm—had ignominiously consulted for his comfort, but now generously sacrifices his life—in depth of his humiliation becomes wonderfully penitent, trustful, and obedient. Notwithstanding these contradictions, we should, perhaps, hardly have expected another outbreak of his lower nature, after so striking a Divine discipline and subjugation, and so remarkable a display of honesty, courage, self-sacrifice: it is a surprise to find him again quarrelling with God’s appointment, discontented, hard, unmerciful, excited and grieved at the respite of Nineveh. There is a certain inconstancy in impulsive natures; there is a desperate activity of the lower propensities; hence our need of Divine guidance, a continual need—alone is able to keep the very best from falling. "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." I. JONAH’S . (Verse 10) Proposed change of translation, making words to express grief rather than resentment, is hardly called for. Evidently Jonah lost self-control, and gave way to violent excitement. Here is another proof of the honesty of Bible narrative. It gives a faithful picture of human infirmity—"the law of sin in the members warring against the law of the mind." It would be a very untrue representation if faults corrected once, even by God, were represented as subdued forever. The most distressing experience of true Christians is the renewed activity of their infirmities and corruptions even after profound humiliation and true contrition. "Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults. Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me" (Psalms 19:12, Psalms 19:13). II. REASON FOR IT. (Verse 2) God too merciful—his mercy on this occasion judged out of place. Jonah’s truthfulness as a prophet seemed to be compromised; he was made to appear foolish in the eyes of men—the whole of the painful experience he had gone through shown to be unnecessary; he would have to return home without bringing word to his people of the great catastrophe by which they would have been compelled to regard God’s will. Jonah finds confirmation of the thought that had influenced him at first—God too merciful to inflict great judgments; he seems to find a reason for his original rebellion, and, with irreverent honesty, vindicates himself before God. A very great aggravation of his sin, that what he disliked in God was his graciousness to sinners. The mood of mind which Jonah is represented as expressing openly often has a lurking existence, not less mischievous because half concealed. Mercy of God is sometimes thought to be excessive. So thought Jews when Gentiles were to be admitted to Christian Church. Possibly this transaction was designed to foreshadow that event—Jonah’s strong feeling a foreshadow of narrow Jewish jealousy. On a wider theatre, man’s terrible selfishness is apt to prevail even over all considerations of mercy; for instance, a merchant interested in fall of price of grain is apt to be grieved for good weather and plentiful harvest—the heir of a rich man (possibly of his father) disappointed when he recovers from serious illness—the heart is apt to grieve at the good of a neighbour, especially of a rival—some one has said, "There is something even in the troubles of our friends which is not altogether displeasing to us"—a state of war is sometimes desired because of impulse to be given to certain branches of trade: in all such cases, the aspect of selfishness is simply hideous—men may well shrink from looking at such pictures of themselves—yet such feelings are by no means uncommon. What surprises in case of Jonah is that, after showing himself a very paragon of self-sacrifice, the selfish feeling should have been so strong, and that he should have given such open expression to it. III. JONAH’S PRAYER. (Verse 3) He asked to be relieved of his life, which had become too burdensome to him. See here the sad prevalence of carnal spirit—no acknowledgment of higher wisdom of God, of the way in which good might be brought by him out of what seemed to Jonah to be evil. See, too, the sinfulness of a despairing spirit in servant of God—not unnatural in men of world—complications and miseries may arise which overwhelm—misery may be too absolute to bear, and every succeeding step may only aggravate it—dreadful condition of human spirit when absolute misery closes upon it, Such should never be the condition of a servant of God while in possession of his reason—sense of Divine providence, and assurance of protection and guidance should repel it—it is unbelieving men that ask, "Is life worth living?" Unbelief and suicide go together. Observe, in Jonah’s case, effect of tolerated sin on his spiritual condition—he loses trust in God—does not see how God can save him even from himself—makes no such request, but only asks him to take away his life. Sometimes it seems so impossible to do right, that we are willing to give up all in despair. "If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!" This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/pulpit-commentary/