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DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
SECOND AND CHEAPER EDITION. Price 7s. 6d.
THE CHRISTIAN'S PLEA AGAINST
MODERN UNBELIEF.
A HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE.
REVIEWS.
* ' A volume both interesting in itself and calculated to be of very import
ant service to those whose duty it may be to present Christian evidences to
others. The reader will find complete statements of the general arguments
from miracles, from prophecy, and from history, with a very lengthy and
able chapter upon the ' Authority of the Canon.' He brings to this work a
mind thoroughly conversant with the literature and philosophy of his sub
ject, and a clear and agreeable style." — Guardian.
"This volume is one of great ability and completeness. It is the fruit
of a lifetime of scholarly, and, of late years, professional dea'lings with
Christian truth. Professor Redford brings to bear upon the matters dis
cussed, not only wide reading and accomplished critical scholarship, but an
acute and patient intellect, as little likely to be deluded by sophisms as
disturbed by passion. Among all works of its class that have come under
our notice, there is none that for masterly cleverness, completeness, and
compendiousness, we could place by the side of this." — British Quarterly
Review. 11 It has been executed by Mr. Redford with considerable skill and care,
and with great fairness. Difficulties are not shirked, but met. It will be
found by those who have to grapple with sceptical arguments a most con
venient manual." — Record.
"The author's extensive reading and research are apparent in every
chapter, while his skill in touching the weak points, in tile arguments or
statements of sceptics is very conspicuous. This book is invaluable for the
student who seeks to acquire an exact acquaintance with the various phases
of opposition to Christianity, and will serve as an admirable book of refer
ence to the Minister who, amid his pastoral duties, meets with those whose
minds have been unsettled." — Wesleyan Methodist Magazine.

London : HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 27, Paternoster Row.

Studies in the Book of Jonah
% <§dtmt uvfo an fepusificm,

BY
R. A. REDFORD, M.A., LL.B.,
PROFESSOR OF SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY AND APOLOGETICS,
NEW COLLEGE, LONDON.
AUTHOR OF "THE CHRISTIAN'S PLEA AGAINST MODERN UNBELIEF,'
"PROPHECY, ITS NATURE AND EVIDENCE," ETC.

HODDER AND STOUGHTON,
27, PATERNOSTER ROW.
MDCCCLXXXIII.

Butler & Tanner,
The Selwood Printing' Works,
Frorne, and London.

PREFACE.
"\T0 part of the Bible is less studied than
the Minor Prophets. Yet, as repre
senting the decline and restoration of the
Jewish people, they possess a singular interest
and special significance. But such works re
quire to be looked at attentively. They are
full of allusions which are not on the surface,
and their language is concise and sometimes
obscure. We should endeavour to enter as
fully as possible into the spirit of the time
when they were written. We should listen
to the voice of Divine Truth which spoke in
them. Criticism has done much to destroy
the feeling of reverence which has lingered
long around such books. But it is time that
criticism itself should be disarmed by the re
vived appreciation of the moral and spiritual
features which characterise these short sum-

PREFACE.

maries of what were, no doubt, powerful minis
tries of inspired messengers.
It seems, therefore, desirable to awaken
attention to the value of such less read por
tions of Scripture, by means of studies, devoted
to separate books in an exhaustive manner,
describing the total impression to be gathered
from them.
The Book of Jonah is the first of several
which it is the author's intention, if life be
spared, to treat in this method, thus supply
ing, in part, what appears to be a want.
Putney, August i$th, 1883.

CONTENTS.

$ait I.
INTR OD UC TOR Y.
Authenticity of the Book of Jonah Defended
Against the Attacks of Critics. PAGE
CHAPTER I.
Adverse Theories Canvassed ... . 3
CHAPTER II.
The Supernatural in the Narrative . . 21
CHAPTER III.
Evidence of Language and General Features . . 51
CHAPTER IV.
The Use of the Psalms in Jonah's Prayer . 71
part II.
THE NARRATIVE.
CHAPTER I.
The Words Themselves, Literally Rendered . . 87
CHAPTER II.
Exegetical Study of the Words  96

viii CONTENTS.

part III.
HISTORICAL AND PRACTICAL EXPOSITION
OF THE MAIN FEATURES OF THE BOOK.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
The Office of the Prophet in the Time of Jonah . 127
CHAPTER II.
Special Features of the Book Considered . . 143 ^
CHAPTER III.
Israel, at the Time of Jonah, in Relation to Sur
rounding Nations, Especially to Assyria . . 152 *
CHAPTER IV.
The Character of Jonah  200 y
CHAPTER V.
The Seamen, their Religion and Conduct . . . 219
CHAPTER VI.
The Teaching of the Book of Jonah on the Divine
Character and Purposes  238 ''

CHAPTER VII. >

The Repentance of the Ninevites .... 263

CHAPTER VIII.
The Place of the Book of Jonah in Messianic
Prophecy  „„,
• • ¦ ^75

PART I.
INTRODUCTORY.
AUTHENTICITY OF THE BOOK OF JONAH DEFENDED
AGAINST THE ATTACKS OF CRITICS.

CHAPTER I.
ADVERSE THEORIES CANVASSED.
IN many respects, it may be said, there is a new
spirit animating intelligent readers of the Old
Testament. There is a decided reaction produced by
the hard and barren criticism which would strip away
the living flesh from the sacred writings, leaving
nothing but dry bones. While it is not to be denied
that many valuable results have been gathered from
the bold and often irreverent, but learned and
scientific, enquiries, which have been directed more
particularly to the external form of the books of
Scripture, still those results have been less appre
ciated than they might have been, because, to a large
extent, they have remained in the hands of writers
whose animus against the authority of the Bible has
been only too manifest. It is time that we should
examine again these ancient writings, not with a
polemical aim uppermost in our thoughts, but with
a simple, sincere desire to enter into the mind of
the writers. No true work of man, whether of
old time or of our days, can be properly understood,
unless it is approached in a spirit of sympathy and

4 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF f ON AH.
with an open mind. Criticism has its function, but
it must be a subordinate one. The atmosphere of
doubt is too near the earth to be free from refracting
and distorting influences. The true science, whether
of human things or of Divine things, must look
upward and not downward, towards the highest end
of knowledge, not towards the intermediate point of
speculation or theory.
We propose to examine the Book of Jonah as a
portion of the Book of God. It must be regarded
in its proper place in the history of Divine com
munications, otherwise it cannot be understood and
is likely to be depreciated. Startling as some of its
characteristics are ; to some minds, perhaps, somewhat
repellent, and to many more perplexing and strange;
it must be remembered that the fact of its holding
a place in the Hebrew canon, taken in connection
with its unique features, should at once draw to it a
very special amount of attentive consideration. We
must be prepared to meet the objections of critics ;
we must be able to justify our high estimate of a
book which has been placed by some in so low a
rank. If we succeed in such aims we shall advance
the study of the Old Testament.
The history of the Hebrew canon is involved in so
much obscurity that it is not wonderful that modern
criticism should find in such a'book as Jonah ample
field for its theories. The three scriptures of Ruth,
Esther and Jonah, it must be admitted, present a

ADVERSE THEORIES CANVASSED.

different aspect, as literary compositions, from the
other books of the Old Testament, and might fairly
suggest the question whether the standard of inspired
authorship was strictly observed in the formation of
the Hebrew canon. At the same time, the most
cursory reader will observe that there is a tone of
purity, simplicity, and piety, pervading these books,
preserving them from extravagance and sustaining
their theocratic character, which at once distinguishes
them from such a book as Tobit in the Apocrypha
and from the ordinary Eastern romance. The de
fender of the canon may fairly reason that the place
of these books in Scripture is prima facie evidence in
their favour. That the Jews should for centuries
distinguish them from spurious works of a similar
nature requires to be explained. That they should
be assigned each one to its proper position in relation
to the whole Revelation must surely not be a mere
accident of time, but the result of careful consider
ation on the part of those who put the Old Testa
ment together, guided as they were by Jewish
tradition. But in the case of Jonah, the miraculous element
has, doubtless, had much to do with the persistent
opposition to its authority. The whole of the
modern critical school of Germany is actuated by
a fierce hatred of the supernatural. The ruling
principle in their criticism is denunciation of the
miraculous. Whatever cannot be brought under

6 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF f ON AH.
their scientific canons is to be rejected as mythical or
fabulous. They feel themselves, however, under the
necessity of putting forth some theory in order to
relieve the audacity of their denials. They must
explain the origin of the book which they attack.
Generally speaking their theories are as varied as
their names. They are agreed only in the negations.
When they attempt to build up, in a new form,
that which they have destroyed, their weakness im
mediately reveals itself. Much of their so-called
criticism is simply the application of an arbitrary
standard to what they have failed to understand, and
their want of sympathy with the higher intention of
Scripture betrays itself in the shallow and unsatisfac
tory suggestions which they put forth, by way of re
moving difficulties and accounting for obstinate facts.
There are questions of Hebrew philology which
may be regarded as still open. When it is boldly
asserted by certain scholars that the language of the
Book of Jonah is positive evidence of its late com
position, that it could not have been written in the
eighth or ninth century B.C., and must have been in
the sixth or fifth or even later still, the assertion
must be tried by a close examination of the words.
This we propose to supply in another chapter. The
mere dogmatic affirmation of a few scholars, if it is
challenged by others equally to be relied upon, will not
have much weight with candid readers. There is
often much slavish repetition of the dicta of authority

ADVERSE THEORIES CANVASSED.

in matters of philology. The critics are not justi
fied, as they are supposed by some to be, in
laying down their decisions as final and unquestion
able. In fact, they show so much of the spirit of
partisans in their attacks upon the positions of the
fathers, that we must always receive their statements
with reserve, and determine to accept nothing from
them for which they furnish no sufficient proof.
Now to the Christian, who holds that the authority
of the Lord fesus Christ is above question, it will be
an answer to all objections against the historical
credibility of the Book of Jonah, that the use of it
by the Saviour precludes the possibility of His re
garding it in any other light than as an inspired
work. Not only does He point to the facts of
Jonah's preaching and the repentance of the people
of Nineveh, but He solemnly declares that in the
day of judgment these facts will be remembered.
He also uses the miraculous element and connects
it immediately with the greatest miracle of Christ
ianity, His own Resurrection. Plainly, therefore, it
was no spurious book in the eyes of the Jewish
Church of the Lord's days ; and He Himself sanc
tioned the popular view of its Divine authority. To
some minds this overwhelming argument from the
Christian point of view will stand in the place of all
others. But it is necessary, sometimes, to meet opponents
on their own ground. The critic will not follow us

8 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF fONAH.
into the innermost sanctuary of Christian faith. Let
us, then, remain with him for awhile in the outer
court of human judgment and reasoning. Is he able
to satisfy us there, that, in place of the older view
(sanctioned by Christ and adopted by the universal
Jewish and Christian Church, until the rise of the
rationalistic school of Germany, without a question),
he can furnish us with an explanation of the book
which relieves us from difficulties and which can be
harmonised with facts ?
We will supply the reader with a few instances
in this chapter, without loading our pages with too
many specimens of critical hypothesis. From the
few he can easily judge of the value of all. The
first, and that which has been approved by men of
considerable eminence as scholars in our own coun
try, is that of Kuenen, whose two great works on
Tfie Religion of Israel, and on The Prophets and
Prophecy in Israel, will be well-known to many as
representative of the school. Now Kuenen has
attempted to work out in his history a theory in
regard to the religious state of the Jews after their
return from captivity, which he has by no means
proved, and which cannot be reconciled with many
facts. He supposes that Ezra and Nehemiah, in
effecting a great religious reformation, and restoring
the authority of the neglected Mosaic Law, were
actuated by an extreme Levitical, a priestly spirit ;
that they were victorious over the opposition of the

ADVERSE THEORIES CANVASSED. 9
semi-heathen party amongst the people ; but that
there remained, in both periods, a small number of
higher *and broader spirits, who, by their contact with
heathen systems, had been led to throw off their
Jewish prejudices and embrace a more liberal view of
the destination of Israel and the function of prophets.
He suggests that the Book of Jonah emanated from
this party, and represented the more cosmopolitan
feeling which actuated them, and their desire to
rebuke the extreme strictness of the priestly party.
This, of course, involves a condemnation of Ezra,
Nehemiah, and (Kuenen would add) of Malachi as
well, for he admits that,, if we follow their represent
ations, we should think only unfavourably of the
opposition they met in the people. In other words,
there is no evidence whatever in Scripture itself of any
such noble-minded and cosmopolitan spirit working in
the nation ; but the critic thinks there ought to have
been such a spirit present, in order to account for
Ruth, Esther, and Jonah; therefore he introduces
it into his theory. "Probability is in favour of
the supposition that many noble and upright men
ranged themselves among the opponents of Ezra
and Nehemiah, from full conviction." This he
endeavours to confirm by referring to the method
by which Nehemiah suppressed the marriages- with
strange women ; and both he and Ezra, by their
precipitation, while they succeeded in their object,
must have " excited opposition, and principally among

10 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
the more cultivated and discreet of their contem
poraries." This, however, is directly against the
original prohibition of intermarriage. If the offenders
violated the Law of God and the very spirit of theo
cracy, how can they have been " the higliest and most
spiritual of the people ? " It is also affirmed by
Kuenen, that "Ezra and Nehemiah assailed as much
the independence of the religious life of the Israelites,
which found utterance i7i propliecy, as the more tolerant
Judgment upon the heathen to which many inclined;
tlieir reformation was, in other ivords, anti-prophetic
and anti-tmiversalistic." He goes on to say that
prophecy disappeared about the same time as the
reformation was effected by Ezra and Nehemiah ;
and he takes that as proof that they suppressed the
prophetic spirit ! But the fact is not substantiated ;
for the first Babylonian prophets (to say nothing of
those who appeared during the captivity, Jeremiah's
latest prophecies, Ezekiel, Daniel, and others) were
certainly as great and wonderful manifestations of
the prophetic spirit as any in Israel. Zechariah and
Malachi themselves were marvellous outbursts of
Messianic hope, and quite irreconcilable with any such
suppression of prophecy as Kuenen suggests. Moreover,
the tradition of the Jews is that Ezra and Nehemiah
themselves, with the Great Synagogue, put together
the works of the prophets with the other Scriptures.
It is entirely gratuitous to say, as Kuenen does,
" There was no room for the prophet in such a

ADVERSE THEORIES CANVASSED. u
society as Ezra and Nehemiah tried to establish.
He is the man of the Spirit, and therefore a child
of freedom. He must be able to speak as his heart
prompts him, upon every subject which seems to him
to concern religion, against all who endanger the
spiritual worship of Jehovah. We have no difficulty
in discovering in tlie writings of the prophets before
the exile, more than one saying which, spoken in Ezra's
days, would have been considered high treason ! "
This we cannot accept in view of the statements
of Scripture, and in remembrance of the fact that
Ezra himself must have approved of the very sayings
referred to, otherwise lie would not have put them in the
canon. The critic admits that the reformation, as he
calls it, was indispensable. "Take azvay their mea
sures and you woidd see the small Jewish nation lose
itself among its neighbours and vanish without leaving
a trace behind" In other words, Ezra and Nehemiah
were directed by God to do what they did. Israel
was saved, both nationally and spiritually, by it. And
yet, forsooth, this Divine method was destruction of
the Divine Spirit ! God contradicted Himself! Such
reasoning is, surely, only worthy of rationalist^
critics. It is utterly without foundation ; in fact, it
is mere gratuitous assumption to support a theory.
Ezra and Nehemiah represented the highest spirit
of the people, the Divine voice; and that voice,
whether it spoke by way of legal enactment or of
¦brophecy, was always the same. Tliere was no real

12 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
inconsistency between a true Levitical reform and
prophecy. Indeed it was, by means of the reform
ation which Ezra and Nehemiah effected, that the
Messianic hope of Israel rescued itself from the
corruptions of a semi-heathen state. The critic has
found a mere mare's nest of his own. He wishes to
account for the books in the canon which seem to
indicate a Divine breadth of view, not to be explained
on any naturalistic principle. He therefore begins by
first post-dating the books — on the assumption (for it
is no more) that their style and language belong to
the later age — and then, in order to find authors for
them in that later period, he has positively to invent a
whole class of minds in the nation for the existence
of which he has no evidence to bring forward. It
is not likely that contact and intermixture with
heathenism would develop such a state of mind and
feeling as he presupposes. On the other hand, as
those who broke down the distinctions of Judaism
were traitors to Jehovah, it is a contradiction to sup
pose that they would be the subjects of inspiration.
Certainly, the books of Ruth and Jonah bear no
traces of their being originated among such a class.
There is nothing in them like defection from the true
theocratic spirit. The most wonderful fact about
them is, that they inculcate a true spiritual universal
ism, while they breathe no syllable of unfaithfulness to
the coveriant of Israel.
Another point on which Kuenen lays great stress

ADVERSE THEORIES CANVASSED. 13
is the change in the Divine procedure effected through
the repentance of the Ninevites. This, he thinks, was
imagined by the author in order to meet the objec
tions of some to the prophecies against the heathen,
that they were not literally fulfilled. But there is no
evidence that any such objection was prominently
before the minds of the people in the sixth century,
when Kuenen supposes that the Book of Jonah was
published. How could it be when Nineveh had been
destroyed? When judgment had already overtaken
other heathen nations, when the predictions in regard
to Israel and Judah had been so exactly fulfilled even
to the amount of years of their captivity, how could
such an objection have been put forward? It is
simply monstrous that any one should maintain that
the special object of the Book of Jonah was to meet an
objection which would, at the. time, have been met with
infinitely more force by patent and indisputable facts.
Again the theory breaks down for want of evidence.
It is entirely gratuitous.
Let us now take another example of critical can
dour. Ewald is certainly not so much a theoriser
as Kuenen, but he has his literary hypothesis to suit
his philological judgments. He supposes l that, about
the time of the decay of prophecy, collectors of the
Jewish writings put together the prophets, according
to their literary views. He thinks that there were
1 Prophets of the Old Testament— J onah.

14 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF fONAH.
" afterg'rowtJis" when, as he expresses it, " the mighty
ancient tree of Hebrew prophetism had completely fallen
into decay. It had sent its roots too deep into the
life and especially the literature of the nation, and
it had been too full of the energy of true life, to
permit it to suddenly disappear without some new
aftershoots. Many of these aftershoots start up,
indeed, very soon, with peculiar luxuriance, and form
a distinct kind of literature ; but they were mostly
sapless and feeble scions. Some of them attain some
thing of the elevation and greatness of the ancient
prophetic books ! " A very remarkable fact, surely,
especially in the sphere of religious writings ! Quite
unprecedented and without parallel !
If such instances are to be found in the sixth or
fifth century, why not in the remaining four centuries
before Christ ? Certainly there is nothing in the
Apocrypha to compare with any biblical book of the
kind. It is easy, indeed, for Ewald to talk as he
does of legends, and to class under that head a large
part of the Old Testament ; but it is not easy for
him, or any other critic, to explain the fact that those
"legends" are inseparably bound up with the whole
Revelation and with the spiritual history of a people
manifestly led by God, and with a religion which
culminated in Christianity. Speaking of the Book of
Jonah, Ewald admits that " it is in itself a perfectly
intelligible and complete piece of narration " ; but he
regards it as " taken from a large series of similar

ADVERSE THEORIES CANVASSED. 15
ticces, and belonging to an entirely new branch oj
literature," while at the same time he recognises in
it the sublimest teaching and extraordinary skill in
the treatment oj its materials ! That Jonah existed
is not denied ; and " this later narrative, which is so
modest and yet so exceedingly ingenious and profoundly
suggestive, supplies evidence of his vastly impressive
and daring labours'' In a word, then, Ewald regards
the book as the work of some prophetic spirit in
the sixth or fifth century, taking up an ancient legend
and " shaping it with greater freedom in the same
spirit in which it first arose, under the influence oj
prophetic thoughts, in such a way that it would serve
the author simply as pliable material for the elaboration
of his own principles ! " Now against this theory
there are two crowning objectio7is : (1) The universal
Jewish Church accepted the Book of Jonah as canonical,
and it was so regarded at the time of our Saviour.
It is impossible to reconcile this fact with such an
origin of the book. True, there is an appearance of
legend on the surface, in the story of the whale and
in the repentance of Nineveh, and especially in the
lack of historical data in the book. But on the other
hand, the solemn commencement, "Now the word of
the Lord came" and the serious tone of the whole
narrative, and (which is admitted by all critics), the
sublime teaching included in it, forbid the supposition
that it was a mere "legendary aftergrowth!' We
have no reason to suppose that the Jews did (as the

16 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
early Fathers sometimes did) assume the names of
great prophets to give weight to their own writings.
There was always, among the Jews, at least till the
Alexandrian period, a projound reverence Jor Scrip
ture, which excluded the idea of a mere random and
careless accumulation of writings to which canonical
authority was attributed. (2) The Lord Jesus Christ,
both as Himselj Divine and as representing the beliej
oj His age, could not have used the book as He did,
had it been what Ewald represents it to be. He
must have distinguished between the true prophets
and the mere writers oj legends. He would not have
drawn special attention to the typical meaning of
Jonah's history had it been fabulous ?
But in addition to these two leading objections to
Ewald's theory, we maintain that it is entirely incon
sistent with the admissions of Ewald himself. He
points to the fact that there is no detail in the book,
no working up of the legend, no connecting links with
Assyrian history, no attempt to render the story,
as such, fascinating. It breaks off abruptly. It is
penetrated with a deeply religious spirit. It is both
psycliologically probable, and historically possible.
One great point with the critics has been, that
Nineveh could not have repented so suddenly at the
preaching of a foreign propltet. Bleek, e.g. says,
Introduction to the Old Testament (vol. ii. p. 182):
" The chief difficulty in my eyes, consists in the im
probability, which must necessarily appear to any

ADVERSE THEORIES CANVASSED. 17

unprejudiced reader, that the whole of the inhabitants
of so enormous a city as Nineveh is represented to
have been, should have immediately felt such remorse
at the exhortation to repentance from a foreigner of
a strange nation, and that they should have been
turned to such sincere contrition as is here described,
from the king downwards to the very meanest of the
people ; added to which, that in the history of this
nation not the slightest trace of the event and its
results is at all alluded to," etc., etc. As to the latter
point, we have no reason to suppose that every
individual, or even the majority, literally repented ;
for, referring to the pleading of Abraham with God
for Sodom, we know that even a small number of
triLe penitents would save the city. The rest may have
been partly influenced by example, and partly by
their own feelings ; but that such a change in a
whole city should take place is not improbable. It
will be shown in subsequent chapters of this work
that sincere religious feeling was not unknown among
the Assyrians, and that the preaching of Jonah had
a foundation of knowledge to work upon. Ewald
himself, referring to the fact, admits its possibility.
" We know," he says, " as a fact, from other sources
that among the ancient nations of those countries,
days of profound humiliation frequently interchanged
with the most luxurious life and feasts of wildest
joy, as this was most plainly seen in the worship
of Tammuz. How greatly, moreover, feeling changes
C

1 8 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
in great cities, and at times even the most serious
feeling of repentance will become prevalent, is a
phenomenon with which we are sufficiently familiar
in our own day and experience both in Europe
and America. A true Hebrew prophet, of the
times when these prophets had often produced the
most powerful effects, both in their own land and
far beyond its limits, was able to become also in
Nineveh the man of the day." Rev. T. K. Cheyne,
writing on Jonah in the Theological Review for 1877
(vol. xiv. p. 217), accepting entirely Kuenen's pro
posed solution, describes thus the supposed inten
tion of the book. " It may be asked in conclusion,
What induced the writer of Jonah to take the trouble
to work up this myth or symbol into a popular tale ?
Certainly it was not an artistic impulse ; he wrote
it neither to please himself nor to amuse others, but
to press certain home; truths upon his countrymen.
These truths would seem to be, (1) The equality before
God of Jews and heathen. The exclusiveness which
showed itself in the episode of the ' mixed marriages '
(Ezra ix. 10), was threatening to petrify national
character, and to hinder the accomplishment of God's
large designs for Israel. In opposition to this, the
writer shows us an Israelite wilfully rejecting God's
immediate revelation, and heathen acting in the spirit
of high morality. One may indeed fairly extend to
this book the criticism which has been passed on
Lessing's immortal ' Nathan,' that the lower religion

ADVERSE THEORIES CANVASSED. 19
shows better in its representatives than the higher
Very likely this was said at the time. For it was a
true idea that the heathen could show a good dispo
sition and even repent. We find even great religious
writers describing the heathen as wicked because
heathen (cf. Hab. i. 13, ii. 4, and iii. 13; Ps. Ixxxiv
10, lxxxix. 22 ; Isa. xxvi. 10 ; Ps. cxxv. 3). The
scene of Jonah and the palmchrist (ch. iv.), was
especially designed to check this feeling. (2) The
prophetic or missionary character of Israel, the agent
chosen of God for the fulfilment of His large designs
for the world. It was the second Isaiah (xiii. 1-4)
who first fully realized this prophetic character,
though indeed it was only the corollary of the in
tense monotheism of the later Israelites. Jonah and
Israel — type and antitype — had each to be brought
to the consciousness of their mission by calamity."
Now it is strange that a scholar of Mr. Cheyne's
ability does not recognise the absolute contradiction
in such a representation as this. If the meaning of
the book was so much above the ordinary feelings of
the people, then it was inspired, and if it was inspired
it could not have taken the form of a mere popular
tale, for that is entirely out of harmony with all the
other inspired productions of the prophets. Moreover,
if the story is fiction, why should a prophet of the
sixth or fifth century take such a liberty with the
character of one who is acknowledged to have been
the true successor of Elijah and Elisha by Ewald

20 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
himself, and whose life passed through almost equally
unusual vicissitudes of marvellous exaltation, victory,
and glorification, and of flagging zeal and despair.
The whole theory is beset with difficulties far more
insoluble than those of the orthodox view. Holding
that view, we have simply to admit the possibility of
physical and moral miracles, which harmonizes with
all the other supernatural elements of the Bible. There
are, it is true, some superficial perplexities connected
with the language of the book, but these, as we shall
see in the sequel, are by no means insuperable. Criti
cism has made a very determined attack on the
genuineness and authority of " Jonah," but hitherto it
has failed to shake it. The substantial fact remains,
the Jewish Church received it. We cannot prove that
they were wrong. Until we do so, we should acqui
esce in their decision.

CHAPTER II.
THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE NARRATIVE.
A DEFENCE of a work, such as the Book of
Jonah, against the attacks of adverse critics,
must of necessity take account of the miracles, which
form a substantial part of the narrative. To some
minds the difficulty of admitting the truth of what
is described as supernatural, is insuperable. Now
it is not possible to discuss fully, in this chapter,
the subject of miracles. It must be taken for granted
that there is no such antecedent incredibility
attached to all miracles that a book which includes
them must, at once, be rejected as spurious. But no
candid defender of Scripture will deny that some
miracles are more credible than others. And no
reader of the Book of Jonah can escape the impres
sion that there is somewhat exceptional and peculiar
in the two great miracles recorded there. The ob
ject of this chapter, therefore, will be to show, by
a careful consideration of the facts, that while they
are startling they are yet in harmony with the
general tone of Scripture.
That any special manifestation of the Spirit of

22 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
God should be accompanied with special signs in
the natural world, is not only possible, but probable.
The human heart has testified in every age to its
expectation that the physical shall bear witness to the
spiritual, that the seen shall, in some measure, corre
spond with the unseen. Now the two great miracles of
the Book of Jonah are, it must be noticed, intimately
bound up with the narrative and, what is still more
important, with the meaning and intention of the
book. The one is the miraculous preservation of the
prophet himself. The other is the miraculous con
version of the people of Nineveh. On both these
two main facts the story rests, and both are equally
essential to it. Let us take the former of the two
and consider it, for a moment, in this aspect of it.
Jonah is thrown out of the ship in a storm, swallowed
by a great fish, cast out upon the shore, and pre
served alive. We will not, at present, enter upon the
question, what the narrative is intended to describe
as the form of the miracle ; whether a maintenance,
supernaturally, of life, in circumstances which would
naturally involve death ; or a miraculous suspension
of animation for some forty-eight hours or more ; or
a revival of an extinguished life, a literal raising of
Jonah from the dead. That we must carefully discuss
presently. Meanwhile the reader's attention is called
to the following points, (i.) This miracle is distinctly
affirmed by the Lord Jesus Christ to be a type of the
Resurrection. If it were not a fact, if it were a mere

THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE NARRATIVE. 23
fiction, or exaggeration, it could not have been so
employed. Indeed, it would, in that case, be a
stumbling block in the Christian's path. It would
imply that the Resurrection of the Lord was of the
same shadowy character, (ii.) The gist of the whole
narrative is the Divine dealing with Jonah, as the
representative of His people. As an incident in the
life of an individual, it would be a mere moral history ;
but as it is, it is a profoundly significant parable,
pointing to the solemn responsibilities of Israel as the
messenger of Divine mercy to the world. Now, apart
from the vitiating of the whole book, if it is founded
upon a fiction, it may be argued that the miraculous
preservation of Jonah is necessary to the fundamental
plan of the book. This will be admitted by those
who represent it as an ingenious and artistically
beautiful apologue. Take away the incident of the
storm and the punishment of Jonah, and his ultimate
fulfilment of the Divine command, and you have des
troyed the unity and character of the whole. This will
appear in the subsequent chapters more clearly. It
must be remembered that what Jonah wanted was an
overpowering manifestation of the Divine, to subdue
his own unbelief and prejudice, and that was sup
plied him, in a manner in which it was impossible
for him to doubt. Hence his immediate obedience
to the second cd\\ of the Divine Word. It must also
be remembered, that in preaching he required a back
ground of supernatural fact upon which to set forth

24 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
the message which he was commanded to deliver.
We are not told, indeed, that he used the miracle of
his own deliverance as a credential of his mission,
but we must admit that it is at least possible that he
did so ; nor is there any great improbability in the
supposition that the fame of that miracle preceded
him at Nineveh, and that it became the common
accepted sign which God sent to the whole Semitic
family of peoples about that time, (iii.) And then,
once more, it must not be forgotten that the miracle
is quite in harmony with the course of revelation,
•vith those that had preceded it in Israel, and with the
spirit of the time. Coming soon after the ministry both
of Elisha and of Elijah, and being first sent to the
same part of Palestine, it seems quite fitting that such
a work should be wrought. The miracles of Elisha
were of a wider scope than those which had hitherto
been sent amongst the people. So this miracle is
more adapted to strike the minds of the heathen than
if it had been performed strictly within the limits of
the chosen race. The sailors would be called in as
witnesses, and possibly themselves proclaimed the
facts. And if Jonah was to be preserved alive, when
cast out of the vessel into a raging sea, what more
fitting form of the miracle can we imagine, than that
he should be cast out by a great fish on the neigh
bouring shore ? To our minds, no doubt, there is
something repellent in the quaintness of the story and
its very simplicity. But that is partly the effect of an

THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE NARRATIVE. 25
irreverent use which has been sometimes made of it,
and partly perhaps due to the broad difference in
the character of the Western mind from the Eastern.
Just as our associations with the ass, which are so
entirely unlike those of Eastern countries, form an
obstacle to the reception of the story of Balaam, so
the element of the ludicrous and grotesque is to
us almost inseparable from the narrative of Jonah.
But this we must do our best to overcome. By
throwing back our thought to the time and place
of the incident, we are able to recognise that it both
might be firmly believed by the men of Israel and
Nineveh, and would by them be received as a solemn
message Jrom God.
The other great supernatural fact of the book is
the conversion oj Nineveh through the preaching oj
Jonah. This is a moral miracle of the highest order.
We have already observed that there is no occasion
to suppose more than a temporary and partial change
to have been effected. Indeed, as the statement is
that " God saw their works that they turned jrom their
evil way ; and God repented oj the evil that He had
said that He woidd do unto them ; and He did it not "
(iii. 10), the inference may be justly drawn that the
repentance only went to the extent of averting the
evil, which we have reason to believe, from other
parts of Scripture, need not imply that it was a very
deep repentance, or one that was universally mani
fested. We should conclude, then, that the preaching

26 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
of the prophet from Israel effected a vast humiliation
of the people of Nineveh, a day of fasting and prayer,
or several such, which would probably lead to the
abandonment of some of those violent enterprises,
the cruelty and oppression of which had brought
down upon the city the threatened judgment of God.
Now, as we have seen, this sudden and universal
humiliation and fasting was not an unknown thing,
and still is a familiar fact in Eastern countries, so
that such a change is no impossibility in the nature
of things. But is it not an extreme improbability,
and does it not make an unreasonable demand upon
faith ? Certainly not, in view of that promise of the
outpouring oj tlie Spirit oj God upon all flesh which
the prophet Joel proclaimed only a jew years ajter
the time of Jonah, possibly in immediate connection
with the incident described. The dates of the minor
prophets cannot, it is true, be accurately fixed. But
if Joel prophesied about 800 B.C., Jonah preceded
him by only a jew years. The fact of Nineveh's re
pentance might well be therefore in the thoughts of
the later prophet. Mr. Cheyne asks, " hozv could the
Ninevites give credence to a man who was not a ser
vant of Asshur 1" If Mr. Cheyne had looked further
into Assyrian mythology he would have seen that
the worship of Asshur rested on a higher basis of
Monotheistic belief (as we shall see in a later chapter),
and that the community of religious ideas among all
the Semitic nations quite explains the reverential

THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE NARRATIVE. 27
attention given to a prophet who came to denounce a
threatening in the name of " the Great God of Heaven
and Eartlt!' Nebuchadnezzar 's conduct amply con
firms this : for the Babylonian and Assyrian religions
were virtually the same. And we may refer to such
a case as that of Balaam, who was both himself
obedient to the voice of the Divine Spirit, and, as
representing the true God, was suffered to go his way
unharmed by the king of Moab, notwithstanding that
he had blessed those whom Balak would have paid
him abundantly to curse. If the narrative repre
sented Jonah as effecting the vast moral change
described by merely moral means, then it would be
incredible ; but it is put before us as a miracle oj
the Holy Spirit, for it is under the direct command
of that Spirit that the prophet goes to Nineveh, and
it is the simple repetition of the words put into his
mouth which produces the effect. As to the point
that there is no confirmation of such a change in the
evidence of history, it is met by the fact that as yet
we are quite unable to speak, with any degree of
confidence, on details of Assyrian history. Moreover,
as is well said by Prebendary Huxtable (in Tlie
Speaker s Commentary, Excursus A.), " We need not
be disappointed or staggered if no traces of the event
be found. Tlie staple subjects oj the inscriptions, so jar
as they have hitherto been deciphered, are campaigns,
conquests, sieges, building oj palaces and tlie like ;
matters of barbaric interest, in which a merely moral

28 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.

or religious element is not to be looked for." If refer
ence is sometimes made in the inscriptions to religion
and its propagation in conquered lands, still we
cannot suppose that a merely temporary restraint,
produced, probably, in the life of one king alone,
would be referred to as a national fact. It would not
interfere with the worship of Asshur, nor have we any
reason to think that it was intended to do so. Pos
sibly, it was that very aspect of the Divine mercy, its
breadth and liberality, not demanding a change of
dogmas and religious practices, which offended the
Hebrew prophet. He could not understand why the
Lord should spare the city, notwithstanding that it
did not entirely put away its idolatry. We may also
lay some stress on the analogy which Preb. Huxtable
refers to : " That an outward profession of national
repentance was treated by JeJiovah as a ground for
remitting tlie tlireatened overthrow, notwithstanding
that it was both superficial and short-lived (compare
i Kings xxi. 27-29), was in accordance with tliepeda-
gogic character of the Old Dispensation, wherein external
slums were very commonly made use of to represent in
vivid symbol the actings of God's justice and mercy,
and thus to draw men on to that true spiritual repent
ance which it is the object oj all Divine revelation to
bring about!' We have already alluded to Gen. xviii.
23-33, which is full of instruction as to the principles
of the Divine method of procedure. That declara
tion of Divine mercy and judgment remained before

THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE NARRATIVE. 29
the minds of God's ancient people, to teach them
how to estimate their own position as mediators,
like Abraham, between God and the world. " Why
should it be thought a thing incredible with us " that
a heathen city should understand enough of the
Divine character to believe that if they turned from
their evil ways and cried out to Heaven for mercy,
the threatened destruction would be averted ? That
such a fact should be put into God's book is itself a
sufficient reason for the whole history. It has helped
to produce repentance in many minds. It remained
age after age both as a witness to Divine forbearance,
and as a warning to those to whom the word of God
came, lest " they who repented at the preaching oj
Jonah should rise up in the judgment and condemn
them!' Having thus considered the two supernatural facts,
jrom the point of view of general principle, it remains
to adduce a few considerations, especially in respect
to the miraculous preservation of the prophet, which
may serve to relieve the difficulty which some may still
feel in accepting the narrative as authentic.
First, then, we remark, the manner in which the
miracle is told is that of perfect simplicity and truth
fulness. Dr. Pusey has dwelt upon this feature of
the narrative in his commentary. " It is perhaps a
part of the simplicity of Jonah's narrative, that he
relates these great miracles as naturally as he does
the most ordinary events. To God nothing is great

30 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
or small ; and the prophet, deeply as he feels God's
mercy, relates the means which God employed, as if
it had been any of those everyday miracles of His
power and love, of which men think so little because
God worketh them every day. God prepared a great
fish, he says, God prepared a palmchrist ; God pre
pared a worm ; God prepared a vehement east wind.
Whether Jonah relates God's ordinary or His extra
ordinary workings, His workings in the way in which
He upholds in being the creatures of His will, or in
a way which involves a miracle, i.e. God's acting in
some unusual way, Jonah relates it in the same way,
with the same simplicity of truth. His mind is fixed
on God's providence, and he relates God's acts, as
they bore upon God's providential dealings with him.
He tells of God's preparing the east wind which
smote the palmchrist in the same way in which he
speaks of the supernatural growth of the palmchrist,
or of God's providence in appointing that the fish
should swallow him. He mentions this, which was
in the order of God's providence ; he nowhere stops
to tells us the 'how.' How God converted the
Ninevites, how He sustained his life in the fish's
belly, he tells not. He mentions only the great facts
themselves and leaves them in their mysterious great
ness." Now if the book were written for the sake
of the supernatural in it, that is, ij it were a mere
fiction, we should expect a very different tone, as we
find in the apocryphal books ; but here the miracles

/-

THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE NARRATIVE. 31
are so completely subordinated to the moral and
spiritual intention of the work that we cannot but
recognise its harmony with the rest of Scripture. It
is true that Jonah wrote for a people who believed
in miracles. But there is no evidence of any merely
fictitious use of that faith. He does not appeal to
the love of the marvellous. He writes as one who
simply told of the Divine procedure.
The miracle itself is so briefly described that it
remains an open question what was the exact nature
of it. " Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to
swallow up Jonah. And Jonah zvas in the belly of
the fish three days and three nights. And the Lord
spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the
dry land!' The kind of fish is left undetermined,
for the Hebrew is simply "great fish" (7)1.3 2il\
The Septuagint renders the whole clause thus, koI
irpocreTatje Kvpios ferret, fieyaXw Karairietv tov Iwvav.
Our Lord uses the Greek kt)to<;, from which our term
" cetacea," describing the whole genus, is derived.
There can be no doubt whatever that the term is
one of general description, not of specific designation.
Any great fish might be so described. Dr. Pusey
points out that as used in Homer the word would
include both the " dolphin " and the "dog." "In the
natural historians (as Aristotle) it designates the
whole class of sea creatures which are viviparous, as
' the dolphin, the seal, the whale ; ' Galen adds the
Zygsena (a shark) and large tunnies; Photius says

32 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF fONAH.
that ' the Carcharias,' or white shark, ' is a species of
it.'* Oppian recounts, as belonging to the Cete,
several species of sharks and whales, some with the
names of land animals, and also the black tunnies
.-Elian enumerates most of these under the same
head." But whatever meaning we choose to attach
to the Greek, the real stress of the argument must
lie on the Hebrew, and there we have simply "a
great fish" so that nothing can be brought against
the miracle on the ground of contradiction. The
whale may be naturally so formed that a full sized
man could not be swallowed by it ; but whether that
be so or not, the original leaves completely undeter
mined what kind of fish was " prepared by Jehovah "
to do the work. Fish, of such size that they can
swallow a man whole, and which are so formed as
naturally to swallow their prey whole, have been
found in the Mediterranean. The white shark,
having teeth mainly incisive, has no choice, except
between swallowing its prey whole, and cutting off"
a portion of it. It cannot hold its prey, or swallow
it piecemeal. Its voracity leads it to swallow at once
all which it can. Hence Otto Fabricius relates,
" its wont is to swallow down dead and, sometimes
also, living, men, which it finds in the sea." The
white shark attains to the length of thirty feet.
Blumenbach says that the whole body of a horse
has been found in one. And it is not uncommon
in the Mediterranean. There are wonderful instances

THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE NARRATIVE. 33
of fish swallowing the bodies of men, and in some
cases throwing them out alive. But it does not seem
of any importance to dwell on such narrations, as
Dr. Pusey has done, for they provoke in some minds
a feeling of revulsion, which hinders the calm con
sideration of the text itself. No one can possibly
deny that a great fish could swallow a man, and
more than that, it must be admitted that a body
thrown out of a ship at sea would be likely to be
immediately laid hold of by some sea monster.
The real gist of the miracle lies in the preservation
of the prophet under such circumstances. Those
who wish to put together the facts and opinions
which prove the possibility of a human body being
held inside a "great fish," have only to read the
evidence adduced by Dr. Pusey in his introduc
tion to Jonah {Com. Minor Prophets, pp. 257-9)
We desire to lay no special stress on such facts,
as relieving the difficulty of faith, because the
main point is left untouched by them, how a man
could be preserved alive in the body of a fish for
three days and three nights. But then, was he alive ?
The language of the psalm which Jonah offered up
as thanksgiving seems to imply that he was either
actually dead, or in a state of unconsciousness.
"Thou hast brought up my life from corruption, O
Lord my God." " The depth closed me round about
the weeds were wrapped around my head." The
language of the psalm, compared with the facts as

34 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.

described, would seem to imply that on being cast
out of the ship Jonah sank to the bottom of the
sea. " I went down to the bottoms of the mountains ;
the earth with her bars was about me for ever."
We must allow for the poetic hyperbole of the com
position. But such language points to the natural
fact of death, or insensibility. The fish seeking for
food, finds the body and swallows it. In that case,
the psalm would be entirely ex post facto. It would
be a recollection of the rapid thoughts which passed
through the mind of the prophet as he sank in the
waters. But the words, " Then Jonah prayed unto
the Lord his God out of the fish's belly," if taken
literally, supposes a state of consciousness. The
Hebrew word, however, is simply "from" (IVDD). It
is no forcing of the preposition "p "from," to trans
late it as equivalent to "coming from," i.e. "when
Jonah came out of the bowels of the fish!' Any way,
it is not the psalm itself, which Jonah no doubt
composed deliberately, but the substance of the
psalm, the lifting up of the heart to God, which is
immediately connected with the incident. "The
testimony of many persons who have suffered drown
ing, or been otherwise in imminent danger of almost
certain destruction shows, that, at such season of
extraordinary experience, the extreme tension of the
mind makes it capable of passing with amazing
rapidity through a vast succession of thoughts and
feelings, many of which are afterwards distinctly

THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE NARRATIVE. 35

remembered. Something of this kind we may
surmise to have occurred in the case of Jonah ;
earnest prayers, while he was sinking in the deep,
and was being swallowed up by the fish, with per
haps, even then, a prophetic assurance of Divine
preservation ; and when he awoke to consciousness, a
joyous sense of safety and ardent outpouring of thank
fulness to his Preserver. The sentiments of his ode
are those which he thus felt ; the form into which
they here appear cast, and which presents a highly
finished specimen of Hebrew poetry, we must sup
pose to have been the production of a later and more
tranquil hour. A similar remark applies to the 22nd,
69th, and other Psalms" {Speakers Com., vol. vi.
P- 593)-
But it is necessary, before leaving the subject of
the miracle, to give some attention to the remarks
of the critics on the close affinity of the narrative
with acknowledged legends, which in their view is
a sufficient account of its place in the book. Mr.
Cheyne, in the article before referred to {Theol. Rev.,
vol. xiv. p. 213), admits what he calls the "psycho
logical verisimilitude," and that the " orthodox or
conservative argument *' is strong in that respect.
He means, that Jonah is a character likely to have
been real, and that the circumstances as a whole,
in their harmony with the purpose of Jehovah, are
not unnatural ; but he goes on to remark that
"ordinary readers, especially when influenced by

36 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
theological prejudice, are unable to realize the in
veterate love of romance common to the ancient
Jews with the other nations of the East." Yet
surely, if that were so, it would make the fact of the
admission of a mere book of fiction into the canon
all the more inexplicable, for the compilers of Scrip
ture, knowing the prevailing tendency, would be
careful to exclude such a book. " The marks of
a story," we are told, "are as patent in the Book
of Jonah as in any of the tales of the Thousand and
One Nights. The hero no doubt acts most properly
under the circumstances, but how grotesquely im
probable those circumstances are ! " Now, we do not
admit, for a moment, any resemblance between
the narrative of Jonah and a mere idle tale of
romance. For first, there is the manifest religious
purpose giving reality to all ; next, there is the perfect
simplicity and artlessness of the manner of narration ;
thirdly, there is the difficulty of reconciling such a
legend about a great prophet, given in his name, with
his character, unless it were true ; and lastly, there
is the main fact, that the book carries with it the
whole authority of the Jewish nation and the com
pilers of the Old Testament canon. But admitting,
for the sake of argument, that there is a possibility
that we have in this book an antique legend wrought
into a didactic form — what have the critics to say
as to the legend itself? Here we will quote Mr.
Cheyne's words : " Granting that the Book of Jonah

THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE NARRATIVE. 37
is a fiction, how shall we account for its origin ? The
later literature of the Old Testament supplies us with
an answer. We know how lovingly the Jews of the
Captivityand the Restoration brooded over the thought
of the nation ; how, like Rome to the Romans, Israel
became to them an almost divine being, towards
whom they cherished the strongest personal attach
ment. Just as the Servant or Liegeman of Yahveh in
the second Isaiah, and the sufferer who is the subject
of so many of the Psalms, are symbolical of the
suffering righteous or ideal Israel, and (probably)
the 'Son of man' in Daniel (vii. 13) of triumphant
Israel, so Jonah, the recalcitrant prophet, may well
be a type of offending Israel. From an exile or
post-exile point of view, it seemed as if the calamities
of Israel had arisen from her hankering after political
instead of spiritual supremacy ; in short, from the
abnegation of her prophetic mission. The belly of
a sea-monster is actually used in Jeremiah (li. 34, 44)
as a figure for the captivity of Israel. And the
restoration of the captives was really so unexpected
an event, that it might fairly be likened to Jonah's
no less strange deliverance in the story. This view
is to some extent confirmed by the fact that the
psalm, ascribed to Jonah when in the belly of the fish,
is mainly composed of metaphorical expressions.
Thus, the belly of Sheol (or Hades), the seas, the
floods and the waves, are clearly figures of speech,
meaning ' great affliction,' which made it all the

38 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
easier for the unknown writer to enclose it in his
framework of romance. The solution here offered
removes the chief difficulties which encompass the
narrative. But there is still an element of uncertainty
about it, until we can show the origin of the gro
tesque symbol of the 'great fish ' (Jonah i. 17). And
happily we are able to do this. No practised eye
can doubt that the symbol in question is a shrivelled-
up myth, and that the story in its original form
related to the favourite mythic subject of light and
darkness. The name and character of Jonah are a
later addition. It would indeed be almost incredible
if a story prevalent among so many various races,
from New Zealand to India, had left no vestige of
itself among the Israelites, especially as not a few
other stories occur in the Old Testament, which are
merely imaginative versions of nature-myths. And
the myth of the sea-monster in particular is pre
served, not only in the story of Jonah, but in frag
mentary allusions to the leviathan, Rahab, and the
dragon, in the books (probably nearly contemporary)
of Job and the second Isaiah (Job iii. 8, xxvi. 12, 13 ;
Is. li. ¦ 9, cf. xxvii. 1). All these appellations are
really synonymous, and refer to the great enemy of
the sun, the dragon of cloud and darkness, whose
existence in the early Babylonian mythology, under
the name of the seven-headed serpent, has been
proved by M. Lenormant and Mr. Sayce ; and under
the name of Tiamtu {i.e. the sea, especially the

THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE NARRATIVE.

39

heavenly sea, like the Hebrew t'hom) by Mr. George
Smith. Henceforth there can be no reasonable
doubt that the cloud-dragon forms an essential part
of Babylonian, Assyrian, and (at least at one period)
popular Jewish mythology."
A theory of this kind, is based upon so many
assumptions that it demands almost implicit faith
in those who put it forth. The whole fabric falls to
the ground when we maintain, which we do upon
the evidence of Scripture as a whole, that the Jews
were not, like other nations, the victims of mytho
logical invention. It might be admitted that, pre
vious to the Captivity, there was some influence of
heathenism upon the popular mind, particularly in
the northern tribes ; but it is not at all probable
that those who came out of the Exile and com
piled the sacred books, were under such influence.
Moreover, the reasoning of Mr. Cheyne is incon
sistent. He admits the antiquity of the legend,
and yet denies the antiquity of the book. He
requires, in order to complete his theory, a state
of feeling, out of which he supposes it to have
arisen, and he assumes that that state of feeling was
of late origin — after the Captivity. Yet he is obliged
to acknowledge that the legend is quite old enough
to have been introduced into the Book of Job, and
he ought to add, must have been connected with the
Book of Genesis. Jeremiah may have taken it from
Jonah, and the presence of the allusions in his

40 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
writings confirm, so far, the priority of Jonah. But
we deny in toto the resemblance of the narrative of
Jonah to any such legend. The expression in the
Hebrew is simply " a great fish" and there is no
anology to the dragon-story, neither is there in any
legend anything which can be compared to the fish
swallowing Jonah and preserving him alive, and at
the command of Jehovah vomiting him again upon
the shore. " The sun slaying the darkness " is not
at all parallel. The idea in all such stories is that
of an enemy of man waiting to destroy him and
defeated of his purpose, but the idea of the fish in
Jonah is that of preservation, not destruction. True,
Jonah compares his situation in the belly of the fish
to being in Hades ; but we may take that as referring
to his being in the depths of the sea and virtually
dead, not to the rage of the monster. The whole
story is told in a manner to put the fish into the
background and lay stress chiefly on the preservation
of the prophet. In fact the swallowing and vomiting
forth are mere incidents in the personal history of
Jonah. He is not introduced as fighting a monster and
overcoming it, but as mercifully received by the fish
and carefully kept the appointed time. Hence, sym
bolically, the fish has been taken to represent the true
Church, which saves from death and introduces the
sinner to a new state — in which he rejoices in Divine
mercy. No doubt Jonah is a sign of God's love to
His people, but however the history may be spiritually

THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE NARRATIVE. 41
applicable to the general purposes of revelation, we
are not to conclude from its significance that it is of
human invention ; rather that significance proves
that it is of Divine appointment. To show how this
net of symbolism when once it is thrown over the
histories of the Old Testament will easily catch up
the familiar names and pull them into the hands
of theorisers, we may quote the note with which Mr.
Cheyne concludes his article. " The substitution of
Jonah, i.e. the symbol of the Jewish nation, for the
sun, may be paralleled by the transformation of
Samson ('the sun-god,' as Dagon=the fish-god)
into an Israelite national hero, and possibly, if
Goldziher's hesitatingly suggested interpretation be
correct, of Balaam ('the devourer,' viz. of the sun=
the leviathan or dragon), into the tempter and des
troyer of the Israelitish people," and so on. There
is really no end to such fancies. The whole history
of the Jewish people becomes a mass of fables, and
is therefore much more incredible than any number
of genuine miracles.
The growth of the gourd and its rapid destruction,
described in chapter iv., has been challenged by
the critics. We certainly have the same language
employed in that case as in the case of the " great
fish." The Lord is said to have "prepared" the
gourd, the worm that smote it, and the vehement east
wind which was so trying to the prophet ; but it
may be doubted whether it is intended to represent

42 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
the growth and destruction of the plant as in any
sense supernatural. The expression " son of a night"
rendered in the English version, " which came up in a
night and perished in a night," is so completely after
the analogy of the Eastern mode of speech, that we
could not conclude from it any supernaturally rapid
growth. The idea of the whole passage seems to
be a very rapid springing up of the " kikaion!' The
reference to time has been somewhat unnecessarily
pressed. " Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd.
But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the
next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered."
The next day referred to may have been that follow
ing Jonah's "exceeding gladness": that is, as soon as
the plant was grown enough to be found serviceable,
Jonah . expressed in some form, on a particular
occasion, " exceeding gladness," in the shade afforded
by it ; but he had only just begun to rejoice in it
when it was taken away from him. If this explana
tion be not admitted, we must suppose either a
hyperbolical representation, a day being used to
express the rapidity of the growth, or a supernatural
development of the vegetable life, in which case the
miracle would harmonize with that of the prophet's
preservation. Divine agency would, of course, be
intended, but not necessarily in a supernatural form.
It seems doubtful whether the "palma christi " or
palmcrist was really the plant referred to. Dr. Pusey
quotes from Jerome that " the kikaion, called kikeia

THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE NARRATIVE. 43
[or Elkeroa] in Syriac and Punic, is a shrub with
broad leaves like vine leaves. It gives a very dense
shade, supports itself on its own stem. It grows
most abundantly in Palestine, especially in sandy
spots. If you cast the seed into the ground it is
soon quickened, rises marvellously into a tree, and in
a few days what you had beheld a herb, you look up
to, a shrub. The kikaion, a miracle in its instantan
eous existence, and an instance of the power of God
in the protection given by this living shade, fol
lowed the course of its own nature." '' It is a native
of all North Africa, Arabia, Syria, India." We must
refer, however, to the remarks made by Dr. Thom
son in his Land and the Book (imp. 8vo. ed. 1881,
p. 13). He maintains that the reference is not to
the " palma christi," but to the gourd. " The word
kur-'ah, gourd, closely resembles both in form and
sound khiirwah, castor-bean, just as the kikion, gourd,
of Jonah resembles the Egypto-Greek kiki, castor-
bean, according to Dioscorides. These accidental
resemblances may have led Jerome and others into
the opinion that they were the same plants. But
Orientals never dream of trailing a castor-oil plant
over a 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 thou
sands of arbours are covered with various creepers
of the general gourd family. As to ancient trans
lations, the LXX. gives colocynth, which is a general

44 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
species of gourd ; and the Vulgate, castor bean." A
few days would be sufficient for a gourd to run over
the arbour which Jonah built. Indeed, when it is
said that Jonah made him a booth, it is not stated
how he made it. We may conjecture that he found
gourds already growing on the spot, and trained them
over his booth, and God made them to grow with
unusual rapidity, which He might do by steady rain
or in any other natural way. The Targums retain
the Hebrew word. The Talmud substitutes the kiki
of Egypt for it. Dr. Kitto mentions that the
Ricinus abounds on the Tigris, and grows to a great
size there. There can be no doubt of its rapidity of
growth and its shady leaves fitting it for the purpose ;
but Dr. Thomson's testimony is of great weight, and
the gourd is certainly better adapted for the purpose
than the palmcrist. Any way, we must allow for
some degree of poetic colouring in such a narrative.
The lesson conveyed required the speedy growth and
speedy destruction of the gourd ; but there was no
particular force in the one day, unless it was an
allusion to the one day's preaching of Jonah in
Nineveh. Even then it is only said that Jonah went
one day's journey in the city, but not that he
remained only one day within its walls. We must
not unduly press such small details. The general
impression is a broad one of rapid action and rapid
decision. But, regarded as a miracle, there is no
more incredibility in the incident of the gourd than

THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE NARRATIVE. 45
in any. other miracle of the Old Testament ; though
our principle should be that of parsimony in dealing
with the supernatural element — God works no un
necessary miracle.
The moral miracle has not been so much dwelt
upon by the objectors ; though it makes quite as
great a demand upon faith. Now the remark just
made, in regard to the gourd, applies to the ac
count of the repentance of Nin'evelk- - The manner
of the narrative is so elliptical that we must supply
much which is left unexpressed. "And Jonah
began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he
cried, and said, Yet jorty days, and Nineveh shall be
overthrown." Here is no statement of the prophet's
appearance, or of any of his surroundings. Did he
make any appeal to his own miraculous preservation ?
Did he call upon the people to repent ? Did he refer
to the histories of Divine judgments in the past ?
Did he address himself to any one class in the com
munity ? " So the people oj Nineveh believed God, and
proclaimed a jast, and put on sackcloth, jrom the greatest
oj them even to the least oj them. For word came unto
the king oj Nineveh, and he arose jrom his throne, and
he laid his robe Jrom him, and covered him with sack
cloth, and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be pro
claimed and published through Nineveh by the decree oj
the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor
beast, herd nor flock, taste anything: let them not feed,
nor drink water: but let man and beast be covered

46 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let
them turn every one from his evil way, and from the
violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God
will turn and repent, and turn away from His fierce
anger, that we perish not ? " This is a rapid summary
of the work of the prophet and its results. The text
of the sermon was the prediction of the overthrow in
forty days. But it does not follow that Jonah said
no more. The number Jorty is a symbolical number,
and it may be taken to represent generally the de
creed period, probably in allusion to the jorty years
in the wilderness, during which God bore the ill man
ners of the Israelites. Within a short and definite
time, the judgment shall come down. Then, it is said
that " word came to the king!' What word ? Was it
Jonah's words repeated in the palace, or was it word
of the wonderful effect produced by the preaching ?
May we not take the whole passage to be a mere
graphic Eastern representation of a prophetic mission,
which may have endured a shorter or longer time,
but which effected the conversion of the city ? Upon
this point it is difficult to speak with any confidence.
As we have already observed, the intention is to
describe an outpouring oj the Spirit on a heathen
people. The substance of that truth is preserved
either in the literal view of the words or in their
Avider interpretation. Dr. Pusey compares it to the
voice of the fanatic "Jesus, the son of Anan, an
unlettered rustic, who four years before the war, when

THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE NARRATIVE. 47

Jerusalem was in complete peace and affluence, burst
in on the people at the Feast of Tabernacles with
an oft-repeated cry : ' A voice from the east, a voice
from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice
on Jerusalem and the temple, a voice on the bride
grooms and the brides, a voice on the whole people ' ;
how he went about through all the lanes of the city,
repeating day and night this one cry ; and when
scourged until his bones were laid bare, echoed every
lash with 'Woe, woe to Jerusalem,' and continued as
his daily dirge, and his one response to daily good or
ill treatment, 'Woe, woe to Jerusalem.' The magis
trates, and even the cold Josephus, thought there was
something in it above nature." And so there may
have been, though we have no authority for saying
so. But the two cases were quite different. Jonah
was sent to Nineveh by God to utter His own Divine
message. Our Lord describes it as " the preaching oj
Jonah" and compares it in some degree with His own,
" a greater than Jonah is here" (Matt. xii. 41). The
word used by our Lord is icr]pvy/u,a, and that is the
word used of the gospel itself, Kr]pvyp,a airocrToXiKov,
and certainly meant more than a mere "cry" of
alarm and terror. At the same time, there is great
force in the remark which Dr. Pusey makes, that the
threatening sent to Nineveh by Jonah was calculated
to produce great alarm among the people of the city,
for it was of a "miraculous overthrow." It was a
turning upside down (see Jud. vii. 13 ; Job ix. 5 and

48 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
xxviii. 9), like the overthrow of the five cities of
the plain, which are known, throughout the Old
Testament, and still throughout the Mahomedan
East, by the same name, " al-montaphikat" " the over-
thrown '' (see Gen. xix. 21-25 ; Deut. xxix. 23 ; Amos
iv. 11 ; Jer. xx. 16; Lam. iv. 6).
When it is remembered that the tradition of the
flood was familiar to the people of the Mesopotamian
valley, and that the destruction of the cities of the
plain was in all probability also among their familiar
traditions, and when we remember at the same
time that in those days of violence and rapine, it
would be well understood that a great city might
be destroyed suddenly by invasion, as both Nineveh
and Babylon subsequently were, it is not at all
an improbable thing that the solemn proclamation
of approaching doom should produce such an effect
as is described in the Book of Jonah. Mr. Cheyne
reasons very unfairly when he says, " There is
moral improbability in a whole city being con
verted by an obscure foreign prophet. To judge of
the degree of this improbability, it is enough to
read any inscription you please of an Assyrian king.
Fancy Sargon or Sennacherib in the presence of
Jonah ! How could the Ninevites give credence to
a man who was not a servant of Asshur ? " All this
is beside the point. Jonah was not " obscure," for he
would be known as the representative prophet of
Israel ; foreign he might be, but his language (as we

THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE NARRATIVE. 49
shall show in another chapter) would be understood.
We are not told that the king himself was in the pre
sence of Jonah. He may have been influenced by his
people. Does Mr. Cheyne doubt that a great popu
lation can be wrought upon by a great preacher ?
Does he reject the possibility of a moral change pro
duced upon a multitude rapidly? If so, he must
be blind to undisputed facts of history. Moreover,
apart from all question of probability, the narrative
simply records the fact. If it is inexplicable on any
natural grounds, then we are shut up to the miracu
lous. So it is that our Lord represents it. We
certainly cannot let go a fact stamped with His
authority, on the one vague objection that ancient
Assyrian inscriptions represent the kings of Nineveh
as men unlikely to be influenced by a prophet. Such
semi-barbarous natures are often the most easily sub
dued by the supernatural and the mysterious.
While we would not lessen by one word the evident
claim of the narrative on faith, we protest against
the mere flimsy criticisms by which its authority is
attacked. They are not worthy of those who make
them ; and, in the face of the Lord's own direct appeal
to the historical truthfulness of the book, ought not
to weigh with any candid mind a moment. The real
question which a serious student of Scripture will ask
is not, Can I reconcile these facts with my sense of
probability ; but can I harmonise them with the
whole bearing of prophecy ? Have they a fitting place
E

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

CHAPTER III.
VINDICATION OF THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE BOOK
OF JONAH BY AN APPEAL TO THE EVIDENCE OF
LANGUAGE AND GENERAL FEATURES.
THE argument of the critics against the early
date of the Book of Jonah, from the supposed
traces of Clialdaic influence upon the language, is not
sustained by a close examination of the instances
alleged. At all times such conclusions from single
words must be precarious, especially if the words
adduced are such as might be employed with a
borrowed significance. Long before the ten tribes
were carried away to Assyria, or the two to Babylon,
there was some degree of communication between
Palestine and Mesopotamia. It does not follow, be
cause a word familiar among the Chaldeans in the
fifth century is found in a Jewish writing, that it is
to be explained by placing the date of that writing
in the fifth century. The word may have been an
ancient Chaldean word, and as such borrowed by the
Jewish writer. Or again, there may be words which
are explained by the circumstances. Jonah, as a man
of Galilee, would be led to adopt sea-terms, which he
learned by his contact with the sailors ; and when he

52 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
came to Nineveh he would naturally pick up the
indigenous words for what was strange to him as a
Jew. Moreover, it should be remembered that Jonah
was brought into intercourse with a very wide range
of peoples speaking Aramaic and not Hebrew, and
that probably in northern Palestine the provincial
dialect would lead in that direction. Aramaic be
came the language of diplomacy and commerce
throughout the districts of western Asia. But not
withstanding this, the absence of tlie A ramaic element
from the book is remarkable. Had it been written
after the Captivity it is difficult to explain this purity
of Hebrew. The style is Hebraic throughout. It is
quite in harmony with the simplicity and purity of
Hebrew narrative. It is, as Dr. Pusey has remarked,
touched here and there with poetic expressions pecu
liar to itself. Such as, in the account of the storm :
" The Lord cast a strong wind " ; " the vessel thought
to be broken " ; " the sea shall be silent " (hushed, as
we say), i.e. calm ; " the wind was advancing and
storming',' as with a whirlwind [the word is used as to
the sea by Jonah only] ; " the men ploughed" or " dug "
[in rowing] ; "the sea stood from its raging!' Also, "let
man and beast CLOTHE THEMSELVES with sackcloth";
and that touching expression, " son of a night, it [the
palma-christi] came to being, and son of a night [i.e.
in a night] it perished!' It is in harmony with the
simplicity of Jonah's character, that he is fond of the
old idiom, by which the thought of the verb is carried

EVIDENCE OF LANGUAGE. 53
on by a noun formed from it : " The men FEARED a
great FEAR " ; " It displeased Jonah a great dis
pleasure"; " Jonah joyed a great joy!' Other instances
will be mentioned in the course of this chapter.
That the argument is precarious on the critic's side
is seen from the fact that, while many agree in
the rejection of the authenticity of the book, they
disagree widely in their conclusions as to its date.
De Wette would date it before the Captivity ;
Gesenius after it. Ewald as late as the fifth cen
tury ; Hitzig places it in the second, and makes it of
Egyptian origin. Baur derives it from an Assyrico-
Babylonian symbol. And Bleek thinks it may have
been written in the beginning of the Persian age,
and that the author intended Babylon by Nineveh !
though he admits that it bears evidence of having
been composed in Judea and not in Babylonia. And
Bunsen suggests that the song of thanksgiving was
really composed by Jonah on the occasion of some
great deliverance, and led to the invention of the
story. Such diversity of opinion points to a very
shallow foundation on which the whole edifice of
criticism rests. The language is itself a proof that
the book could not have been written after the
Captivity. We will glance briefly at the individual
instances adduced.
1. Sephinah, ship (i"U13D). This is a Hebrew word
from a root meaning to board a floor, a "decked vessel!'
The verb does not occur in Chaldee, though it does

54 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
in Talmudic Hebrew. The Arabic cognate means
smoothed, "planed." Our " deck " may be compared,
which is from the Dutch dekken, to cover. That the
same word is found in Syriac, Chaldee and Arabic,
is no proof that it is taken from them. They
borrowed it from the Hebrew. The use of the word
is first found in Jonah, perhaps because a decked
vessel was not known before to a scripture writer.
The common word for ship is " oniyyah," fTON, from
the word ^H, like the Latin classis, fleet, or ships
generally, a word generally used of the large merchant
ships. It is when Jonah's going "down into the sides
oj the ship" has to be mentioned that the term "decker"
is chosen. Oniyyah and sephinah are employed in
the same verse.
2. Mallach, in the plural DTPD, is also Hebrew
from !"TO, the sea, or salt ; exactly equivalent to our
seamen, or, as we say, "old salts," and like dXiev<;
from aX<;, salt. While not occurring in earlier books,
this is explained by the absence of allusions to sea
men. 3. Rab hachobel, TJiiri 2~], chief of the sailors, or
perhaps mate, LXX. 6 irprnpevs ; "Rab" is Phoenician.
This was a Phoenician vessel. Dr. Pusey says it oc
curs in all only four times, and in all cases as here, of
persons not Hebrew : Nebuzaradan rab Tabbachim
(2 Kings xxv. 8), captain of the guard ; rab Sarasim
(Dan. i. 3), chief of the eunuchs ; Col rab baitlio, every
officer of his house (Esth. i. 8). " Sar," with which

EVIDENCE OF LANGUAGE. 55
Gesenius compares it, is never used except of an office
of authority, of one who had a place of authority
given by one higher. It occurs as much in the later
as in the earlier books, but is not used in the singular
of an inferior officer. It is used of military, but not
of any inferior secular command. It would probably
have been a solecism to have said " sar hacliobel," as
much as if we were to say, "prince oj sailors." Cho-
bel Alh, which is joined with it, is a Hebrew word.
4. Ribbo, *Q"), ten thousand, is said by some to be
a later Hebrew word for JT^n, the Thau being cast
away. i"D2"1 is the word found in the earlier books,
the Pentateuch, Judges, Samuel, and Canticles. It is
also admitted that the word is found in the later
books from Daniel to Nehemiah. But it is to be
found in Psalm lxviii. 18 and in Hosea viii. 12, about
the date of whose prophecy there can be little dis
pute. The form is too uncertain to allow of much
being built upon it.
5. Yitli ashshath (i. 6), J"I$J?JT. The word used by
the captain to Jonah and referring to God's thoughts.
" If God will think of us." In Chaldee, only used of
the evil thoughts of man. It is an old Hebrew word,
as we see from the use of \ni#y in the number eleven,
the first number thought of after the ten digits.
The root occurs in Job, in Psalm cxlvi. 4 and Can
ticles. 6. Dr. Pusey has shown at great length that the
abbreviated form of the relative asher, "lttfN, is no

56 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
argument for a late composition. It is Phoenician
and old Hebrew, as we see in the old names, Methu-
sael, Misael, etc., etc. He suggests that it was used
more in the dialect of northern Palestine.
7. Manah, HJD, to prepare or appoint, is found in
Ps. xi. 8, and is not a late word. Jonah uses it for
the providential appointment of God.
8. Taam, 0^t3, a royal decree, probably a Ninevite
word, as it is Aramaic, connected with D^D, to taste,
and perhaps meaning judgment, like our word "taste"
in art. The word would be D^D in Syriac. " The
employment of the special word is a part of the same
accuracy with which Jonah relates that the decree
used was issued not from the king only, but from
the king and his nobles ; one of those minute touches
which occur in the writings of those who describe
what they have seen, but supplying a fact as to the
Assyrian polity which we should not otherwise have
known, that the nobles were in some way associated
in the decrees of the king" {Pusey, p. 251). Is it
likely that one writing in the fifth century about
Assyria in the ninth would have thought of inserting
so minute a particular, especially as the Jews would
not have known it at that time, and Jonah himself,
only because he had visited Nineveh ?
With regard to these words the following is Dr.
Pusey's summary of their evidence. "Out of these
eight words or forms, three are naval terms, and, since
Israel was no sea-faring people, it is in harmony with

/'

GENERAL FEATURES. 57
the history that these terms should first occur in the
first prophet who left the land on his mission by sea.
So it is also that an Assyrian technical term should
first occur in a prophet who had been sent to
Nineveh. A fifth word occurs in Hosea, a con
temporary of Jonah, and in a Psalm of David.
The abridged grammatical form was Phoenician, not
Aramaic, was used in conversation, occurs in the
oldest proper names, and in the northern tribes.
The seventh and eighth do not occur in Aramaic
in the meaning in which they are used by Jonah "
(p. 250). The argument against the authenticity of
the book on the ground of late forms in the language,
therefore, entirely breaks down. Had it been com
posed after the time of the Captivity it would have
been full of Chaldaisms, but, as it is, there is not one
instance which can be made out.
Is it, then, a stronger case which the modern critics
make out against Jonah when they represent it as a
moral fiction or parable, founded upon a legend of
the prophet's history, and wrought up to its present
shape some three hundred years after the time of the
supposed occurrences ? We have already referred to
this theory and examined it from the critic's point of
view. But apart from the question, whether it is pre
sented to us by those who have set it forth, in a
reasonable and probable shape, which we maintain it
has not been, we may now meet the opponents of the
orthodox position in another way. Looking into the

58 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
narrative itself, and laying aside the general question
as to the possibility of the supernatural, we may
examine those features of the writing which witness
to its truthfulness.
i. The javourable representation oj heathen people,
their religious character and their humanity. This is
seen in the conduct of the sailors towards Jonah
and their appeals to Divine protection, their fear of
Jehovah, and their recognition of Jonah's sin in fleeing
from his prophetic mission. Again, the Ninevites are
pourtrayed as open to reproof, as ready to repent, as
putting away their violence, as mercifully regarded
by Jehovah — and that upon broad principles of Divine
compassion for their ignorance and the helplessness of
the multitudes. This sympathy with the heathen is
supposed to be the feeling of a minority of the Jewish
1 people after the Captivity, expressed in this book as
la protest against the views of the more authoritative
'leaders of the nation, who would naturally wish to
separate the Jews more and more from those who had
led them into idolatry. But why should a writer of
the fifth century commit so great an anachronism as
to put such sentiments into a writing claiming to be
of the ninth century ? It would strike every reader at
the time as an anomaly. That God should have so
plainly rebuked the prejudices of the Jews three hun
dred years before, would be incredible, except it were
manifestly supported by fact. It would seem a con
tradiction to the Jewish mind that the nation should

GENERAL FEATURES." 59
be so severely punished for not holding aloof from
heathens, and yet that Jonah should have been
punished for not at once obeying a Divine command
ment to go and preach to a heathen city. Now even
though it should be admitted that in the time of Ezra
or Nehemiah a feeling in favour of the heathen might
be expressed in a writing of a fictitious kind, and such
a writing might by chance find its way into the sacred
canon, it cannot be granted by any candid student
of the Scriptures, uninfluenced by a theory, that the
writer of such a fiction would be likely to place his
story in the time of Jonah. Nor can we understand
how the Jews would continue to regard the writing
as inspired, when it so evidently reproved the whole
nation for its exclusiveness, unless they were con
vinced that it had come down to them with the stamp
of Divine authority upon it.
2. The character of Jonah himself as described in the
narrative is inexplicable, on any other ground than
the truthfulness of the writing. We cannot at this
point give the fullest attention which such an argu
ment demands. It will be before us again in a later
chapter. But we briefly notice the following remark
able facts as much too remote from ordinary Jewish
thought to be invented by a writer in the fifth century.
The daring attempt of Jonah to escape the fulfilment
of his mission. His putting himself among heathen
when he was averse to a mission among heathen.
His going down into the hold of the ship to sleep, and

60 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
sleeping so profoundly that even the storm did not
awake him, though he was conscious that he was in
danger. His deeply religious spirit in the time of his
extremity and after his deliverance, notwithstanding
his offence against Jehovah. The strange contradic
tion between his fulfilment of his mission at last and
its wonderful effect, and his peevish complaint against
God and inhuman disappointment that Nineveh was
saved. The unfavourable view of Jonah's character
left without one word of explanation or abatement
at the end of the book. Who could have dared to
cast such a slur on a great prophet's name, without
warrant from history ? If there was a tradition to
the same effect among the people, why then should
we doubt the narrative ? Surely only Jonah himself
would have ventured to state such facts, and only
Jonah would have told them so simply and without
comment. " We have only to suppose the writer to
have been Jonah himself, and then the whole com
position assumes the character of a frank and self-
humiliating confession ; by the very act of penning it
Jonah at once emerges out of his former character
and appears to our view not only as a prophet, but as
a remarkably humble and noble-spirited saint. For
the self-humiliation of the penitent is made all the
more striking, when he simply narrates the story of
former folly and unworthiness, while he forbears all
such expressions of self-disapproval as would tacitly
serve as a justification of his present self. By writing

GENERAL FEATURES. 61
as he has done, Jonah (supposing him to be the
author) lias exposed his character to the reprobation
and even contempt of the great majority of his
readers ; grandly careless of what they would think
of him, concerned only for the cause cf God and His
righteousness."1 Here, then, is the key to the whole
mystery of the character. Had Jonah never written
the book we should say it would be hard to believe
that he could have been a true prophet of God, and
then it would be incredible that he could have been
employed on such a mission. But his depth of repent
ance and faith is seen in the fact that he laid himself
as a sacrifice on the altar of revelation. Hence the
strange mixture in his conduct of the spirit of obe
dience and the spirit of selfishness. It is what is seen
in the greatest saints — in David, in Simon Peter,, in
multitudes far below them ; but the grace of God
prevails -over the infirmities and faults of a merely
human character, and behind the distressing picture
of inconsistency and moral weakness, there comes out
the overpowering sufficiency of Divine strength, mak
ing the sinner into the servant of God — the man who
fled from Jehovah's presence, His chosen witness.
3. The touches of nature and historical truthfulness
in the narrative are altogether unlike anything that we
meet with in Eastern fiction. " Every phrase is vivid I
and graphic. There is not a word which does not |
advance the history. There is no reflection. All
1 Speaker's Commentary, vol. vi. p. 585.

62 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
hastens on to the completion, and when God has
given the key to the whole, the book closes with His
words of exceeding tenderness, lingering in our ears "
{Pusey, p. 251). The touch in i. 3, is an instance in
point. "He found a ship going to Tarshish ; so he
paid the fare thereof and went down into it to go with
them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord!'
Why is it mentioned that Jonah paid the fare ? Be
cause it would be Jonah's object to secure his passage
without dispute on the part of the heathen captain.
Had he concealed himself on the ship, they might
have put him out before sailing. Moreover, though
he was fleeing from duty, he was not dishonest. He
might have wished, too, to be undisturbed for some
time, after a long struggle with anxious and distress
ing thoughts. He therefore paid his fare and imme
diately went down to sleep. Such a minute touch is
not like the work of a mere writer of fiction.
Again, the whole passage i. 4 to i. 16, describing
the conduct of the heathen sailors in the storm, is very
unlike an invention. It is true to the sailor-character.
It expresses at the same time the superstitious fears
of the heathen, and yet their simple acknowledgment
of Providence, and readiness to admit the superiority
of the Hebrew's religion. The remarkable prayer put
up after the vain effort of the men to bring the ship
to land, is almost like a solemn funeral service over
the grave of the prophet. " Wlierefore they cried
unto Jehovah and said, We beseech thee, 0 Jehovah, we

GENERAL FEATURES. 63
beseech Thee, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay
not upon us innocent blood : for thou, O Jehovah, hast
done as it pleased thee!' This is quite natural and
consistent with the fact that Jonah had told them all,
and that their minds were deeply affected by his
story, especially as they were open-hearted sailors,
not heathen priests. But who would invent such
language and put it in the lips of ignorant heathen
men, in the fifth century ? It is simply incredible.
No writer of fiction, unless he was miraculously in
spired, could have drawn such a scene and invented
such words.
Again, the description of the repentance of Nineveh
has all the traits of truthfulness in it. It is just such
a proclamation as Assyrians would make, bearing the
marks of Eastern despotism and extravagance. And
yet there is no attempt to represent the change as
anything else than it was — repentance for the sake
of averting Divine wrath. " Who can tell if God will
turn and repent and turn away from His fierce anger,
tliatwe perish not?" Had it been the main object
of the writer to present the heathen in a favourable
point of view, one would have expected much more
to be said about Nineveh and its adoption of Jonah's
religion. We are left to conclude that while Divine
wrath was averted, yet it was more because God had
pity on the great city than because they were con
verted from heathenism to anything like an accept
ance of the Jewish faith. This we know was the true

64 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
representation. Whatever effects might be produced
at Nineveh, they did not influence the heathen cha
racter of the Assyrians as a people. They continued
to worship Asshur, though we have reason to think
that there was a period about Jonah's time when their
violence, as an aggressive nation, was less than in
either previous or subsequent ages. The judgments of
God which ultimately overtook the city were delayed
for several centuries. It has been brought forward
as a difficulty, that Nineveh is mentioned as though
it was not in existence at the time of the composition
of the work. But nothing is said of the city more than
was necessary to describe the facts of Jonah's mission.
It is with reference to the prophet's preaching alone,
that the fact is stated, " Now Nineveh was an exceed
ing great city." The meaning therefore is, that
Nineveh was a great city for Jonah to preach in, not
that it was once and is no longer. There is no allusion
to time. So in the whole book there is no attempt
to paint up a narrative with historical exactness,
as there would be in a fiction, because the spiritual
intention of the book is uppermost in the prophet's
thoughts. There is enough of history to give the air
of truthfulness to the narrative, and yet not enough
to divert attention from the main substance of the
whole, which was the prophet's mission, and God's
revelation of Himself and His purpose through him.
The last instance which may be adduced is, the
description of Jonalis conduct in the fourth chapter.

GENERAL FEATURES. 65
l  !  1
It strongly recals Elijah's despondency when he
fled before Jezebel. But it could not be borrowed
from it, for the character of Jonah is very different.
The incident of the gourd, while plainly didactic, is
yet very unlike a mere invention. It harmonizes
with the natural circumstances in which the prophet
was placed. And yet the manner in which the
lesson is taught is very unusual. Who would have
thought that such a man as Jonah could have shown
any anger over the loss of the gourd ? There is
nothing of the kind in the case of Elijah sleeping
under the juniper tree. His prayer for death meant
disappointment in the great mission of his life, not
anger at the loss of mere physical comfort. More
over, in the case of Elijah, God provided miraculous
meat and drink, and so He could have sheltered
Jonah from the sun's heat had he prayed and waited.
It was the petulance of the prophet which broke
forth, and it was the contrast between the selfish
smallness of the man and the large love and generous
pity of God, which evidently was intended to be the
main lesson of the incident. But who would have
invented such facts? The form is too simple and
natural for fiction. The character of Jonah is too
extraordinary to be the product of mere genius. Its
very improbability is the guarantee of its truthful
ness. This however is a point which we must con
sider more fully and deliberately when we come to
expound the words of the narrative in a later chapter
F

66 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
of this work. We must be content in this place with
a very decided protest against the random assertions
of the critical school. Both in the case of the Book
of Ruth and in that of Jonah, we appeal to the
deeper instinct of the Church of God in all ages,
as bearing witness to the surpassing beauty of the
incidents, and their teaching, placing them apart
from mere legendary writings, as stamped with an
authority which gave them their position among the
Scriptures of God. Until spurious work can be
found which will compare with them in simplicity,
purity and significance, it is the part of believing
common sense to receive them as the word of
God. 4. There is another argument from the general
features of the book which, perhaps, is even more
convincing than those which we have just reviewed.
It is impossible to doubt that the miracle of Jonah's
preservation was intended to be a preparation of the
mind of God's people for the doctrine of the Re
surrection. It will be enough for the Christian that
the Lord Jesus Christ has distinctly employed the
facts of Jonah's history in His own teaching. "As
Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's
belly, so shall the Son oj man be three days and three
nights in the heart oj the earth " (Matt. xii. 39, 40).
Is that like the use of an ancient parable or legend ?
Did it not correspond with the similar case of the
preaching of Jonah to Nineveh, as a warning to the

GENERAL FEATURES. 67
men of that generation, that at the Day of Judg
ment the heathen would rise up and bear witness
against them ? But apart from this testimony of our
Lord, is not the doctrine of the Resurrection plainly
in the Book of Jonah ? As coming after the miracles
of Elijah and Elisha, it seems quite a natural develop
ment. It is the spirit of the doctrine which breathes
in Jonah's preaching. Now, if the work be viewed
in that light, is it at all likely that the teaching
of Resurrection would have been disguised, and not
didactically expressed, had the date of the work
been after the Captivity ? It is generally held by tlie
critical school that the doctrines of a future state
and of the Resurrection are post-exilic. But one who
should compose a fiction, for the sake of embodying
doctrine, would surely have expressed it much more
decidedly. He would have left us in no doubt e.g. that
Jonah died and was raised to life again. He would
probably have introduced some reference to Jonah's
own faith and to its proclamation at Nineveh. But
the sign which the Lord Jesus distinctly acknow
ledged and employed, is yet sufficiently hidden
to require faith to recognise it ; while the fact that
there is no evidence of its having been recognised
and employed by the Jewish Rabbis previous to the
time of Christ, shows that it did not lie on the sur
face. It was enough that the sign was there in the
word of God, and those who sought after Divine light
could find it. It is thought by some that our Lord

68 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
must have referred to this sign, when He said to His
disciples, after His resurrection, " that it was written
and it behoved the Christ to suffer and to rise the
third day" (Luke xxiv. 46), and the apostle Paul
(1 Cor. xv. 4) says that He "rose again the third
day according to the Scriptures." " There is no other
passage in the Old Testament Scriptures which could
serve as a basis to this particular designation of
time. Gen. xxii. 4 approaches the nearest to doing
so, but the application is somewhat precarious. Of
other passages which have been referred to on this
point, Ps. xvi. 10 falls short, and is not used for this
purpose either by St. Peter in Acts ii., or by St. Paul
in Acts xiii., while Hosea vi. 2 cannot be regarded
as strictly predictive, but only as faintly allusive.
It follows that Christ and His apostles were ac
customed to point to Jonah's entombment in the fish,
not merely as an occurrence to which His own en
tombment might be compared, but as a prediction .
so definite that it therefore " behoved Christ to rise
again on the third day." And this is an impor
tant fact for estimating this particular of Jonah's
history. For we may in all reverence infer, that this
most strange and otherwise utterly unaccountable
circumstance was ordered by Divine Providence for
the very purpose of providing a typical prediction in
which both the Lord Jesus Himself (Luke xviii. 31-
33), and His Church as taught by Him, should recog
nise the distinct foreshadowing of His preordained

GENERAL FEATURES. 69
death and resurrection." {Speaker's Commentary, vol.
vi. p. 577).
Now if there is all this significance in the Book
of Jonah, is it likely that it would be a mere ficti
tious legend or parable, invented in the fifth century ?
Even Ewald, who advocates the fiction theory, admits
that the Book of Jonah is superior to all others of
a merely legendary kind. "The story would have
been wholly impossible, if legends of similar miracu
lous deliverances from the jaws of the sea and its
monsters had not, long before our narrative, been
in circulation, not only in other seaboard countries,
but along those long-stretching coasts of Phoenicia,
which were almost without harbours, and so difficult
to navigate. These legends were used by our nar
rator so as to work in with the fundamental thought
of all his narrations, and yet his story is incomparably
superior to them all. The base and earthly elements
are ennobled by the breath of the Divine in its purity,
and things material and monstrous are transformed
by contact with the light of the Immortal." Ewald
refers to Philo, Burnouf 's Introduction to the History
of Buddhism, and the German story of Ortnit ; but
they by no means bear out his view that the author has
worked up legendary matter into his narrative, and he
admits that "it is remarkable that reminiscences of
the name of Jonah and memorials of him are to be
found in several places of the long coast-line. See
Osborne's Palestine, p. 1 37." This does not look as

70 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
though there were a working up of early myths in
the story ; rather that it is immediately connected
with the prophet. And why should such a deliverance
be deemed impossible, if there are so many similar
accounts ? One would rather conclude that it is
founded on fact. At all events, it is strange that such
deep significance should be embodied in a mere idle
myth, which had come down from the earliest times.
The Jewish people must be credited, with very little
spiritual discernment that they should incorporate
such materials in their Old Testament, that they
should suffer them to be identified with the name of
one of their greatest prophets, and a period so distin
guished as that which immediately succeeded the
prophets Elijah and Elisha, and preceded Isaiah.
The view of the critics is shallow and unsatisfactory.

CHAPTER IV.
THE USE OF THE PSALMS IN JONAH'S PRAYER.
IT will be evident to the most cursory reader of
the second chapter of the Book of Jonah, that
what is called a prayer, which "Jonah prayed unto the
Lord his God out oj the fish's belly" is not an original,
ejaculatory prayer, such as would come from one in
extreme danger and in sight of death, but a poetical
composition. It would be quite consistent with truth
and with the spirit of Hebrew poetry, that such a
hymn of praise for deliverance should be called a
prayer, and that it should be represented as offered
to God at the time of danger. So it is that many of
the psalms speak of immediate pressure of calamity
and distress, although they must have been composed
in a state of safety and peace. But the question at
once suggests itself with regard to Jonah's language —
Was it his own, or did he borrow it from well-known
psalms, and simply adapt it to his own experience
and' feelings ? It would be quite natural that he
should offer to Jehovah that which was already
regarded as sacred, and incorporated with the word
of God, especially when he was himself inspired to

72 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
write a history which should take its place upon the
pages of Scripture. But if it be granted that Jonah
used the Book of Psalms, then we are brought face
to face with a most important piece of evidence,
either in favour of the received view of the Book of
Jonah or directly against it. It seems necessary to
give this question a separate and very careful con
sideration. If the psalms which Jonah quotes, or to
which he refers, are of late date themselves, which
some critics will perhaps maintain, then it would be
impossible to resist the conclusion, the Book of Jonah
was written long after the time when Jonah lived, and
probably after the time of the Captivity. Then the
whole character of the book and its value must be
regarded differently. But such a conclusion must
not be accepted until it is fully proved. We have
seen so far, that there is no valid evidence on which
it can be made to rest. The crucial point, however,
is the use of the psalms, and to these we must now
turn our attention as the last of the critical topics to
which we shall refer in this work.
Chapter ii. 2. " /" cried by reason oj mine affliction
unto the Lord, and He heard me ; out oj the belly oj
hell cried I, and Thou heardest my voice!' There are
two references which are suggested by these words.
The one is to the 18th Psalm, and the other to
the 1 20th Psalm. The words are not exactly from
either, but the eighteenth is so much in harmony
with the whole of Jonah's prayer, that we can

USE OF THE PSALMS IN JONAH'S PRA YER. 73
scarcely doubt it was in his thoughts. Take e.g. the
following parallel in the two compositions.
Ps. xviii. 4, 5, 6. The sorrows of death compassed
me,
And the floods of ungodly men made me afraid.
The sorrows of hell compassed me about ;
The snares of death prevented me.
In my distress I called upon the Lord, and cried unto
my God :
He heard my voice out of His temple,
And my cry came before Him even into His ears.
Compare with these verses the following words out
of Jonah's prayer —
" The waters compassed me about, even unto the soul,
And the stream closed me round :
The depth closed me round about.
I called from my distress unto the Lord.
Yet I will look again towards Thy holy temple.
And my prayer came unto Thee, into Thine holy
temple."
Again, in Ps. cxx. 1 we find similar language : " In
my distress I cried unto the Lord and He heard me!'
And in Ps. cxxx. 1 we have an echo of the same cry,
which may, however, have been itself taken from the
earlier Psalm, as it is one of the "songs of degrees "
generally ascribed to a later date : " Out oj the depths
have I cried unto Thee, 0 Lord." Now in the case
of the 1 8th Psalm, which is much the most likely to
have suggested Jonah's words, as it is so manifestly

74 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
a composition coming from circumstances of great
calamity and danger, the title has the following ex
planation of its occasion. " A psalm of David, the
servant of the Lord, who spake unto the Lord the
words of this song in the day that the Lord had
delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and
from the hand of Saul." Hengstenberg says, " The
strongest scepticism has not ventured to deny here
the Davidic authorship." With the solitary excep
tion of Olshausen in the Emendations, it is generally
recognised. Ewald urges in support of it, that we
have here expressed, with the greatest clearness,
David's nature, his mode of reflection and his deep
consciousness, his experiences so peculiar in their
kind. " That the psalmist was a king is quite manifest,
from verse 50, as also from verse 43. The same
confidence in the blessing of God, in respect to his
latest posterity, discovers itself in the last words of
David (2 Sam. xxiii.). The particular words have
quite the Davidic tone. The recurrence in the
Books of Samuel is also to be regarded as an external
ground, the more so, as all other songs which these
books contain, as of David, are certainly his genuine
productions." So that the reference to the 18th
Psalm is quite consistent with the authenticity of
Jonah. ii. 3. " For Thou hadst cast me into the deep, in
the midst oj the seas ;
And the floods compassed me about :

USE OF THE PSALMS IN JONAH'S PR A YER. 75
All Thy billows and Thy waves passed over me."
This immediately recalls the words of the 42nd
Psalm, ver. 7.
"Deep calleth unto deep at the noise oj thy waterspouts ;
All Thy waves and Thy billows are gone over me."
The resemblance is too close to be doubted for a
moment, and it is still closer in the Hebrew than in
the English. The latter part is literally the same,
though somewhat changed in our Authorized Version.
Indeed, were it not that there can be no doubt about
the date of the 42nd Psalm, we should say that it
is more likely that the psalmist refers to Jonah,
than that Jonah refers1 to the psalm. But Hengsten-
berg says, the internal evidence for the Davidic
authorship is exceedingly strong, and the reference of
Joel i. 20, besides this in Jonah ii. 3, may be regarded
as strong external evidence. The whole tone of the
42nd Psalm is Davidic.
Ver. 4. " Then I said, I am cast out oj Thy sight ;
Yet I will look again toward Thy holy temple!'
Compare with this, Ps. xxxi. 22.
" For I said in my lieart,
I am cut off Jrom bejore thine eyes!'
Also Ps. xviii. 6.
" He heard my voice out of His temple,
And my -cry came before Him, even into His ears."
Also Ps. v. 7.
" But as for me, I will come into Thy house in the
multitude of Thy mercy :

76 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
And in Thy fear will I worship toward Thy holy
temple."
See also I Kings viii. 38 ; Dan. vi. 10. Jeremiah
uses the 31st Psalm, but only as Jonah did.
" There is not the shadow of a reason," says Heng-
stenberg, " for setting aside the superscription, which
expressly announces the Psalm to have been David's."
Ver. 5. " The waters compassed me about, even to the
soul:
The depth closed me round about,
The weeds were wrapped about my head!'
This is perhaps a recollection of Psalm lxix. 1 :
" Save me, O God, for the waters are come in unto
my soul." The resemblance is not very close, and
Jonah plainly adds a descriptive reference to the
circumstance of his own case. The 69th Psalm is
strongly Messianic, and like the 22nd, is much
referred to, and applied to Christ, in the New
Testament. It was ascribed to David by the Jews,
and is full of originality and in perfect harmony with
the other psalms which were in thought and language
so suitable to the Royal Psalmist. " The arguments
against David," says Hengstenberg, " are not of such
weight as to counterbalance the strong evidence in
favour." There might seem to be a dim reference to
the Captivity in verses 33-36 ; but it is so vague that
it can only be fairly taken as descriptive of the
sufferings of the Lord's people in every age. The
correspondence in Jonah, however, is in this instance

USE OF THE PSALMS IN JONAH'S PRAYER. 77
too wide to be employed on either side of the argu
ment with any great force.
Ver. 6. " T went down to the bottoms oj the moun
tains ;
The earth with her bars was about me Jor ever ;
Yet hast Thou brought up my lije Jrom corruption, O
Lord, my God."
Here there would seem to be a recollection of
Ps. xvi. 10. " For Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell,
neither wilt Thou suffer Thine holy one to see corrup
tion!' And we may compare Ps. xxx. 3 and 9 :
" 0 Lord, Thou hast brought up my soul from the
grave : Thou hast kept me alive, that I should not
go down to the pit." " What profit is there in my
blood, when I go down to the pit ? Shall the dust
praise Thee ? shall it declare Thy truth ? " The
reference to the bottoms or ends of the mountains
is very singular. There could be nothing in Jonah's
actual circumstances to lead him to think of the
mountains, he must, therefore, have had the language
of the psalms in his mind. We find such expressions
as these : Ps. xxiv. 2, " For He hath founded it upon
the seas, and established it upon the floods " (referring
to the earth). " To Him that stretched out the
earth above the waters " (Ps. cxxxvi. 6). The
foundation-mountains of the earth were supposed to
rest on the floor of the sea. Hence in Ps. xviii. 15.
" Then the channels of water were seen,
And the foundations of the world were discovered

78 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
At Thy rebuke, O Lord,
At the blasts of the breath of Thy nostrils."
Either the psalms were borrowed from Jonah, or
Jonah used the psalms. Either way, it is unreason
able to doubt that Jonah's language was composed
at an early period.
Ver. 7. " When my soul jainted in me I remembered
the Lord.
And my prayer came in unto Thee, unto Thine holy
temple!'
This, as we before observed, is probably taken from
the 1 8th Psalm ; but there are other instances of re
semblance. The reference in Psalms xiii. and xliii.
" Why art thou cast down, 0 my soul? and Ps. cxlii. 3,
" When my spirit was overwhelmed within me," and
the language of Jeremiah in Lamentations, iii. 21-26.
Beyond the reference to the temple, and therefore
to the 1 8th Psalm, however, the correspondence is
too wide to be of much significance. No doubt the
general idea of remembering the Lord when the soul
fainted had become incorporated into the religious
language of the people, and would be used without
direct quotation.
Ver. 8. " They that observe lying vanities,
Forsake their , own mercy."
This is plainly a reference to Ps. xxxi. 6. " I have
hated them that regard lying vanities. But I trust in
the Lord." The term "lying vanities '' was "a con
temptuous designation of idols." " I will be glad and

USE OF THE PSALMS IN JONAH'S PRAYER. 79
rejoice in Thy mercy," says the Psalmist. " They
forsake their own mercy" says Jonah. He has seen
the mercy of the Lord, both to the Ninevites and to
himself, therefore he speaks with deep feeling of the
" lying vanities" because he knew that his book would
be a great stimulus to the efforts of God's people in
every age to proclaim His truth to the heathen. The
31st Psalm was undoubtedly Davidic, as we have
just seen.
Ver. 9. "But I will sacrifice unto Thee with the
voice of thanksgiving;
I will pay that that I Jiave vowed.
Salvation is of tlie Lord!'
In Ps. iii. 8 we have the latter part of this verse,
" Salvation to the Lord" and in several psalms lan
guage corresponding to the former part.
Ps. cxvi. 17, 18 —
" I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving
And will call upon the name of the Lord.
I will pay my vows unto the Lord
Now in the presence of all his people."
Ps. Ixvi. 13, 14
" I will go into Thy house with burnt offerings.
I will pay Thee my vows,
Which my lips have uttered,
And my mouth hath spoken, when I was in trouble."
So in the opening words, " But I will sacrifice" we
have an echo of Ps. v. 7. " But as for me, I will come
into Thy house in the multitude of Thy mercy, and in

80 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
Thy fear will I worship toward Thy holy temple!' The
psalms thus quoted cannot certainly be proved to
have been composed by David, but there is no evi
dence of their late authorship.
The remarks of Dr. Pusey on Jonah's prayer will
show how these remarkable correspondences strike a
deeply reverent mind, apart from critical argument ;
and it ought to be remembered that against such a
testimony, from a profound student of Scripture, there
is nothing which is of any force unless it be sup
ported by overwhelming evidence. The judgment
of critics on the dates of the psalms is very little
to be relied on. Dr. Pusey says {Minor Prophets, p.
252), "The hymn itself is a remarkable blending of
old and new, as our Lord says, Therefore is the king
dom of heaven like a householder, who bringeth out of
his treasure new and old (Matt. xiii. 52). The prophet
teaches us to use the psalms, as well as how the
holy men of old used them. In that great moment
of religious life, the well-remembered psalms, such as
he had often used them, were brought to his mind.
What had been figures to David or the sons of Korah,
as, ' the waters are come in even unto my soul ; all Thy
billows and Thy waves passed over me? were strict
realities to him. Yet only in this last sentence and
in some other sentences, which doubtless had become
a proverb of accepted, prayer, 'I cried out of my
trouble unto tlie Lord, and He heard me', does Jonah
use exactly the words of earlier psalms. Elsewhere

USE OF THE PSALMS IN JONAH'S ERA YER. 81
he varies or amplifies them, according to his own
special circumstances. Thus, when David said, ' the
waters are come in, even unto my soul,' Jonah sub
stitutes the word which described best the condition
from which God had delivered him, ' the waters com
passed me about, even to the soul.' Where David said,
' T am cut off from before Thine eyes,' expressing an
abiding condition ; Jonah, who had for disobedience
been cast into the sea, uses the strong word, 'I am
cast out from before thine eyes.' David says, ' I
said in my haste ;' Jonah simply, ' I said,' for he had
deserved it. David said, ' when my spirit was over
whelmed,' or ' fainted within me,' ' Thou knewest my
path'; Jonah substitutes, 'When my soul fainted
within me I remembered the Lord; ' for when he
rebelled he forgot Him. David said ' I hate them
that observe lying vanities ; ' Jonah, who had himself
disobeyed God, says mournfully, ' They that observe
lying vanities forsake their own me7'cy,' i.e. their God,
who is .Mercy. Altogether, Jonah's thanksgiving is
that of one whose mind was stored with the psalms
which were part of the public worship, but it was the
language of one who uses and recasts them freely,
as he was taught of God, not of one who copies.
No one verse is taken entirely from any psalm.
There are original expressions everywhere. The words,
' I went down to the cuttings off of the mountains ' ;
'the seaweed bound around my head ;' 'the earth, its
bars around me for ever ' ;— perhaps the coral reefs
G

82 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
which run along all that shore — vividly exhibit him
sinking, entangled, imprisoned, as it seems, inex
tricably. He goes on. We should expect some further
description of his state ; but he adds, in five simple
words, ' Thou broughtest up my life from corruption,
0 Lord my God! Words, somewhat like these last,
occur elsewhere : Thou hast brought up my soul from
Jiell (Ps. xxx. 3), agreeing in the one word ' brought
up! But the majesty of the prophet's conception is
in the connection of the thoughts. The seaweed was
bound round his head as his graveclothes ; the solid
bars of the deep-rooted earth were around him, and —
God brought him up. At the close of the thanks
giving, ' Salvation is the Lord's', the deliverance is
completed ; as though God had only waited for this
act of complete faith. So could no one have written
who had not himself been delivered from such an
extreme point of drowning, as man could not, of
himself, escape from. True, that no image so well
expresses the overwhelmedness under affliction or
temptation, as the pressure of storms by land, or
being overflooded by the waves of the sea. Hence
poetry knows of ' a sea of troubles,' or ' the triple
wave of evils.' It expresses how we are simply
passive and powerless under a trouble, which leaves
us neither breath nor power of motion ; under which
we can be but still, till by God's mercy it passes.
We are sunk, overhead, deep down in temptations,
and the masterful current is sweeping in eddies over

USE OF THE PSALMS IN JONAH'S PRA VER. 83
us. Of this sort are those images which Jonah took
from the psalms. But a description so minute as the
whole of Jonah's would be allegory, not metaphor.
What in it is most descriptive of Jonah's situation, as
binding of the seaweed around the head, the sinking
down to the roots of the mountains, the bars of the
earth around him, are peculiar to this thanksgiving
of Jonah ; they do not occur elsewhere, for, except
through miracle, they would be images not of peril
but of death."
There is only one other remark which remains to
be made upon the critical aspect of this prayer, and
that is, that had it been the composition of a writer
living after the time of the Captivity, and were the
whole story of Jonah an allegory or parable, we
should have expected a much freer use of the later
psalms, and a clearer reference to the parallel
between the deliverance of Jonah and the release of
the people out of their captivity. The thanksgiving
of the prophet is short and exceedingly vivid in
sentiment and expression ; altogether unlike the
poetical rhapsody of a man who was dealing with
allegory, but entirely in accordance with the view
that Jonah was speaking from his own experience,
briefly ascribing salvation to the Lord. It should
also be borne in mind, in considering the relation of
Jonah's hymn to the psalms and other portions of
Scripture, that it is quite possible that it was the
original from which some of them were taken, as e.g.

84 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF fONAH.
Ps. cxx. I, from ver. 2, and Lam. iii. 54, from ver. 5.
It is remarked in the Speaker's Commentary, vol. vi.
p. 581, that "internal criticism furnishes no sufficient
ground for determining with any preponderance of
probability which in each case was derived from the
other. The internal evidence, therefore, supplied by
the hymn, taken all together, so far from proving a
late era for the book, strongly favours the belief, that
at least this portion of the book was written by
Jonah himself." Some have even ventured to suggest
the theory that the whole story of the book was
an afterthought, founded on a hymn of praise for
deliverance from drowning, composed by Jonah him
self. That, however, is too evidently a mere shift of
the uncandid mind. The only view which is consistent
with itself throughout, is that which magnifies the
power and mercy of Jehovah, and harmonizes with
the place of the book in the Hebrew canon, namely,
that Jonah wrote it under the guidance of the Divine
Spirit.

PART II.
THE NARRATIVE.

CHAPTER I.
THE WORDS THEMSELVES, LITERALLY
RENDERED.
IT seems due to a book like that which we are
studying that we should give the narrative
exactly as it is told, without note or comment, before
we consider the words in a more exegetical manner.
Ewald has rendered the Hebrew very ably in his
work on "The Prophets of the Old Testament."
We have kept his translation before us in putting
together the following version, without paraphrase or
substitution of English for Hebrew idiom.
I Now there came the word of Jehovah to Jonah
the son of Amittai, saying : —
" Rise up, go to Nineveh, the great city, and
cry against it ;
For the wickedness of it has come up before
Me."
And Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from
before Jehovah.
And he went down to Yapho and found a vessel.
It was going to Tarshish and he paid its fare —
87

STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
And he went down into it, to go with them to
Tarshish,
From before the presence of Jehovah.
Now Jehovah cast a mighty wind upon the sea.
And there was a great storm in the sea,
And the ship was in danger of being broken to
pieces.
Now the seamen were in fear and they cried each
to his god.
And they threw out the freight which was in the
ship into the sea
In order to lighten the weight which was upon
them.
And Jonah had gone down into the hold of the
merchantman
And had laid himself down to sleep, and was
snoring ;
And the chief of the sailors drew near to him.
And he said to him, " What is the matter with
thee, snoring so ?
Get up and call upon thy god — if so be the god
will think of us,
And we perish not."
And they said each to his neighbour,
" Come and let us cast lots, and we will
know
On whose account this evil is upon us."
And they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah.

WORDS -OF THE NARRATIVE.

And they said to him, " Tell us now, we pray
thee,
On whose account this evil is upon us ?
What is thy business, and whence hast thou
come ?
What is thy country, and of what kind of nation
art thou ? "
And he said to them, "A Hebrew am I,
And Jehovah, the God of heaven, I fear.
He it is who hath made the sea and the dry
land."
And the men were afraid with a great terror.
And they said to him, " What is this thou hast
done ? "
For the men knew that he was flying from before
Jehovah ;
For he had declared it to them.
And they said to him, " What shall we do with
thee,
That the sea may be hushed before us ;
For the sea groweth more and more stormy ? "
And he said unto them, " Take me and throw me
into the sea,
Then the sea will be hushed before you.
For I know that it is for my sake
That this great storm is upon you."
Now the men strained hard to reach the dry land,
And they were not able ;

90 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
For the sea grew more and more stormy against
them.
Then they called upon Jehovah and they said,
" We beseech Thee, O Jehovah, we beseech Thee,
Let us not perish on account of the life of this
man,
And lay not upon us innocent blood,
For Thou, O Jehovah, doest as it pleaseth Thee.
4 And they lifted up Jonah, and they cast him into
the sea,
And the sea abated its fury.
And the men were afraid, with great terror,
towards Jehovah ;
And they sacrificed a sacrifice to Jehovah,
And they vowed vows.
5 And Jehovah appointed a great fish to swallow
Jonah ;
And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days
and three nights.
6 And Jonah supplicated Jehovah his God
From the belly of the fish.
And he said, I called in my distress upon
Jehovah,
And he answered me from the belly of Sheol ;
I cried, and Thou didst hear my voice.
And a whirlpool cast me into the midst of the
seas,

WORDS OF THE NARRATIVE. 91
And the currents encompassed me around.
All Thy waves and Thy billows passed over me.
And I said, I am cast forth before Thine eyes,
Yet will I continue to look towards the palace of
Thy holiness.
Waters had surrounded me, even my life ;
The deep was round about me.
The seaweed was wrapped about my head.
To the bottoms of the mountains I went down,
The earth with her bars was about me for ever.
But Thou, O Jehovah, my God,
Didst make my life to go up from the pit.
When my soul fainted within me
I remembered Jehovah,
And my prayer arose unto Thee,
Even to the palace of Thy holiness.
They that observe lying vanities,
Their mercy they forsake.
But I, with the voice of thanks, will sacrifice to
Thee,
I will pay Thee that which I have vowed.
Salvation is Jehovah's.
And Jehovah spake to the fish,
And it cast forth Jonah upon the dry land.

92 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
8 Now the word of Jehovah came to Jonah a second
time, saying, —
" Rise up, go to Nineveh, the great city,
And cry against it the cry which I speak to
thee."
9 And Jonah rose up and he went to Nineveh,
According to the word of Jehovah.
And Nineveh was a great city before God —
Three days' journey to go through.
io And Jonah began to go into the city,
Going one day into it.
And he cried, and he said,
" Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!'
1 1 Now the men of Nineveh believed on God,
And they proclaimed a fast ; and put on sack
cloth,
From their greatest even unto their least.
And the matter reached even to the king of
Nineveh ;
And he rose up from his throne,
And he put off his royal robe from upon him,
And he covered himself with sackcloth, and sat
in ashes.
And he caused it to be proclaimed and published
in Nineveh,

WORDS OF THE NARRATIVE. 93
" By the decree of the king and his nobles, say
ing-
Man and beast, herd and flock,
Let them not taste anything ;
Let them not feed, nor drink water ;
Let man and beast be covered with sackcloth,
And let them cry unto God with all their might,
And let them turn each one from his evil way,
And from the violence which was in their hands.
Who knoweth if the God shall turn and repent,
And turn from the fierceness of His wrath,
And we shall not perish."
12 And God saw their doings,
That they turned from their evil way.
And God repented of the evil which He said
He would do to them —
And He did it not.
13 Now it was wrong to Jonah, a great wrong.
And he was angry.
And he made supplication to Jehovah and he
said, —
Now, O Jehovah, I beseech Thee, is not this
what I said
While I was yet in my country ?
Therefore it was that I was in haste to flee to
Tarshish.

94 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
For I knew that Thou art a God gracious and
merciful,
Slow to wrath and of great mercy,
And repenteth thee concerning the evil.
And now, O Jehovah, take away my life from me,
For my death is better than my life.
14 And Jehovah said, Art thou so very angry ?
And Jonah went forth from the city.
And he sat down on the east of the city.
And he made for himself there a green booth,
And he dwelt under it in the shade,
Even until he should see how it would be in the
city.
15 And Jehovah-Elohim appointed a gourd,
And He made it to grow up over Jonah,
To be for a shadow upon his head ;
To deliver him from his trouble.
And Jonah rejoiced over the gourd
With a great rejoicing.
16 And God appointed a worm,
At the rising of the dawn on the morrow ;
And it smote the gourd and it withered.
17 And it came to pass when the sun rose,
That God appointed an east wind, a hot wind,
And the sun smote upon the head of Jonah,
And he fainted and begged that he might die ;
And he said, My death is better than my life.

WORDS OF THE NARRATIVE. 95
18 And God said to Jonah, Is it good that thou art
angry for the gourd ?
And he said, I do well to be angry even to death.
And Jehovah said, Thou hast mercy upon the
gourd,
For which thou hast not laboured, neither madest
it to grow —
Which came as the son of a night, and as the son
of a night perished.
And I, should not I have pity upon Nineveh,
The great city :
Therein are more than twelve times ten thousand
men,
Which discern not between their right hand and
their left hand,
And multitudes of cattle ?

CHAPTER II.
EXEGETICAL STUDY OF THE WORDS.
/"^HAPTER I. ver. i, VT>), " And was." The his-
^^ torical waw conversive, which is the commonest
form of commencement of the historical books. So
we find it in the instances of Exodus, Leviticus, Num
bers, and Joshua, I and 2 Samuel, I and 2 Kings.
After the time of the Captivity, Ezra begins in the
same manner, and virtually Nehemiah, for the title,
" The words of Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah," may
be considered as separate from the book itself.
Both Ruth and Esther begin so. It would seem to
have been, properly speaking, confined to the histori
cal books, for while Ezekiel might seem to be an
exception, it is not really so, as the opening words
of that book are put in the form of narrative : " Now
it came to pass," etc. Dr. Pusey thinks that there
can be no doubt as to the meaning of this form of
commencement, that it was intended to connect the
writing which it introduces with the line of Divine
Revelation. He would recognise still more in the
case of Jonah, that the connection of prophecy to the
96

STUDY OF THE WORDS. 97
Gentiles with that to the Jews was intended to be
thus expressed. " This form, And the word of the
Lord came to — saying, occurs over and over again,
stringing together the pearls of great price of God's
revelations, and uniting this new revelation to those
which preceded it. The word And, then, joins on
histories with histories, revelations with revelations,
uniting in one the history of God's works and words,
and blending the books of Holy Scripture into one
Divine book." 1 We must be careful, however, of
building too much upon a slight and slender founda
tion of this kind. It is possible that the book which
so commences was really part of a series, other parts
of which are lost. In the cases mentioned above, a
distinct connection is traceable, with historical mat
ter to which the book attaches itself. It seems likely
that the waw conversive was freely employed in the
case of history, not as distinctly intimating the claim
of the book to be received as Scripture, but as suit
able to denote its connection with the body of fact.
The sense is given better by our own " Now," than
by the simple conjunction. It is the word with
which a narrator opens his history. The absence of
any formal title, such as we find in the case of Isaiah
and other prophets, may be explained by the fact
that it is rather a history than a collection of
prophecies. Jonah is more an instrument in Divine
hands than an inspired voice.
1 Minor Prophets, p. 265. H

98 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
niirp-"n'7 The word of Jehovah. There can be
no doubt whatever that this expression denoted a
solemn, oracular communication from Jehovah. So
it is employed in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and through
out the Old Testament. It is true that the same
form would be used by a false prophet, but only as
claiming to be inspired. It would certainly at no
period in Jewish history be regarded as losing its
solemnity. Therefore, to suppose a devout Jew of
the fifth century sitting down and deliberately in
venting a fiction about the prophet Jonah, and
opening it with these words of the most solemn
meaning, is to suppose an anomaly which only the
perverse ingenuity of criticism can for a moment
tolerate. It would have been regarded as blasphemy
for any Jew to trifle with the name and authority of
Jehovah in that manner. No apocryphal book begins
in this way.
\Tl£3K"p rUi' Jonah the son oj Amittai. Jonah is
the same word employed in Gen. viii. of the dove
sent forth from the ark. Is there any special sig
nificance in the name ? Perhaps not. But it is a
coincidence worth remarking. Amittai signifies the
Truth oj God. Hitzig compares Matthew, Mar6aio<;,
dropping the a. The Syriac has Mathai or Matthew
in this place. The book certainly describes a dove
like mission from the ark of God, the Church, over
the world as it was under Divine judgment, and that
in the name of the God of Truth. At all events, the

STUDY OF THE WORDS. 99
name may refer to the consolatory message which
Jonah brought to Israel (see 2 Kings xiv. 25). Gath
Hepher, from which Jonah the prophet came, was a
town of Lower Galilee, in Zebulon. "ISnrT J13 " The
winepress oj the well," mentioned under the form of
~©n H^, Josh. xix. 13, in the definition of the border
of Zebulon. It was on the border of Zebulon-
There is a little village called El-Meshdad on
the top of a rocky hill, about two miles east of
Sefurieh, the ancient Sepphoris, where is a tomb still
pointed out as the tomb of Jonah. In the twelfth
century, Benjamin of Tudela mentioned that such a
tomb was there. Jerome says {Procsm. in Jonam),
" Geth, quae est in Opher haud grandis est viculus, in
secundo Sepphoris miliario, quae hodie appellator
Diocsesarea euntibus Tiberiadem ubi et sepulcrum
ejus ostenditur : " i.e. 2 miles from Sepphoris, which
is now called Diocaesarea in the way to Tiberias. We
may therefore conclude that the traditional site of
Jonah's tomb may be traced back to the time of our
Lord. He was probably really buried there. It is
remarkable that he came " out of Galilee," therefore
was a true predecessor of our Lord. His birthplace
would account for his so promptly going to Joppa to
embark for Tarshish.
Ver. 2. With regard to Nineveh, it is only neces
sary to point out here that the city is mentioned,
and not the kingdom. Nahum only once speaks of
the king of Assyria. Zephaniah (630 B.C.) couples

ioo STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
the capital and the kingdom together ; the latest
mention of Nineveh as an existing city. The de
struction of the city is dated 606 B.C. The term
"great " may be applied to Nineveh as a metropolis,
or simply as a comparative term ; it was immense
as compared with any city in Palestine. Probably,
however, the word " great " is employed simply to call
attention to the fact that Nineveh was a vast strong
hold of heathen wickedness, where the power and
grace of God would be signally displayed. The
wickedness referred to was chiefly violence. " Woe to
the bloody city. It is full of lies and robbery : the
prey departeth not" (Nahum iii. 1). It is "a den of
lions" (ii. 11, 12). The command is to cry, or call,
to it, or against it ; not a mere proclamation of
judgment, but the lifting up of the voice of warning,
which was mercy.
Ver. 3. " And Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish
jrom bejore Jehovah {Jrom the presence oj the Lord).
A nd he went down to Ydpho and jound a vessel. It
was going to Tarshish, and he paid the jare oj it.
And he went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish,
jrom bejore the presence oj Jehovah."
God said, " Rise up, and go to Nineveh." Jonah
rose up and went to Joppa to go to Tarshish. As
to the destination which the prophet sought there is
some uncertainty. We read in Genesis (x. 4), " And
the sons of Javan, Elishah and Tarshish, Kittim
and Dodanim." These were grandsons of Japheth.

STUDY OF THE WORDS.

Various opinions have been held as to the locality
intended. Josephus {Ant., ix. x. 2) says Tarsus in
Cilicia. Theodoret and others, Carthage. The Tar-
gum and Jerome render the word " to the sea" in
other words, to some far off place on the sea, or by
sea. It is generally held, however, that the reference
is to the ancient city of Spain, Tartessus, proverbially
famous for wealth in metals, such as silver, iron, lead,
tin. Cf. Ps. lxxii. 10 ; Isa. xxiii. 14 ; Jer. x. 9. " Silver
spread in plates is brought from Tarshish." The
connection with Tyre, i.e. with Phoenicia, is well
known. See Ezek. xxvii. 12. "Tarshish was thy
merchant (speaking of Tyre) by reason of the multi
tude of all kinds of riches ; with silver, iron, tin and
lead, they traded in thy fairs." The city was near
the Guadalquivir. Pliny and Strabo seem to identify
it with Carteia in the Bay of Gibraltar, or Gades, the
Cathaginian Gadir, i.e. Cadiz. It would seem that
" ships oj Tarshish " became a kind of general nau
tical term, like " East Indiaman." Evidently, there
fore, Tarshish was some well known place of com
merce ; and it suits the facts that Jonah should wish
to flee westward from a commandment which would
have sent him eastward. He rose up to flee "jrom
the presence oj the Lord" literally, "jrom being bejore
Jehovah"; not a mere general expression to denote
Jonah's fleeing from God, but plainly pointing to his
official position. It is said by some critics that the
character of a prophet is lowered by supposing him

102 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
capable of attempting to flee from the presence of
the Infinite God. This, however, is to mistake the
language. The meaning of "presence oj the Lord"
is frequently, in Scripture, ministration before God.
See the following instances: Gen. xii. 46 ; Deut. x. 8;
1 Kings viii. 25, xvii. I ; 2 Kings iii. 14 ; Luke i. 19.
The Targum renders the word, " that he might not
prophesy in the name oj the Lord!'
Yaja, Ydpho, Jaffa, Joppa, is the one port of the
Mediterranean belonging to Israel. It was fifty miles
from Jonah's country. In the days of Solomon it
was the port for Jerusalem, and it still remains so.
The materials of the temple were landed there, both
in Solomon's time and after the Captivity. It was
probably in the hands of the Phoenicians in the time
of Jonah (Josephus, Ant., xiii. xv. 4). It was at
Joppa that the apostle Peter saw his vision, similar
in import to the mission of Jonah, declaring Divine
mercy for the Gentiles. The "ship " was Phoenician,
for the Phoenicians had the carrying trade of Pales
tine. The Jews were never sailors. The word
employed signifies a large merchant ship, afterwards
described as a "sephinah " or "decker" The fare or
hire which Jonah paid would enable him to act as
he pleased, and so hide himself at once, to remain
undisturbed in his anxiety and gloom.
Ver. 4, 5- " Now Jehovah cast a mighty wind upon
the sea, and tliere was a great storm in the sea, and tlie
ship was in danger oj being broken in pieces. And the

STUDY OF THE WORDS. 103
seamen zvere in fear, and they cried each to his god.
And they threw out the freight which was in the ship
into the sea, in order to lighten the weight which was
upon them." It seems probable that the ship had not
got far upon its way, for the sea is frequently very
rough in the vicinity of Joppa. Josephus, in his
fewish War, describes such a storm there. The
description is very vivid in Hebrew ; literally, " the
ship was driven along, and was thought to be
broken," i.e. they thought that she would be broken.
The word used for seamen is also very characteristic,
like our word "old salt," men of the salt sea. In
Phoenician vessels the men were often of different
nations, and the Phoenicians themselves had many
gods. The meaning may be, that each cried to
his own national deity, or to his own household
god. Ver. 5, 6. " Now Jonah had gone down into the
hold oj the ship, and had laid himselj down to sleep,
and was snoring. And the chiej oj the sailors drew
near to him. And he said to him, What meanest thou,
sleeping so ? A rise, and call upon thy God, ij so be
that the God zvill think oj us, and we perish not!' We
can well imagine that the misery of Jonah's mind
affected his bodily state, and he fell into a profound
sleep like a stupor, so heavy that even the storm did
not awake him. It is interesting to notice that while
the sailors call each one upon his god, still there is
one God represented as the object of their thoughts ;

104 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
"the God" will think of us, it may be, though we all
cry to a different deity.
Ver. 7, 8, 9. " And they said to one anotlier, Come,
and let us cast lots, and we will know on whose account
this evil is upon us. And they cast lots, and the lot
Jell upon Jonah. And they said to him, Tell us now,
we pray thee, on whose account is this evil upon us ?
What is thy business, and whence hast thou come ?
What is thy country, and oj what nation art thou ?
And he said to them, I am a Hebrew, and I Jear the
God oj Heaven, Jelwvah ; He it is who hath made the
sea and the dry land!' The word " lot " means " a
small pebble," as in the Greek. " The lot was shaken
out of the helmet" {Horn. II., vii. 177, 182). Such
consultation of fate by lottery was regarded in
ancient times as a solemn appeal to God. It is a
testimony to the work of conscience that the storm
was attributed to Divine displeasure. The ancient
Greek Tragedy was founded on the same idea.
Jonah calls himself a "Hebrew!' The name is not
common in the Old Testament. It occurs only
thirty-three times in all, and generally means,
whether employed by Jew or Gentile, one who is set
apart ; i.e. not a Gentile.1 In Jonah's brief answer
to the sailors, it may be said, that he was already
preaching to the heathen, for their idea of a Creator
must have been very obscure. This also prepared
the way for his confession afterwards.
1 Gen. xliii. 32; Exod. i. 19, iii.' 18, xxi. 2 ; 1 Sam. iv. 9.

STUDY OF THE WORDS. 105
Ver. 10-12. "And the men were ajraid with a
great terror. A nd they said to him, What is this thou
hast done ? For the men knew that he zvas fleeing
jrom bejore Jehovah, jor he had declared it to them.
And they said to him, What shall we do with thee,
that the sea may be quieted bejore us ? For the sea
grozveth more and more stormy. And he said unto
them, Take me and throw me into the sea, then the sea
zvill be quieted bejore you, jor I know that it is jor my
sake that this great storm is upon you."
We must, of course, suppose that Jonah told them
all his history. Their hearts were already open.
They listened with awe and trembling. They had
no deep and intelligent belief in their own supersti
tions, though they seemed to be influenced by a natural
religion. The man who was evidently a "servant
of the Lord," as the Septuagint renders the words,
at once moves their sympathy, and is their teacher.
The simplicity of the narrative is remarkable. There
is no attempt to fill it out with fictitious incident, or
to dwell on the state of mind either of the prophet
or of the seamen. A mere writer of fiction would
certainly not have shown so much self-restraint.
Jonah's manner is very briefly indicated, but it evi
dently had a great effect.
Ver. 13, 14. "Now the men strained hard to reach
the dry land, but they were not able ; jor the sea grew
more and more stormy against them. Then they called
upon Jehovah, and they said :

106 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
We beseech Thee, O Jehovah, we beseech Thee,
Let us not perish on account oj the lije oj this
man,
A nd lay not upon us innocent blood.
For Thou, 0 Jehovah, doest as it pleaseth Thee!'
The Hebrew expresses the effort of the men in
a very forcible manner, as though they were digging
through the waves with the oars. The scene is
brought vividly before us. The wind was not, as Dr.
Pusey says, "offshore;" because it was a north wind,
it would blow them south, they would therefore be
driven into the trough of the sea and be in the more
danger. The powerful and persevering effort of the
seamen shows their kindliness and Jonah's influence
over them. We possess, in the recorded prayer of
the heathen sailors, a very singular and valuable fact,
far too significant to be, as the critics suggest, a
merely feigned incident. No writer of the sixth or
fifth century B.C. would have been likely to invent it,
or to put it before us exactly in such a shape. The
concluding words were a remarkable recognition of
the justice of Jehovah, both in the storm and in the
fate of Jonah, and it was intended to express their
own solemn acceptance of the office assigned to them,
to be the instruments in Divine hands of punishing
the disobedient prophet.
Ver. 15, 16. "And they lifted up Jonah, and they
.cast him into the sea. And the sea abated its fury.
And the men were afraid with great terror, fearing

STUDY OF THE WORDS. 107
Jehovah. And tliey sacrificed a sacrifice to Jehovah,
and they made vows."
The language is here doubtless elliptical. The
whole transaction, with the sudden ceasing of the
storm, produced a great effect upon the sailors. They
were afraid ; but it was not with the fear of ignorance
and superstition. They perceived that Jehovah was
present and had heard their prayer. They acknow
ledged Him, and immediately their religious worship
took the form of sacrifice and vows: they vowed
services and gifts, which in all probability they after
wards paid to Jehovah; on their return from their
voyage. It would be an easy thing to find that
which would serve as a sacrifice on board the vessel.
Such large merchantmen generally carried animals
for food.
We can scarcely doubt that if the vessel was
bound for Spain, such a conversion to the worship of
Jehovah would be announced in the western world to
some extent. Jonah was taken out of the vessel, and
sent eastward to Nineveh. Thus, eastward and west
ward, the message was spread, and the name of the
Lord was pronounced, in some sense, "from the
rising of the sun to the going down of the same."
Ver. 17. " And Jehovah appointed a great fish to
swallow Jonah. And Jonah zvas in the belly oj the
fish three days and three nights."
The Hebrew word, rendered in the Authorized
Version "prepared!' simply means appointed, and the

108 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
reference is not to creation, but to the order of Pro
vidence. It was not a new kind of fish, but one
providentially selected for the purpose, and guided
by the Divine will to the spot. It is important to
notice the rendering of the LXX., which has led
to the tradition that the fish was a whale. Without
entering here again into the subject of the miracle,
we may refer briefly to the opinions held as to the
meaning of the word which was chosen by the Greek
translators, the word /07T09, from which is derived the
scientific word cetacea. The Greeks used an adjec
tive in the same sense. In Homer it includes the
"dolphin " and the "dog." Aristotle, in his Natural
History, uses it of the whole class of sea monsters
which are viviparous, as the dolphin, seal, and whale.
Galen adds the Zygaena, a shark, and large tunnies.
Photius says the Carcharias or white shark is a
species, ^lian enumerates most of them under the
same head. While the true or Greenland whale
has a small swallow, all species are not the same in
that respect. See Speaker's Com., vol. vi. p. 591,
where Mr. Beale's treatise on the spermaceti whale
is quoted, to show that "the throat is capacious
enough to give passage to the body of a man, pre
senting a strong contrast to the contracted gullet of
the Greenland whale," and Cuvier expressly asserts
that the spermaceti whale (Physeter Catodon.
Lin.) is found in the Mediterranean. The white
shark (carcharias vulgaris), though not strictly a

STUDY OF THE WORDS. 109
cetacean, is the most voracious of the " squalidce,"
and might swallow Jonah. It attains to 30° feet
in length. Blumenbach says, the whole body of a
horse has been found in one. And other cases are
mentioned by Pusey, which leave it in no doubt that
the physical circumstances are possible. Couch, in
his History oj Fishes, says, that sharks have a habit
of throwing out whole anything that they have
swallowed. The white shark is found in the Medi
terranean. There is a Rorqual not uncommon in
the Mediterranean, named indeed by Cuvier, Ror-
qualis Mediterraniensis, and by M. Lesson, Balaenop-
tera M. the Rorqual musculus of Linnaeus and
Lac^pede. One of this species was found at St.
Cyprien, in 1828, 75 feet long. It has singular
folds in the mouth and throat, of such size that
Jonah might have been imbedded in them.
"In the belly oj the fish!' In the bowels, or within,
generally. There is no necessity to insist on the
literal exactness of such a description. But the
" three days and three nights " puts the fact entirely
out of the sphere of the ordinary laws of human life.
The only question needing to be entertained by the
believer in miracles is, what was the character oj the
miracle"? Was it death, or suspended animation and
re-awaking? or was it simply preservation in circum
stances in which death would naturally occur ? The
simple term, " and Jonah was" does not help us to
an answer. Nor does the language of the prophet,

no STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
in the psalm of praise, decide it. Either way, it was
miraculous. Chap. ii. ver. i. "And Jonah prayed unto Jehovah
his God Jrom the belly oj the fish!' Was the prayer
actually offered in the fish, or when Jonah came forth
from it ? The punctuation of the Hebrew, which is
of later date than the text itself, leaves the question
undecided. The preposition "from" may mean, as
he came from ; or the intention may be to represent
the prayer as the substance of what Jonah prayed.
Ver. 2. " Out of the belly of Hell!' bfop IB!
That is, " The lowest part of Hades!' Sheol occurs
in Job x. 21, 22. The idea is that of a subterranean
place full of darkness, where the DWSH, the shades,
gather together. Some take it as derived from bitW,
to ask, because Death gapes, as it were, for all ; but
Gesenius thinks it is like btyp, meaning " a hollow
place" as the German Holle or lidhle, so in Latin
" caelum " is probably from koI\o%.
Ver. 3. " The floods compassed me about." ")i"U is
T X
used very generally for " current" i.e. the " rushing
water surrounded me" perhaps alluding to the motion
of the fish, which would give to Jonah the sensation
of the waters rushing by him.
"All Thy billows!' ")2$?p is only used in the plural,
and is from "Qttf, to break in pieces (cf. shiver) ; that
is, the waves broke on the shore, " breakers!' See
Ps. xiii. 8.
Ver. 5. " Even to my soul." ttfSJ 1%, even to my

STUDY OF THE WORDS.

breath ; that is, over my mouth. There is some sup
port in these words to the view that Jonah actually
died and rose again.
" The weeds!' ffID, the seaweed. Hence the
Arabian Gulf is SflD"^. The word "soughing" may
have some connection with it. Whether the word
points to the bottom of the sea, or to the neighbour
hood of the shore, cannot be said ; but the connection
seems to determine the former.
The expression Itf-Un, " wrapped" or " bound" is
very graphic ; it would be used of binding a turban
round the head.
Ver. 6. " To the bottoms of the mountains" That
is, the ends or roots of the mountains. 32Jp, from 2%p
to cut (into shape), hence "form." The Vulgate has
" extrema montium." The rendering of this verse
by the LXX. is remarkable : aftvo-aos iicvfcXcoo-e fie
io-^aTT), eSv rj KedyaXrj pov ei? <ryj,a /ui? opeav.
" The earth with her bars!' HTTll " Her bars"
TV-; '
or " bolts." Gesenius says, " The bars of the earth
are at the gates of Hades!' Cf. Job xvii. 16. r:U
¦?lNltf, " The bars of Sheol!'
" My life from corruption." Literally, from the
pit. JTPtf, from n-l#, to sink down. Gesenius says it
never means "corruption." The LXX. has Sidcpdopa,
that is, destruction. Cf. Ps. xvi. 10 ; Job xvii. 14.
Ver. 7. " When my soul fainted." This surely
points to insensibility, and therefore to an actual
drowning. He cried to God, as he felt himself lost.

112 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
Ver. 8. " Lying vanities!' HW "bin, cf. Ps. xxxi.
6 ; a description of idolatry, quite in consonance with
the whole of Scripture. " Their own mercy" that
is, their merciful God ; cf. Ps. cxliv. 2. "My mercy";
of God.
Ver. io. " And Jeltovah spake to the fish, 'and it
cast jorth Jonah upon the dry land." That is to say,
Jehovah answered the prayer which the prophet put
forth, by speaking to the fish. " The dry land " would
probably be the coast somewhere in the neighbour
hood of Joppa, so that the prophet would, without
any difficulty and no great delay, return to his own
home. Chap. iii. ver. 1-3. "Now the word of Jehovah
came to Jonah a second time, saying —
Rise up, go to Nineveh, the great city,
A nd cry against it the cry which I speak to thee.
A nd Jonah rose up, and he went to Nineveh, accord
ing to the word oj Jehovah"
We are not told when the second time was,
but probably it was not long after the miracle.
Weeks, possibly months, might elapse. But Jonah's
deliverance was, meanwhile, being proclaimed,
certainly in his own country, probably elsewhere.
The seamen might speak of it where they went.
The miracle was assuredly a new revelation to
the prophet. He was now better prepared for his
mission. After such a rebuke he reverently awaited
the repeated summons. He might have been super-

STUDY OF THE WORDS. 113
seded. He might have been rejected. The new call
was a sign of forgiveness and acceptance.
Ver. 3, 4. " Now Nineveh was a great city before
God, three days' journey to go through. And Jonah
began to go into the city, going one day into it. And
he cried and said, Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be
overthrown" In the Hebrew the words are, " a city
great to God" ; that is before the eyes of God, or in the
judgment of God. See Gen. x. 9, where it is said that
" Nimrod was a mighty hunter before the Lord!' We
find many expressions of a similar kind in Scripture.
" Wrestlings of God," " mountains of God," " cedars
of God," "prince of God," "in the sight of the Lord."
We may compare the use of the word " divinely " in
English ; as, divinely great or divinely beautiful, i.e.
beyond the scale of man. There is difference of
opinion as to the meaning of the measurement of the
city. " Three days' journey " is said by some to mean,
a city whose diameter was three days' journey. Now
the Assyrian inscriptions show that the day's journey
was fourteen miles. That would make the breadth
of the city forty-two miles, which is much too great.
According to Herodotus, it would be fifty-one, or
sixty-nine miles. Another suggestion is, that the
three days' journey refers to traversing the principal
thoroughfares ; but in that case the distance could
not be employed as a measurement. Jerome has
proposed to refer it to the circumjerence — three days
to travel round it, which would be a more reasonable I

ii4 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
size, about fourteen miles in diameter ; or probably,
as it was in the shape of a parallelogram, some fifteen
miles long by five miles broad. Taking the whole
population as 700,000, with much cattle — that is, large
empty spaces, without houses, where the cattle fed —
we should expect the city to be about that size, and
then it would be considerably less than our own
London. Ver. 4. " A day's journey!' That is, he went right
into the city, and walked about for the day. The
idea intended to be conveyed is, that he had no
sooner begun his work than the desired effect was
produced. " Yet jorty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown!'
POSTO ii)??} DV D^n.N Tty (odd arbaim yom wenine-
weh nipacheh). If exactly in these words it would
be understood (see 2 Kings xviii. 26), though it would
sound like a strange dialect to the Assyrians. The
Assyriac of both "jorty " and " days " {" irbu'ai " and
" immi ") was substantially the same in Hebrew
^arbaim" and "yom"). The word "overthrown"
might also be known. The Hebrew has "jorty" but
the LXX. followed the Arabic and has " three" days.
Theodoret and Theophylact believed that the reading
originated in a clerical blunder. The word " over
thrown" occurs of the destruction of Sodom and
Gomorrah, probably well known to the Ninevites.
See Gen. xix. 21, 25; Deut. xxix. 23 ; and cf. Isa. xiii.
19, of Babylon. Josephus strangely enough says,

STUDY OF THE WORDS. 115
that Jonah preached that the Assyrians would, in a
very little while, "lose the dominion oj Asia" for
which he has no authority, except as he inferred
it from the likelihood that the overthrow would be
accomplished by some great rival power.
Ver. 5_9- "Now the men oj Nineveh believed o?i
God. And they proclaimed a jast, and put on sackcloth,
from their greatest men even to their least. And the
matter reached even to the king of Nineveh ; and he
rose up from his throne, and he put off his royal robes
from him, and he covered himself zvith sackcloth atid
sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and
published in Nineveh :¦ —
' By the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, —
Man and beast, herd and flock,
Let tliem not taste anything —
Let them not feed, nor drink water ;
Let man and beast be covered with sackcloth,
And let them cry unto God with all their might,
And let them turn each one from his evil way
And from the violence which was in their hands.
Who knoweth if the God shall turn and repent,
And turn from the fierceness of His wrath,
And zve shall not perish! "
The faith of the people of Nineveh was not merely
belief in the truth of the proclamation, or the mes
senger, but in the God who sent it. In Gen. xv. 6
the same word is employed in the same sense,
"Abraham believed in God." For the time at least, the

116 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
people, heathen though they were, acknowledged the
supremacy of Jehovah ; perhaps it might be said that
they identified Jehovah with their own supreme God
" //," or " Ra," who was to them an " unknown God!'
This subject, however, is discussed more fully in
another place. The practice of religious fasting is
very ancient. The sackcloth which was put on was
a coarse cloth of a dark colour, made of goats' hair.
Sometimes it was worn next the skin, as a kind of
penance. Sometimes it was put on as an outer gar
ment. The sitting in ashes was also a very ancient
practice. (See Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, Art.
Mourning!) The account of the decree is rather less
forcible in the Authorized English version than in the
original. It is given as a formal document. The
word for decree (" ta'am ") is connected with the
Assyrian language. It occurs also, frequently, in
the Book of Esther in Chaldee, as the official order
of the Persian sovereign, and in Daniel for the order
of the Babylonian monarch. It is an Aramaic word,
and may have been known all through western Asia.
It cannot be properly brought forward as an evidence
that the book is of late composition ; rather it proves
that Jonah must, have been in Assyria. The decree
was issued in the name of the king and his great
council of magnates. The king's rule, therefore, was
not absolute. The command to cover the beasts with
sackcloth, and to prohibit their food, is peculiar, and
scarcely likely to be put into a work of fiction. " It

STUDY OF THE WORDS. 117
strikes our minds as a piece of barbaric enthusiasm)
showing, however, its passionate intensity, that the
decree associates with the self-affliction of man the
compulsory affliction also of all such animals as stood
in close connection with man ; but, like the mention,
in the next verse, of sackcloth being put upon man
and beast, it is a feature more likely to have been
introduced into the narrative because of being true
to fact, than to have been merely invented by a writer
of fiction." {Speaker's Commentary, vol. vi. p. 598 ;
cf. Joel i. 13, 14, ii. 12, 16.) Perhaps it was a sug
gestion of the heathen themselves, and not Jonah's
suggestion, as there is nothing to give sanction to it in
God's word. The moaning and distress of the beasts
described in Joel was on account of the desolation of
the land. The heathen may have thought they would
be the better heard for the loud noise, and so would
increase it with the voices of the beasts. Violence
was the one special temptation of the Assyrians.
They were a military people. In the ninth century
it is known that their violent and cruel conquests
were very numerous. Had the reference been to the
sin of idolatry alone, we should expect that another
word would have been employed. Moreover, it is
said that the violence was in their hands — that is to
say, they possessed wealth violently taken from their
neighbours. The moral tone of the message pro
claimed by Jonah may be inferred from the decree of
the king in reply to the Divine denunciation. Some,

118 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
however, have held that Jonah did no more than
repeat the cry, "Yet forty days" etc.
Ver. 10. "And God saw their doings, that they
turned from their evil way. A nd God repented of the
evil which He said He would do unto them, and He did
it not!' It is remarkable that the narrative here
speaks not of Jehovah, but of God, using the same
word, " Elohim" which is found in the book of Gen
esis and elsewhere as the name of God as God of the
universe, as distinguished from Jehovah, the God of
Israel. The decree was in the name of the supreme
God. The repentance is therefore ascribed to Him.
The idea seems to be that what the people of
Nineveh believed might come to pass did come to
pass. The evil was averted. The threatening was
not fulfilled. (See Exod. xxxii. 14 ; Jer. xviii. 7-10.)
On the subject of the Divine repentance, we must
refer the reader to the chapters in which it is fully
considered. Chapter iv. ver. 1-3. " Now to Jonah it seemed
wrong, a great wrong, and he was angry. And he
made supplication to Jehovah, and he said : —
Now, 0 Jehovah, I beseech Thee, is not this what I said
While 1 was yet in my country ?
Therejore it was that I was in haste to flee to
Tarshish.
For I knew tjiat Thou art a gracious God and
merciful,
Slow to wrath, and of great mercy,

STUDY OF THE WORDS. IV)
And repenteth Thee concerning the evil.
And now, O Jehovah, take my lije jrom me,
For my death is better than my lije!'
It was wrong to Jonah, because his self-esteem was
wounded. The whole of this chapter is so important,
in its bearing on the character of the prophet, that
it demands a separate treatment, which we have
given it in a subsequent chapter. It is interesting
to notice that the same request was made by the
prophet Elijah in similar, though somewhat different,
language (see I Kings xix. 4).
Ver. 4, 5. And Jehovah said, Art thou so very
angry? And Jonah went jorth jrom the city. And
he sat down on the east oj the city. And he made jor
himselj there a green booth. A nd he dzvelt under it in
the shade ; even until he should see how it would be
in the city"
Whether we render the words " Art thou so VERY
angry ? " or "doest thou well to be angry ? " the meaning
is the same. We have followed the margin, which is
the reading of the LXX., the Targum, the Syriac,
Arabic, and others ; but there are some ancient
authorities, and most of the moderns, for the usual
rendering. The "green booth" would be made of
interwoven branches, probably with some creepers
twined among them. The gourd was perhaps on the
spot. It may have been growing there, but it grew
more quickly and abundantly for Jonah. Another
view is that the sense is pluperfect. Now Jonah had

120 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF fONAH.
done it ; i.e. before the time of the prediction had
expired. We may well believe that he would retire
from the city each night, and lodge outside it. So
Theodoret takes it, and in modern times, Rosen-
muller and others. " He went forth, therefore, and
took up his abode on the east side of the city ; " " on
some rising ground, we may suppose, not far off, such
as the Jebel Maklub, or the more distant Kurdish
hills, where he could command a view of the city."
The only objection to this view is that in the Hebrew
the narrative seems continuous, and we should expect
some word to throw back the reader's thought to
what had preceded the anger of the prophet. It
seems to be a close of the mission and a winding
up of the prophet's work which is being referred to.
He went out and sat down to wait, for more than the
time specified, as much as to say, t will not doubt
that the word will yet come true.
Ver. 6-8. " And Jehovah Elohim appointed a gourd
and He made it to grow up over Jonah to be Jor a
shadow upon his head, to deliver him Jrom his trouble.
And Jonah rejoiced over the gourd with a great re
joicing. A nd God appointed a worm, at the rising oj
dawn on the morrow; and it smote the gourd and it
withered. And it came to pass when the sun rose that
God appointed an east wind, a hot wind ; and the sun
smote upon the head oj Jonah, and he jainted, and
intreated that he might die. And he said, My death is
better than my lije!'

STUDY OF THE WORDS.

The same word is employed in all the three in
stances of the Diyine interposition, — -the fish, the
gourd, the worm. The meaning is that of appoint
ment or special preparation, but not necessarily mira
culous formation. As to the gourd, there is much
discussion. The LXX., Syriac, and Arabic, Luther,
Calvin, and English version have "gourd!' Jerome,
from whom the Vulgate and others took the render
ing "hedera" was misled by the resemblance of
the Hebrew word "kikaion" to the Egyptian "kiki."
In this he followed the Greek versions, which trans
lated it by the word /aWo?. Augustine protested.
But Jerome insisted that " hedera " was the nearest
word. He is supposed to have referred to the palm
crist (Palma christi), or Ricinus communis, castor oil
plant ; but there is much to be said for the common
rendering, gourd. The east wind was a hot wind,
not as rendered in the English version, "vehement!'
Jonah's booth would have been blown away by a
vehement wind. The affliction from which the pro
phet suffered was a fierce heat from the rays of the
sun falling directly upon him.
Ver. 9-1 1. "And God said to Jonah, Is it good
that thou art angry Jor the gourd ? And he said, 1 do
well to be angry, even unto death. A nd Jehovah said,
Thou hast mercy upon the gourd jor which thou hast
not laboured neither madest it to grow, which came as
the son of a night and as the son of a night perished,
and I, should not I have pity upon Nineveh, the great

122 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
city, wherein are more than twelve times ten thousand
men which discern not between tlieir right hand and
their left hand, and much cattle f "
The expression "son of a night" is an Aramaism,
meaning " in a night" but the meaning must not
be taken too literally. It describes rapid growth
generally, but not necessarily within the space of
a single night.
In ver. 1 1, " Sixscore thousand persons" means not
necessarily adults, but may mean infants ; cf. Deut. i.
39 ; Isa. vii. 15, 16. The reference to "cattle" seems
to bring the whole under the idea of the helpless and
innocent. Taking the period of irresponsibility as
under seven years of age, and reckoning the average
as one-fifth, there would be in Nineveh a population
of six hundred thousand. This would be a moderate
estimate for a city so described. It must not be for
gotten that in the East large spaces are included
within the walls of a great city, and that, like the
suburbs of the Metropolis, a very vast population
would be within. reach of the message of Jonah. At
the same time, it must be granted that the expres
sion " cannot discern between their right hand and
their left hand" is somewhat obscure. Is it certain
that the reference is to the " irresponsible ; " is it not
possible that the meaning may be "who, as com
pared with the Hebrews, are to be pitied for their
ignorance " ? In that case the sixscore thousand
(120,000) would represent the whole population. It is

STUDY OF THE WORDS. 123
remarked in Speakers Com. (vol. vi. p. 607), that the
history of chapter iii. shows that such a description
of the Ninevites in general would be altogether out
of place. But the rebuke would be more powerful
to Jonah's prejudice as a Hebrew, if the comparison
were distinctly made between the heathen ignorance
and the Jewish privilege. Moreover, it is striking
that no allusion is made to the repentance of
Nineveh as a reason for Jehovah's forbearance.
That is explained, if the reasoning be stated thus :
The prophet is tempted to charge God with caprice.
He proclaims destruction, and then suddenly, on the
ground of a rapid profession of repentance, with
draws it. Is that repentance deep and true ? If the
people are so easily forgiven, why were they so
severely threatened ? They are not to be dealt with
as though they are enlightened, and as though they
had received constant and repeated warnings, like
the Jews. They were ignorant, crude-minded people,
who had only a very rough and broad conception of
their moral obligation ; they cannot discern between
their right hand and their left, in spiritual things ;
therefore Jehovah must deal with them in a rough
and ready kind of way ; sending them an awful
threatening of immediate destruction to rouse them
to consider their past conduct, and then, on their
showing themselves open to good influences, with
holding the punishment for a term, until they have
had ample space for reformation and change.

I24 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
Beautiful as is the thought that the Lord regarded
the little children as pleading for others, it is scarcely
in perfect harmony with the general tone of the
book, which is not so much general Divine benevo
lence, though of course that is included, as the special
purpose of Jehovah to show mercy to the heathen.
The expression, " wherein are more than" etc., would
naturally mean the population of which is, etc. ; here
"tlie cattle" are introduced as making up the popula
tion ; i.e. the whole living community. At the same
time, while exegesis seems to demand that the strict
interpretation of the words should refer to the whole
of the people, the spirit of the words is the same as
though the little children alone were mentioned. It
is the tender mercy of God that is expressed, and
that "tender mercy is over all His works." God
needs not that even little babes should intercede
with Him for helpless creatures. He pities the
grown-up men and women as much as the children.

PART III.
HISTORICAL AND PRACTICAL EXPOSI
TION OF THE MAIN FEATURES OF
THE BOOK.

CHAPTER I.
THE OFFICE OF THE PROPHET IN THE TIME OF
JONAH.
THE character and significance of the Book of
Jonah, which probably stands first, in order of
time, among the writings of the prophets (strictly so
called) will be better understood when we have eluci
dated a few points with regard to the position and
office of the prophet generally ; and when we have
explained how such a mission as that upon which
Jonah was sent, to the heathen city of Nineveh,
could be harmonized with the conception of the
prophetic character.
Now, in the first place, with respect to the Prophetic
office, and how it was viewed by the people of God, in
the time when, it is supposed, this book was written ;
it must be remembered that from very early times,
certainly long before the ninth century before Christ,
when Jonah probably received his commission, there
were religious teachers among the people of Palestine
who, while they were separated by their character
and work from others, were still not, like the priests
or Levites, distinguished by family or by order, or

128 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
by the specific function assigned to them. The idea
which was attached to the name of "prophet" was
that of an inspired man, one who was called out from
among the people by the special influence of the
Spirit of God, resting upon him, and manifesting itself
from time to time in his addresses and predictions.
From the beginning of Scripture there would seem to
be indications of prophetic gifts, bestowed upon indi
viduals. The use of the name "prophet" though it
was restricted in the late periods of Jewish history,
was undoubtedly, at first, widely and somewhat
loosely employed, to designate any one to whom was
imparted an elevated utterance which was ascribed
to Divine impulse. Beyond the individual and per
sonal designation, there was the deeper conception of
the " word of the Lord" which might reveal itself in
various forms and through various agencies. Through
a long course of ages there was a continuous line
of Divine communications. In Paradise there was a
" word of the Lord" which came to our first parents.
And from that earliest instance of the intercourse
between God and man, there followed an unbroken
chain of revelation. Hence we find a fixed formula
employed in Scripture, and especially after the rise of
the prophetic schools, when inspired utterance became
more frequent. " The word of the Lord came!' Very
early we meet with the names of individuals, such
as Enoch and Noah, to whom seems to have been
committed a special prophetic mission to the age in

THE PROPHET IN JONAH'S TIME. 129
which they lived ; " the word of the Lord came " to
them and through them. " Enoch prophesied" we are
told by Jude. Noah was " a preacher of righteousness!'
In the case of Abraham, again, we have the three
offices, afterwards embodied in the theocracy — the
prophetic, the priestly, and the kingly — distinctly fore
shadowed. " Tlie word of the Lord" is said to have
come to Abraham, again and again. The covenant
is made with him as the representative man.1 So
with others, down to the time of Samuel, who estab
lished schools of the prophets, and prepared the way
by his institutions for a wider diffusion of the gifts of
prophetical utterance. There were individual men,
like Jacob, and Joseph, and Moses, upon whom the
spirit of prophecy especially rested. And there were
occasional instances of inspiration which show to us
that, at any time or from any quarter, and through
any instruments, "the word of tlie Lord" might be
sent to Israel. The idea was always before the
minds of the people, that Jehovah would send his
word to them. They would easily distinguish be
tween the ordinary and regular ministry of their
prophets, and special messages, which were uttered as
such, with the introductory formula, " the word of the
Lord came" or "the burden of the Lord" The schools
of the prophets, at Ramah and elsewhere, gave to
young men a general training in the ancient Scrip
tures and in musical and poetical gifts, as doubtless
1 See Prophecy, its Nature and Evidence, pp. 37-8. K

130 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
also in the spiritual life in its fullest sense ; and those
who came forth out of such schools would be fitted
to expound the word of God, and exhort and warn
the people, on the basis of great moral and national
principles, which were recognised as inherent in the
Law of Moses. But, in addition to that broad and
general function of the prophet, there was, especially
about the eighth century before Christ, the particular
characteristic of the prophetic mission, which is em
bodied in the writings of the sixteen prophets, whose
names are attached to the prophetical books of the
Old Testament ; that is, the reception from Jehovah of
a message, which should be written down and handed on
to the future as part of Scripture. Elijah and Elisha
were great prophets, but they wrote nothing. Why
should those who followed them differ from them
in that respect ? Why should men, certainly much
inferior in their influence over the nation and their
prominence in national affairs, in some instances
men of very humble position and obscure origin,
and so far as we can ascertain, of no great power of
character, be appointed to add their words to the body
of Scripture, while their greater predecessors left be
hind them no oracles and no verbal remains of their
ministry ? The answer to this question is probably to
be found in a consideration of the history of the peo
ple. Previous to the eighth century before Christ, the
ministry of prophets was principally directed to the
practical maintenance of the religious position of the

THE PROPHET IN JONAH'S TIME. 131
nation, the rebuke of their idolatrous practices, their
wicked kings and their degenerate priesthood ; in
other words, the rescue of the Law, as a sacred bond
of union between the people and their God, from dese
cration, and of the nation from the ruin threatened
them for their unfaithfulness. But after the mission
of the great heralds of Jehovah, Elijah and Elisha,
was shown to be substantially fruitless, the horizon
was clouded with the rising darkness of judgment, in
the appearance of the hostile heathen nations, com
missioned to punish the fallen people. It was when
the shadows of that approaching judgment began to
deepen over Israel, that prophecy began to assume a
new shape. It was then that prophets began to utter
specific messages, which could be written down and
preserved as Scripture. In two hundred years the
whole of the twelve tribes would be swept away
out of Palestine, and dispersed over a wide region
of heathen country, where they would, even against
their will, be acting as witnesses for God to the world.
Hence the importance of those Scriptures, which
during those two centuries would be sent by a suc
cession of prophets, not likely to be able to effect
any great changes, like Elijah, but still continuing
the line of Divine mercy, repeating the same voice
of the covenant, leaving the people without excuse.
That the writings of such men as Isaiah and Ezekiel
and Jeremiah, as well as those of the minor prophets
who preceded the period of exile, would be of incal-

132 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
culable value to the captives in their seventy years
of banishment from the favour of Jehovah, must be
evident. They kept such writings together as their
select Scriptures. And when they returned to Pales
tine, and restored the worship of the temple and all
their religious services, they no doubt regarded the
words of the prophets as second in importance only
to the book of Legislation — the sacred foundation on
which the whole of their religious economy was built.
We can understand, then, the solemnity which was
attached to the mission of a prophet. He was the
organ of a Divine revelation. He was the represen
tative of that Holy Spirit who had been speaking
through many ages to the fathers. If a word came
to him which went beyond the ordinary scope of
prophetic ministry it would be all the more solemn ;
it would be very clearly not the prophet's own, but
"the word of Jehovah" which had "come to him!'
To disobey that word, to hide it within his own
thoughts, to take from it or add to it, would be a
grievous sin to be conspicuously punished. Now we
are told (chap. i. ver. 3) that "Jonah rose up to flee to
Tarshish jrom the presence of the Lord" The mean
ing of that flight is explained by the book itself. It
was " disobedience to the heavenly vision." It was
renouncing the position and vocation of the Divine
messenger. It was doing "despite unto the Spirit
of Grace." And the whole book is a commentary
on the expression, " Presence of the Lord!' Shallow

THE PROPHET IN JONAH'S TIME. 133
critics have objected that a prophet could not be so
ignorant of the Divine character as to suppose that
he could escape the presence of the Infinite Spirit.
They have missed the purport of the whole narra
tive. By the Presence of the Lord is manifestly
intended the organic centre of Divine Revelation.
The radical conception of Judaism is the founda
tion on which such an expression must rest ; — it
was that of a ministry gathered about Jeliovah, who
is seated on a throne of majesty and grace in the
midst of His people. " The presence of the Lord" re
garded as a place, is the chamber where the minister
ing priest, or prophet, is face to face with God. Forth
from that chamber he goes to fulfil his mission,
whatever it be, whether as a priest to bless, or as a
prophet to speak the message, to proclaim " the word
of the Lord" Jonah rose up to flee from that centre
of his spiritual responsibility, to turn his back upon
One who was telling him what to say and to do. At
that special crisis in the history of his people such
unfaithfulness was specially sinful. The word which
came to him then must have been a word of unusual
grandeur and weight. It concerned the counsels of
Jehovah, not only in respect to the Jews themselves,
but in respect to the world, whose great empires were
drawing closer round that central spot, where God's
truth had been for so many ages preserved. There
are times when responsibility enlarges with the hori
zon of men's thoughts, and when knowledge seems

134 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
to be summoned out of its recesses that it may be
cast forth freely upon the spreading waters of a
changing world, to be found in a mighty harvest after
many days. Take for example such an instance as
our own connection with the teeming population of
Hindostan. Is not the imperial position of Britain
with respect to India an overwhelming claim upon our
faithfulness as heralds of the cross ? Can we with
hold the " word of the Lord" when it is manifestly
given to us that we may publish it in a land over
which we have commanding influence ? So Jonah
must have felt that when God spoke to him about
Nineveh, He spoke of that which was in every one's
thoughts at the time — the connection between As
syria, and the Mesopotamian world generally, and the
chosen people. To shut his ears to that message, to
withhold obedience to such a command, was to abro
gate the functions of a prophet, to put himself in the
place of God, and challenge the Divine voice itself.
We can scarcely conceive a more direct contradiction
of the prophetic name and office. He fled from "the
presence of the Lord."
But further : Was a mission to Nineveh, such as is
here appointed to Jonah, in accordance with the vocation
of a prophet of Israel at that time? Much depends
on the answer we give to that question. If Jonah
could not reconcile obedience to that command,
with his prophetic character, then we may be sure
he would not have acknowledged it as sent from

THE PROPHET IN JONAH'S TIME. 135
Jehovah. No doubt there were forms of Divine
communication, such as the vision, or ecstasy, which
left no room to doubt — if the substance of them
were in accordance with the Divine Word generally
— that they were supernaturally given, though the
prophet would probably receive an inward assurance,
wrought by the Spirit of God, that he was inspired.
But we can imagine that an entirely new revelation
would cause him perplexity ; especially if he could
not understand it. The apostle Peter was not left
to reason out the meaning of his vision of "the
sheet let down from Heaven " ; he received at once
the providential confirmation of it, together with
the inspired message it contained, so that he was
prompted to act upon it, at once and without hesita
tion. Was there anything, then, we ask, in the case of
Jonah, which would enable him to grasp the Divine
meaning and purpose in the command to go to
Nineveh ? If there was not, we should be ready to
plead for him, that he was so completely taken aback
by the unusualness of such a mission, that he could
not persuade himself that it had Divine authority.
Let us consider this point more closely.
Now it must be remembered that the special
function of the prophet was to lead the people into
the more spiritual meaning of the Law. Hence we
find that the writings of the prophets are more con
cerned with the Messiah and with the Hope of Israel,
than with the Mosaic regulations. The priest ful-

136 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
filled his office in observing the Law, and teaching the
people to do so. The prophet called them to look
beyond the letter of the Law, and rise to their voca
tion as the ministers of Jehovah to the world. The
primitive promise made to Abraham was, that "in
him and his seed all the families of the earth .should
be blessed." It was therefore strictly in accordance
with the prophetic office, that prophecy should con
cern itself with heathen nations. Jonah could not
possibly know beforehand what was to be done with
Nineveh. He had no more right, as a prophet, to
determine the limits of his ministry, than to dictate to
God how the Divine word should be spoken. He
must simply do as he was bid, or resign his office.
But, again, at the crisis when Jonah lived there
were distinct, providential indications, that Israel was
about to enter upon a new stage of its history.
For a hundred and fifty years the ten tribes of
Israel had gone from bad to worse in their re
bellion against Jehovah. In the time of Jeroboam
II. judgments were already falling very heavily on
the land. " The affliction of Israel was very bitter"
Syrian armies swept over the northern parts of
Palestine, and emptied their towns and villages
almost entirely of their inhabitants. " There was not
any shut up, nor any left, nor any helper for Israel"
i.e. their strong places were deserted and their soli
tary places were a vacancy. It was seventy years
since the great Elisha had testified for God. The

THE PROPHET IN JONAH'S TIME. 137
long silence was a trial of faith. Had Jehovah for
saken Israel ? Now it would seem that Jonah was
raised up, at such a time, to revive the fainting hopes
of the people. His word came to pass — God heard the
prayers of the faithful. The invading Syrians were
driven back, and the coasts of Israel restored.1 But
the temporary success only fed the pride of the
stubborn idolaters. They drew down the judgment
of Jehovah once more, and Jonah must have wit
nessed that abuse of Divine grace. At such a crisis,
for God to send a message about Nineveh was very
significant. It seemed to say : With Israel I have
done ; now I will turn towards the heathen. Upon
them I will bring my judgments, and it may be they
will repent. Jonah must have felt the solemnity of
the mission entrusted to him. Never before was any
prophet sent out of the land to proclaim a message,
either of judgment or of mercy, amongst the heathen.
What did it mean ? We can easily imagine that
national and patriotic revulsion from such an errand
would be powerfully excited. The prophet was
already regarded as a great friend of his country,
because he had predicted good concerning it, and his
prediction had been brought to pass. When it was
1 The effect of that fulfilment of the prophet's word is
recorded in the historical narrative (2 Kings xiv. 27), " And the
Lord said not that He would blot out the name of Israel from
under heaven : but He saved them by the hand of Jeroboam
the son of Joash."

138 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
known, as it must be known, that he had gone out
of the borders of Israel to take up a mission in
the name of Jehovah amongst the distant people of
Nineveh, a people who were threatening both the
neighbours of Israel and Israel itself, would not all
the favour which he had won be withdrawn from him,
and would he not be regarded as a traitor to the
national welfare ? Then, the mission was to announce
a speedy destruction ; but the real intention of the
mission was to summon the people of the heathen
city to repent, and avert the evil by their change of
life. If God really determined to destroy the capital
of Assyria in forty days, why not send the destruc
tion without warning, which would make it the more
complete ? Jonah acknowledged that such were his
thoughts, when the mercy of Jehovah was before his
eyes, and it displeased him exceedingly. "Was not
this my saying, when I was yet in my country?
Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish : for I knew
that Thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow
to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest Thee
of the evil." That is to say, I foresaw that the
result of such a mission would be the salvation
of the heathen, otherwise why should it be sent ?
My revolt was from the thought of a saved Nineveh,
and it is that which makes me angry now. Why
should they be saved ? Are they not the enemies of
Israel ? Are they not the greatest danger rising up
on the horizon of the Lord's people ? Would not

THE PROPHET IN JONAH'S TIME. 139
their overthrow mean a clear course for my fellow-
countrymen for ages to come ? Some such thoughts
we may be sure were working in the prophet's mind,
and, as he himself acknowledged, prompted his flight.
Now, it is in view of that contrast, between the
thoughts of man and the thoughts of God, that we
must examine the book itself. A flood of light is
thus thrown upon it. Jonah represents, not so much
a spirit of wilful insubordination and disobedience
against God, as a false Judaism, a lower form of
national feeling, which, no doubt, was the prevailing
form eight centuries before Christ, and continued to
be so, until the apostate Israel was swept away in
the destruction of Jerusalem. The beginning of that
defection from the true theocratic idea is seen in
the time of Samuel, in the determination of the
people to be like the surrounding nations, in the
possession of a standing army and a military
monarchy. The rebellion of the ten tribes, and the
breaking up of the national unity, was a severe judg
ment sent from Jehovah to rebuke that spiritual
defection. As idolatry increased, especially in the
northern division of the land, the theocratic feeling
grew weaker, and the spiritual mission of the people
was suffered to fall into the background, obscured by
their secular interests, by the wars which they were
compelled to carry on, sometimes with neighbouring
heathen nations, sometimes with their own brethren
of the rival kingdom. It was a sad falling off from

140 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
the Mosaic standard and from the Abrahamic cove
nant. Why should an Israelitish prophet rebel
against the command of Jehovah, to warn a heathen
city of its danger ? Simply because that prophet,
good man as he was, had become steeped in the
current ideas and sympathies of his day, instead of
rising above them and calling back his contemporaries
to the loftier conception of their mission as the Israel
of God. " While I was yet hi my country!' Yes, he
was in it, and he yielded himself to the popular
feeling, which was that of hating every neighbouring
nation as a rival or opponent of Israel. So it was
that the primitive Hope of the Messiah, the Divine
Prince, who should appear as the Redeemer of the
people, was lowered and secularised, until it became
a mere political calculation, mingling with all the
other national ideas and notions — Jewish, but not
theocratic — cutting the nation off from other nations,
not sending them out as the heralds of peace and
salvation. Now there cannot be a doubt, when we glance
through the series of prophetic writings which follow
the time of Jonah, from the eighth century to the
fourth, that their main intention was to lift up that
Messianic Hope out of the dust where it was defiled
and lost, and to invite the chosen race once more,
and with repeated voices from heaven, to take up
their great vocation, to be the messengers of Jehovah
to the world. Very soon after Jonah, came Isaiah.

THE PROPHET IN JONAH'S TIME. 141
His ministry was emphatically a Divine call to
Judah, and so to Israel as well, to arise and shake
herself from the dust, and put on her beautiful
garments, and to be what Jehovah had appointed
her to be, a light to lighten the Gentiles, until the
whole earth should be full of the glory of the Lord.
What, then, could be more appropriate than that
some striking appeal should first be made in the
history and words of a prophet, declaring beyond all
possible doubt, in a manner which must rouse the
careless and indifferent to reflection, that Jehovah was
not only the God of the twelve tribes of Israel, but
of all the nations of the earth ? That the form of the
appeal should be miraculous was only to be expected,
after the ministries of Elijah and Elisha, which were
full of miracles. The people would scarcely be
likely to give solemn attention to any message from
a prophet, unless there were some credential of a
supernatural kind to give weight to it. Moreover, if
the purport of the message was to break down pre
judice, and to call back the whole nation to a lofty
spiritual conception of its mission, the miracle sent
must be something very distinguished, something
beyond dispute, and adapted to produce an impres
sion over a very wide sphere — not a mere local oc
currence, such as might be great to those immediately
concerned, but not fitted to rouse the people of the
whole country. Such was the narrative which Jonah
placed before his contemporaries. There could be no

142 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
doubt about the facts : the miraculous deliverance of
the prophet — the extraordinary results of his mission
in the heathen city — his own renunciation of his
former narrowness and prejudice, like that of the
apostle Peter, under the influence of a Divine vision.
The short, but deeply interesting story, was like a
proclamation from heaven through the length and
breadth of the land : Let us awake and respond to
this appeal of our God against our worldliness and
indifference, our neglect of God's word, and our
alienation from His Spirit. Let us not, like Jonah,
turn from the presence of the Lord, unfaithful to our
vocation, lest judgment swallow us up; but let us
come forth out of our sea of unbelief, out of our
dark pit of rebellion, and be as the voice of Jehovah's
Righteousness and Mercy to all the nations of the
earth. Such is the evident meaning of the book, and
hence its place as the first in the line of written
prophecies.

CHAPTER II.
SPECIAL FEATURES IN THE BOOK CONSIDERED.
THE most cursory reading of the Book of Jonah
must be quite sufficient to produce the impres
sion, that it stands apart, in some respects, from other
prophetic writings. We are immediately arrested by
the fact, that while Jonah was, as the history shows
us, a distinguished prophet, whose predictions were
fulfilled, yet nothing of his prophetic mission and
work remains but this singular record, founded
upon a single passage in his life as a prophet, and
preserving nothing of his general teachings. Another
striking feature, on the surface of the narrative, is that
it sets the character of a great prophet in a very
unfavourable light, and leaves him at the end under
the manifest rebuke of Jehovah. We cannot doubt
that Jonah himself was an eminent saint of God.
His mission was unique in Jewish history : he was
delivered from death by a miracle ; he was inspired,
and mighty power attended his words. Apart from
his infirmities, he was appointed to fulfil a very
momentous part, as the instrument of Divine purposes.
We may fairly conclude, therefore, that the book

144 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
has special significance attached to it. Let us con
sider in this chapter some of those special features
of the work, which by their very speciality authorize
it as proceeding from God.
I. The first and most conspicuous fact which is
brought before us, is that on which the book as a
whole is founded, viz. the mission of a prophet of Israel
to a heathen nation. This was an entirely new fact in
Jewish history, and cannot be studied too attentively
in all its aspects. The commission which was given
to Jonah was clothed in very few, simple, but com
manding words. " Arise, go to Nineveh that great city,
and cry against it ; for their wickedness is come up
before me" (i. 2). "Arise, go unto Nineveh that great
city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee "
(iii. 2). The narrative is content with the barest
summary of Jonah's preaching. " And Jonah cried,
Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!'
This exceeding brevity is intended, no doubt, to
enhance the impression of the facts. If the Book of
Jonah had been written to preserve Jonah's prophecies,
it would have contained more of his words. If there
had been anything very special in the prophet's own
mind, in his exposition of the word of God, in His
message to Israel or to Nineveh, we may be sure,
more of his own language would have been left on
record. But even when he sings his song of deliver
ance, he does so, not in his own words, but in the
words of his predecessors. It was the fact itself,

SPECIAL FEATURES CONSIDERED. 145
then, of Jonah's mission to Nineveh, which formed the
substance of his prophetic function. Now the people
were, no doubt, very much astonished at such a fact ;
but they could easily adjust it to previous revelations.
The Messianic Hope had been abundantly revealed
already. Jonah's own language is evidence how
familiar were the psalms in the lips of devout men
of that time. And the psalms are full of Messiah ;
full of large and liberal views of Messiah's office and
work. The history of David and Solomon was a
preparation for what was to come. How can we
explain the appeals which were made to the devout
feelings of worshippers — " Say among the heathen,
that the Lord reigneth " — " Declare His glory among
the heathen, His wonders among all people " (and many
others, which we find in the psalms, and therefore
which were constantly being repeated in public
worship) — unless we grant that the minds of the
most thoughtful and spiritual were being trained to-
familiarity with the idea of their missionary character
as a people. We know that the Jews had many
transactions with heathen nations, and that their
commercial and military emissaries must have
penetrated into distant lands, and brought back
tidings of other people, while at the same time they
spread the name of Israel over a very wide sphere.
But a new and striking fact is sent, to touch their
hearts and to open their eyes. Jehovah Himself
chooses out one of the Jewish prophets, a distin-
L

146 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
guished man, and gives him a Divine commission to
go to Assyria, and preach among the Gentiles. It
seems difficult to conceive of any fact which could
have been more powerful at that juncture in its
influence over the popular mind, and especially as
connected with the personal history of Jonah ; so
solemn in its warning against unbelief, and so
emphatic in its confirmation of the Divine appoint
ment of the prophet.
Again, take another instance, showing that the
special significance of the book is in the facts. The
fact is recorded that Nineveh repented at the preaching
of Jonah. It is recorded in such a manner that
the inference is plainly intended to be drawn, that
the repentance was a supernatural fact. There was
certainly nothing in the character of the prophet to
account for it. The mere announcement that the
city would be overthrown, made by a stranger, and
he alone, and so far as we know without any special
signs, at the time, of Divine authority, would not
account for the impression produced. The voices
of fanatics or maniacs were often, no doubt, heard in
great cities. Tradition says, that before the destruc
tion of Jerusalem, such a cry was heard for many
weeks ; but heard without heed. A nation like the
Assyrians, given up to violence and rapine, would not
be likely to repent, by the mere influence of natural
causes. Indeed, it is one of the arguments employed
by adverse critics, to undermine the authority of the

SPECIAL FEATURES CONSIDERED. 147
book, that the conversion of a whole city by the
preaching of one prophet, for so short a time, is
absolutely incredible. Incredible it is, except on
the presupposition that Jehovah wrought specially
with His messengers. The doctrine of a direct and
special Divine influence, the work of the Spirit, was
not unknown to the Jews. It is plainly taught in the
psalms. Nor would it be beyond belief to a devout
Israelite, that the spirit of repentance should be
poured out on a whole people — that, as Isaiah after
wards predicted, " nations " should be " born in a
day!' Still, at the time when Jonah wrote, it would,
no doubt, be a great marvel, which would fill all with
astonishment, that a heathen city should be suddenly
turned from ungodly life to the confession of sin and
amendment. The more wonderful the fact, the more
clearly it spoke of Divine interposition. And the
more distinct the message of the book, the more
likely that it was authentic.
It is not a sufficient reply to this reasoning to
suggest that the whole narrative was an invention of
a later age. There is no reason to believe that the
Jews would ever, of themselves, have so represented a
Gentile people, except under special teaching. One
who was so completely emancipated from Jewish
prejudice as to originate such a book as the Book of
Jonah, simply out of his own thoughts, would have
been certainly far too devout and spiritual and lofty-
minded to feign its truth; such a man could not have

148 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
have related the story as divinely authorised, when it
was a fiction of his own invention. There is nothing
in Jewish literature with which we can compare it, as
we have seen in a previous chapter. How immeasur
able then must have been the influence of such a fact
as the repentance of Nineveh, upon the contempor
aries of Jonah, and upon all subsequent prophets !
It seems impossible to overestimate it. Can we not
plainly recognise the influence in such a passage as
that in Joel — the first prophet to proclaim the
promised outpouring of the Holy Spirit on all flesh,
from that time a common topic ? The great conflict
between light and darkness was solemnly inaugurated
by that repentance at Nineveh. A sign was thus
given to the people of God, that the world would be
conquered, that the kingdom of righteousness would
spread to the ends of the earth.
2. Tlie peculiar character of the Book of fonah is
further to be observed, in its adaptability to parabolic
use. This has been so evident that it has been
turned into an argument against its truth. There is
no need, it has been said, to conclude, from the fact
that the events are represented as real, that they ac
tually occurred. A parable is usually so expressed.
Our Lord's parables are clothed in the form of
historical narratives, as e.g. Luke x. 30: "A certain
man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell
among thieves!' The verisimilitude of the occur
rence is sufficient ground on which to build up the

SPECIAL FEATURES CONSIDERED. 149
structure of didactic meaning. So, it is argued,
into the mould of Jonah's story is poured the pure
gold of great spiritual lessons. But the value of the
mould itself is nothing! The parable remains, how
ever we regard the narrative ! Now, as to the worth
of this reasoning, we have already shown it to be fal
lacious. But the admission, that the whole can be
viewed as a parable, does not militate, in the least de
gree, against the truthfulness of the story, but rather
lends it a very special character. All attempts to
interpret parables must be regarded as open to criti
cism. At the same time, it can scarcely be doubted,
that some of the meanings which are conveyed by
the Book of Jonah were transparent enough to be
recognised, even by the Jews themselves, certainly by
those whose insight was the deepest. The moral
identification of the prophet and the people, is quite
a familiar thought, in the whole of the prophetic
period. Hence the difficulty, sometimes, of exactly
distinguishing, what is said of the individual in his
personal capacity, and what is said representatively.
The Messiah Himself is the ideal Israel. The people
are continually addressed by Jehovah as being them
selves the echo of His voice. He speaks through
them to the nations. Their faithfulness or unfaith
fulness to their Divine vocation is the chief subject of
prophecy. Now it is easy to recognise, in the Book
of Jonah, a parable, which would very powerfully
appeal to the whole nation. Were not they "fleeing

150 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH
from the presence of the Lord" instead of fulfilling
their mission ? Were not they in danger of being
plunged into the great, heaving "sea of troubles"
where the monster of the deep would await them?
Would not heathen nations be the instruments, in
the hands of a righteous God, in punishing their'
unfaithfulness? Yet, if they learned the lessons of
Providence, ought they not, even yet, though so weak
and worthless in themselves, by the preserving mercy
and inspiring grace of Jehovah, to become His
messengers of Righteousness to surrounding nations ?
The conclusion of the book was also wonderfully
significant. The angry prophet in his booth, praying
for death, mourning the loss of his temporary refuge
— over against the great teeming multitude of human
beings, rescued by Divine compassion, men, women
and children, on the simple ground of their repent
ance. Was it not a parable ? Why should Israel
be angry that Jehovah would break down the old
distinction, and shed His love abroad ? Why should
they mourn for a gourd, " the son of a night," the
mere offspring of changing circumstances ? Their
legal system was not identical with eternal truth.
Their Jewish rites and ceremonies were not intended
to be a permanent house of abode. If God smote
the gourd, He could provide better shelter for His
servant. If He called all nations into the participa
tion which He promised, of the great inheritance of
His love, it would not be because He loved Israel the

SPECIAL FEATURES CONSIDERED. 151
less, but because He loved all men. Surely such a
parable would be an open secret, to all who sought to
know the mind and ways of Jehovah ; and though it
might at that time need interpretation, yet, to those
who read it side by side with the subsequent mes
sages of the prophets, it must have been a powerful
appeal, against pride, inhumanity, bigotry, pharisaism,
and all the besetting sins of the Hebrew nation.
Such a significance seals the book as Divine.
And then, lastly, it may be noticed that the book
is eminently adapted to teach one of the most im
portant views of the character of prophecy itself.
God is not a mere arbitrary Being, making decrees
and deciding destinies. He is the God of Righteous
ness and the God of Love, " not willing that any
should perish, but that all should come to repentance."
It is impossible not to recognise, apart from New
Testament teaching, the Messianic sentiment running
through the book. It breathes the spirit of the
Messiah. It preaches the gospel, though there is no
direct prediction of the Redeemer in it from begin
ning to end. The narrative itself was a proclamation,
better than the utterances of any prophet by word of
mouth, declaring the character of God and preparing
the world for His grace. We shall, however, return
to this view of the book in subsequent chapters.

CHAPTER III.
ISRAEL AT THE TIME OF JONAH, IN RELATION TO
SURROUNDING NATIONS, ESPECIALLY TO ASSYRIA.
THE political relations of the Jews were their
temptations. In the course of their national
development it was a matter of necessity that they
should be brought into some sort of contact with the
heathen peoples around them. But they were from
the first forbidden, by direct command of Jehovah, to
form any close alliances with those who worshipped
strange gods. Their isolation was part of their
preparation for the office assigned to them, to be
stewards of the mysteries of God. No sooner did
they renounce the Divine ideal entrusted to them,
the ideal of theocracy, and by their wilful and per
verse adoption of the monarchical form of govern
ment, descend to a lower level of national existence,
being compelled to imitate heathen methods of
defence and aggrandisement, than they became in
volved in political difficulties and military strife ; they
were gradually drawn into that whirlpool of inter
national conflict which for centuries seethed over the
whole extent of western Asia. They were no longer,
as they might have been, " walled around " in their

ISRAEL AND ASSYRIA. 153
own small country, with the sea on the one side and
the desert on the other, the mountains of Lebanon
defending them on the north. Their national
character greatly changed for the worse under the
military reigns of Saul and David ; they became an
ambitious people, aiming more or less at dominion
over the nations, following the bad example of the
Eastern despotisms.
But the judgments of Jehovah soon fell. Solomon's
kingdom, great and splendid as it was, broke in
pieces. Luxury and idolatry prevailed in the land.
The two kingdoms which had at one time formed
one empire, the ten tribes of Israel and the two tribes
of Judah and Benjamin, while they were jealous of
one another, sought, each in their own way, for an
increase of power. The sceptre of David was gone.
But, by alliance with neighbouring kings, it would be
possible to revive some of its grandeur. It was this
fatal alienation from the ancient theocratic ideal
which accounts for the subsequent history of Palestine.
Hence the wars which occurred, the many entangle
ments, in which they would not have been concerned,
but for association with heathen powers around.
In the year 825 B.C., Jeroboam II., the son of
Joash king of Israel, began to reign over the ten
tribes. " He reigned forty and one years." While
himself unfaithful to Jehovah, as his people were,
he was permitted to obtain advantages over the
neighbouring powers in the north, in conflict with

154 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
the armies of Syria. " He restored the coast oj Israel
jrom the entering oj Hamath unto the sea oj the plain,
according to the word oj the Lord God oj Israel, which
He spake by the hand of His servant Jonah, the son of
Amittai, the prophet, which was of Gath-hepher. For
the Lord saw the affliction of Isi'ael, that it was very
bitter : for there was not any shut up, nor any left, nor
any helper for Israel. And the Lord said not that
He would blot out the name of Israel from under
heaven : but He saved them by the hand of Jeroboam
the son of Joash!' A prophet, like Jonah, who
had been so intimately bound up with his country's
military struggles against its neighbouring enemies,
must feel a patriotic impulse mingling with his pro
phetic ministry. He was doubtless, like all the pro
phets, a thoughtful observer of contemporary events
and their bearing on national affairs. It was not
difficult for any inhabitant of northern Palestine
at that time, about eight centuries before Christ, to
estimate the growing power of the great Mesopota-
mian kingdom of Assyria, with its capital at Nineveh.
What, then, was Assyria at that time, and what was
its relation to Israel ? Mesopotamia, a low-lying,
fertile district, watered by the great rivers Euphrates
and Tigris, was always subject to inroads from tribes
dwelling in the higher lands of Armenia. The
earliest migrations of the human race proceeded, from
that centre of elevated country, on which, as we are
informed in the Book of Genesis, the ark of Noah

ISRAEL AND ASSYRIA. 155
rested, and from which the three great branches of
the Noachic family diverged. It seems probable
that the first possessors of the Mesopotamian low
lands were from Armenia, or from the neighbourhood
of the Caspian Sea. But it is now regarded as a
settled point, that some two' thousand years B.C. a
Hamite or Cushite race (possibly from Ethiopia
direct, or possibly driven onwards from Arabia, by
migratory movements from the farther west), drove
out the original inhabitants of southern Mesopotamia,
and originated the ancient Chaldean or Babylonian
kingdom, in the neighbourhood of the Persian Gulf.
After about four centuries and a half, this southern
kingdom was invaded by Arabian tribes, and became
subject to an Arab dynasty. The northern districts
of Mesopotamia underwent a change. A Semitic race
became dominant there. And that Semitic people
(probably the result of an Arabian immigration) grew
more and more powerful, from the year 1298 to the
middle of the eighth century. It is quite certain that
the Assyrians were Syro-Arabians, i.e. of the same
Semitic descent as the inhabitants of northern
Arabia and Syria ; and with these were closely con
nected in race, the Phoenicians, later Canaanites, and
subsequently, the descendants of Abraham (who went
forth from the Chasdim, or Chaldean Ur, the modern
Mugheir, the most ancient city of the world, some
where about the time of the Assyrian dynasty).
The Assyrian kingdom probably commenced at

156 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
Asshur on the right bank of the Tigris (Kileh Shergat),
sixty miles below the site of Nineveh. For many years
it was a subordinate kingdom to Babylon, or Chaldea.
But the power of Nineveh grew. Somewhere about
1250 B.C., Babylon became subject to it, remaining
the inferior kingdom until 625 B.C., when again the
Babylonian power, under the influence of Medes,
rose against Nineveh and destroyed it. The real
supremacy of Assyria, therefore, lasted from 1250 B.C.
to 625 B.C., a period of more than six hundred years.
But the main interest of the Assyrian history lies
within a much shorter space. From about 900 to
650 B.C., that is, two hundred and fifty years, their
career, under enterprising and warlike monarchs, was
one of almost irresistible conquest and material
prosperity. It would not be interesting to the reader to go back
much farther than 900 B.C. in our sketch of Assyria.
There was, however, before that period, a great As
syrian conqueror, Asshur-dani-pal (or Sardanapalus),
about 930 B.C. He made Calah his capital, the modern
Nimrud, going north forty miles from the original
capital of Kileh Shergat. " In his annals, which have
come down to us in a very complete condition, it is
apparent that he carried his army far and wide through
western Asia, from Babylon and Chaldea on one side,
to Syria and the coasts of the Mediterranean sea on
the other. It seems to have been in the latter quarter
that his most prominent and important conquests

ISRAEL AND ASSYRIA. 157
were effected. Sardanapalus styles himself "the
conqueror from the upper passage of the Tigris to
Lebanon and the Great Sea, who has reduced under
his authorities all countries from the rising of the sun
to the going down thereof" (see Layard's Nineveh
and Babylon, ch. xvi. p. 361). In his Syrian cam
paign, which is recorded at length not only in the
general inscriptions, but also in the votive Bull and
Lion which he set up at Calah on his return from it,
he took tribute from the kings of the principal Phoe
nician cities, as Tyre, Sidon, Byblus, and Aradus :
among the rest, probably from Ethbaal, king of the
Sidonians, the father of Jezebel, the wife of Ahab.
He is the first of the Assyrian kings of whose
grandeur we are able to judge, by the remains of
extensive buildings and sculptures which have come
down to us. He was the founder of the north-west
palace at Nimrud, which, next to that of Sennacherib,
at Kouyunjik, is the largest and most magnificent of
the Assyrian edifices. The greater portion of the
sculptures now in the British Museum are from this
building. It was a structure nearly square, about
360 feet in length, and 300 in breadth, standing on
a raised platform, overlooking the Tigris, with a
grand facade to the north fronting the town, and
another to the west, commanding the river. It was
built of hewn stone, and consisted of a single central
hall, more than 120 feet long by 90 wide, probably
open to the sky, round which were grouped a number

158 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
of ceiled chambers, some larger and some smaller,
generally communicating with one another. The
ceilings were of cedar, brought apparently from
Mount Lebanon ; the walls were panelled to a
certain distance from the floor by slabs of alabaster,
ornamented throughout with bas-reliefs, above which
they were coated with plaster. The smaller chambers
were frequently dark ; the larger ones were lighted
either by openings in the roof, or by apertures in the
upper part of the wall near the ceiling. The floors
were paved with slabs of stone, often covered with
inscriptions. A close analogy has been pointed out
between this style of building and the great edifices
of the Jews, as described in Scripture (1 Kings vi. vii. ;
2 Chron. iii.), the Jewish kings having in all proba
bility borrowed their architecture from Assyria. The
dimensions, however, of the palace of Solomon fell
far short of those of the great Assyrian monarchs"
(Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. i. pp. 461-2).
Then followed another great conqueror, who
made numerous inroads on the neighbouring coun
tries for the thirty-one years of his reign, and brought
many kings into subjection to Assyria. What is most
remarkable in his expeditions is their extent. "At
one time they are in Chaldea, on the very borders of
the southern ocean ; at another in eastern Armenia
and the vicinity of the Caspian ; frequently they are
in Syria, and touch the confines of Palestine ; occa
sionally they are in Cappadocia, and the country of

ISRAEL AND ASSYRIA. 159
the Tuplai (Tibareni). Armenia, Azerbijan, great por
tions of Media Magna, the line of Zagros, Babylonia,
Mesopotamia, Syria, Phoenicia, the chain of Amanus,
and the country beyond it to the north and north
west, are invaded by the Assyrian armies, which
exceed upon occasions 100,000 fighting men. Every
where tribute is enforced, and in most places images
of the king are set up as a sign of his possessing the
supremacy. The Assyrian successes are throughout
attributed, after the favour of Asshur and Mero-
dach, to their archers." " The most interesting of the
campaigns of Shalmanubar are those which, in his
sixth, eleventh, fourteenth and eighteenth years, he
conducted against the countries bordering on Pales
tine. In the first three of these, his chief adversary
was Benhadad, of Damascus, the prince whose wars
with Baasha, Ahab, and Jehoram, and whose murder
by Hazael, are related at length in the Books of
Kings and Chronicles. Benhadad, who had strength
ened himself by a close league with the Hamathites,
Hittites, and Phoenicians, was defeated in three great
battles by the Assyrian monarch, and lost in one of
these 20,000 men. This ill success appears to have
broken up the league ; and when Hazael, soon after
his accession, was attacked in his turn, probably
about the year B.C. 884 or 885, he was left to his own
resources, and had to take refuge in Anti-Libanus,
where Shalmanubar engaged and defeated him,
killing (according to his own account) 16,000 of

160 STUDIES IN THE BOOR OF JONAH.
his fighting men, and capturing more than 1,100
chariots." It was probably at this time, or perhaps three years
later (882), when the conqueror once more entered
Syria and forced Hazael to supply his troops with
provisions, that the first direct connection of which
we have any record, took place between the people of
Israel and the Assyrians. "One of the first epigraphs
on the black obelisk (in the British Museum), records
the tribute which Yahua, the son of Khumri — i.e.
Jehu, the son of Omri — brought to the king who set
it up, consisting almost entirely of gold and silver
and articles manufactured from gold. It was, perhaps,
this act of submission which provoked the fierce
attack of Hazael upon the kingdom of Israel in the
reign of Jehu,, when he ' smote them in all their
coasts,' and deprived them of the entire country east
of Jordan, the ancient possessions of the tribes of
Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh, as far as 'Aroer by
the river Arnon,' which flows into the Dead Sea"
(Rawlinson's Herod., vol. i. p. 465).
The next monarch was Shamas-iva, who suppressed
a violent rebellion led by his elder brother Sardana
palus, and obtained considerable victories in his ex
peditions. He was succeeded by his son Iva-lush III.,
who is supposed to be the same as Pul mentioned in
Scripture. (In the LXX. Phaloch, or Phalos, or as
Eusebius and others write it, Belochus). We learn
from one of the slabs discovered and deciphered, that

ISRAEL AND ASSYRIA. 161
he received tribute from various countries, among
which Khumri or Samaria is named, as well as Tyre
and Sidon, Damascus, Idumea and Palestine on the
Western Sea (see 2 Kings xv. 19, 20). Menahem, king
of Israel, gave a tribute of a thousand talents to Pul.
He reigned from 800 to 747, and was probably the
monarch referred to in the Book of Jonah. It is
believed that a new dynasty ascended the throne of
Assyria after Pul or Iva-lush III. Tiglath-Pileser II.
revived the declining power of the kingdom, for
luxury and sloth were rapidly consuming it. He is
the great conqueror referred to in Scripture. During
the period of conquest which he initiated, Assyria
reduced Egypt, subjugated Susiana, crossed Tarsus
in Asia Minor, invaded Cappadocia, and established
relations with Gyges of Lydia. He also made some
naval expeditions in the Mediterranean and in the
Persian Gulf. Cyprus was subdued, and Grecian sub
jects were numbered amongst those in the Assyrian
empire. The greatness of Assyria lasted about < a
century after this time, that is from about 747 to 647
B.C., when the attacks of northern tribes commenced.
The wealth and luxury obtained by conquest
undermined the strength of the people, and courted
the assault of covetous neighbours. The Scythian
hordes came down upon the plains from the moun
tains, just as the Northern races came upon the
decaying Roman empire. The Medes and Babylon
ians seized the opportunity of revenging their own
M

162 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
past defeats, and from the year 634 onwards, Assyria
became a prey to their joint attacks. The capital,
Nineveh, was besieged and captured in 625 B.C.
The list of the Sargonidae includes names familiar
to the reader of Scriptures. Shalmaneser, Sargon,
Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, Sardanapalus and Saracus,
fill up a space from 745 to 647 B.C. Tiglath-Pileser II.
took tribute from Menahem in 743, attacked and
subdued Damascus, and Pekah, king of Israel, and
received the submission of the king of Judah, Ahaz,
734-732 B.C. His successor, Shalmaneser, invaded
Palestine several times, and commenced the siege of
Samaria in 723 B.C. Sargon, a usurper, after leading
a successful revolution, and dethroning Shalmaneser,
himself became king, 721 B.C. He captured Samaria,
the capital of the ten tribes, and carried away the
Israelites, setting them in Gaulo'nitis and Media.
Sennacherib ascended the throne about 705 B.C. His
first expedition into Palestine was in 700 B.C. To
him king Hezekiah gave tribute. His second ex
pedition into Palestine took place in 698 B.C., about
which time occurred the memorable destruction of
his army near Pelusium, on the borders of Egypt.
Sennacherib was subsequently murdered by his two
sons, in 680 B.C. A struggle between the two mur
derers followed. Esarhaddon obtained the throne, 680
B.C., reigning alternately at Babylon and at Nineveh.
He subdued Egypt, and punished Manasseh, the king
of Israel, for his revolt. He introduced into the

ISRAEL AND ASSYRIA. 163
conquered territories of the ten tribes, the colonists
from Babylonia, Susiana, and Persia. The splendour
of Nineveh, however, was connected with the reign of
his successor, Sardanapalus or Asshur-bani-pal, 667
B.C., or a little later. His victories were wide spread,
and his power overwhelming. Egypt, Asia Minor,
Armenia, Susiana, Babylonia, Arabia, — he was sur
rounded on all points of the compass by a vast multi
tude of subject peoples. To him is attributed the
greatness of the capital. Art flourished in his reign.
The most magnificent of the Assyrian palaces was
built and adorned by him. The royal library, dis
covered at Nineveh, was collected under his reign.
But his later years were years of luxury and enerva
tion. His son and successor Saracus, or Asshur-
emid-ilin, made but a faint resistance to the invading
forces of the enemies both in the north and in the
south. The capture and destruction of Nineveh, in
625, was the overthrow of the Assyrian power. After
that time two kingdoms became rivals for supremacy
in western Asia. These were the revived kingdom
of Babylonia — which subdued Egypt and Palestine —
and the rising monarchy of the Medians, a hardy and
warlike people who united for a time with Babylon
to overthrow her rival, and then, uniting with the
Persians under Cyrus to destroy the Babylonian
empire, became the ruling power of western Asia.
It must be observed with regard to these names
and dates that they are at present surrounded with

164 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
much obscurity. Until the tablets which have been
discovered are more thoroughly examined, and the
results can be carefully considered and tabulated, it
is impossible to assign events to their precise places,
and the names of monarchs must be in some con
fusion. The most important points, however, are the
extent of the Assyrian dominions, and the nature of
the empire over which the Assyrian monarch reigned.
On these points there can be but little uncertainty,
and the chief conclusions of modern historians may
be summed up in a few words. The following is the
list of countries subject to Assyria during the period
of its supremacy. " Susiana, Chaldea, Babylonia,
Media, Matiene or the country of the Namri,
Armenia, Mesopotamia, parts of Cappadocia and
Cilicia, Syria, Phoenicia, Palestine, Idumea, and for
a time Lower Egypt. Cyprus, also, was for some
years a dependency." But we must not suppose that
all this immense region of western Asia was a com
pact kingdom, like a modern European monarchy,
as Germany or France. It has been compared with
the empire of Solomon. " The first and most striking
feature," says Canon Rawlinson {Herodotus, vol. i.
p. 490), " of the earliest empires is, that they are a
mere congeries of kingdoms ; the countries over which
the dominant state acquires an influence, not only
retain their distinct individuality, as is the case in
more modern empires, but remained in all respects
just as they were before, with the simple addition of

ISRAEL AND ASSYRIA. 165
certain obligations contracted towards the permanent
authority. They kept their old laws, their old
religion, their line of kings, their law of succession,
their whole internal organization and machinery ;
they only acknowledged an external suzerainty which
bound them to the performance of certain duties
towards the head of the empire. These duties, as
understood in the earliest times, may be summed up
in the two words ' homage ' and ' tribute ; ' the sub
ject kings ' serve ' and bring presents (see 1 Kings
iv. 21); they are bound to acts of submission, must
attend the court of the suzerain when summoned,
unless they have a reasonable excuse, must then
salute him as superior, and otherwise acknowledge
his rank ; above all, they must pay him regularly the
fixed tribute which has been imposed upon them at
the time of their submission and subjection, the
unauthorized withholding of which is open and avowed
rebellion. Finally, they must allow his troops free
passage through their dominions, and must oppose
any attempt at invasion by way of their country, on
the part of his enemies. Such are the earliest and
most essential obligations on the part of the subject
states in an empire of the primitive type, like that of
Assyria ; other obligations, with the corresponding
one on the part of the dominant power of the pro
tection of its dependents against foreign foes, appear
to have constituted the sole links which joined
together in one the heterogeneous materials of which

166 Sl^UDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
that empire consisted. It is evident that a govern
ment of the character here described contains with
in it elements of constant disunion and disorder.
Under favourable circumstances, with an active and
energetic prince upon the throne, there is an appear
ance of strength, and a realization of much magnifi
cence and grandeur. The subject monarchs pay
annually their due share of ' the regulated tribute of
the empire ; ' and, the better to secure the favour of
their common sovereign, add to it presents, consist
ing of the choicest productions of their respective
kingdoms. The material resources of the different
countries are placed at the disposal of the dominant
power ; and skilled workmen are readily lent for
the services of the court, who adorn and build the
temples and the royal residences, and transplant
the luxuries and refinements of their several states
to the imperial capital. But no sooner does any
untoward event occur, as a disastrous expedition, a
foreign attack, a domestic conspiracy, or a mere
untimely and unexpected death of the reigning
prince, than the inherent weakness of this sort of
government at once displays itself — the whole fabric
of the empire falls asunder — each kingdom re-asserts
its independence — tribute ceases to be paid — and the
mistress of a hundred states suddenly finds herself
thrust back into her primitive condition, stripped of
the dominion which has been her strength, and
thrown entirely upon her own resources. Then the

ISRAEL AND ASSYRIA. 167
whole task of reconstruction has to be commenced
anew ; one by one the rebel countries are overcome
and the rebel monarchs chastised — tribute is re-
imposed, submission enforced, and in fifteen or
twenty years the empire has recovered itself. Pro
gress is of course slow and uncertain, when the
empire has continually to be built up again from its
foundations, and when at any time a day may undo
the work which it has taken centuries to accomplish."
The Assyrian empire, like all the ancient mon
archies, concentrated its strength and wealth around
its capital. Arfd like them, it exhibited the same
fatal weakness in the subject states. Rebellion was
perpetually breaking out, and such rebellions had to
be subdued by conquests which themselves dried up
the resources of the dominant power. So it has been
always in the history of great empires. They are
irresistible for a time, until they have subdued sur
rounding peoples, and then they begin to perish in
their extremities. This was especially the case with
the vast empires of the East. Though in the instance
of the Assyrians, the character of the people who
were concentrated around the capital would seem to
have been so warlike and energetic that their power
was preserved for a great length of time. The
nations which dwelt in the west and in the north
were no match for the Assyrians, until the dominant
people themselves were enervated by luxury. The
western countries were too small and subdivided to

1 68 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
resist the attacks of such a kingdom. For five cen
turies it maintained its position of supremacy, until
the bold and fierce tribes of the Scythians came
down upon it, and found ready helpers in the neigh
bouring kingdoms of Media and Babylonia.
We know but little of the internal government of
Assyria. But there is one remarkable feature of its
wars which, in view of the relations between Israel
and the later kings, it is interesting to notice. There
was no attempt to destroy the religion of any people
brought into subjection. But there does seem to be
something of a religious character attributed to the
wars. They were made, by the power of the god
Asshur. One inscription says : " I, Asshurdanipal,
established true religious worship and holy rites
throughout the land of Tsukhi. As far as the land of
Carduniash I extended the true religion of my empire.
The people of Chaldea, who were overthrowers and
revilers of my religion, I crucified and slew them."
Sennacherib says : " The men of the city of Khismi,
impious heretics, who from days of old had refused to
submit to my authority, I put to death, according to
my religious laws." These and similar inscriptions
show that there was a reverential feeling, at least pro
fessedly, attached to the military expeditions which
were made. "Nothing," says Rawlinson, "is more
universal than the practice of setting up in the
subject countries ' the laws of Asshur ' and ' altars to
the great gods.' In some instances not only altars,

ISRAEL AND ASSYRIA. 169
but temples are erected, and priests are left to super
intend the worship and secure its being properly
conducted." This propagandism, however, does not
seem to have been very determined, and would prob
ably be modified by the character of the religion
which was found in the subject country. That of
the Jews was certainly tolerated.
Another interesting point which should be re
membered in studying the relation between the
people of Palestine and those of Assyria, is the simi
larity oj their language. The question may be asked,
How was it that Jonah could be understood in
Nineveh ? It has already been observed that Semitic
tribes probably drove out the more ancient Cushite
or Hamite settlers, who had entered Babylonia coming
from Ethiopia. Assyria was colonised by the same
men. An Aramean element can be traced all along
Mesopotamia and through the Arabian peninsula.
The original language of Babylonia was the Akka
dian, which is partly allied to the African dialects and
partly to the ancient Turanian or language of High
Asia. It belongs to the same primitive stock from
which the Semitic languages went forth, but it is
earlier in origin than the Semitic. This Akkadian
tongue became the learned language of the priests
and of science — the language of records and annals —
as the Latin was in Europe. " When the Semitic tribes
established an empire in Assyria in the thirteenth
century B.C., they adopted the alphabet of the Akkad

170 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
and with certain modifications applied it to their
own language ; but during the seven centuries which
followed, of Semitic dominion at Nineveh and Baby
lon, this Assyrian language was merely used for
historical and official documents. The astronomical,
and other scientific tablets found at Nineveh are
exclusively in the Akkadian language, and are thus
shown to belong to a priest-class, exactly answering
to the Chaldeans of profane history and of the Book
of Daniel." (Rawlinson's Herod., vol. i. p. 319.) The
language of the people, . however, was substantially
the same all through Semitic or western Asia.
There can be no doubt that any traveller going
from Assyria west, to Syria, Palestine or Phoenicia,
or travelling south, to Babylonia and through the
Arabian peninsula to the borders of Egypt, would
easily make himself understood, just as at the
present time the Arabic is an introduction to almost
all the dialects of the same regions, though it would
scarcely supply the want of Turkish or Persian in
conversing with the representatives of the Sultan or
the Shah. It is thought by some that Semitic is
a development from Hamitic : " In the Babylonian
records there are said to be evidences of the gradual
development of Semitic from the Hamitic type of
speech. It is possible to group the Semitic tribes into
three divisions, and in naming them it will be seen
that while the people of Palestine should be placed
in a different group from the Assyrian, they were yet

ISRAEL AND ASSYRIA. 171
closely allied, as indeed we should expect from the
fact that Abraham went forth from Ur of the Chal-
dees, probably in a stream of migration which followed
the course of the Euphrates. The Eastern Group
of Semitics occupied the valley of Mesopotamia, from
Armenia on the north, and to Lebanon on the west.
These were the Assyrians, the later Babylonians,
the Arameans or Syrians, whose language is repre
sented by the modern Chaldee. The Western Group
contained the nations on the coasts of the Mediter
ranean ' from the borders of Egypt to Pamphylia,
and then inland to Caria,' with the colonies sent out
from this district. Such were ' the Canaanites, the
Jews and Israelites, the Phoenicians, the Cilicians,
with whom may be classed the Pisidians and the
Solymi, the Cypriots and the Poeni of Africa. Rem
nants of this race remain in the modern Hebrews,
and perhaps to some extent in the Maltese and the
Berbers of North Africa. The Central Group occupied
the desert between the valley of the Euphrates and
that of the Jordan, and likewise the northern and
western portions of the great peninsula. It consists
of the Joktanian and Ishmaelite Arabs.' " About the
time of the prophet Jonah this Semitic race occupied
altogether a parallelogram which might be said to
be 1,600 miles long and 800 miles broad, that is, only
about one-thirteenth of the whole Asiatic continent.
It is very true, as is observed by Canon Rawlinson,
that the Semitic race has shown no great aptitude

172 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
for spreading its settlements over other countries, but
at the same time it has most powerfully affected the
world by its ideal tendencies, " by the projection
into the fermenting mass of human thought of new
and strange ideas, especially those of the most
abstract kind. Semitic races have influenced, far
more than any others, the history of the world's
mental progress, and the principal intellectual revo
lutions which have taken place, are traceable, in the
main, to . them." The Christian religion and Islam-
ism both proceeded from the Semitic race. The
German Reformation owed much to the preceding
revival of letters, which itself was due " to the spirit
of enquiry aroused by the Arabians in Spain, who
invented algebra, turned the attention of studious
persons to physical science, and made Aristotle in
telligible by means of translations and commen
taries." (See Hallam's Middle Ages, and History oj
Literature!) But before we pass from the subject of Assyria, it
will be necessary to explain how it is that the name
of the empire, and of the people, does not occur in
the book of the prophet. The city of Nineveh, and
the people of Nineveh, and the king of Nineveh and
his nobles, we read of all these, but the name of
Assyria does not appear, nor should we be able to
gather from the prophecy itself that the great city
was a capital, except from the fact that the king
resided there. It is important to ascertain what was

ISRAEL AND ASSYRIA. 173
the exact position of Nineveh, in order to estimate
the bearing of the book upon several aspects of
Jewish character. Was Jonah influenced by the
thought of Assyrian aggrandisement, threatening his
own nation ? Was Nineveh taken as the type of a
heathen kingdom, or simply as a great city, full of
souls ? Are we to understand the change produced
by the prophet's preaching as spread from a capital
city as a centre, through the provinces or satrapies
of an empire ? These are questions which cannot
be answered without a clear understanding of the
facts in regard to Nineveh itself, at the time of
Jonah's mission.
Assyria, as a country, was a district of low-lying
land which may be indicated by the course of the
river Tigris. It was not large, — about 500 miles in
length, and from 350 to 150 miles in breadth. We
may compare it with Italy in size, or with Great
Britain. But we must not suppose that the whole
of that country received from the first the name of
Assyria. In ancient times cities were the strongholds
of distinct tribes or classes of people, who, having
formed a settlement and fortified themselves against
their enemies, began to throw out immediately off
shoots from their original settlements, in neighbouring
towns and villages ; and thus, after a time, the name
of a city would be given to a large district of country.
Asshur, now Kileh Shergat, some sixty miles south
of Nineveh, on the right bank of the Tigris, was pro-

174 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
bably the original seat of the Assyrian people. Many
of the earliest antiquities have been found there.
Asshur, the son of Shem (see Gen. x. 22) doubtless
gave his name to the place ; but it does not follow
that he actually founded it. He was worshipped by
the Assyrians as their chief deity. The name, there
fore, may be merely indicative of dedication to the
worship of the deity. Another chief city of the As
syrian country was Calah, or Halah, or Nimrud, which
again was at some time the seat of the monarchy.
Nimrod is said to have founded it (Gen. x. 11). A
large proportion of the remains brought to this coun
try were derived from the Nimrud ruins. It would
seem probable that, from about the year 930 B.C., the
royal residence was there ; but when it was removed it
is difficult to say. Somewhere about the 8th century
B.C. the seat of empire was removed to Nineveh. If
the account in Genesis be received as historical, then
the two cities of Calah and Nineveh were both built
by Nimrod, the Cushite emperor. But again we are
met with the mythological difficulty, for Nin was a
deity of the Assyrians, and the question is suggested,
did Nineveh receive its name from the deity to whom
it was consecrated, or from the conqueror who
founded it ? Possibly the Greek form, Ninos, and
the Hebrew Nin, may be closely connected with the
name Nimrod, and, as in the case of Asshur, only
represent in the name of the city the deification of
its original founder.

ISRAEL AND ASSYRIA. 175
Assyria was the "land of Nimrod" to the Jews
(see Micah v. 6). We are left completely in the dark,
so far as the Scripture is concerned, as to the position
of Nineveh previous to the time of Jonah, for there is
no reference to the city after its mention in Genesis.
Moreover, it is remarkable that Assyria is only men
tioned as a kingdom about the year 770 B.C. in the
time of Menahem. The predictions of Nahum, which
were certainly delivered much later than the time of
Jonah, and when Nineveh was a magnificent capital,
still refer to the city as though it were identified with
the empire of Assyria, and the name Assyria occurs
only once (Nahum iii. 18) : "Thy shepherds slumber,
thou king of Assyria ! Thy nobles lie still. Thy
people are scattered upon the mountains, and no one
gathereth them." There seems little doubt that the
destruction of the city occurred about the end of the
7th century, some say 606 B.C., others 625 B.C. Now,
the immense size and wealth of the city point to a
long-continued growth previous to that time. We
may, therefore, safely conclude that towards the end
of the 8th century, when Jonah first prophesied,
Nineveh was not only a great city, but may have
been the royal residence. It is impossible to ascer
tain the name of the king referred to in the prophecy.
But there is reason in the argument that the preach
ing of Jonah probably coincides with a crisis in the
national affairs, and that the reference is to that
period when a change of dynasty occurred, and the

176 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OP JONAH.
people of Nineveh under Pul were beginning to lose
their ancient spirit and energy, which was revived
under Tiglath-Pileser II.
Iva-lush III., or, as he is named in Scripture, Pul,
came to the Assyrian throne according to some,
810 B.C., and reigned to 781 B.C. (but according to
others, 772 to 747). Jeroboam II. reigned from 825
to 784 B.C. The latter part of his reign would there
fore coincide with the latter part of Pul's reign in
Assyria, according to the former reckoning (or within
about thirty years according to the latter). Some
king of Nineveh at that time certainly obtained war
like successes in the neighbourhood of Israel, and
would be likely, therefore, to appear in the prophet's
eyes the enemy of his country. Some, however, have
thought that Shalmaneser III. is referred to, who
reigned from 783 to 773 B.C. The name of the king
is of much less importance than the position of the
city. All our knowledge of Nineveh, previous to the
discoveries made in recent times among its ruins, was
dependent on traditions which were centuries old,
and therefore must be received with the utmost cau
tion ; but there can be no doubt that the size and
importance of the city, in the eighth century before
Christ, were such as they are represented in the Book
of Jonah. No description or measurement is to be
found in any historian in whom confidence can be
placed. Herodotus would undoubtedly have re
corded everything that could be learned in his time.

ISRAEL AND ASSYRIA. 177
Xenophon encamped on the site of the city with his
ten thousand Greeks (B.C. 401), and he has nothing to
say of it. Ctesias and Diodorus Siculus do not even
know where the city stood, for they place it on the
Euphrates instead of the Tigris. Strabo, Ptolemy,
and Pliny simply repeat traditions, which were
handed down to them, but into the authority of
which they did not themselves enquire. The only
mention of details in regard to it is found in Dio
dorus, whose authority is quite worthless, and who
simply gathers together such tales and fables for the
sake of interesting his readers. At the same time
it is worth while noticing that the measurements he
gives would correspond with the general description
in Jonah. The city formed a quadrangle, he says,
150 stadia by 90 stadia, 480 stadia, or 60 miles;
the wall surrounding the city was no less than 100
feet in height, defended by towers each 200 feet
high, and 1,800 in number, and three chariots could
drive abreast round them. This would be about
the same measurement as Jonah's " three days' jour
ney" — that is, allowing the usual Jewish measure
for the day's journey (twenty miles), the city would
require three days' journey to go round it. The
population of adults would be about 600,000, the
number of children being 120,000. But on investi
gating the ruins in the neighbourhood of the Tigris,
it was found that there were mounds scattered over a
wide district, all of them full of Assyrian, Babylonian N

178 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
and Persian remains ; and while they are most nume
rous in the region of the ancient Nineveh, still it is
difficult to ascertain what were the limits of the city.
There is one mound on the north, lying east of the
river Tigris, which is now called Kouyunjik. To the
north-east, about ten miles away, is another called
Khorsabad ; to the south, about six and a half miles
from the junction of the Tigris and the Zab, is Nim
rud ; and on the east of Nimrud, about fifteen miles
north-east, is Karamless. These four mounds form
an irregular quadrangle, and within them there are
scattered ruins everywhere, showing that in all
probability an immense city occupied the whole
district. Mr. Rich first examined Kouyunjik ; Khor
sabad was then examined by M. Botta; and their dis
coveries were followed by the remarkable excavations
at Nimrud and Kouyunjik made by Mr. A. H. Layard,
the fruits of which now adorn the British Museum.
While it has been held by Sir H. Rawlinson and
others, on the ground of the cuneiform inscriptions,
that each of these mounds represents a distinct city,
and that the true Nineveh was only that which is
represented by the ruins opposite Mosul ; it has been,
on the other hand, reasonably argued that the site
thus indicated would be much too small to corre
spond with the traditions of the city. We know that
in ancient times vast spaces were included within the
walls of a city, as in the city of Pekin in our own
days. " It has been conjectured that these groups of

ISRAEL AND ASSYRIA. 179
mounds are not ruins of separate cities, but of fortified
royal residences, each combining palaces, temples,
propylea, gardens, and parks, and having its peculiar
name ; and that they all formed part of one great
city, built and added to at different periods, and
consisting of distinct quarters scattered over a very
large area, and frequently very distant one from the
other. Nineveh might thus be compared with Da
mascus, Ispahan, or perhaps more appropriately with
Delhi, a city rebuilt at various periods, but never on
exactly the same site, and whose ruins consequently
cover an area but little inferior to that assigned to
the capital of Assyria. The primitive site, the one
upon which Nineveh was originally founded, may
possibly have been that occupied by the mound of
Kouyunjik. Even Sir H. Rawlinson is compelled to
admit that all the ruins may have formed part of
that group of cities which, in the time of the pro
phet Jonah, was known by the common name of
Nineveh" (Art. Nineveh, Smith's Diet!). At the
same time it must be acknowledged that the sur
rounding walls have not been discovered. Probably
the stories of such walls are merely fabulous, and all
the defence consisted in the strongholds or fortifica
tions — to which the prophet Nahum refers — which
are surrounded by groups of houses, and dwellings
scattered over a wide area, amidst fields, orchards,
and gardens. This may account for the rapid de
struction and entire overthrow of the city. There

180 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
seems much to confirm the suggestion that the name
Nineveh was employed sometimes to denote the
smaller city, sometimes the whole district, as London
may mean either the city, strictly speaking, or the
metropolitan district. " The probability amounts
almost to certainty that the plain between the two
great homes of Assyrian empire (Kouyunjik and
Nimrud) was, during the 9th, 8th, and 7th centuries
before Christ, sprinkled over thickly with a popu
lation which might very well amount to six or seven
hundred thousand." " If ever there was a wall round
the whole of the great city, it may have vanished,
either through being, from strategic motives, pur
posely removed, or through being superseded by the
stronger fortifications, first of Khorsabad by Sargon,
and then of Nineveh proper by Sennacherib, both of
which came into being later than Jonah." Mr. Layard
is still of opinion that the whole quadrangle may have
been designated as one city. It is certain that Kou
yunjik and Nimrud were the seats of Assyrian kings,
and, during the period from the 9th to the 7th
centuries B.C. were " enriched with palaces, temples,
and other monuments ; Sargon (722-705) adding
to them a new imperial city of his own founding,
strongly fortified, which is now called Khorsabad,
' Dur Sargina.' " (See Speaker's Commentary, vol. vi.
p. 601. RzwYmson's Ancient Monarchies, chap. ix. G.
Smith's Assyrian Discoveries, Layard's Nineveh and
Babylon. Menant's Annates des Rois d'Assyrie, etc.)

ISRAEL AND ASSYRIA.

But there still remains one subject on which it is
requisite to put together a few facts, that the reader
may understand the Book of Jonah. We may ask,
What was the relation of the Jewish religion, as it was
practised at the time of the prophet, to the heathen
religions, and especially to that of Nineveh ? It is
admitted almost universally among philosophical
enquirers into the history of religions, and among
philologists, that there is abundant evidence of an
underlying monotheism in all the polytheistic
systems of the world. " The idea of God," says
Professor Max Miiller, "was an idea which was not
original to man, but derived." He would regard the
earliest polytheisms as only the forms in which that
idea was coming to an expression. But the facts
show that the development of polytheism was accom
panied by a moral degeneracy. The farther we go
back in the history of religions the simpler have
been men's ideas of dependence upon God, and
obedience to His rule. Indeed, in polytheism itself
we recognise a primitive dualism, the worship of a
supreme male and female deity, which must have
sprung from something more simple still, the recog
nition of one supreme Power. "Originally" (says a
learned writer quoted in Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. ii.
p. 296), " the Egyptians had The Unity, worshipped
under a particular character, which was the case in
other countries also, each considering him their pro
tector, and giving him a peculiar form and name,

1 82 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
though really the same one God; and it was only when
forsaken by him that they supposed their enemies
were permitted to triumph over them (comp. also
Josephus, Ant. viii. 10, 3, of the Jews and Shishak).
But it was not long before they subdivided the one
God, and made his attributes into different deities.
In like manner the Hindoos have one supreme Being,
Brahme (neuter), the great one, who, when he creates,
becomes Brahma (masculine) ; when he manifests
himself by the operation of his divine spirit, becomes
Vishnu, the pervader, or Narazan, " moving on the
waters," called also the first male ; when he destroys,
becomes Siva or Mahadiva, " Great God ; " and as
Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, is the Creator, Preserver,
and Destroyer, which last answers to the regenerator
of what only changes its form ; and reproduces what
he destroys. The same original belief in one God
may be observed in Greek mythology; and this accor
dance of early traditions agrees with the Indian notion
that " Truth was originally deposited with men, but
gradually slumbered and was forgotten ; the know
ledge of it however returning like a recollection." For
in Greece, Zeus was also universal and omnipotent, the
one God, containing all within himself; and he was
the Monad, the beginning and end of all {Somn.
Scip., c. 6; Aristot. de Mund., 7); (comp. Clemens,
Stroph., v. p. 603). The Deity once divided, there
was no limit to the number of His attributes of various
kinds and of different grades ; and in Egypt everything

ISRAEL AND ASSYRIA. 183
that partook of the divine essence became a god."
Pantheistic mythology is an aftergrowth, plainly the
result of the human mind in its activity applying the
conception of Deity to all things, perhaps from the
idea of Deity being itself more profoundly thought
upon, though not in the spirit of primitive reverence,
but of philosophical development. It is impossible
to conceive the idolater rising to monotheism, but it
is quite possible to conceive the monotheist losing
the purity of his conception, and dividing and diffus
ing his own deity among all the objects of the world,
for man's mind tends to the material, and finds it
difficult to retain the pure thought of an unchange
able, eternal, spiritual Being — Infinite, and yet Per
sonal, and One. There is no necessity to discuss here
the question of a primeval Revelation. The facts are
difficult to explain without such a theory; for the tra
ditions of mankind point to a golden age of know
ledge, as well as life, in the first ages of the world. It
may however be admitted that (apart from the evi
dence of Scripture) it is at present impossible to sub
stantiate that view. Scripture evidence will not be
accepted by the critics as valid. Putting aside then
any such theory, we simply occupy this position — that
in all nations, amid all the confusion and degradation
of mythology, there is an underlying basis of Reli
gious Truth, which explains the possibility of inter
course and exchange of religious sentiment between
the Jews and the heathen. This is implied in the

184 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
whole of the Old Testament. The three names —
Elohim, Elohim Jehovah, and Jehovah — refer to a
progressive development of the revelations of God
as a covenant God, in His special intercourse with
Israel ; but not to a progressive development of
Jewish theology, regarded as the work of Jewish
thought. The foundation of the patriarchal religion
is exactly the same as that of the Mosaic, i.e. the one
living and true God revealed to His creatures. It
would be a distinct contradiction of the Book of
Genesis to represent the Hebrews as choosing Jehovah
as a national God. On the other hand, the history
declares that Elohim, El Shaddai, tlie God of their
fathers, appeared to Moses, and gave him the Law, as
a structure to be built upon a basis, viz. the faith
already delivered and preserved through many ages.
Hence we find that Abraham, in his intercourse with
the people of Canaan and with the Egyptians, had no
difficulty in appealing to great moral principles, and
does homage himself to Melchizedek, the King of
Righteousness, the worshipper of "the most High
God!' The children of Israel in Egypt fell back into
idolatry. On what ground did their great deliverer
and lawgiver appeal to them, but on the ground of
that pure monotheism which they had received from
their ancestor Abraham? This view is confirmed by
the investigations of antiquaries into the remains of
Chaldea and Assyria. There can be no doubt that
substantially the same religion prevailed all through

ISRAEL AND ASSYRIA. 185
the Mesopotamian valley, and that it was regarded
as having both a Cushite and Semitic form.
The complicated polytheism of later times must
not be taken as the original religion of either Babylon
or Nineveh. The gods of Chaldea and Assyria were
divided into three classes. First, there were the Great
gods — " various deities," says Canon Rawlinson,
¦' whom it was not considered at all necessary to trace
to a single stock, regarded with equal respect and
glorified with equally exalted epithets ; some fifteen
or sixteen personages." Secondly, there was an
inferior class of divinities ; " a far more numerous
assemblage, less often mentioned, and regarded as
less worthy of honour, but still recognised generally
through the country." And then, thirdly, in addition
to these two classes of national deities, "the Pantheon
contained a host of more local gods or genii, every
town and almost every village in Babylonia being
under the protection of its own particular divinity "
{Ancient Monarchies, vol. i. p. 139). Now, first among
the highest rank of deities there stands one who is
generally regarded as holding some sort of presi
dency among the gods, just as Zeus among the
Greeks, and Jupiter among the Romans. This is //
or Ra. " The form Ra represents probably the native
Chaldean name of this deity, while II is the Semitic
equivalent. 77, of course, is but a variant of El
\>Vf). The root of the well-known Biblical Elohim
as well as of the Arabian Allah. The

186 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
meaning of the word is simply ' God', or perhaps
' the God,' emphatically. Ra is a god with few peculiar
attributes. He is a sort of fount and origin of deity,
too remote from man to be much worshipped, or to
excite any warm interest. There is no evidence of
his having had any temple in Chaldea during the
early times. A belief in his existence is implied
rather than expressed in inscriptions of the primitive
kings, where the moon-god is said to be ' brother's son
of Ana, and eldest son of Bil or Belus.' We gather
from this, that Bel and Ana were considered to have
a common father, and later documents sufficiently
indicate that the common father was // or Ra. We
must conclude from the name Babil, that Babylon
was originally under his protection, though the god
specially worshipped in the great temple there seems
to have been in early times Bel, and in later times
Merodach." This is a very remarkable indication
of a monotheistic basis underlying the polytheistic
worship of Chaldea. There cannot be a doubt that
it remained in the Assyrian religion as well as the
Babylonish, for we find the god Asshur, the great god
of the Assyrians — in other words, their deified ancestor
Asshur — worshipped in a manner which implied the
general belief of the people in a supreme god. " His
usual titles are ' the great lord! ' tlui king of all the
gods', ' he who rules supreme over the gods! Some
times he is called ' the father of the gods! He is re
garded throughout all the Assyrian inscriptions as

ISRAEL AND ASSYRIA. 187
the special tutelary deity both of the kings and of
the country. He places the monarchs upon their
throne, firmly establishes them in the government,
lengthens the years of their reign, preserves their
power, protects their forts and armies, makes their
name celebrated, and the like. To him they look to
give the victory over their enemies, to grant them all
the wishes of their heart, and to allow them to be
succeeded on their throne by their sons, and their
sons' sons, to a remote posterity. Their usual phrase
when speaking of him is, " Asshur, my lord" They
represent themselves as passing their lives in his
service. It is to spread his worship that they carry
on their wars. They fight, ravage, destroy, in his
name. Finally, when they subdue a country, they
are careful to ' set up the emblems of Asshur ;' and
teach the people his laws and his worship." No
such terms are employed of the other deities.
Now while it may be freely admitted that Asshur
represents the great progenitor of the Assyrian
people ({'Asshur the son of Shem," see Gen. x. 22),
yet it must also be recognised that in attributing "the
Divine character to him," the Assyrians did not
merely glorify their national origin, but intended to
give an embodiment to religious feelings which were
already existent among them and probably derived
from their ancestors. " It is indicative," says Canon
Rawlinson, " of the (comparatively speaking) elevated
character of Assyrian polytheism, that this exalted

1 88 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
and awful deity continued, from first to last, the main
object of worship, and was not superseded in the
thoughts of men by the lower and more intelligible
divinities, such as Shamas and Sin, the sun and
moon; Nergal, the god of war; Nin, the god of hunt
ing ; or Iva, the wielder of the thunderbolt." It may
be remarked, too, that some such background of purer
and more exalted religious faith is to be recognised
all through the polytheistic systems. "In the wor
ship of Egypt we may have such a gradual descent
and deterioration (though in Assyria it did not take
place) from Amun, the hidden god, to Ptha the demi-
urgus, thence to Ra, the sun god, from him to Isis
and Osiris, deities of the third order, and finally to
Apis and Serapis, mere daemons." So in reading the
best of the Greek and Latin writers, such as Plato
and Cicero, it is very evident that they made a dis
tinction in their thoughts between the God and the
gods. They regarded the polytheistic system as a
religious necessity, but they did not allow it to obli
terate their faith in a pervading omnipresent Deity.
There are many curious symbols to be traced in the
religious remains of Assyria and Chaldea, such as the
wings upon the emblem of Asshur, and the three human
heads upon a signet cylinder of the Assyrian monarch
Sennacherib, and the sacred tree, with its ram's horns
and many blossoms, and many others which are not
yet sufficiently understood, but which may be found
hereafter to be connected with primitive religious

ISRAEL AND ASSYRIA. , 189
traditions. The remarkable resemblance of the
Chaldean legends of the Creation and Paradise and
the Flood, to those of the Bible, point to a very close
connection between the religions of the Akkadian
and Semitic families. However we explain that
resemblance, whether by the theory of a primitive
revelation, or by the common use of primitive tra
dition, it points to the fact that the peoples of the
Mesopotamian country were probably closely allied
to one another in their original faith, however they
separated from one another in subsequent times.
Abraham at Mugheir remained true to the simpler
religion ; and for the sake of preserving it, left his
native country and became a pilgrim under special
Divine guidance.
We can easily understand then, that a preacher of
righteousness, denouncing violence and wrong in the
name of the Most High God, declaring the judgments
of El, or Elohim, against the wicked city, would not
only be understood as the messenger of the supreme
Deity, but would be believed as representing the
character of that Deity, as the better thoughts of the
Assyrians themselves regarded it. " The religious
sentiment," says Canon Rawlinson, " appears on the
whole to have been strong and deep-seated among
the Assyrians. Although religion had not the pro
minence in Assyria which it possessed in Egypt, or
even in Greece ; although the temple was subordin
ated to the palace, and the most imposing of the

190 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
representations of the gods were degraded to mere
architectural ornaments, yet the Assyrians appear
to have been really, nay even eminently, religious.
Their religion, it must be admitted, was of a sensuous
character. They not only practised imageTworship,
but believed in the actual power of the idols to give
protection or work mischief; nor could they rise to
the conception of a purely spiritual and immaterial
Deity. Their ordinary worship was less one of
prayer than one by means of sacrifices and offerings.
They could however, we know, in the time of trouble,
utter sincere prayer ; and we are bound therefore to
credit them with an honest purpose, in respect to the
many solemn addresses and invocations which occur,
both in their public and their private documents.
The numerous mythological tablets testify to the
large amount of attention which was paid to religious
subjects by the learned ; while the general character
of their names, and the practice of inscribing sacred
figures and emblems upon the signets, which was
almost universal, seem to indicate a spirit of piety
on the part of the mass of the people" {Ancient
Monarchies, vol. ii. p. 278). It cannot therefore be
doubted that while Judaism was separated by a great
gulf from the polytheistic systems of the heathen
nations around, still there was an underlying basis
of natural religion, or of remembered tradition, which
enabled a messenger in proclaiming truth which
appealed to the conscience and to the deepest heart

ISRAEL AND ASSYRIA. 191
of man, to wake up slumbering echoes there which
would produce a very great effect, especially if the
attendant circumstances were of a character to lend
power to the natural fears of the multitude. The
overthrow of great cities was not an unknown fact.
Tradition amongst the Chaldeans, and probably
amongst the Assyrians as well, told of a great de
struction of the world. And there is little doubt
that the overthrow of the cities of the plain was
a well-known fact in the time of Jonah and in the
Mesopotamian valley. The general religious features
of the prophet's narrative, then, are quite historical.
There is no good ground for rejecting it on the
supposed incompatibility of a Jewish prophet's stand
point with that of a polytheistic nation.
We must now, however, deal with another question,
which is suggested by a consideration of the relation
between Judaism and the religions of the world. It
is at first sight a startling fact, that a prophet should
be divinely commissioned to travel from Galilee to
Mesopotamia to proclaim a message of warning
among a people with whom the Jews had no manner
of dealing. So strange and perplexing is this fact,
that objectors to the authenticity of the book, as we
have seen in a previous chapter, have founded upon
it the theory, that some late writer in the 5th or 6th
century B.C. invented the story, as a suitable medium
for the ideas which were then working in many minds,
and which were the fruit of a wider expansion of

192 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH
Jewish feeling, produced, instrumentally, by the disci
pline of Divine judgments, and the contact of the
exiled race with heathenism. Such a spirit mani
festly breathes in the Book of Daniel. It is admitted
by all that the Messianic Hope was more developed,
and more distinctly and emphatically expressed, after
the Captivity than before. And while there is no
very distinct reference to that hope, as such, in the
Book of Jonah, yet it could easily be imagined that
one who was under its influence and anticipating the
widespread dominion of Messiah, might have been
prompted to clothe his aspirations in the form of a
religious romance. In that case, however, we should
have expected a very different working out of the
fundamental idea. There is nothing said of the
reception of Judaism by the Ninevites, nor even of
any permanent result effected by Jonah's mission ;
nothing is suggested of a Messianic nature in his
preaching ; npr is there anything throughout the
book, from beginning to end, to lead us to suppose
that the writer was thinking more of his own people's
future than of the heathen nations. As an ideal
romance, therefore, we should condemn it as singu
larly small and scanty in ideas ; as so little suggestive,
that it would defeat its own object. But if we take
it for what it claims to be, a matter of fact narrative
of a portion of a great prophet's history, then it be
comes a deeply interesting and significant question :
How was it that this unique mission was appointed

ISRAEL AND ASSYRIA. 193
by God just at that period ? How could a Jewish
prophet receive such a command ? And why did he,
doubtless under special inspiration, place on record
the Lord's dealings with him as an unfaithful
minister, and the story of his visit to Nineveh ? A
few words will be sufficient on these points.
Now although the Mosaic economy rested on a
very defined basis of national worship, and the
restrictions forbidding intercourse with other nations
were of the strictest and most solemn nature, it will
be remembered that the Jews were often reminded,
by providential occurrences, that their religious privi
leges were not bestowed on them that they might
boast over other peoples, but that through them the
world might be enlightened. The "stranger zvithin
their gates " was always regarded as under the special
care of Jehovah. Those who became proselytes of
the Jewish religion were in no wise excluded from
the covenant of grace, but included in it. Moreover,
we may take it for granted that there were many
instances similar to that of the Queen of Sheba, who
came to be instructed in Hebrew wisdom, as well as
to behold the splendour of Solomon's kingdom.
The story of the little maid taken captive by the
Syrians out of the land of Israel, and waiting on the
wife of the great Syrian captain, throws light on the
relation of Israel to other nations in respect to their
share of Divine benefits. Had the people been
taught that, on no occasion and on no consideration O

194 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
were the blessings sent to Israel to be bestowed on
other nations, the little maid would not have dared
to utter her exclamation : "And she said unto her
mistress, Would God my lord were with the prophet
that is in Samaria, for he would recover him of his
leprosy " (2 Kings v. 3). Naaman did not hesitate,
under the sanction of the king of Syria, to seek the
healing power of Elisha, and Elisha did not hesitate
to work a miracle on a Gentile, though still it was
in Jordan that he was commanded to wash. It was
by doing homage, in a certain sense, to the special
Divine mission of Israel that he received the benefit.
"Are not Arbana and Pharpar, rivers oj Damascus,
better than all the waters oj Israel ? May I not wash
in them and be clean ?" He must bow down that
Gentile pride and simply fulfil the prophet's word.
Such an event was itself a preparation of the minds
of God's people for their work as His witnesses to
the heathen. Still it was a very different thing for
strangers to come to Zion and be enlightened, or
healed, and messengers to go Jorth to heathen lands
from the midst of Israel. When the commandment
came to Jonah there was no exact precedent to
which he could refer in order to confirm it. At the
same time, there was one part of the history of his
great predecessor, Elisha, which might seem to ex
plain what the Lord was intending by the mission
enjoined upon him. When Elisha was at Damascus,
possibly in a time of famine, the king of Damascus,

ISRAEL AND ASSYRIA. 195
Benhadad, being sick, sent to inquire of him, as a
prophet of God, whether he should recover, thus
recognising his prophetic office ; and Elisha pro
phesied both the king's death and Hazael's treachery
and cruelty to the children of Israel (2 Kings viii.
7-15). These two cases were striking and instructive.
Naaman had become a proselyte, and even consulted
the prophet as to how he should conduct himself
in his own country when he accompanied his king
to the temple of the Syrian god, Rimmon. Can
he help bowing before the god, and will Jehovah
overlook and pardon his apparent departure from
his new religion ? The reply of Elisha was full of
meaning. " Go in peace!' Be not disturbed in mind.
God is not a man that He should be made angry
in such a case. He is ready to accept your faith,
and will not burden it with impossibility of practice.
The fact that he anointed Hazael to be king of
Syria, in accordance with the commission given
him through his predecessor Elijah, pointed to the
widening of the prophetic office to embrace within
its sphere heathen nations. It was the result of the
miracle, and of the conversion of Naaman, that
Elisha, when he went to Damascus, obtained so
much influence ; so that he carried the prophetic
power over the borders of Israel.
But while these facts came to be known to Jonah,
and to all the people of the Jews, still there was no
instance, as yet, of a mission given to a prophet to pro-

196 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
claim a religious message sent directly, in the name of
fehovah, to a heathen nation. The prophet, therefore,
must fall back upon the fundamental conception of
the theocracy and the general bearing of the Divine
commission. If he did so, he would find, especially
in view of such a character and work as Elisha's,
abundant confirmation of the Divine authority of
the voice which spake to him. We must carefully
remember the character of prophetic studies at that
time. One who was holding the office of messenger
of Jehovah to Israel, would certainly regard it as
part of his divinely appointed duty to enter as
deeply as possible into the spirit of the Law of
Moses. He would ponder the writings, which
formed part of his education as a prophet ; not
only the Pentateuch, but probably other writings
which Samuel would preserve in his university of
Ramah, and which would be viewed as practical
commetits on the Law. Such a life and mission as
that of Elisha (whose name VpyN that is, " to whom
God is salvation" JtVfi vN;, was a distinct advance in
revelation upon that of his predecessor Elijah, " My
God is Jehovah ") must have been an enlargement
of the prophet's conception of his mission, as he
studied it ; for, it must never be forgotten, . one
prophet stepped into the place of another, so that the
tradition of doctrine was handed on, and each
decided advancement was perpetuated. Jonah,
coming after Elisha, could not take the same view

ISRAEL AND ASSYRIA. 197
of his prophetic office as Elijah did ; he was not
sent merely to proclaim the supremacy of Jehovah
over the idols of an idolatrous nation ; he was
the immediate successor of one whose mission it
was to announce salvation.
Healing miracles distinguished Elisha's ministry,
and it is remarkable, as has been observed, that
miracles, chiefly of mercy, form the staple of his
prophetic work. This was perhaps divinely ordered,
that the impression of his character might be the
more powerful. Pre-eminently he was a voice of
Love, of toleration towards those who were not
included in Israel, and of benevolence, expanding
in its object to a wider sphere. How could his
successor fail to learn the lesson of such a life ?
As yet, it is true, prophecy was little written, so
that the exposition of the deeper meaning of the
Law would be mostly traditional. But it is im
possible to doubt that such a man as Elisha, who is
represented as surrounded with a school of prophets,
more or less under his instructions, would impress
upon his contemporaries the stamp of his own mind,
as a student of the Word of God. This would be
handed on to the time of Jonah, — probably about
a century later — and as no great prophet appeared
in the interval, the people would be left to their
own studies of what had previously been sent them.
Now the work of the Spirit of God never ceased in
Israel, notwithstanding the degeneracy of the nation.

198 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
There was always "a remnant" among them, "ac
cording to the election of grace!' Hence the appear
ance, from time to time, of an inspired prophet ;
on several occasions of more than one at the same
time. Such men came forth, not from an absolute
desert of spiritual death and desolation, but from a
living Church of God, where the grace of the Holy
Spirit still preserved the remembrance of Divine
truth, the Hope of Israel, and the higher conception
of the Law. It was, therefore, only requisite that
Jonah should take the place assigned to him, as the
successor of Elisha, to rise to a very great height
of spiritual vision and foresight. All the bearing of
history and prophecy up to that time was a pre
paration for what followed. The religion of Palestine
was manifestly the lifting up of the standard of
Jehovah, that "all nations might flow unto it!' The
time was hastening when the voice of the prophets
would proclaim it, and that in messages which would
be unmistakable, in clear, emphatic tones, as in
Micah and Isaiah. But meanwhile, it seems to have
been the Divine appointment that a prophet should
be sent to Israel in whose person a very wonderful
work should be wrought, and in whose history there
should be given a key to the purposes of Jehovah,
such as never before had been entrusted to His
people. Just as Elisha was more a worker of
miracles than a preacher, so Jonah was more a sign
to the men of his day, than a prophet in the strictest

ISRAEL AND ASSYRIA. 199
sense. At that time we can easily understand that
miracles and signs would have more effect on the
popular mind than verbal messages. Jehovah gra
ciously adapted the form of His message to the
moral state of those who received it. Hence, the
key was one which could be easily used to unlock
the secret : " Israel, the preaclur of righteousness to
the world!'

CHAPTER IV.
THE CHARACTER OF JONAH.
ONE of the most remarkable facts about the Book
of Jonah is, that while he himself is so promi
nent in it, yet there is not one word from beginning
to end of comment upon his character and conduct.
He openly disobeys a Divine command ; he is fol
lowed silently and swiftly by the Divine judgment.
Yet there is no word of the writer's own in condem
nation of his flight. He passes through a wonderful
discipline of Providence, and is miraculously saved.
His hymn of thanksgiving is preserved. But no word
is said of his state of mind, his sense of sin, his
repentance, his return to the attitude of submission
and prompt obedience to the Divine command. He
receives his new commission and at once rises up
to fulfil it ; goes to Nineveh and preaches with mar
vellous success ; still there is a strange reserve in the
narrative. One would have expected some descrip
tion of Jonah's feelings and experience in entering
the heathen city, some account of the method which
he followed in calling the Ninevites to repentance.
But the facts are again set before us in the barest,

THE CHARACTER OF JONAH.

most naked simplicity, without one single sentence of
reflection. This is still more noticeable in the last
chapter, where again the contrast is suggested be
tween what was in Jonah's mind and what was in
the mind of Jehovah. We are looking on a very!
pitiable object ; a prophet of God under the influence
of most unworthy and miserable feelings, betraying
a rebellious anger against the appointments of the
Divine will, which rouses a holy indignation against
him ; and still the close of the book is significantly
abrupt. Nothing added to the picture ; only the
touching remonstrance against the selfish narrowness^
of the man, the tender pleading of Divine compassion
against human prejudice and blindness. There is
a sublime irony in the concluding scene which is full
of meaning, and casts its reflection back on the whole
book. We are evidently reading, not a chapter out of
an autobiography, still less a fellow-creature's descrip
tion of a sad episode in a good man's history ; we
are not dealing with the airy materials of imaginative
genius, nor with the slight framework of a novelist,
into which he has wrought didactic truth or elevated
sentiment. The only probable and consistent view of
the work is that Jonah wrote it himself. He there
fore said as little about himself as possible. He told
the facts with all their weight of meaning against his
own character, just as they were, without a line of
exculpation or condemnation. He left his character
to be a study for his successors, because he knew that

202 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
through him God was speaking to the whole world,
and that the writing of the book would be itself, in
the sight of God, compensation for that past derelic
tion and temporary spiritual eclipse, into which he
had suffered himself to fall. It seems incredible that
any other than the prophet should have written the
book exactly as we now possess it. And if it be
granted that Jonah is the author, then we find a
still deeper interest in making the character of the
man a subject of investigation.
I. The first point at which the narrative may be
said to touch the personal character of the prophet
v is the flight to Joppa. " But Jonah rose up to flee unto
Tarshish, from the presence of the Lord, and went
down to Joppa" We cannot certainly say at what
time in his life the Word of the Lord, to go to
Nineveh, reached Jonah. While it has been suggested
that this may be the account of his first call to the
prophetic office, and that therefore the whole would
be the spiritual preparation for a life which he after
wards spent, as an acknowledged messenger of Jeho
vah in Israel, there is nothing on which such a sugges
tion can be supported. It seems much more probable
that such a mission would be entrusted to a tried
prophet, than to one not as yet conscious of his
prophetic power. Moreover, if Jonah was a young
1 man, we can scarcely explain his being so despondent
land aggrieved when Nineveh remained undestroyed.
He would then have no prophetic character which

THE CHARACTER OF JONAH. 203
would suffer by the apparent nullifying of his words.
It is so unusual and extraordinary a mission which
was committed to him, that we must believe he was
trained first by a long course of Divine communica
tions and special signs of his representative authority,
as the leading prophet of his time. Here, then, we
are led up to the man, at the beginning of the book,
on a spiritual eminence — " The Word of the Lord
came to him" solemnly, emphatically, unmistak
ably ; the command out of heaven, which hitherto
he had regarded it as a matter of life and death to
receive and obey. When he turned from it we are
told that he turned from " the presence of the Lord,"
or literally, "from being with the Lord." It is, of
course, the merest fatuity of criticism to take this
as meaning that Jonah thought to hide himself from
Omniscience. He renounced his official position, as
the interlocutor between Jehovah and His people, as
the mediator and messenger, as the leading prophet
of his day. He was God's adjutant ; he refused to
carry His order. He would rather himself be cut offx
from Israel than fulfil the mission. He prefers to flee
to a Gentile country in the west, that he may not be
an ambassador to a Gentile city in the east.
It is a most extraordinary fact thus brought before
us, and requires to be deeply pondered. Think of it.
A man conscious of special inspiration and authority,
doing direct violence to the Word of the Most High !
We are, at first, almost ready to reject the anomaly as

v204 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
inconceivable, and attribute it to the baseless imagi
nation of a writer who invented such a story for the
mere sake of employing it by way of parable. But
human character has so vast a variety in it, that it
would be unreasonable to doubt any phase of it on
the ground of its presenting inconsistencies and con
tradictions to view. There are such in all characters,
though not so profound and inscrutable in some cases
as in others. Jonah was a true prophet or God
would not have selected him for such a mission. We
must, therefore, begin our study of his character with
this conviction — he meant nothing throughout like
determined rebellion against God as God. The first
word was, " Cry against Nineveh " ; the second com
mand was, " Cry, Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be
overthrown!' It would seem, from what the prophet
himself relates of his own thoughts, that at the very
first he understood the mission to be one of mercy,
and not of destruction. " Was not this my saying,
when I was yet in my country ? Therefore I fled
before unto Tarshish : for I knew that Thou art a gra
cious God and merciful, slow to anger and of great kind
ness, and repentest Thee of the evil" We seem to be
plunged by these words into a still deeper depth of
perplexity. The man had laid hold of the thought of
Divine goodness and compassion with so firm a grasp,
that when the message came, " Go and cry against
Nineveh," at once he understood it to mean, Go and
stop those sinners in their mad career, lest suddenly

THE CHARACTER OF JONAH. 205
they be overwhelmed and that without remedy. Is
it possible then to conceive that Jonah actually re
volted from that thought of a merciful God ? And
is it possible, again, that he did so with deliberate
purpose ; not by a sudden impulse, but with the full
glory of the Divine character shining round him ?
" His objections were such as he felt he could state
calmly to the Lord. They were such as the Lord
deigned to consider. Knowing their existence in His
servant's mind, He seems to have considered them
even before they were stated. There is a recognition
of them in the very first Divine word that breaks
on the prophet's ear. After the mystical preparation
for conference with His servant, whatever that pre
paration was — a deeper silence in the air, perhaps,
betokening the approach of the ' God of peace ' ; or
a sudden elevation of sense and soul into the pure
spirit life — the very first word he hears is ARISE.
This is a word used before another verb as a term of
excitement. ' Arise — I know you have difficulties in
yourself, in your people, in the mission, in Nineveh ;
arise, therefore, gird your loins, and stir your
strength, and go!'" (Raleigh's Story of Jonah, pp.
41-2). Jonah's sin was not apostasy from God. He did
not deny that the mission was worthy of Jehovah.
He did not discuss with God the fitness of it, which
would have been blasphemous self-assertion, of which
such a man as a leading prophet would be incapable,

v2o6 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
unless he had wholly fallen from his religious life,
x But he shrunk from the mission. As though he would
say to God : Send, Lord, by whomsoever thou wilt
send, only let me be spared from this, for it is too
"great and too tremendous a mission for me. It is
very true, as Dr. Raleigh has remarked in the work
quoted above, that in the brevity of the narrative
we must suppose much to have transpired which is
left unrecorded — "days of dark, troubled, anxious
thought." And when we remember that, after these
days, the decision of such a man was to banish himself
altogether from Israel, where he would not dare any
longer to hold up his head as a prophet of Jehovah,
to live among the heathen of Tarshish, and that he
acted on that decision, we are led to ask very urgently,
what were the thoughts^ which were working within
him, and how do we account for such a contradiction
.in his character — a good man and yet a disobedient
prophet ?
Now the struggle in Jonah's mind must have been
the result either of personal feeling or of mistaken
ideas. It may have been personal feeling that lay
at the root of his conduct. The mission would end
in the repentance of Nineveh, therefore in the non-
fulfilment of Jonah's cry. He would be called a false
prophet ; he whose word had been so wonderfully
fulfilled in the deliverance of Israel, could he bear
that apparent falsification of his word ? Would he
not be mocked at as a prophet of evil which never

THE CHARACTER OF JONAH. 207
came to pass ? Might there not be great personal
danger in the mission itself ? They would treat him
at Nineveh, as some of the Jewish kings did the
prophets who denounced their idolatries, as Ahab and
Jezebel would have treated Elijah, had they been
able. Moreover, was he fitted to preach among an
unknown people, in the name of Jehovah ? Had he
strength, knowledge, boldness for it ? It was a strange
and uninviting errand on which the Lord would send
him. He worked honourably and as a distinguished
servant of Jehovah in the sight of all Israel, and was
he to be suddenly carried away from that lofty posi
tion and sent to the ends of the earth to cry against a
wicked city and threaten destruction ? It was like a
visitation of punishment upon him ; exile, banishment,
a cloud of Divine displeasure, burying him out of sight.
Deeply the word seemed to eat into the heart of the
man, like a sword piercing him through, with a sense
of disappointment, reproach and fear. We can con
ceive that such was the personal feeling under the in
fluence of which he probably yielded.
But such feelings were founded on false ideas about
God, and about the people of God and their vocation,
which could only be thoroughly rooted out of the
prophet's miijd, and out of the minds of those who
thought with him at that time, by some such disci- .
pline as we find described in this remarkable book
Let us recall what some of those erroneous ideas and
reasonings were.

208 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
It has already been observed, that the time when
Jonah lived was one when Israel began to be placed
in a position of critical importance among the sur
rounding nations. There was a period, but it was
a very brief one, during which the power of the
Hebrew people made itself felt over a vast extent of
country to the north and east and south of Palestine.
But the division of the tribes into two kingdoms, their
mutual jealousies, and the rapid degeneracy of the
northern tribes, with the threatened judgments of
Jehovah hanging over them, must have shaken the
confidence of such a man as Jonah in the future
prosperity of his country. He may, indeed, have
received some prophetic intimations which led him to
look with foreboding on the growing darkness of the
cloud in the east. His people would be visited for
their sins with national judgments. Assyria which
at that time„ seemed to be pushing her conquests
nearer and nearer to Israel, might be the chosen
instrument in the hand of Jehovah for the humiliation
of the backsliding children. When, therefore, the
prophet himself was summoned to avert from that
great enemy of Israel the anger of God, the effect
upon his mind was to produce a conflict between
patriotic feeling and conscience, which he could not
silence. The conflict was quite natural; but the
grievous mistake was, that Jonah listened to his
"Own thoughts instead of to the voice of Jehovah.
He reasoned that if Nineveh should be destroyed

THE CHARACTER OF JONAH. 209
a great danger would be removed from the pros
pects of his own country, a great oppressor of
humanity would be justly punished, and the Divine
righteousness would be exemplified. If he went
and preached to the cruel city, the probability was,
the punishment would be remitted, and after a time
the Ninevites would fall back into their old state of
violence. But what had a prophet to do with such
calculations ? The question for him to ask was I
simply : What am I commanded to say and to do ?
It was a confusion in his mind of the political and 'i
the religious, which in such a man was inexcusable.
We must not, however, forget, that in those times and
in the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the prophet had
so much to do with the national life, was so powerful
a factor in the commonwealth, that it was a tempta
tion to which he was always exposed, to deal dis
honestly with the oracles entrusted to him, as his
private judgment or interest might dictate. If he
had a Divine message which went against the pre
vailing feeling of the nation, he might conceal it, or '
modify it, or refuse, himself, to proclaim it. And if
a mission were given him to fulfil which seemed to
him simply one of evil to his own country, he was
tempted to place too much confidence in his own
interpretation of the Divine meaning, and charge
Jehovah with placing upon him a burden too great
for him to bear. Yet the true prophet, however great
the conflict of his thoughts, would put the religious P

210 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.

above the political. He was first and chiefly the
^ servant of the Lord, standing in His presence. He
could only refuse a mission, whatever it was and
however little he understood it, by forsaking that
position of being before Jehovah and acting as His
ambassador. Jonah's fault lay in listening too much
\ to the false reasonings and remonstrances of his own
mind. But there is another view which may be taken
of Jonah's state of mind. \ He anticipated the result.
He would go to Nineveh and cry against it. He
would predict the overthrow of the city. The people
would put away their violence. They would be
spared. The prediction would be falsified. Now
probably this mission came to the prophet very soon
after his predictions with respect to the restoration of
the borders of Israel had been remarkably fulfilled.
-He was in the full flush of his prophetic triumph.
The people proclaimed him the chosen messenger of
the Lord, and looked to him as the oracle of Israel.
Immediately then upon that comes a command to
become the mouthpiece of a prediction which would
certainly not be fulfilled, which was only a conditional
prophecy, in fact a warning, the purpose of which was
to procure its own nullification by the repentance of
Nineveh ! Was not that to humiliate the prophet in
the eyes of his own country and the world ? Was
it not to lower the value of prophecy itself ? Was it
not to put prediction into the subordinate place and

THE CHARACTER OF JONAH.

set uppermost the moral and spiritual elements of the
prophetic office, which the people were always dis
posed to undervalue ? Thus it was a real test of the
prophet's spirit. Did he think more of the work he I
had to do than of himself? Did he put Jehovah's
glory above all glory of men ? Jonah was not ready
for that complete self-effacement which was the/
highest expression of obedience. He must be taught |
by a very severe discipline, that if he would be always
a prophet and obtain a prophet's reward, he must not'
put the presence of fellow-men above the presence
of the Lord ; otherwise he will be cast out from
Divine favour, and find himself in the depth of
shame and in the darkness of death, from which
only the infinite mercy of God can pluck him forth.
He that "goes down" in the method and aim of his ,
life, will certainly find that he has made a miser
able exchange ; instead of " the presence of the Lord"
he is in the darkness of the pit.
There is just one other suggestion which may be
made, as to the thoughts which were working in
Jonah's mind. The mission to Nineveh, although
not altogether unprepared for, as we have seen, by
previous intercourse with Gentile nations and intima
tions of the wider diffusion of Divine blessings, was
yet a distinct and special mission to the stronghold
of heathenism, like a new'departure in the religious
history of Israel. We can easily believe that it
seemed to Jonah a change in the Divine action so

212 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
stupendous, that he could not drive out of his mind
doubts as to the authority of the message. They
may have gone no further than doubts ; a sense of
perplexity which he could not overcome. Who am
I, that I should be the instrument in such a work
of prophecy to the heathen ? Did not even Moses
shrink from undertaking the leadership of Israel in
their exodus from Egypt ? What wonder then that
Jonah should start back and flee from the Divine
call ! Was his flight more than a sort of " nolo
episcopari " ? Perhaps he only intended to flee that
/the Lord might fetch him back, with signs that should
overcome all his unbelief and prejudice and fear.
He meant by it, not that he refused to obey the voice
of God, but that he must hear it louder, and that it
should entirely destroy the paralysing perplexities of
his own mind. We are inclined to take that more
lenient view of Jonah's character. He was lacking in
faith, in enlightenment, in moral courage, in simplicity
of trust in God, in broad sympathy with mankind
and interest in the welfare of souls ; but he was
-not an apostate, and had no intention of ultimately
rejecting the commands of God. Hence he was
entirely brought back to implicit obedience by
miraculous preservation, which plainly said to him,
" Thou art the chosen servant of God ; even against
thine own will thou shalt be the Divine messenger;
spite of thy fears thou shalt be strong, and shalt be
a sign unto all the world of the grace of God." On

THE. CHARACTER OF JONAH. 213
the whole, in the flight of Jonah we trace the main
feature of his character. He was a true prophet, a
man of God, a devout man, waiting for the word ofp
God, but he leaned too much upon his own under-'
standing and was lacking in faith. The purpose of
the book is to show how such a character, with its
infirmity and narrowness and proneness to error, is
led by the gracious discipline and interposition of -
Jehovah, just as the apostles were in carrying the
Gospel outside the limits of Judaism, from the lower
to the higher position, from ' that of the mere
Israelitish prophet of Gath Hepher to that of the
messenger of a universal love to the world.
II. Let us now look at another point where the
character of Jonah is exhibited. The sleep into
which the prophet fell instantly that he went down
into the ship, is quite consistent with a state of mental
perplexity and fear. He had faith enough to know
that he was turning his back upon peace of mind ;
but he was so wearied with the mental strain and
struggle, so burdened with the weight of a reproach
ing conscience, that he gladly hid himself from the
faces of his fellow-men, and sought the darkness
and the solitude of his sleeping-place, where nature
asserted its demands, and he was soon wrapt in
unconsciousness. All that is full of verisimilitude.
Then follows the storm ; the waking up of the
prophet ; his confronting the heathen mariners, and
their simple-minded belief in the righteousness of

214 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
God and His avenging justice ; their appeal by lot
to Divine omniscience ; and the finger of Providence
as if pointing to Jonah as the guilty one. Now the
conduct of the prophet at that crisis is very signifi
cant. He has no 'crime to confess, such as heathen
men would understand and condemn by the light of
the moral law. It would no doubt appear mysterious
to them that he should have fled as he had. Why
should he refuse to go to Nineveh ? Why should
I it be so dreadful a sin to renounce a mission which
others might fulfil in his place? But, instantly that
Jonah saw the storm, and the sign of the lot pointing
to himself, conscience began to gain the upper hand.
He realized how great his offence was in setting
himself against God, and he not only told all to the
sailors, but became at once his own judge, passing
the capital sentence upon himself. "And he said
unto them, Take me up and cast me forth into the
sea, so shall the sea be calm unto you, for I know
that for my sake this great tempest is upon you."
Yet there must have been something in Jonah's
manner which convinced the men that he was pro
nouncing a severe sentence on himself, and that he
was aNgood man, for they wrought hard to save him ;
and they prayed afterwards, when they felt compelled
to offer up the prophet to the angry sea, that Jehovah
would not lay the death of the innocent man to their
charge. " For Thou, O Lord, hast done as it pleased
Thee," i.e. we are acting as unwilling instruments

THE CHARACTER OF JONAH. 215
of the Divine decree. The calm submission of
Jonah, and his instant recognition of the hand of
God, plainly indicate a mind intensely alive to moral
truth, and ready at once to sacrifice self to the /
declared will of God. We cannot, therefore, for
one moment entertain the idea that Jonah was an
apostate, in any sense of the word. He was not a
hardened hypocrite, professing to be a prophet of
the Lord, and yet wilfully trampling His command- '
ment under his feet. He was not a formalist ; he
was not a half-hearted servant of God, who, when he
was summoned to a duty which required effort and
endurance and courage, selfishly hid himself away
from it. We cannot believe that God would have
rescued him from his danger, had he been so
abandoned and worthless. Nor was it likely that
such a character would be united with that of a true
and great prophet ; though it is conceivable that a
really great man might be betrayed for a time into a
selfish or cowardly course of conduct, especially as
a reaction from great success, as we see in the case
of Elijah fleeing from Jezebel (1 Kings xix.). But'
Jonah's character was defective rather than corrupt.
Like the apostle Peter, he needed a great deal of
teaching, but the root of his piety was sound and
deep. He puts himself at once in the hands of the
chastising Jehovah. He sees his error and how great
it is, and is ready to leave himself to the merciful dis
position of Jehovah, just as David did, while doubtless

216 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
at the same time praying for deliverance. Unless
there was an instantaneous Divine communication to
the prophet's mind that he would be preserved, he
must have looked at that moment into the jaws of
death. But he was not unwilling to die, for he felt
that he was unfit to live. Unless he could live an
honoured and faithful life, death would be welcome.
But all such calm contemplation of the judgment of
God is not like the state of an apostate. Jonah could"
say at that moment, "Salvation is of the Lord!' He
looked towards the holy temple. " Though He slay
me yet will I trust in Him." His faith, though
mixed with unbelief, was real and deep, and the Lord
rewarded it by delivering him from all his fears, and
lifting him up to the height of his vocation as the
x messenger of love to the world.
III. The psalm of thanksgiving speaks for itself.
If the substance of it passed through Jonah's mind
when he was sinking in the deep, then he was
assuredly a devout man of God, full of faith and the
Holy Ghost at that moment, whatever his error had
been. If it was entirely a subsequent production,
then we must believe that Jonah recognised the
fitness of it to his own character, or he would not
have introduced it, and certainly would not have
represented it as coming from him in the midst of
his trial.
IV. Passing by the preaching at Nineveh, which
must have been with special power of the Spirit,

THE CHARACTER OF JONAH. 217^
a power which certainly would not have been
committed to Jonah unless he had been accepted'bf
Jehovah once more, we come to the remarkable scene
in the last chapter, the prophet's despondency in the
booth, and colloquy with God, which concludes the
book. What shall we say of Jonah's character as it
is presented there ? Can we ascribe such conduct to
mere petulance ? Can we believe that he would have
recorded concerning himself a mere passing feeling
of disappointment ? Would he have dared to set his
own selfish humour over against the greatness and
graciousness of God ? Again we must look deeper
for the explanation, and give the prophet the benefit
of any obscurity in the incidents. The evident in
tention of the whole chapter is to place Man in -
contrast with God. Jonah's idea of the Divine
character was plainly an imperfect one. He thought
that Divine repentance was Divine weakness, that|
the non-fulfilment of the word was a dishonour tol
Jehovah. What he did not understand was the
supremacy of Love in the dealings of God with Hisj
creatures. He was displeased ; he was very angry.)
Yet it was not entirely for himself. It was for
Jehovah and the honour of His spoken word. But
afterwards he came to see that the greatness of God
is not that which man is prone to think it, the great
ness of power alone, or even of justice alone, but the
fatherly greatness, which smites only for the sake
of saving life, and not for the sake of destroying it. .

Vl8 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
Why did Jonah pity the gourd ? because it served ?
him. Was it not a much greater pity which God
had for Nineveh ? absolutely unselfish, perfectly
pure, infinitely great. The thoughts and feelings of
\ the prophet are those of a man of like passions and
'infirmities with all others : but when we set over
against them the purposes and revelations of God,
surely we shall bow down and worship Him, before
whom all men and things lie open ; who while He
has made Himself known to His servants the
prophets, is yet unsearchable in His wisdom ; • but
I His love is a "height and length and depth and
breadth which passeth knowledge."

CHAPTER V
THE SEAMEN : THEIR RELIGION AND CONDUCT.
IT must be admitted by every candid reader of
the Book of Jonah, that the representation of
heathen religion given in it is very remarkable, as
coming from a Hebrew source. The sudden storm
and the imminent danger of the vessel tried the
character of the seamen ; and the general impression
which the brief narrative leaves is undoubtedly a
favourable one, leading us to think of the men as
simple-minded and sincere, reverent towards God,
and kind to their fellow-men. So in the repentance
of the great heathen city, we are brought face to face
with the fact that, notwithstanding all the degrada
tion of Assyrian polytheism, there was a suscepti
bility of conscience left undestroyed in the people,
from the highest to the lowest, upon which the
prophet was able to work, by the proclamation of
approaching judgment. Postponing for the present
the consideration of the repentance of Nineveh, let
us in this chapter examine more closely the account
given of the heathen seamen, in the narrative of
the storm.

220 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
The first point is the effect of terror, of the near
ness of death upon heathens. " Then the mariners
were afraid, and cried every man unto his god" It
was no ordinary storm, but " there was a mighty
tempest in the sea, and the ship was like to be
broken" ; or, as Dr. Pusey expresses it, " The ship
heaved and rolled and creaked and quivered under
the weight of the storm which lay on her, and her
masts groaned and her yard arms shivered." To a
certain extent it may be admitted that the prayers
of the sailors were the cries of cowardice, of men
unnerved by an overwhelming fear of death, stricken
with a panic which rendered them helpless. And it
is a remarkable fact, that those whose minds are
unenlightened in religion are prone to such paralysis
of fear. There is a great difference between different
races in this respect, the Eastern being much less
brave in danger than the Western, though quite as
capable of desperate courage when it is once excited.
The atmosphere of a Christian country has certainly
something to do with the natural characteristics of
the people. Even though the individual may be
destitute of religion, still the general effect of religion
may be traced upon his physical constitution and
mental habits. In Britain, e.g., the calm strength
and self-possession and faithfulness to duty which
characterize the people as a whole, and which are so
nobly exemplified in numerous instances when great
emergencies try them, are to be traced to the diffu-

THE SEAMEN: THEIR RELIGION AND CONDUCT. 221
sion in the nation of intelligence, morality, and good
order, and these all rest upon Christianity as a
foundation. In heathen countries the moral fibre of
the people is relaxed by their superstitions. Hence
we find, as a rule, that the more degraded the religious
observances of a nation, the weaker are their men,
the more easily reduced to helplessness by circum
stances of great danger. " The mariners were afraid!'
It seems probable that the vessel was manned from
various nationalities, as was generally the case in the
large Phoenician ships. In the twenty-seventh chapter
of Ezekiel there is evidence that the crews were
drawn from various parts of the world. They would
be likely, therefore, to carry with them their different
objects of worship, or emblems of their religions.
They would recognise, possibly, each one a different
tutelary deity. And the cry of helplessness in the
storm would send each one apart to his separate
religious observance. It is only the general fact that
is stated ; but it has its importance. Their religion
was not enlightened, and did not deliver them from
the power of natural fears ; it was not a religion
calculated to strengthen the mind and brace the
energies, and give calmness and courage in the hour
of extremity. But it is something to remember, that
these heathen men, with all their ignorance and
superstition, recognised the real worth of prayer and
the dependence of man upon God. They certainly
must have believed, however dimly, in the govern-

222 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
ment of God. Say it was polytheism that they pro
fessed, still polytheism is not atheism. It rests upon
a general belief in the supernatural and invisible, in
heavenly powers, which are regarded as in subordina
tion to a supreme Will. " They did what they could.
They were true to the best instincts of the human
mind. They did not know God, and therefore could
not call upon Him. They knew, however, that there
was a Providence, and that there were powers — ruling
powers — above men, laws, and forces. They believed
in gods, and to the gods they cried. Honour their
honesty, while you deplore their ignorance ; reverence
their worship, while you turn away from the objects
of it. Bow the knee beside them, and feel that you
are on holy ground while you are in company and
fellowship with human spirits in prayer " {Raleigh,
p. 85). It would seem, moreover, that while doubt
less terrified and scared, the sailors did not entirely
cease from action, for they " cast forth the wares that
were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it of them."
We may also take it for granted that they worked
the ship, otherwise it must have gone to pieces.
It is an interesting question, whether it is the
intention of the narrative, as an inspired narrative, to
represent the heathen men as saving the ship by their
prayers, or simply to describe their terror and ex
tremity ? The carefulness with which the conduct of
the shipmaster is narrated, which is evidently intended
to be set in contrast with Jonah's insensibility, lends

THE SEAMEN: THEIR RELIGION AND CONDUCT. 223
considerable force to the suggestion that these heathen
seamen were really devout and God-fearing men in
their own way, and that God heard their prayers.
The shipmaster aroused the sleeping Jonah, that there
might not be one unpraying soul in the vessel. " So
the shipmaster came to him, and said to him, What
meanest thou, 0 sleeper ? arise, call upon thy God, if so
be that God will think upon us, that we perish not!'
The inference from such words, surely, is, that in the
mind of the shipmaster there was one God, called upon
by different names. The prayers might be in different
languages and to different objects, but they would be
really one. " If so be that God will think upon us,
that we perish not" Dr. Raleigh has some forcible
remarks on this subject. " Did God hear their
prayers ? Did He accept them ? Did He answer
them ? Did they ' avail ' and become ' effectual ' in
any degree, as the fervent prayers of righteous men
do ? Did the cries of these sailqrs become powers for
the occasion, altering the chain of circumstances, and
helping, among other things, to bring on the issues
which actually came ? God only can answer such
questions fully. No one may dogmatise or speak as
possessing absolute knowledge. But I am very much
inclined to answer these questions in the affirmative.
Something, of course, would depend on the character
of the men. ' He that turneth away his ear from
hearing the. law, even his prayer shall be abomina
tion.' If men regard iniquity in their hearts, 'the

224 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
Lord will not hear them.' But looking at the ques
tion generally, the probability seems to be, that the
earnest and agonising cries of such men as these
to the only gods they knew, for deliverance from a
danger expressly brought upon them not by their
own misconduct, but by the misbehaviour of one of
the Lord's own servants, would be heard of Him,
accepted as a true prayer, and as though it had been
made unto Himself." " If the prayers of these men
are heard, we have here a strange, striking picture of
men and things ! A prophet of God refusing to go
and speak to the heathen ! Heathen sailors saving
that prophet, or helping to save him, from the con
sequence of his disobedience, by their prayers ! " (pp.
87, 88).
The next point is the casting of lots by the
seamen. "And they said every one to his fellow,
Come, let us cast lots, that we may know for whose
cause this evil is upon us." It seems strange that,
having prayed to God for help, they should not have
waited, to see if their prayers were heard. No doubt
it was the fact that the sea continued raging, which
seemed to the sailors an indication that the storm
was not an ordinary visitation of calamity. It was
sent, they thought, as an expression of Divine dis
pleasure on account of some particular sin. We see
an instance of that deep feeling of the pervading
presence of Divine justice, a feeling which was
common throughout the heathen world, in the saying

THE SEAMEN: THEIR RELIGION AND CONDUCT. 225
of the barbarians on Melita as they saw the viper on
the apostle Paul's hand : "And when the barbarians
saw the venomous beast hang on his hand, they said
among themselves, No doubt this man is a murderer,
whom, though he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance
suffereth not to live " (Acts xxviii. 4). The ancient
tragedy is an evidence of this prevailing belief in the
heathen world, that moral and physical evil are closely
connected together. It is very unlikely that such an
incident as the casting of lots in the storm-tossed
vessel would have been invented by a mere writer of
fiction in the sixth or fifth century. Had it been
simply for the sake of affording the occasion of the
subsequent miracle, one cannot understand why the
ship should not have been wrecked in the story, and
Jonah saved. To suppose that the deliberate inten
tion of the writer was to represent the heathen as
favourably as possible, seems too far fetched. The
ingenuity would be very unlike an ancient fable or
any work of fiction emanating from the Jews. But
as it is, taking the book as the genuine record of facts,
all is fitting and congruous. The seamen were God
fearing men, fully convinced that such a storm, com
ing so suddenly and with so much violence, was not
to be met by mere human effort. They first prayed
for help and deliverance ; and then, when their prayers
seemed in vain, the storm took another aspect in their
minds ; it was not the mere raging of the adverse
elements of nature, it was the raging of Divine ven-
Q

226 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
geance against some terrible sin ; and as it seemed
directed specially against their vessel, they naturally
concluded that the object of that Divine vengeance
was amongst them. Who was it ? We have no need
to suppose that they had any thought of becoming
executioners of justice ; but in seeking out the
offender, their object may simply have been to force
him to confession, and to some special sacrifice which
would appease the anger of the Deity.
It is impossible to doubt that the Divine mind
influenced the thoughts of the men, and suggested to
them the casting of lots, with a view to bring about
the detection and punishment of Jonah. It is quite
in accordance with other instances in Scripture, that
God should employ a usage which He would not
enjoin upon mankind generally, for the special pur
pose of His providence. There was an appeal by
Urim and Thummim amongst the Jews which was
divinely appointed, and in the instances of Achan
and Jonathan, we are led by the sacred history to
believe that God over-ruled the lot to direct His own
people. So He caused the heifers which the Philis
tines sent forth with the ark, to take the way to Beth-
shemesh, that the heathen might know that their
plague came from Him and not by chance. " Lots,"
says Thomas Aquinas, " according to the ends for
which they were cast, were for (i.) dividing ; (ii.) con
sulting ; (iii.) divining, (i.) The lot for dividing is not
wrong (i) if not used without any necessity ; for this

THE SEAMEN: THEIR RELIGION AND CONDUCT. 227

would be to tempt God : (2) if in case of necessity,
not without reverence of God, as if Holy Scriptures
were used for an earthly end, as in determining
any secular matter by opening the Bible : (3) not for
objects which ought to be divided otherwise (as an
office ought to be given to the fittest) : (4) not in
dependence on any other than God. ' The lot is cast
into the lap, but the wlwle disposing of it is the Lord's'
(Prov. xvi. 33). So then they are lawful in secular
things which cannot otherwise be conveniently dis
tributed, or when there is an apparent reason why,
in any advantage or disadvantage, one should be
preferred to another, (ii.) The lot for consulting, i.e.
to decide what one should do, is wrong, unless in
a matter of mere indifference, or under inspiration of
God, or in some extreme necessity when all human
means fail, (iii.) The lot for divining, i.e. to learn
truth, whether of things present or future, of which
we can have no human knowledge, is wrong, except
by direct inspiration of God. For it is either to
tempt God, who has not promised so to reveal things ;
or, against God, to seek superhuman knowledge by
ways unsanctioned by Him. Satan may readily mix
himself unknown in such inquiries, as in mesmer
ism. Forbidden ground is his own province " (See
Pusey's Minor Propliets, p. 270). The custom, how
ever, is one of extreme antiqurty. Among the
heathen the following instances are cited in the ar
ticle on Lot, Smith's Dictionary : choice of a cham-

228 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
pion or of priority of combat ; decision of fate in
battle; appointment of magistrates, jurymen, or
other functionaries ; priests ; a German practice of
deciding by marks or twigs, mentioned by Tacitus
{Germ., 10) ; division of conquered or colonized land.
Very similar instances are found mentioned in- the
Old Testament, and in the case of Matthias in the
New. Election by lot prevailed in the Christian
Church as late as the seventh century. There is
every reason, therefore, for regarding the conduct of
the seamen as a serious and solemn appeal to God.
And as such, it is another evidence of their simple
faith in the essential truths of the existence and
government of the divine Being and His hatred of
sin. The same recognition of omniscience and right
eousness in God is seen in the Homeric poems : —
" The crowd, with hands uplifted to the gods,
Trojans and Greeks alike, addressed their prayer :
' O Father Jove, who rul'st from Ida's height,
Most great ! most gracious ! Grant that whosoe'er
On both our armies hath this turmoil brought,
May undergo the doom of death, and we,
The rest, firm peace and lasting blessing swear.' "
"This terrified ship's company, without Divine
leave, fell upon lot-casting to discover a supposed
culprit in the ship, for whom the angry elements were
howling like beasts of prey, and God, with His unseen
hand, shakes the fateful box or vessel, and makes the
lot fall on Jonah. Is not this an instance of what

THE SEAMEN: THEIR RELIGION AND CONDUCT. 229
we may call the liberality of God ? He comes to
men as they are. He takes what there is in the form
of worship and service of Him, if it is the best that
men can achieve in the circumstances. He will be
pleased with the manner of true prayer, although it
exhales from a pagan censer. He will approve the
efforts men make to find out truth, justice, crime,
although these efforts do not seem to be regulated
by pure reason, and although they are not conducted
with perfect calmness. Men who have but broken
lights to follow, in following them truly, are in ' the
path of the just that shineth more and more.' The
long ' times ' of human ' ignorance ' that preceded
the coming of Christ, ' God winked at,' overlooked,
and passed by. He did not try men by higher
standards of knowledge than any which they
possessed, or could possibly possess. He tried and
judged and governed them by the laws and lights
they actually had. He did that uniformly. It was
a discovery He made to Peter ; but it was not there
fore a new thing with God. What the wondering
apostle ' perceived ' for the first time, had been true
from the beginning of the world, — viz. that ' God
was no respecter of persons' " {Raleigh, pp. 103-4).
" The lot fell upon Jonah!' We are intended to
understand that in this case God undoubtedly used
the heathen practice to accomplish His purposes.
The strange man who had just been roused out of
sleep is thus, before them, pointed out by the finger of

230 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
God as the object of Divine justice. At the same
time, the men are not vindictive in their spirit. As
throughout, so at that critical point, there is an im
mediate condemnation of Jonah in their minds. He
is a mystery to them, and they simply inquire of him
what is the secret he has to reveal. " Then said they
unto him, Tell us, we pray thee, jor whose cause this
evil is upon us : what is thine occupation ? and wlience
comest thou ? what is thy country ? and oj what people
art tliou ? " The natural excitement of the men is
well expressed in these rapid, eager questions. They
were evidently taken by surprise to find the culprit
in the inoffensive-looking stranger, whom they had
to waken to his danger in the storm. Jonah was a
good man ; and though there may have been upon his
countenance the lines of mental distress and dejection,
still there would be no appearance of reckless crimin
ality. His manner could scarcely be one of aston
ishment, or even terror, when the lot fell upon him,
for he knew it all beforehand, and no doubt was quite
prepared to die. He had gone through a terrible
conflict of feeling in the past. He could not suffer
more than he had suffered. Perhaps it was almost
a relief to him when the crisis came. The meaning
of the questions is well interpreted by Dr. Raleigh.
" ' For whose cause ? ' Have you wronged, injured, or
slain some one in wrath, and are you fleeing with the
guilt of blood on you ? Is there some mourning ?
Some that you have desolated ? Is there some

THE SEAMEN: THEIR RELIGION AND CONDUCT. 231
hidden grave ? ' For zvhose cause ' — literally, For
zvhat, to whom ? What have you done, and to whom
have you done it ? What is thine occupation ? Of
what craft, trade, profession ? Is it lawful, or is it
something hateful to the gods, for which they are pur
suing you ? In the following of that occupation are
you now on an evil errand, when thus apprehended
by the storm and judged by the lot? 'And whence
comest thou ? ' What was the last journey you made
before you came on board, and why did you make
it ? Where were you before we first saw you, and
what were you doing ? ' What is thy country ? ' Is
it far, or nigh — inland, or on the sea-board ? Is it
flat or mountainous, fruitful or barren ? protected by
many gods or few ? blessed or cursed of the heavens ?
' Of 'what people art thou?' Are you possibly inno
cent yourself, yet suffering because you belong to
some unfortunate family, or to some guilty, doomed
race?" (pp. n 2-1 3). The particularity of their in
quiries were for their guidance in their difficult
position, having to deal with a man on whom the
Divine condemnation had fallen, yet being unwilling
either to bring upon themselves innocent blood, or to
be cruel in their treatment of a fellow-creature, even
though he were a criminal. Such a state of mind
does credit to the men, showing that they had
humanity in their disposition and respect for the
right in their consciences. It is certainly unlike a
feigned incident. One would expect, in a mere

232 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
fiction, that the men would at once follow out the
direction of the lot, and be glad to be rid of the curse
which lay upon them on Jonah's account. It is true,
however, to the character of sailors generally, to repre
sent them as humane and kindly, and there is reason
to think that the Phoenicians were not so morally
degraded as other heathen peoples ; perhaps the
sea-faring men of that nation, by their extended in
tercourse with other nations, were enlightened and
sympathetic more than others. We find the same
remarkable susceptibility and openness to impression
in the scene which immediately followed, when Jonah
told them all, and no doubt told them, with the
solemn manner of a prophet, speaking of things im
measurably important, and of a man in sight of death
itself. "And he said unto tliem, I am an Hebrew ;
and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, which hath
made the sea and the dry land" That is to say, there
can be no doubt that this storm is on my account.
" Then were the men exceedingly afraid, and said unto
him, Why hast thou done this? For the men knew
that lie fled from the presence of the Lord, because lui
had told them!' He had told them exactly the nature
of his offence — that he had thrown off his prophetic
character and refused to fulfil his ministry as God
appointed it. And those heathen men at once seized
the awfulness of the prophet's position. They
grasped the thought, that a spiritual offence was far
greater than an ordinary moral crime — inasmuch as

THE SEAMEN: THEIR RELIGION AND CONDUCT. 233
it was more directly against God personally, and they
understood that the raging sea expressed the wrath
of an offended Being, whose servant was being pur
sued by Him and brought to judgment. There is an
intense interest in the revelation of character in these
few words, both of Jonah and of the seamen. In the
prophet, there was a grand homage done to truth
and righteousness, in the simplicity and fulness of his
confession. And in the seamen, there was a very
impressive example of the natural allegiance of the
human soul to God. They had nothing to say for
Jonah ; they took the side of God at once ; they felt
that all the powers of heaven and earth were against
a man who, having once gone into the presence of the
Most High, turned his back upon the claims of such
an office. The world may show great indifference to
religion, and yet there is a homage to it in the secret
depths of the heart which we can easily call forth.
Even those who themselves are far off from the
presence of the Lord, know what becomes those who
profess to dwell in it. There is nothing to the or
dinary mind more repulsive than unfaithfulness in a
priest or prophet. Either stand afar off from holy
things, or put off your shoes from your feet and
remember that the ground is holy, and the men who
are on it should be holy too.
The remainder of the description of the seamen's
conduct perfectly harmonizes with what has gone
before. They cannot treat the prophet as a mere

234 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH
criminal. They remember that he is the Lord's mes
senger, notwithstanding his offences. The sanctity
of his office still attaches to him in their view. They
take him at once into their counsel ; and indeed, it
might be said, that they come to him as to an oracle,
that they might know the will of God. " Then said
they unto him, What shall we do unto thee, that the sea
may be calm unto us ? " Of course, the thought would
come at once to all, that Jonah must be got rid of;
but the idea of laying violent hands on a prophet
of Jehovah was to those simple-minded and reverent
men something abhorrent. Yet the sea wrought
and was tempestuous. Something must be done, and
done at once. The prophet's sentence upon himself
perplexed them still more. How could such a man
be a bad man ? And how could they cast him out
of the ship without offence against God, if he was
really a good man ? There was so much firmness and
decision however, in Jonah's language, that they knew
not what to do. "And he said unto them, Take me up,
and cast me forth into the sea ; so shall the sea be calm
unto you : for I know that for my sake this great
tempest is upon you" Surely the scene that followed is
far too touching and beautiful, too deeply significant
and impressive, to be fiction. Only the inspiration of
God could suggest such facts, and God would never
inspire a mere fiction, for a place in His word. "Ne
vertheless the men rowed hard to bring it to the land ;
but they could not : for tlie sea wrought and was tern-

THE SEAMEN: THEIR RELIGION AND CONDUCT. 235
pestuous against them. Wherefore they cried unto the
Lord, and said, We beseech Tliee, O Lord, we beseech
Thee, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not
upon us innocent blood ; for Thou, O Lord, hast done
as it pleased Thee!' There is nothing in all fiction to
compare with this. The influence of Jonah's lofty
self-surrender had its effect, no doubt, on the men,
and they were under the impression of the nearness
of God and the solemnity of the crisis. "Those
men," rowing hard, "with hair tossing in the wind,
faces dashed with foam, horny hands dripping brine,
contribute a grander sight to the angels than philo
sophers lecturing on morals, or even than preachers
delivering the gospel. They are preaching with
every stroke the deepest gospel they know — working
up to their last energies on behalf of a fellow-creature
in great and awful straits, and hoping that it may be
the will of the most High at length to favour their
endeavour." Then it is very remarkable, that they
are led on to prayer, a very beautiful and suitable
prayer, before they put themselves as it were in the
hands of God, by casting out Jonah into the deep.
It would really seem as though the intention of the
narrator was, that Jonah, and the facts together, had
been the means of converting those poor heathen to
the knowledge and worship of the one true and living
God. It is a wonderful instance of rapid enlighten
ment, and of the work of the Spirit of God on the
mind of Gentiles, and as such it was a preparation

236 ' STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
of Jonah for the work he would have to do at
Nineveh, and a most powerful rebuke of his unbelief
in standing aloof from that task.
Then came the end. The sentence is already
passed, and it has to be executed. They must obey,
and in this they are a contrast to Jonah himself
" Thou hast done" they said, " as it hath pleased
Tliee;" we must do Thy will. "So they took up Jonah,
and cast him forth into the sea; and the sea ceased
from lur raging!' The work was no sooner done than
God gave them the sign that they had accomplished
His own decree, and that the innocent blood was not
upon them. " Then the men feared the Lord exceed
ingly, and offered a sacrifice unto the Lord, and made
vows!' The end of the storm was not the end of
their religious feelings. They pledged themselves to
Jehovah, and while they offered a sacrifice of some
living creature in the ship, " acknowledged and glori
fied the justice and holiness that had just exacted
and received a nobler and more awful sacrifice in the
living man ; appealing at the same time to Divine
mercy, and placability, and propitious love."
Altogether, the character and conduct of the
heathen sailors form a remarkable example of the
openness of the Gentile world to the teaching of true
religion. There is simplicity in the narrative, at this
part of it, which is unlike the fictions of a later age,
and yet it is impossible not to be struck with the
boldness of the incidents. That a company of sailors,

THE SEAMEN: THEIR RELIGION AND CONDUCT. 237
knowing nothing but the superstitions of the Phoe
nicians, or other Pagan nations, and that as rude
and uninstructed men would know them, should yet
readily understand and appreciate Jonah's position,
should reverence his office and life, and should seize
the solemnity of the crisis with so much depth and
earnestness of feeling, not only treating Jonah himself
so considerately, but at once acknowledging Jehovah
as the true God, fills us with surprise. It is not at
all probable that one who sought to clothe a mere
sentiment, that of sympathy with the Gentile world,
in the form of a story, would have invented such
details as we find in the first chapter. The hand of
the artist would be certainly more easily traceable.
As it is, simplicity and originality combine to bear
witness to the truthfulness of the narrative.

CHAPTER VI.
THE TEACHING OF THE BOOK OF JONAH ON THE
DIVINE CHARACTER AND PURPOSES.
APART altogether from critical questions, there is
- on the very surface of the Book of Jonah a
remarkable distinction to be recognised. While it
deals with the history of a prophet, still it is impos
sible to believe that it was written for the sake of
commemorating him, and his strange conduct and
miraculous deliverance. And again, while it brings
prominently before the reader the heathen city of
Nineveh, it is remarkable that very little is said about
that city,' so that we are left with the impression that
the book was not intended to fix special attention on
a particular portion of the heathen world, and on the
fate of a particular empire. It is true, that in the
third chapter we are introduced to the great Assyrian
capital, and the imagination is stirred by the sug
gestions of the narrative, so that we are carried in
thought to the palace of the great king, to his council
of nobles, and to the vast population of the city, all
pervaded with the same spirit of humiliation and
penitence, and filled with the sounds of lamentation
238

DIVINE CHARACTER AND PURPOSES. 239
and appeal to God for deliverance. Such details are
intensely interesting, as are the glimpses into the
personal demeanour and experience of the prophet.
But they fail to remove the prevailing impression of
the book, which is, that the Spirit of God is employ
ing all such facts in subordination to a single aim,
and that of the very highest order and most perma
nent importance, in harmony with the whole bearing
of Divine revelation.
Had we met with the Book of Jonah in the Apo
crypha, we should have been tempted to overlook the
profound teachings contained in it, and we should
have regarded it as a traditional story, wrought up
into its present shape by some writer of a later time,
whose spirit was, by contact with better forms of
heathenism, liberated and delivered from Jewish
prejudices. But, as we have seen, the difficulty then
would have been to account for the simplicity and
purity of the book, and for the fact that the more it is
studied the deeper and the more valuable its teach
ings are found to be. We do not receive it from the
Alexandrian school, but from the Jews of Palestine.
It is not an apocryphal book, but so far as we can
trace it, has come down to us, with a recognised place
in the Hebrew canon, from those who put that canon
together. The book forms a constituent part of the
Old Testament Scriptures. Then we are led to in
quire, what is the special contribution which is made
by it to the whole body of revelation ? For that

/40 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
surely is the only method by which we do justice to
those who have gone before us ; to the Spirit of God
in the Jewish Church ; to the law of progress in the
dispensation of Divine grace. The character of the
book is so diverse from any other in the canon, that
it must suggest itself to any candid mind, whether
it was not put where it is because it was regarded by
those whp first received it as the work of inspiration.
A careful study of its profounder meanings bears fruit.
in this case as in every other, and "Wisdom is justi
fied of her children." The peculiarities of the book
fall into the background. The idiosyncracies of the
prophet, the marvellousness of his history, the indi
vidual interest in the heathen city and its fate, all
sink into comparative oblivion. The mind of the de
vout reader is enchained upon the one supreme topic
which belongs to the very substance of Bible truth,
and which is of universal and perpetual import, — the
character of God ; His purposes towards mankind ;
His ultimate end in His dealings with the one elect
race, and with all the world through them.
I. The first and broadest teaching of the Book of
Jonah regards the character of God as the God of
Nations. The opening words suggest to us at once
that what is about to be written in the book concerns
not so much the religious welfare of Israel or Judah,
but a great heathen city, which is representative of the
world outside the elect people. " Now the word of
Jehovah came unto Jonah tlie son oj Amittai, saying,

DIVINE CHARACTER AND PURPOSES. 241
Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against
it; for their wickedness is come up before Me" There
are many instances in which prophecies are delivered
against heathen nations, but those prophecies were
included in the ministry of men who preached among
God's own people. The evident intention of such
denunciations of judgment upon surrounding nations,
was to maintain and exalt Divine authority amongst
the Hebrew people themselves. They were filled
with the thought of Divine Righteousness as vindi
cated among -the heathen, and so were warned against
their own sins and exhorted to fulfil their own vocation.
But the message which came to Jonah was not 'to
preach the destruction of Nineveh among his own
people, but to turn his back for a time upon Israel
and go and denounce the heathen city in the name of
Jehovah whom he served ; in other words, to transfer
his ministry as a prophet to a heathen sphere. It
was a most striking, and, to Jonah, perplexing an
nouncement. But it was a new revelation of God, if
only it was rightly received by those to whom it was
sent. Now it has been the theory of some modern
critics, that the Old Testament taught a view of the
Divine character which rose no higher than that of
the Judaizing scribes. Jehovah was a national deity,
whose laws and works were a reflection of the Jewish
mind. In other words, the religion which expresses
itself in the Old Testament is only one factor in the
religious history of mankind, and as such has only a
R

242 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
relative value. It served its purpose in the progres
sive development of Religion in its place in the world,
but that purpose was only a subordinate and tem
porary one. But here we are met with a fact which
directly traverses such a view. Jonah is commanded
to preach at Nineveh in the name of Jehovah. The
Phoenician sailors feared Jehovah exceedingly, offered
sacrifice, and made vows to Jehovah. Moreover, it is
remarkable that when Nineveh repents, it is not be
cause Jonah's preaching has changed their form of
religion, and they have adopted Jonah's faith instead
of their own, but "they believed God" {Elohim), they
" cried mightily to God" {Elohim), and " God saw their
works, and repented oj the evil that He said He would
do unto them, and He did it not!' Thus we are taught
that God and Jehovah are one. The Jew is not per
mitted to make a distinction between his God and
the God of Nineveh. The God of Israel is the God
of the Nations. What could more plainly say that
" God has made of one blood all nations of men for
to dwell on all the face of the earth " — that the reve
lation identified with the name of Elohim is the same
as that identified with the name of Jehovah. What
ever tendency there was to separate them in the minds
of the Jews, this book denounced it as entirely con
trary to the Spirit of God and to the bearing of the
ancient Scriptures. Then, again, the God of the
Nations was not only identified with Jehovah, in the
stoty as a whole, but His character is proclaimed to

DIVINE CHARACTER AND PURPOSES. 243
be the same towards all the world which it was fo r
wards His own people. The general result of this
book is that God is at once righteous and merciful/
He cannot pass by the transgressions of the wicked,
but He willeth not the death of a sinner, but rather
that he should turn from his wickedness and live.
Neither amongst the heathen themselves, nor amongst
the tribes x>f Israel, was this character of God pre
served incorrupt amid the superstitions and prejudices
of ignorance and degeneracy. The heathen thought
of God as arbitrary, despotic, capricious, and cruel.
The Jews were tempted to think of Him as bound by
a special covenant to one chosen race, and leaving
the rest of the world to perish. Nothing could more
signally rebuke such ignorance and prejudice, as
the mission of Jonah to Nineveh. Go and tell that
people that there is a righteous God in heaven who
will by no means clear the guilty, whose eyes are in
all the earth ; but tell them also that what He is to
His chosen, covenant people of Israel, He will be to
all mankind, a God passing by iniquity, transgression
and sin, to all those who truly repent and turn from
their wickedness.
Again, the proclamation of threatening against the
Ninevites was a condemnation of despotic rapacity
and violence. As such it was a revelation of the cha
racter of God which was needful both to the heathen
and to the Jews. Nothing is said of the direct enmity
of Assyria towards Israel-. At the time of Jonah it

.244 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
was still only a dark cloud on the horizon. It was
therefore impossible to pervert the meaning of Jeho
vah's message to a mere reflection of His love for
His people. It was a message to Nineveh. It was a
condemnation of cruelty and worldly ambition as in
themselves offensive to God. And yet among the
Jews themselves, there is too much reason to believe
that Divine sanction was often pleaded for a procedure
which violated the laws of humanity and moderation
as truly as the semi-barbaric policy of the Mesopota-
mian kingdoms. The tone of the whole Book of
»Jonah is that of sympathy with man as man ; and that
sympathy is attributed to God, that it might be clearly
taught that Righteousness is not inconsistent with Love,
but is only another name for Love. Now these views
of the Divine character may be . found, it is true, in
other parts of the Old Testament. They are pro
minently taught in the Book of Genesis. The God
of the patriarchs was a Being who delighted in the
order and happiness of the whole human . family.
While the nations of the earth are represented as
ruled by the Divine hand, and the purpose of Jehovah
is seen to be unfolding itself more and more in
the history of the descendants of Abraham, there is
nothing to warrant any narrow exclusiveness in the
doctrines of the Mosaic economy. The separation
from the heathen which is commanded and enforced,
is separation from heathen abominations. While, all
1 through the history, Israel is the beloved of the Lord,

DIVINE CHARACTER AND PURPOSES. 245 '
the blessing which is preserved and handed on from
generation to generation to the chosen people, is a
blessing which is destined to be expanded until it
shall embrace " all the families of the earth." This
universality of the religion of Israel is the substance''
of the message sent by Jonah, and it is sent through
him to all nations and all times. The God who cares
for Nineveh is the God who cares for the world.
II. Another aspect of the Book of Jonah is its
bearing upon the popular mind at the time when it
was written, its teachings as to the character of God^
as^the God of Israel. Now all we have just said, as
to the proclamation of Truth to the nations, had to be
put before the contemporaries of Jonah in his own
land, in some form which would arrest their attention
and deeply impress their hearts. We must bear in
mind that Israel was about to be tried with a series
of special messages, inciting all that believed in the
Divine vocation of Jehovah's people to rise to the
height of their privilege and realize His blessing.
Prophet after prophet was to be sent, who should
appeal to them to turn from their idolatries and
national exclusiveness, and become the witnesses for
God to the world. We have only to remember that
it was no very long time after Jonah that Micah ap
peared, and that he was the immediate predecessor of
Isaiah, in order to see that Jehovah was sounding a
trumpet-call to those to whom He had entrusted His
Truth, to become His ambassadors to the whole sphere

246 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
of His dominion, that the earth might be filled with
His knowledge. The keynote of prophecy is the
reign of Messiah, and the promise is that that reign
shall be universal. But in the time of Jonah — that
is, eight centuries before Christ — the people were
scarcely prepared to listen to direct statements of this
truth. It would occupy but a small space in prophetic
messages, and would be introduced only in dim inti
mations and predictions capable of the widest appli
cation, while, at the same time, clothed in language
which might be viewed in a narrower sense. Hence
the peculiar character of the Book of Jonah. While
the description of actual occurrences, it was yet a
parable full of significance for all those who would
look beneath the framework of fact and read the
Divine lessons within. The prophet , himself was,
no doubt, almost a typical Jew of his time. We may
well believe that there would scarcely have been found
] in all Israel or Judah one who would not have shrunk,
as he shrank, from a mission to a heathen country.
The purpose of Jehovah would be as mysterious to
the whole land as it evidently was to Jonah. And yet
he is put completely in the wrong by the narrative.
He is exhibited in a most unfavourable light. His
mistakes are arrested by a most merciful Providence,
\and the end is not glory to Jonah, but glory to Jeho
vah, the Saviour of Nineveh, the pitiful protector of
the weak and the ignorant. The effect of such a par
able upon the minds of the people must surely have

DIVINE CHARACTER AND PURPOSES. 2W
been very marked. We are not told of any actual
results wrought by it ; but perhaps it paved the way,
more than we can ever now trace, for the subsequent
messages of the prophets.
There is another point which ought to be noticed
in considering the teaching of this book in Israel.
It was a direct and very powerful protest against i
mere priestism and ceremonialism. Jonah had
nothing to do but to preach repentance. And God
spared Nineveh simply on their turning from their
wickedness and confessing their sins. Some might
have been tempted to reply, then why all the costly
and complicated ritual which Jehovah has instituted
among His own people ? But while the teaching of
the book is undoubtedly broad and liberal, full of the
very milk of human kindness, there is no one word to
be found in it disparaging the Mosaic system. The^
truth which is taught is, that God can'Sispense with
all such external aids to religion when it pleases Him ;
and when He is seeking after the souls of the heathen,
He will set them aside, for He is not a God who
takes pleasure in such things for their own sake. He
is not 'Worshipped with men's hands, as though He
needed anything. The rapid conversions described,
first of the heathen sailors under the influence of the
storm, and then of the Ninevites under the proclama
tion of approaching judgment, must have taught the
people of Israel that, when the Spirit of God is at>
work, the agency of man need not be anything very

248 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
vast or extraordinary. One instrument, and he a
very feeble and unworthy one, may be chosen of God
to accomplish very mighty results.
-* And then there is the personal character of the
prophet, which certainly would seem in some degree
to reflect the attitude of the Jews towards their
neighbours, and so indirectly to rebuke them. They
| were, like Jonah, angry at the loss of their position ;
and yet they dishonoured it, and lost it because they
dishonoured it. They were proud and petulant ;
ready enough to copy what was bad among the
Gentiles, and yet unwilling to> share with them what
was good among themselves. They had a power
wherewith to bless the world, and instead of using it
for the world's sake, they used it for their own, and
brought themselves under the world's curse. The
story of Jonah was a hidden prophecy of the future
of both Israel and Judah. They turned away from
the presence of the Lord. They were swallowed up
by the calamities which arrested them. Yet in God's
mercy they were cast out of the pit of trouble on the
ground of repentance. They received a second calK
after their deliverance. They obeyed it, but not with
the full purpose of heart which His discipline should
have laid up in them ; and while the heathen were
called into the covenant, they sat aloof and sulked,
until the Lord rebuked them again, and brought
them to rejoice in His mercy.
Dr. Pusey has noticed that the form of words with

. DIVINE CHARACTER AND PURPOSES. 249
which the Book of Jonah opens must have suggested
to the Jews the thought, that the Divine purpose was
to extend the covenant of grace to the Gentiles. -
" Would then God deal thenceforth with the heathen
as with the Jews ? Would they have their pro
phets ? Would they be included in the one family
of God ? The mission of Jonah itself was an
earnest that they would. God, who does nothing
fitfully or capriciously, in that He had begun, gave
an earnest that He would carry on what He had
begun. And so, thenceforth, the great prophets,
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, were prophets to the
nations also ; Daniel was a prophet among them, to
them as well as to their captives. But the mission of
Jonah might, so far, have been something exceptional.
The enrolling his book as an integral part of the
Scriptures, joining on that prophecy to the other
prophecies to Israel, was an earnest that they were to
be parts of one system." We can scarcely doubt that
one end of the book was to provoke the Lord's people
to jealousy by them that were no people ; to show
them the heathen repenting, that they might feel the
more deeply the heinousness of their own impenitence. '
Moreover, the history of Jonah must have warned
them against that unbelieving restraint of the Spirit
to which they were tempted throughout their whole
course, as they were reminded by the evangelist
Stephen. " Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart
and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost : as your

250 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
Jathers did, so do ye " (Acts vii. 5 1). The fault of the
prophet was, that he put his own interpretation on
the word of God, and refused to follow the guidance
i of the Spirit when he was led away from his old
standpoint to assume a much higher. He would
rather resign his ministry than go off the old lines.
So the Jews, as a nation, when they were tried by
the great crisis of their history, would rather renounce
their Messiah than acknowledge One who was not
according to their preconceived notions. How
terrible the spiritual danger of those who are not
open to the teaching of the Spirit ! How possible
to pervert a position of exalted privilege into one of
blasphemy against the Holy Ghost ! To be trustees
of the Divine oracles is to be responsible for their
faithful dispensation to the world. We must either
use the foundation stone by building upon it, or be
crushed by its weight as it falls into its true place,
and we are not on it but under it. The Jews would
not build upon the truth which was given in the
Scriptures, and glorified in Jesus Christ. The king
dom of the Messiah had therefore to be established
in spite of them. And the first great act of that work
of establishment of the kingdom, was the crushing of
Jerusalem, and its nationality, as the old dispensation
closed and the new was inaugurated.
III. God repenting Him oj the evil. Both in the
case of Jonah and in the case of the Ninevites. the
character of God is represented as compassionate and

DIVINE CHARACTER AND PURPOSES. 251
patient. In dealing with His own servants there is no
difficulty whatever in understanding, that while disci
pline was exercised towards the disobedient prophet,
that discipline is yet controlled by the deeper
purpose of the Divine will, which had appointed
Jonah to a mission of the very highest and most
arduous kind. It is quite in accordance with the
teaching of Scripture throughout, and with the his
tory of God's most distinguished servants, that
before a great work is accomplished, the instrument
appointed should himself be carried through a fiery '
trial by which his own crude knowledge and feelings
were purged of their grossness, and the gold of his
obedience purified. But it is somewhat different
when we regard the dealings of God with the world at
large, or with communities, or with mingled motives
in human beings generally. We must then facej
the difficulty, that there seems to be something like
inconsistency and contradiction between the Word
of God and the actual appointments of His provi
dence. The proclamation which Jonah was com
manded to make among the multitudes of Nineveh
was shaped in the form of a prediction : " Yet jorty
days and Nineveh shall be overthrown!' But that a
prophet should be sent to make the proclamation
was itself, apart from anything which Jonah may
have added, an implied condition. It meant, that the
same God who pronounced the sentence was ready to/
recall it on the repentance of the people. The facts

252 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
are a perfectly indisputable proof of this. We do not
need to know whether Jonah preached repentance by
word of mouth or not ; his appearance preached it ;
his cry evidently meant it, for the people did repent.
Had they understood the sentence as irrevocable they
would not have expressed their hope as they did,
" Who can tell ij God will turn and repent and turn
away jrom His fierce anger, that we perish not ? "
The meaning of such words must of course be, that
in their hearts there was the hope and the belief that
He would. How then are we to construe the fact,
that God had announced that He would destroy
them, knowing and foreseeing that they would,
through their repentance, turn away His anger ? To
this question we must direct our attention briefly,
that all difficulty may, if possible, be removed.
First, as to the use in Scripture of the term
" repentance " as applied to God. There cannot
be much difficulty in the mind of any thoughtful
reader of the Bible in the mere verbal contradiction
which appears on the surface. In some places God
is represented as repenting, in other places it is said
that He cannot repent, as e.g. Num. xxiii. 9 : " God
is not a man that He should lie, neither the son of
man that He should repent. Hath He said it, and
shall He not do it ? or hath He spoken, and shall
He not make it good?" Job xxiii. 13: " He is in
one mind, and who can turn Him ? And what His
soul desireth, even that He doeth." Mai. iii. 6 :

DIVINE CHARACTER AND PURPOSES. 253
" I am the Lord, I change not ; therefore ye sons
of Jacob are not consumed." Rom. xi. 29 : " The
gifts and calling of God are without repentance."
The meaning in all such passages is, that God is
the God of truth, perfect and unchangeable in His
character, therefore an object of unwavering con
fidence to His people. In Him " there is no variable
ness, neither the shadow of turning" (James i. 17).
But there are other passages of Scripture which
present another aspect of the Divine character,
viz. that it is open to man and to the influence of -
human action. This is represented both under the
form of a change of procedure in Divine providence,
and a change of feeling towards man in God Himself.
Gen. vi. 6 : " And God saw that the wickedness of
man was great in the earth, and that every imagina
tion of the thoughts of his heart was only evil con
tinually. And it repented the Lord that He had
made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His
heart." And in reference to the conduct of nations
the principle is distinctly proclaimed. Jer. xviii. 7 :
" At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation
and concerning a kingdom to pluck up and to pull
down, and to destroy it ; if that nation, against whom
I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent
of the evil that I thought to do unto them." Here
we have a rule of the Divine method laid down.
Evidently the meaning of repentance, in such a case,
is simply change of procedure. There is no reference

254 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
to any attribute of the Divine nature regarded abso
lutely, except that it is implied that God is just and
pitiful. His sentence is according to the facts of the
case. If the facts are changed, His sentence is re
moved. In the primitive religion of the patriarchs it
would be quite in accordance with all the revelation
of God given at that time to speak of His seeing the
wickedness of man on the earth as a man would see
it, as something which affected His thoughts and pur
poses. If the principle of the revelation then granted
to mankind was that God should be represented
anthropomorphically, that is, as having a similar
relation to men to that which men have to one
another, it would be quite consistent with that princi
ple to speak of God seeing' as man sees, and as being
moved by what He saw. A man seeing the earth
as it was, would be affected by the sight, according as
he was a good man or a bad man. The object of the
passage in Genesis is evidently to teach us that God's
method of dealing with earthly facts may be judged
of by the principles of human judgment, in so far
as they are pure and true, and that the effect of those
facts upon a human heart may be a help to us to
understand how God regards them. Underneath all
such passages there lies the Divine secret of the
Incarnation. " God manifest in the flesh" the perfect
revelation of the Divine in the " Man Christ Jesus!'
There is no contradiction in the various and yet
corresponding parts of the one revelation.

DIVINE CHARACTER AND PURPOSES. 255
To speak of God in human phraseology is not
hiding Him, but helping our thought to approach
nearer to His Spirit. Yet it is necessary to guard
such a method of speech from abuse. God is not
a man, therefore He is above the frailties and errors
of mankind. He is unchangeable ; yet it is through
humanity, which is changeable, that we are able to
see the imaged reflection of His unchangeable per
fection. We are accustomed to this double aspect of
truth in every department. We have to be reminded
everywhere that the Infinite and the Finite are in
man himself. Apparent contradictions are only the
result of the twofold relation of the human mind, on
the one hand to that which can be expressed in
terms of the earthly, on the other to that which is
above this world and which must be expressed in
terms which deny the limits of this world.
But there is another difficulty, which is much more
pressing and definite in the case before us. God,
we are told, commanded Jonah to proclaim the over
throw of Nineveh. How is it consistent with His 1
truthfulness that He should put into the lips of His
prophet an unconditional prophecy, when, as the facts :
proved, the future was really contingent upon the
conduct of the people who received this prophecy ?
Now there is one proposed explanation of this diffi
culty which we must utterly reject as unworthy of
Divine sanction. It is said by some, that God sent
the positive prediction of His judgment to Nineveh,

-256 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
because if it had been expressed otherwise than
positively the people would not have repented. In
other words, He wrought upon their fears by the
absoluteness of the terms in which this message was
proclaimed. This cannot be the explanation. On
the other hand, the passage just now quoted from
Jeremiah xviii. y, manifestly rests upon a well under
stood principle, that all threatenings made by God
directly to a nation are conditional in their nature,
not absolute. He denounces the sin by means of
the threatening. Therefore, if the sin is put away
the object of the threatening is attained. We must
not carry notions derived from positive law and its,
execution into the sphere of ethics and religion, with
out modification. There is no such thing recognised
in law as repentance. The offender, being convicted,
is either punished or pardoned. The pardon is a
sovereign act, which is above the sphere of the
positive law. When God proclaimed to Nineveh
that within forty days it should be overthrown, we
can compare that proclamation to the sentence of
a judge, which, regarded in itself, is absolute ; but
the fact that God sent the proclamation through His
prophet, was a revelation to the Ninevites that He
'was not merely their Judge, but their Sovereign, to
whom they could approach by prayer and penitence,
'and who could exercise the sovereign prerogative of
mercy, and pass by their transgressions. What
Jonah said therefore, was, in substance, this, "Your

DIVINE CHARACTER AND PURPOSES. 257
sins have been before God ; He condemns them as
worthy of death ; He will certainly punish them, and
that speedily, within forty days, unless His mercy
spares you." The unconditional form of the pro
phecy, then, is merely the tribute which is paid to the
justice of God, which is absolute, which can never
be changed as justice, which is honoured even in
the remission of punishment, and which must be
proclaimed as the foundation on which all true repent
ance is made to rest. We deserve the overthrow.
It is the just sentence upon us. That was what
the people must acknowledge. Therefore the prophet
was commanded to pronounce the sentence in the
name of God. But the prophet's appearance was an
invitation to repentance and salvation. It was not
a prediction of the future, for that future must
depend on the moral attitude of the people. That
must be the outcome of moral freedom. Therefore
they must be left face to face with the justice and
goodness of God — His justice in the sentence, His
goodness in the visit of His prophet. They turned
from the error of their ways. Therefore the justice 1
of God was honoured, not in their destruction, but in*
their salvation, for " if we confess our sins, He is
faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse
us from all unrighteousness."
That this is the correct interpretation of the facts
is evident from the last chapter, where the narrow
mind of Jonah is exhibited in contrast with the
S

N258 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
breadth of the Divine righteousness. Man is apt to
think that justice is best honoured by the literal exe
cution of a sentence ; but this conception of justice
is very far from the lofty and spiritual teaching of
the Scriptures. The destruction of human beings is
vno satisfaction to the justice of God — apart from its
bearing on the purpose of His law. He commands
righteousness, because He delights in righteousness ;
if then the righteousness has been ultimately at
tained through His remission of punishment and His
gracious renewal of the sinner, the law is more
honoured in the non-execution of the sentence than
it would have been if the threatened destruction had
been fulfilled. The law is for the sake of men, and
|when both the law and the men are preserved, then
He who created man in His image and delights in
His creation, is glorified, not as the God of death,
but as the God of life.
It has been pointed out by Dr. Raleigh, in his
thoughtful work on The Story of Jonah, that if we
only take this view of the Divine character as in
volving in itself at the same time both justice and
'mercy, then there is no need to put any meaning into
the words other than that which they naturally bear.
- God did really repent or change His mind. " When
He sent the prophet, He meant destruction, just
according to the cry; and when the city was humbled;
He changed His mind, put a seal upon the fountains
and forces of ruin, which were throbbing in readiness

DIVINE CHARACTER AND PURPOSES. 259 '
to break forth, and waved the destroying angel home.
Did He not mean to destroy ? Then how can we
reconcile the prophet's cry with the Divine veracity ?
If He was merely holding out an empty threat, ' a
terror of the Law,' which in fact was no terror at all,
but only a cunning expedient to produce a beneficial
end, then what threatening has truth in it ? Is there
a judgment ? Is there a hell ? Are not pangs of
conscience, and penalties of law, and pointings of
justice to a future life, all baseless and illusory ? If
God means to condemn unbelievers and disobedient
men for the sin they have done, and for the rejection
of His gospel, then He meant to destroy Nineveh.
And if the question is put : ' Why, then, was it not
destroyed ? How can we reconcile the sparing of
the city with Divine veracity, since there is no con
dition or qualification in the denouncing cry ? ' — the
answer is, that the condition was involved and under- '
stood. The possibility of mercy was clearly under-l
stood by Jonah, for he was displeased with it. It
was understood also by the Ninevites, for they cried
for long days and nights, ' Who can tell ? ' If God
had made unreserved announcement of destruction,
the city must have been destroyed, ' for He is in one
mind, and who can turn Him ? Hath He said it,
and shall He not do it?' 'But He knew that
the city would repent. Why then did He threaten
without any expressed reference to the eventuality ? '
The answer is, that He knew that the city would

260 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
repent under the shadow of the Divine commination.
xNot otherwise. The commination was uttered be
cause it was deserved, because it suited the moral
condition of the people, because it was necessary
in the perfect government of God. Also, God
foresaw its good effect, and therefore in all truth
and sincerity it was put forth. God knows that His
believing children will persevere unto the end. Why
then does He speak to them as if they might not ?
as if they might apostatize and draw back unto
perdition ? The answer is : ' Because they might.'
lit is a clear possibility that they might ; and, very
.likely, the realization by them of this awful possi
bility is one of the elements which compose and
complete the certainty of perseverance unto the end.
Some metaphysical objections, no doubt, lie against
this reasoning ; but not more than, not so many as,
lie against any other theory that may be formed.
| It has the inestimable advantage of saving the Divine
veracity and sincerity in all the utterances of the ¦
Bible. Why should it be incredible that God 're
pents ' or changes ? Would it not be more incredible
if it were asserted that He never does ? Would it
be to the honour of God if it could be said, with
truth, that He thinks and feels concerning us in
our condition, exactly as He would if we were in a
condition the very opposite ? Among men, a good
father, a just master, will treat son or servant accord
ing to their works and their state. When they

DIVINE CHARACTER AND TLRPOSES. 261 '

wickedly .transgress he is grieved and ^ngry. When
they repent and reform he is glad and pleased.
Such a man is not called fickle and changeable in
nature on account of those changing states. Because
he has integrity and love in his nature as unchanging
principles, therefore, as the ever varying facts and
scenes of life arise and pass before him, as the
different acts and moral states of men are perceived,
there are emotions corresponding with them excited
in his mind. And are we to suppose that what
constitutes a special perfection in the moral character
of a man is an imperfection in God ? Surely not.
His mind is the one perfect mirror, reflecting, with
out the least distortion or refraction, every object,
act, state, being, in the universe, just as it is. This
is the heart and core of what we are now saying —
that God morally regards us at any one moment
just as we are. He does not look upon hypothetical
beings whose images and proportions he has written
down in His plan, but on the living men, women,
children and cattle, just as they are. Of course He
has considered our future, and has provided for it
all. He sees the germs in us of all that, by His
grace, will make the future blossom into eternal
beauty. But what we are now God regards us as
being. If we repent of all sin and grow into all
goodness, His thought and feeling will rise with us ;
and as, repenting, He spared Nineveh, so He will
spare us, and we shall live and not die" (pp. 248-251).

262 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
The great value of the Book of. Jonah, as setting
such truth very strikingly before us, is itself a power
ful argument for its authority. Mere ingenious
fiction is not rich with spiritual suggestion as this
book is. It is a parable of Divine 'character and
action whose meaning we can never exhaust.

CHAPTER VII.
THE REPENTANCE OF THE NINEVITES.
THERE are two aspects of the repentance of
Nineveh which must be distinguished. It was
a popular movement first ; and extended from the
people to the throne. It became subsequently a
universal act of the city ; being proclaimed by the
decree of the king and nobles, and then taken up in
obedience to the command of the government. It ap
pears of considerable importance to bear this twofold
aspect of the one fact in remembrance. To many
it has seemed almost incredible that the whole city
should be converted by the preaching of one man,
and that one man a stranger. But the narrative
by no means goes so far as that. "So the people
of Nineveh believed God ; " that may refer to an
extensive movement among the lower classes, "in
the streets and lanes of the city." Then it is said
that they "proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth,
from the greatest of them to the least of tltem." Now
the poorer classes of the populace could not have
made a proclamation ; neither could the people have
263

264 S7UDIES IN IRE BOOK OF JONAH.
done so by any other means than that subsequently
described, viz. by the decree of the council of '¦ the
king and his nobles!' We must, therefore, interpret
verse 5 as a summary of what occurred, and the
following four verses as a particular description of
that which is contained in the summary. " For word
came unto the king of Nineveh" i.e. word about the
preaching and its effect upon those who heard it. He
might have suppressed it, as many a king has done a
similar movement ; but he was himself touched by it,
and changed, for it is quite possible that there may
have been a special, coincident working of the Spirit
of God upon the mind of the monarch, which opened
his conscience to the Divine warning. We are
distinctly told that in some way the matter came to
the ears of the king ; and as Jonah is not mentioned
as the medium of that communication with royalty,
we must conclude that only indirectly was the
threatening of God repeated in the palace. But in
the Eastern mind there is a peculiar openness to the
impressions from prophetic messages, as we have seen
in our own time. A coincidence between an event
and an ancient prediction will wonderfully excite
both fear and enterprise. As to the marvellous effect
of the preaching of Jonah on the people of Nineveh,
not only is it credible, but it is by no means un
exampled. The preaching of Whitefield and Wesley
in the last century produced overwhelming feeling
in the hearts of tens of thousands at a time. " I have

THE REPENTANCE OF THE NINEVITES. 265
known," says Mr. Layard, " a Christian priest frighten
a whole Mussulman town to tents and repentance, by
publicly proclaiming that he had received a Divine
mission to announce a coming earthquake or plague."
{Nineveh and Babylon, p. 367. London, 1867).
The preaching of some of our modern revivalists is
another instance in point, one in which similar results
are produced without the use of threatening mes
sages, though perhaps with a plentiful employment
of Christian denunciations of sin. Savonarola at
one time held all Florence under the sway of his
voice, and could excite them to the highest pitch of
feeling by his sermons. But then it must be remem
bered that there is no statement as to how large a
proportion of the inhabitants were moved by Jonah's
cry. If the whole city was repenting there would be
no need for the proclamation from the king ; more
over, it would be most unlikely that the great mass
of the city would venture to express their feelings of
apprehension and penitence unless they were per
mitted to do so, and unless the movement were under
royal sanction, It is true that Jonah's history may
have been known, and that the facts of his miraculous
deliverance may have added special force to his
preaching, both of judgment and of mercy ; but we
are not told that the people were influenced by
any such considerations.
" They believed God." Dr. Raleigh thinks that the
words employed by our Lord, "Jonah was a sign to

266 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
the Ninevites" must refer to the signal facts of his
history ; but in this he differs from other writers.
" How could he be a sign unless they knew some
thing of his previous history, and especially of that
part of it which affected themselves ? Would any
city, ancient or modern, be justified in taking a man
as a ' sign ' — invested with supernatural significance,
clothed with Divine authority — simply on his own
profession, and because he appeared ' crying ' in its
streets ? Any political demagogue could accomplish
his object in this way ; any religious- enthusiast could
put the fevered visions of his own fancy before men
as the revelations of Divine truth ; even the maniac
might for a time be the ruler of the wisest of men.
In order, therefore, to preserve the necessary and
perpetual distinction between faith and credulity,
between religion and superstition, we must suppose
that this repenting city had rational and intelligible
grounds for taking Jonah as ' a sign.' We must
suppose that the man and his history, in that part of
it at least which related to themselves, was very well
known to them" (p. 218). Now while Dr. Raleigh
follows out this argument with great care and thought,
it seems to be too slenderly attached to the narra
tive to be sustained. Whence could the report have
reached Nineveh ? " Nothing more likely," says Dr.
Raleigh. But would the miracle be of such a kind
as to affect the population of a strange, heathen
city ? Would they not have mocked at it, and would

THE REPENTANCE OF THE NINEVITES. 267
they have understood the bearing of it on Jonah's
character ?
Jonah might, indeed, relate the circumstances
himself. But he is told simply to cry against
the city, and his sympathy with the people was
evidently not deep enough to prompt him to any
very touching appeals ; nor would it have increased
his power with them if he had told them that he
had been a disobedient prophet who had been
punished by Jehovah. Our Lord would mean that
he was a sign of the Divine visitation ; and He
used the reference to Jonah's miraculous deliverance
to warn the Jews, lest they should reject a messenger
who had not been merely plucked for their sakes out
of the jaws of death, but raised from the dead with
all the glorious attestation of the Saviour's victory.
The mistake is in first exaggerating the effects of
Jonah's preaching, and then requiring something
beyond the simple cry against the city to account
for such results. But it is better to understand the
repentance as appertaining to a portion of the popu
lation, and so extending from one to another by
rapid communication, until it reaches the precincts
of the palace, and then the king himself.
At the same time, it may be freely admitted that
the repentance of Nineveh is intended to be repre
sented as the work of the Divine Spirit specially
poured out on the city. " A sense of God filled the
city. It was shed from group to group, from street

268 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
to street. It was awful, painful, at the first, like ' a
resurrection of condemnation ' to their spirits. It
turned them away from their own gods as effectually
as the sailors in the ship were turned from theirs ;
for this man Jonah seems to have a stupendous
power, whether he serves or whether he sins, of
making men conscious of the living God." " They
believed God." Doubtless there was much more to
account for that impression on the people's mind
than the mere cry of the prophet. So it is always
when there is a vast impression produced on a multi
tude. We cannot account for it on any merely
natural principles. The words may be simple and
even sometimes in themselves weak and halting, the
presence of the preacher by no means powerful ; yet
the souls of the people may be bowed down like the
trees of the forest before the " mighty rushing wind."
We are sure that in the case of Nineveh it. was
not the influences of the human personality which
wrought the work. We are led to look at Jonah in
the very next chapter, for the time at least, a poor,
petulant, selfish, narrow-minded man, utterly un
worthy of such a work, though chosen by Jehovah to
be the instrument of it ; but God hath magnified
Himself by the selection of very humble agents at
the greatest crises in the history of His Church.
The Spirit of Truth was in Nineveh, and out of the
dark chaos He called forth the new creation.
There is great beauty in the description of the

THE REPENTANCE OF THE NINEVITES. 269
royal conduct. " For word came unto the king of
Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid
his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth
and sat in ashes." "The effect is instantaneous for the
whole air is full of a spiritual electricity. As soon as
the great dimensions and dark features of the case are
revealed to him, he does not hesitate. He feels in a
moment that this is no time for state ceremonial
and gaudy show — for song, and feast, and revelry.
No time even for repose and quietness. It is a time
for instant action, if haply anything may yet be
done to avert the dreaded calamity. There is pro
bably but a brief consultation of the king with the
nobles. The case is plain to them all. The wave of
fear overpowers them just as if they were common
men. In that very fear there is the breeding and
stirring of a higher faith. They too ' believe in
God.' The happy decision is, ' The people are right.
We share their alarm, we must join them in humili
ation, and put out a decree immediately to that
effect.' 'Take the robe from me, the glitter of
which is painful to my sight. Lay by the sceptre,
arid this crown, which perhaps I may never wear
again. Darken the room, hush the babbling tongue,
and soften the steps of the busy foot. Bring the
sackcloth. Sprinkle me with the ashes.' How
beautiful seems the monarch in this swift and happy
descent ! Beautiful almost as the feet of those who
are passing along the mountains to publish salvation.

270 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
In this humbling of himself he is going to exalta
tion. In lowliness he rises. By abdication he
reigns. By fasting he prepares a feast of joy for
other days. By bending low in a sinner's sorrow he
secures for himself and for his people God's rich and
free forgiveness. Never in any battle has he made
a conquest like this. By timely humiliation and
repentance he reverses the currents of providence —
he changes the very mind of God ! "
Assuredly such facts, and if we give the simple
words of Scripture their full weight, they may be so
described, are not like the mere vapid fiction of an
Eastern story-teller, nor can we imagine them in
vented for the sake of putting into them a special
party sentiment. They are too vividly real and too
deeply true to the more spiritual instincts. The re
maining incidents of the fast are also striking ; not at
all such as a Jew would invent, and not such as would
be likely to be inserted in a mere parable if the
intention was solely to draw attention to the fact
that a heathen city repented. " And he caused it to
be proclaimed and published through Nineveh, by
the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let
neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything;
let them not feed, nor drink water ; but let man and
beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily
unto God : yea, let them turn every one from his evil
way and from the violence that is in their hands.
Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn

THE REPENTANCE OF THE NINEVITES. 271
away from His fierce anger, that we perish not."
Now it might be enough in some minds to represent
this as the Eastern dress of the parable. It is painted
up with the colours of hyperbole to heighten the
effect. The superstitious feeling of the polytheist
would be expressed in the dumb cries of the lower
animals as readily as in the confessions and lamenta
tions and vows of the people. " Keep corn from the
horses' manger, and fodder from the beasts' stall ; let
the sheep bleat for the pasture and the dogs howl for
hunger — as if helping ' our cry ; ' let the sleekness
of the steed be hidden by the sackcloth, and let the
ashes be sprinkled on all the glory." But there is
more than the artist's skill in such details. They
are not introduced only for effect. They are not
simply part of a story. The depth of the feeling of
repentance and of the belief of the people in the
prophecy is thus vividly expressed. Their " mighty
cry " could not be better represented as one which
completely absorbed them. They would not have
any signs of plenty and peace around them, such as
feeding cattle and caparisoned horses would be; they
must be surrounded with the emblems and sounds of
lamentation and sorrowing everywhere and at every
moment. " What a city it must have been, with a
cry ascending from every house ! coming even from
children's mouths ! wailing out of sick-beds ! breaking
from the lips of affrighted men as they went gliding,
like ghosts, along the street ! " And how could they

272 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
bear to be themselves in such agony of anxiety and
dread, and not cast the shadow of their woe on the
creatures around them ? It was no mere childish
superstition, it was the greatness and intensity of
their feelings finding vent in a manner suited to their
customary ways and thoughts.
The most remarkable fact, however, in the narra
tive of Nineveh's repentance is that they based their
hope of pardon and salvation on the decided change
of life which they called upon one another to mani
fest. " Let them turn every one from his evil way and
from the violence that is in their hands!' For such
words to be included in the royal proclamation was
to acknowledge that the besetting sins of the people
of Nineveh were such as they must feel to deserve
the threatened destruction. Violence in their hands !
Was it not the common characteristic of ancient war
fare ? Did not all the despotic kingdoms of the East
obtain their supremacy by violence ? Might they
not plead custom in excuse ? Plainly there was a
sense of right not entirely obliterated even in those
heathen minds. Conscience could be awaked.
Although they hardened their hearts in cruelty, they
knew that they were wicked. And they knew that
what God wanted to see was not their sackcloth, but
their changed lives. " When you fast, undo the heavy
burden ; when you put on the sackcloth, strike
off the slave's chains and open the prisoner's door ;
when you cry to God, cease to do wrong to men, and,

THE REPENTANCE OF THE NINEVITES. 273
as far as possible, repair the injuries done already."
And yet these heathen penitents are not so blinded
by superstition that they take it for granted, God is
immediately to be turned from His purpose by their
show of reformation. They rightly seize the main
principle of moral government. " Who can tell if God
will turn and repent ? " It is not absolutely certain,
but it is possible, it is a matter of hope. We need
not utterly despair, as we have to do with such a God
— who even sends His prophet to cry against our
sins. Surely that clear discernment of the relation
of human feeling and conduct to Divine procedure,
is very little like the random and groping course of
superstition " ignorantly worshipping " " the unknown
god." The same Spirit whose influence carried
Jonah's cry to the hearts of the people, taught them
that the righteous God loveth righteousness, that
He will not be mocked, that while He overthrows the
perverse and froward, He giveth grace to the truly
humble and penitent. Dr. Pusey quotes beautiful
words from Chrysostom on the example which such
facts present for our imitation and warning. " They
know not the issue, yet they neglect not repentance.
They are unacquainted with the method of the loving-
kindness of God, and they are changed amid un
certainty. They had no other Ninevites to look to,
who had repented and been saved. They had not
read the Prophets nor heard the Patriarchs, nor
benefited by counsel, nor partaken of instruction, nor
T

274 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
had they persuaded themselves that they should
altogether propitiate God by repentance. For the
threat did not contain this. But they doubted and
hesitated about this, and yet repented with all care
fulness. What account then shall we give, when
these, who had no good hope held out to them as to
the issue, gave evidence of such a change, and thou,
who mayest be of good cheer as to God's love for
men, and hast many times received many pledges of
His care, and hast heard the Prophets and Apostles,
and hast been instructed by the events themselves,
strivest not to attain the same measure of virtue as
they." Certainly such facts, so full of gracious mean
ing for all ages, are not like the mere clothing of the
ideas of a sect among the Jews, as Ewald suggests,
desiring to enforce their broader and more liberal
Judaism upon the authorities of the nation. There is
not the faintest sign of controversial feeling in the
whole book. It is the calm and deep flow of the
water of life : the message of one who has been
moved to write it by the Spirit of God.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE PLACE OF THE BOOK OF JONAH IN
MESSIANIC PROPHECY.
1" ONG before the time of Jonah there was a line of
¦* — ' Messianic prophecy which can be traced dis
tinctly, from the " Protevangel" uttered in Paradise
down to the broad and deep-toned anticipations
embodied in the Psalms of David. It is necessary
to bear in mind, that while prophecy had taken a
new departure in the time of Samuel, still there was
very little that was written down, to be handed on to
future ages in the form of predictions. The Davidic
era, however, produced a considerable change in the
spirit of the people and in their anticipations. David
himself was the .type of the Divine King, though the
type was not complete in .his own individual reign,
but needed to be unfolded and to some extent rec
tified by the reign of Solomon. " What have we,"
asks Davison (in his Discourses on Prophecy, p. 206),
" in the prophetic psalms (and those all, or most
of them, ascribed to David) but an assemblage cf
many of the most considerable attributes of the reign
and religion of Messiah foreshown ? There is the
275

276 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
King set upon the holy hill of Zion ; His law ; the
opposition made to Him by the kings of the earth ;
their rage defeated ; His extraordinary sceptre of
righteousness ; His unchangeable Priesthood ; His
Divine worship ; His exalted nature ; His death, and
early resurrection outrunning the corruption of the
grave ; His dominion embracing both Israel and the
Gentile world." The author has taken up this subject
at some length in his work, Prophecy, its Nature and
Evidence, Chapter VI., " The Messiah the soul of
prophecy." Not only was there a Messianic spirit
living and working in the Davidic period and coming
into expression in the devotional poetry of that time,
but it is important to remember that the use of the
psalms in religious worship would very deeply imbue
the minds of the people with the anticipations arising
out of the prophetic language. " It seems to have
been an appointment of the Divine Spirit, that, just
when the predictions of prophecy were beginning, to
grow in breadth and fulness, the poetic and musical
faculties of the people were trained and enlarged, so
that they could take up the very spirit of prophecy
into their worship and into their daily life. It is said
that the Jews acknowledged the principle, in in
terpreting the language of the psalms, that any
prediction which could not be regarded as entirely
fulfilled in the time of David and Solomon was to be
applied to the time of Messiah." Certainly there was
ground for such a principle to rest upon in the study

PLACE OF JONAH IN MESSIANIC PROPHECY. 277
of the more ancient Scriptures and their fulfilments.
The larger spiritual scope of the primitive promises
would be perceived by the more devout and earnest
students of the Scriptures. It has been truly said of
the Messianic psalms, that they " presented a perfect
drama of Messiah's coming story." An outline was
therefore already in the hands of the people. The
prophets who followed had merely to fill in that out
line and to deepen the colours of the picture.
And as with the psalms so with the facts of the
national life. The history of Israel during the reigns
of David and Solomon was another preparation for
the development of Messianic prophecy. It carried
the thoughts of the people out of their own land. It
opened the prospect of that widespread reign of the
King of Righteousness which was the glad tidings to
be announced by the chosen people : " Say among
the heathen that the Lord reigneth. Declare His
glory among the heathen, His wonders among all
people." " This grand prospect of the world's salva
tion through the covenant people Israel," l says Dr.
Titcomb, " found an admirable outline in their wide
spread distribution among heathen countries in the
days of Solomon ; by which they were placed in a
position exactly adapted for the great work assigned
them. Was it not so? Do we not read of the Hebrew
navy trading along the Red Sea to Ophir? Were not
1 Revelation in Progress, p. 198. (R.T.S.)

278 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
the Canaanites subject and tributary to Solomon's
tax-gatherers ? Did not Hiram, King of Tyre,
welcome him to the throne, and open a commerce
with his people ? Had not Israel's fame extended
as far as to the uttermost parts of the earth ? "
The two hundred years which intervened, between
the appearance of the first of the prophets whose
prophecies were formally committed to writing and
the completion of Jehovah's judgment on the tribes
of Israel and Judah, were marked by a succession of
Divine messages, embracing some of the grandest out
bursts of the prophetic spirit. The line of Messianic
prediction can certainly be discerned all along that
period. We see it, in such a case as that of Isaiah,
much more conspicuous and larger in expression
than in others, but it is never entirely lost sight of.
If the view which we have put forth in this
work is justified, that Jonah commences the line of
written prophecy, then, while we should expect that
there would be Messianic features in his book, we
should also expect that they would be less fully
developed than in subsequent writings. And this we
find to be the case. The general tone of Jonah cor
responds with the general tone of the Messianic
psalms. The typical element is the prominent one,
just as David and Solomon were typical anticipations
of Messiah. There is no distinct prediction of the
personal advent of the Redeemer such as we find in
later prophets. At the same time the book ought to

PLACE OF JONAH IN MESSIANIC PROPHECY. 279
be regarded in its practical bearing on the minds of
the people to whom it was sent. It would certainly
stimulate their thoughts in a remarkable manner ; on
the one hand, as to their influence over heathen
nations and the character of a Divine messenger, and
on the other (by the striking miracle wrought in
Jonah's deliverance from the jaws of death, and again
by the deliverance of Nineveh on their repentance,
and the reproof of the prophet by the sign of the
gourd), as to the spirit and working of that Divine
kingdom which they as a people were appointed to
proclaim. Messiah was the personification of the
Theocracy in their minds. All their national glory
was to be embodied in Him, and all their national
wishes to be realized and fulfilled in Him ; and this
book seemed to say, with a loud, clear, ringing voice,
your Deliverer is the Deliverer of the world, He is
the Faithful and Merciful, rescuing from death, and
turning the shadow of night into the morning. The
first instalment of written prophecy, then, was a very
fitting introduction to those that followed, breathing
Divine love, calling the people to lift up their eyes,
and look to the ends of the earth, and to hope, even
in the midst of their own Jonah-like unfaithfulness,
for One who should come forth out of their ruin' to
be the true Prophet of the Law, "the light to lighten
the Gentiles and the glory of His people Israel!'
We are not left to our own conjectures as to the
estimate in which the Book of Jonah was held among

28o STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
the Jews. The references which were made to the
prophet himself and to the contents of the book by
our Lord Jesus Christ, must be quite sufficient with
all those who acknowledge His Divine authority, to
show that He regarded it as holding an important
place in the line of Messianic prophecy. There are
two distinct uses which our Saviour made of the
Book of Jonah, He sanctioned the typical view, that
Jonah himself was in some respects a type of the
Messiah. He also very emphatically pointed to the
miracle of Jonah's rescue from the fish's belly, as
foreshadowing in some sense His own resurrection.
It is of the utmost importance that these references
to Jonah in the New Testament should be carefully
studied. We must, therefore, devote a few pages to
their elucidation.
I. Our Lord speaks of "the sign of fonah," Matt.
xii. 40, xvi. 4 ; Luke xi. 29-32. While in the former
case the Resurrection is the point especially alleged,
in the latter the broader view of Jonah's mission to
the Ninevites seems to be before our Lord's mind.
'' And when the multitudes were gathering together
unto him, he began to say, This generation is an
evil generation : it seeketh after a sign ; and there
shall no sign be given it but the sign of Jonah. For
even as Jonah became a sign unto the Ninevites, so
shall also the Son of man be to this generation. The
queen of the south shall rise up in the judgement with
the men of this generation, and shall condemn them :

PLACE OF JONAH IN MESSIANIC PROPHECY. 281
for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the
wisdom of Solomon ; and behold a greater than
Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh shall stand
up in the judgement with this generation and shall
condemn it : for they repented at the preaching of
Jonah ; and behold a greater than Jonah is here."
[Revised Version.] There is no direct reference in
these words to the miracle wrought for Jonah as
typical of the Saviour's Resurrection. At the same
time, that may be included in the "sign" {o-?]/j.elov)
which Jonah " became " to the Ninevites. Some have
argued that our Lord would not have employed the
word "sign," unless He had meant His hearers to
understand that the " men of Nineveh " knew the
history of Jonah, and that his escape had so im
pressed their minds that they believed in his message,
and repented ; whereas a still greater sign, in the
Resurrection of Jesus, would fail to open the minds
of that generation to the claims of Messiah. But
while admitting that there is some force in this
reasoning, it seems scarcely consistent with the con
cluding words of the passage in St. Luke, where the
"preaching of fonah" and "the wisdom of Solomon"
are spoken of in the same manner as received by
heathen joyfully.
The multitudes addressed would not be likely to
appreciate the meaning of the Lord if it were at all
remote from their ordinary thoughts. The allusion
to Jonah's rescue from the whale would certainly

2S2 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
be difficult for them to follow out. And it is only
by a somewhat far-fetched use of the facts that we
can suppose the people of Nineveh were acquainted
with Jonah's personal history. He would not be
likely to relate the story himself. If he did, it might
have produced a prejudice against him in his hearers.
The crr]fietov, or " sign," was the strange unexpected
appearance of the prophet and his wild cry of de
nunciation. The two facts are compared : " Even as
Jonah became a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall also the
Son oj man be to this generation" A prophet with a
cry amongst a heathen people became a sign to them ;
they looked upon him as a Divine messenger, they
believed and repented. A prophet was amongst the
Jews; but while Jonah to the Ninevites. was only a
man with a message, Jesus to the Jews was a prophet
accompanied with mighty works and all the cre
dentials they could desire proving His Divine autho
rity. But what did our Lord mean when He said,
" There shall be no sign given to this generation
but the sign of the prophet Jonah ! " He referred,
doubtless, to the general desire and expectation that
there would be sent down from heaven some extra
ordinary manifestation of a purely external character,
which would signify to all the presence and power of
Messiah. This would not be granted ; but they might
take the prophet Jonah and study his history, and
that would be a help to them. The Ninevites re
buked them, for they demanded no such sign in

PLACE OF JONAH IN MESSIANIC PROPHECY. 283
the case of Jonah. They repented at his preach
ing ; perhaps, we may add, at the simple recount
ing among them of the Divine righteousness and
goodness as manifested towards him. But they (the
Jews) were not ready to believe, though the Pro
phet who appeared among them wrought so many
signs in their presence. And yet they should have
one great sign which might be said to surpass all that
they had yet witnessed, and which might be called
the " sign of the prophet Jonah ; " for as Jonah was in
his own history a sign of Divine power and mercy,
so they should see in the personal history of Jesus
similar and still greater facts, His death and resur
rection. 2: But the words as they are reported by the firs!:
Evangelist are more special, and point to the peculiar
place which the Book of Jonah held in the line of
Messianic prediction. Matt. xii. 40 : " For as Jonah
was three days and th7ree nights in the belly of the
whale ; so shall the Son of man be three days and three
nights in the heart of the earth!' These words of
course refer to the use of the sign for that generation.
Our Lord distinctly affirmed that the facts of Jonah's
history might be employed as typically predictive of
His own ; not simply as " a likeness," but as a fore
shadowing, in which the mind of the Spirit could be
recognized. It has been suggested that the other
instances in which the " third day " is mentioned, as
Luke xxiv. 16 ; 1 Cor. xv. 4, etc., may be allusions to

2S4 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
this veiled anticipation in the Book of Jonah. Gen.
xxii. 4 and Ps. xvi. 10, both fail to satisfy the pre
cision of the language. " We may in all reverence
infer," says Prof. Huxtable, in Speaker's Commentary,
vol. vi. p. 577, " that this most strange and otherwise
utterly unaccountable circumstance was ordered by
Divine Providence for the very purpose of furnishing
a typical prediction in which both the Lord Jesus
Himself (Luke xviii. 31, 33), and His Church as
taught by Him, should recognize the distinct fore
shadowing of His pre-ordained death and resurrection.
Those who seriously believe in the vast significance
for mankind of those great events, will find it reason
able to suppose that, if any events at all were to be
typically foretold in the Old Testament, these should
be ; and on the other hand, if this part of Jonah's
history wears to our mind the aspect of being beyond
all measure strange, we must consider, that any
typical representation of events in themselves so
beyond all parallel marvellous, could not fail, if viewed
apart from such typical meaning, to wear just this
very aspect. The ail-but consummated sacrifice of
Isaac by his father is a piece of history which stands
in this respect by the side of Jonah's three days
burial in the fish. Either narrative, if regarded by
itself, shocks all the sense of probability ; either, when
regarded as typical, is seen to be in strict accordance
with the main purpose of Divine revelation, which is
the exhibition to the world of Christ." We must

PLACE OF JONAH IN MESSIANIC PROPHECY. 285
here remind the reader of the special significance
which attaches to Jonah's psalm of praise for deliver
ance. If it was the work of the Spirit upon his mind,
employing the facts of his personal experience as a
medium of inspiration, then we can apply to such
a case what the Apostle Peter has said of the
prophetic Scriptures : they " came not by the will of
man : but holy men of God spake as they were moved
by the Holy Ghost" (2 Pet. i. 21). Many also place
beside this instance that of David, to which the
same Apostle refers in his sermon on the Day of
Pentecost : " Being therefore a prophet, and knowing
that God had sworn with an oath unto him, that
of the fruit of his loins He would set one upon his
throne ; he foreseeing this spake of the resurrection
of the Christ, that neither was He left in Hades, nor
did His flesh see corruption " (Acts ii. 30, 31). Now
if David could thus foretell the resurrection of the
Christ when speaking of himself, so could Jonah.
It seems more likely that Jonah should use inspired
language, which extended the meaning of his own
deliverance to Messiah, than that he should have
magnified the deliverance itself for the sake of ex
pressing his own feeling of thankfulness.
As to the correspondence between the two facts,
the deliverance of Jonah from the prison-house in the
fish, and the deliverance of Jesus from the grave,
it is well to notice that in both cases the sign was
connected with humiliation and an outcasting of

286 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
the Divine messenger, though there was the great
distinction that in Jonah's case the sin of the
prophet was represented in the darkness to which
he was banished, whereas in the case of the Messiah
it was the sin of the world which cast Him into
death. Our Lord in calling the attention of the
people to the case of Jonah, was no doubt intend
ing to set their minds upon the way of faith, by
leading them to think of resurrection as a possibility,
and that in connection with a Divine Message ; and
not only so, but as Jonah after his resurrection
became a successful preacher to Nineveh, so the
Lord would seem to intimate, He who should be
crucified, dead, and buried in the heart of the earth,
after His resurrection would carry the message of
Divine righteousness and mercy to the ends of earth.
Whether or not it was the popular belief that
Jonah had been actually raised from the dead after
being confined in the belly of the fish, it seems
difficult to decide ; but the very emphatic use of
the type by our Lord as a sign to that generation
points to the possibility of such a view. We can
well believe that the story of Jonah had been em
ployed by Rabbinical interpreters as foreshadowing
the restoration of Israel itself to the favour of Jeho
vah. All that could revive the languishing hopes
of the people was eagerly seized. They groaned
under the oppressions to which they were subject.
They deeply mourned their national humiliation.

PLACE OF JONAH IN MESSIANIC PROPHECY. 287
We can easily imagine that the typical meaning of
Jonah was frequently referred to. See, said the
Rabbis, though we may be cast away for a time,
we may yet be restored. And they would connect
such a type with the still more vivid prophecy of
national revival in Ezekiel's vision of the Valley of
Dry Bones, which undoubtedly sustained the hopes
of the people in a future restoration. The idea of
resurrection must have been quite familiar to them,
although they thought rather of the resurrection of
the nation than of an individual. But when the
Lord Jesus distinctly foretold that the Messiah
should be hidden in the earth and after three days
rise again, and pointed them to the prophet Jonah
as a help to apply the thought of resurrection to
an individual, He certainly was giving them a "sign"
helping them to believe, surrounding the facts of
His own personal history with the halo of inspired
authority. Looking back then from these words of the
Saviour to the Book of Jonah, we are wonderfully
relieved of the difficulty which seems to lie about
it, when regarded as an isolated production of an
individual mind. We are no longer called upon to
account for the strangeness of the story, and we
are no longer repelled by its abnormal character.
" God needs to break through all the laws of taste,
and to use language, and bring in figures, and per
form typical actions, which are quite shocking to

288 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
the sophisticated sensibilities of men. He needs a
flaming sword at the gate of every earthly paradise
to keep men out of it until they are fit to enter !
He needs priests, all bloody and smeared, minister
ing at the altar, without intermission of service,
through long ages ! He needs a father standing
with gleaming knife above the bound body of his
son ! He needs to cast a prophet away down to
the depths of a churning sea, and then into the
noisome gurgling belly of a great fish ! No polite
figures these. But sin is not polite. Terrible actions
those. Yes, because our redemption is a stupendous
thing. On these grounds we may say that the
three days in the deep were the greatest days of
the prophet's life. He got his power then to speak
with effect at Nineveh. Unknown to himself, he
then became a figure and image of the Redeemer
of the world. Let the men of this generation take
heed lest the men of Nineveh should rise in the
judgment to condemn them. To them ' the prophet
was a sign — to some men now he is only a scoffing.
They believed his story as sufficient evidence, while
some men now are so impiously bold, and so in
curably foolish, as to declare that no amount of
evidence can prove it. They repented at his preach
ing, while some men now only make merry with
his claims. 'Behold a greater than Jonah is here.'
We have Christ — Christ incarnate, dead, buried,
risen, living evermore — who died for our sins, accord-

PLACE OF JONAH IN MESSIANIC PROPHECY. 289
ing to the Scriptures ; who rose again for our
justification ; who ever liveth to make intercession
for us ; who is able to save unto the uttermost all
who come unto God by Him ; who saith ' Come
unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest' He speaks to us by
miracle and mighty work, by cross and passion,
by death and burial, by resurrection and ascension,
by second coming and judgment, by eternal life
and death. Let us flee, then, without delay to the
shadow of His name, and trust to Him who is
'greater than Jonah' — for our whole salvation."
{Raleigh, pp. 187-8).
There is another aspect of the Book of Jonah
in which it may be described as Messianic. It was
one of the clearest and loudest voices which were
sent to the Jews to teach them that prophecy must
be the Spirit of Christ, i.e. that He who was speak
ing to every age by various messages, in various
modes and with various degrees of light, would
at last speak to the world with the fulness of
His wisdom and love, in His Beloved Son. It
has been remarked by Dean Payne Smith, in
his Bampton Lectures, Prophecy a Preparation for
Christ, that the spirit of the Book of Jonah is
in direct correspondence with the spirit of Christ
ianity. "The great lesson of the Book of Jonah is,
that prophecy is no blind fate, threatening men
with an inevitable destiny ; but that it has a moral
U

290 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
purpose, and is a warning given by an omniscient
but merciful Ruler to beings capable of repentance,
and of thereby reversing the decrees of justice. In
the heathen world you ever find the idea of evil
impending upon man without the possibility of
escape. This is the one grand thought of the
Greek drama ; and the more innocent the sufferer,
the more tragic and interesting is the onward course
of events by which, through no fault of his own,
he is doomed to destruction. This, too, is the one
idea of all ancient oracles. Obscurely and in
enigmas they predict some calamity. The pre
diction must be so given as that it shall not serve
as a warning, but, if possible, rather invite its victim
to his fate. In the opening book of prophecy all
these detestable views are carefully guarded against.
It is no blind fate, but a kind and merciful and ever-
loving God, who orders all human things for man's
good and life, directs the course of history, and
guides the very laws of nature so as to make them
serve for moral purposes" (p. 254). Such we may
say is the true keynote of all evangelical prophecy,
and it is the grand truth which found its embodi
ment in the Messiah. Moses predicted that there
should be a prophet raised up who should be, like
himself, a mediator between Jehovah and His people
(Deut. xviii. 15-19). It cannot be doubted that
while the succession of the prophets is there referred
to, i.e. the continuance of the message, yet the promise

PLACE OF JONAH IN MESSIANIC PROPHECY. 291
is distinctly included of One who should fulfil in
himself the prophetic idea. We may well suppose
that as each individual prophet came and ministered
in the name of the Lord, the ancient words of
Moses would be applied to him. And such a book
of prophecy as Jonah would help the people to ex
pect One greater than Jonah. The very incidents
connected with Jonah's own character would be
a preservative against the tendency to lower the
standard of prophecy, especially as they were con
nected with other incidents which plainly said : the
spirit of prophecy is greater than the prophecies
themselves, or those through whom they were given.
It is a fact beyond dispute that the Jews, in later
times, applied the prediction in Deuteronomy to the
Messiah, and it is also a fact that they regarded
Jonah as a type of Messiah, so that the book would,
if devoutly studied, enlarge their views of the
character and mission of " that prophet who should
come into the world."
But the Book of Jonah is distinguished from all the
other books of Scripture, in that it describes the
mission of a Jewish preacher in a Gentile nation.
It seemed to say, in the powerful form of historical
narrative, the kingdoms of this world shall become
the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Messiah. True,
the reigns of David and Solomon had already set
forth vividly the possibilities which were laid up in
the throne of Israel. The Psalms had put such

292 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
possibilities into inspired language and connected
them with the Messianic hope. But the confusions
which followed the breaking up of the Davidic mon
archy would obscure the prospect once more. Pro
phets were sent who did much to recall the people
to their larger and higher thoughts of Israel's mis
sion ; but, in the northern tribes more particularly,
there was great reason to fear that the contact with
neighbouring peoples, and internal political degen
eracy, would almost obliterate the Messianic elements
from their religious life, and they would sink into
mere narrow-minded Mosaists. The mission of
Jonah was appointed just at a time when it would be
most striking and significant. The successes which
had preserved the tribes of the North from the
oppression of their enemies, and gave them a strong
frontier and a sense of nationality and independence,
were followed by this voice from heaven, which
seemed to say, that same " salvation of the Lord" in
which you as a people rejoice, is "unto the ends of the
earth!' A general promise that in Israel "all families
of the earth should be blessed," needed to be trans
lated into fact, that it might be more vividly im
pressed on the minds of the people. Jonah was not
only sent by Jehovah to a Gentile city to preach, but
he was, as it were, "lifted up," by the miracle which
made his name and story no doubt famous all over
the land, so that he became a sign to every genera
tion. If every book of Scripture had its bearing on

PLACE OF JONAH IN MESSIANIC PROPHECY. 293
the one theme of Messiah, how could any reader
miss the significance of this book ? It seemed to say,
Messiah when he comes will, like Jonah, be a wonder
to all men. They will turn their eyes to Him from
the remotest nations. They will listen to His voice
and follow after Him from serving dumb idols to
bless the name of the Lord. There was the fact of
Nineveh's repentance and faith pleading on behalf of
the Gentile world, age after age, and in face of all the
bigotry and prejudice of the Jews. And when the
true Messiah came, and declared concerning Himself
that being " lifted up He would draw all men unto
Him," Jonah and his mission to the Ninevites, with
all the wonderful story of their salvation, was a sign
unto the men of that generation, and, had they read
its meaning and applied it faithfully, " they would
not have crucified the Lord of glory."
To those who were able, after the death and resur
rection of the Lord, to put side by side the typical
meanings of the Book of Jonah and the facts of the
Saviour's history and of the beginning of the gospel,
there must have been strong confirmation of their
faith to be derived from the very remarkable corre
spondence. This has been referred to by Augus
tine {Sex qucestiones contra paganos expositor, § 38).
Jonah preached after his resurrection. Christ
preached after his. Jonah's word was powerful,
because the Lord had accompanied it with the
mighty sign and wonder of his deliverance. It was

294 STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF JONAH.
on the strong foundation of the resurrection that the
apostles built up the structure of primitive Christi
anity. Moreover, the experience of the prophet was,
in a certain sense, his " lifting up " out of a narrow
Judaism to a wide platform of missionary zeal and
marvellous success. The death and resurrection of
the Lord Jesus Christ was in like manner the casting
away of the lower mission for the higher, the burying
of the Jewish prophet, priest, and king, and His
rising again the prophet, priest, and king of the
whole world — "the extinction of His character as 'a
minister of the circumcision' (Rom. xv. 8), prepar
atory to His reappearing in a new character, as no
longer the Messiah of Judaism, but the Christ of a
more extended ministry, whose scope should em
brace not Israel only, but the Gentile world also"
(John xii. 24, 32 ; Gal. iii. 13, 14; see Preb. Huxtable
in Speaker's Com., vol. vi. p. 578). And we may
add to this view that the witness borne by the Book
of Jonah to the work of the Holy Spirit, to the
universality of that work and to the fact that Divine
grace is bestowed often through instruments in them
selves faulty, but in accordance with the counsel and
predetermination of God, prepared the way for that
dispensation of the Spirit which was inaugurated
by the Ascension of Jesus to heaven. All these inti
mations, which were put into the history of Jonah's
mission to Nineveh, not with the formal distinctness
of words, but with the force of facts, were subse-

PLACE OF JONAH IN MESSIANIC PROPHECY. 295
quently expanded into the manifold messages of a
long line of prophets, who preached concerning the
coming Redeemer and His kingdom, for four
hundred years, until the long silence of the voices
without sent the people to their sacred books, to
study the written Word, and wait until they heard
again a living Voice crying in the wilderness, "Pre
pare ye the way of the Lord!'

Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.

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