//. / - LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY PRINCETON. N. J. Presented by * "TheVVidov^ of Greorde'Duo'^n, % Dwision.0&'5.A C l^\' Section..\.Lr..jLl *> Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library http://www.archive.org/details/bookofjonah146klei \ A COMMENTARY ON THE HOLY SCRIPTURES: CRITICAL, DOCTRINAL, AND HOMILETICAL WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO MINISTERS AND STUDENT8 JOHN PETEELATOE, D. D., ORDINARY PROFESSOR OP THEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OP BONW, Of cowwbotioic with a number of eminent eckopean divines TRANSLATED, ENLARGED, AND EDITED PHILIP SCHAFF, D. D., PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN THE UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. NEW YORK, II OOIHIKCTION WITH AMERICAH SCHOLARS OF VARIOUS EVANGELICAL DENOMIHATIOm. VOL miE XIV. OV THE OLD TESTAMENT: CONTAINING THE MINOR PROPHETS NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 1899 THE MINOR PROPHETS EXEGET1CALLY, THEOLOGICALLY. AND HOMILETICALLY EXPOUNDED PAXIL KLEINERT, OTTO SCHMOLLER, GEORGE R. BLISS, TALBOT W. CHAMBERS, CHARLES ELLICTT, JOHN FORSYTH, J. FREDERICK McCURDY, AND JOSEPH PACKARD. EDITED BY PHILIP SCHAFF, D. D. NEW YORK: CHARLES SCEIBNER'S SONS, 1899 Sttered according to Act of Congress, in the vear 1874, Or Scrihnkr, Armstrong, and Company, a toe Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. Trow's Printing and Bookbinding Company, 205-213 East \2tf1 St., NEW YORK. PREFACE BY THE GENERAL EDITOR The volume on the Minor Prophets is partly in advance of the German original, which has not yet reached the three post-exilian Prophets. The commentaries on the nint earlier Prophets by Professors Kleinert and Schmoller appeared in separate numberi some time ago * ; but for Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, Dr. Lange has not, to this date, been able to secure a suitable co-laborer. 2 With his cordial approval I deem it better to complete the volume by original commentaries than indefinitely to postpone the publication. They were prepared by sound and able scholars, in conformity with the plan of the whole work. The volume accordingly contains the following parts, each one being paged separately : — 1. A General Introduction to the Prophets, especially the Minor Prophets, by Rev. Charles Elliott, D. D., Professor of Biblical Exegesis in Chicago, Illinois. The general introductions of Kleinert and Schmoller are too brief and incomplete for our purpose, and therefore I requested Dr. Elliott to prepare an independent essay on the subject. 2. Hose a. By Rev. Dr. Otto Schmoller. Translated from the German and en- larged by James Frederick McCurdy, M. A., of Princeton. N. J. 3. Joel. By Otto Schmoller. Translated and enlarged by Rev. John Forsyth, D. D., LL. D., Chaplain and Professor of Ethics and Law in the United States Military Academy, West Point, N. Y. 4. Amos. By Otto Schmoller. Translated and enlarged by Rev. Talbot W Chambers, D. D., Pastor of the Collegiate Reformed Dutch Church, New York. 5. Obadiah. By Rev. Paul Kleinert, Professor of Old Testament Theology in the University of Berlin. Translated and enlarged by Rev. George R. Bliss, D. D., Professor in the University of Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. 6. Jonah. By Prof. Paul Kleinert, of the University of Berlin. Translated and en- larged by Rev. Charles Elliott, Professor of Biblical Exegesis in Chicago.' 7. Micah. By Prof. Paul Kleinert, of Berlin, and Prof. George R. Bliss, of Lewis- burg. 8. Nahum. By Prof. Paul Kleinert, of Berlin, and Prof. Charles Elliott, of Chicago. 9. Habakkuk. By Professors Kleinert and Elliott. 1 Obadjah, Jonah, Mic/ia, Nahum, Habakuk, Zephanjah. Wlssenshaftlieh undfUr den Gebraueh der Kirehe autgeltgt «w» PAUL Kleinbbt, Pfarrer zu St. Gertraud und a. Professor an der Universitdt zu Berlin. Bielefeld u. Leipzig, 1868. — DU Prophetcn Hosea, Joel und Amos. Theologisch-homiletisch bearbeitet von Otto Sckmollsb, Licent. der Theologie, Diaeonut m Uracil. Bielef. und Leipzig, 1872. 2 The commentary of Rev. W. Pbbssel on these three Prophets (Die nachexilisehen Propheten, Gotha, 1870) waj originally prepared for Lange's Bible-work, but was rejected by Dr. Lange mainly on account of Pressel's views on th* genuineness and integrity of Zechariah. It was, however, independently published, and was made use of, like other commentaries, by the authors of the respective sections in this volume. < Or. Elliott desires to render his acknowledgments to the Rev. Reuben Dederiok, of Chicago, and the Rev. Jacob Lotke, of Faribault, Minnesota, for valuable assistance in translating some difficult passages In Kleinert^ GommentuiM ■o Jonah, Nahum, and Habakkuk. PREFACE BY THE GENERAL EDITOR. 10. Zephaniah. By Professors Klein ert and Elliott. 11. Haggai. By James Frederick McCurdy, M. A., Princeton, N. J. 12. Zechariah By Rev. Talbot W. Chambers, D. D., New York. (See special preface.) 18. Malachi. By Rev. Joseph Packard, D. D., Professor of Biblical Literature in the Theological Seminary at Alexandria, Virginia. The contributors to this volume were directed carefully to consult the entire ancient and modern literature on the Minor Prophets and to enrich it with the latest results of German and Anglo-American scholarship. The remaining parts of the Old Testament are all under way, and will be published ai fast as the nature of the work will permit. PHILIP SCHAPF. Ohton Tksolookuj Semhaty, Nrw You. . t*uary, 1874. THE BOOK OF JONAH. EXPOUNDED r PAUL KLEUSTEKT, PAATOR AT ST. QERTRAUD, AND PROFESSOR OF OLD TESTAMENT TH BO LOOT W UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN. TRANSLATED AND ENLARGED CHARLES ELLIOTT, D. D., Or BIBLICAL LITXRATUflE IX THE PRESBYTERIAN THEOLOGICAL 8EMIWART AT CHICAOO, NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, ■itered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, hf sckiknek, Armstrong, and Company, hi the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. JONAH. INTRODUCTION. I. Contents. The prophet Jonah, the son of Arnittai, receives a divine command to announce judg- ment against the great city, Nineveh, whose wickedness had come up before Jehovah. He attempts to evade the command by flight, and embarks in a ship to go to Tarshish. A storm rises on the sea. While the crew are praying, Jonah sleeps. But he is awakened ; and the sailors perceiving in the fury \_UribiU~] of the storm a token of the divine wrath, cist lots, by which he is designated as the guilty person. On being interrogated by the crew, he acknowledges to them his guilt, and advises them to cast him into the sea, for the purpose of appeasing the divine anger. They put forth ineffectual efforts to escape from danger, without having recourse to this extreme measure, but finally follow his advice. (Chap, i.) A large fish swallows Jonah. He thanks God that he is preserved in life ; and is, on the third day, vomited out by the fish on the land. (Chap, ii.) He now obeys the command of God, which comes to him the second time, and goes tc proclaim to Nineveh, that within forty days, it shall be destroyed on account of its sins. But the Ninevites, with the king at their head, observe a great public fast, 1 and Jehovah determines to withdraw his threatening. (Chap, iii.) Jonah having waited for the issue in a booth over against the city, must have felt that the effect [of the divine purpose to remit the calamity. — C. E.] would be to make his procla- mation appear false. His displeasure, on this account, is heightened by an incident. A plant [a palmchrist], which had rapidly shot up, had refreshed him with its shade. But during the night it is destroyed by a worm ; and when, on the day following, a scorching wind augments the burning heat of the sun, Jonah despairs of life [" meint Jonah am Leben verzweifeln zu miissen," thinks that he must despair of life]. But God had appointed this incident for the purpose of showing him the unreasonableness of his displeasure. " Dost thou have pity on an insignificant plant, and shall not I have pity on the great city ? " (Chap, iv.) H. The Historical Character of the Book. The narrative indicates history ; for it designates its hero, not by a general or symbolical, but by a historical name, — that of Jonah. And not merely this; but it subjoins a patro- nymic also, " the son of Amittai." Jonah, the prophet, the son of Amittai, is a historical person. We learn from 2 Kings xiv. 25, that he was a native of Gath-Hepher,' 2 which was, accord- ing to Jewish tradition, as given by Jerome, in his preface to this book, a small village, two miles from Sepphoris, called in his time Diocaesaria, on the road to Tiberias. [" Geth in secundo Sephorim miliario, quce hodie appellator Dioccesaria, euntibus Tiberiadem hand grandis est viculus." — Hieronymus.] This description corresponds to the situation of the present village of Meshad, north of Nazareth, where in fact a grave is pointed out as that of Jonah. [Quaresmius, ii. 855 ; Robinson, Palestine, iii. 449 ; Bib. Researches, p. 140.] He foretold to Jeroboam II. (b. c. 824-783) the success of his wars for the extension [the restoration of 1 ["Viun eine grosse dffentliche Buxse,'' perform a great public [act of] repentance. — C. E.] ■2 [The English version of 2 Kings xiv. 25, which reads . . . . " Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, which tool of Gath-Hepher," may be understood as meaning that Jonah was merely a resident of that viiiage ; but the Hebrew preposition mm, rendered of. has. among other significations, that of source, or origin See Qesenius' Hebrew Lexicon t t. — C. B.] 2 JONAH. the ancient boundaries. — C. E.] of the kingdom of Israel ; and was consequently an earl* ;• on temporary of the prophet Amos. In the relations of the book to the history of the times, mere is nothing to contradict the opinion that this was the period of Jonah's ministry [JFt'r- bungszeit]. Assyria, which, according to the statement of Herodotus, ruled Hither Asia five hundred and twenty years, was then a powerful empire ; and as Jeroboam's reign falls within the last century of the Assyrian dominion, Nineveh must certainly have possessed, at that time, the great extent which is assigned to it in this book, and which is also attested by profane authors. The separate cities of which this great metropolis [WeltsladQ was made up, were also of a very ancient foundation. (Comp. with 1, 2.) And, if twenty years after the death of Jeroboam, Menahem became tributary to the Assyrian king, Pul (2 K. xv. 19), it is obviously no rash assumption to affirm that even in the time of Jeroboam the Assyriana •could not have been a strange people to the Israelites. The more special historical characteristics, which an historical interpretation, something more than acute, believes that it has discovered in this book, namely, that Jonah went on a political mission to Nineveh, the nature of which it undertakes to determine (Forbiger, Gold- horn), belong of course to the domain of fiction and hypothesis. To the same place we assign the fables of the Rabbins, that can be gleaned in Carpzov (Introd. ii. 346), concerning the person and history of Jonah, together with the ingenious combinations of the same history with profane Mythology in Forbiger. Rosenmuller, Friedrichsen, Baur, and, in part also, Hitzig. So, then, even at an early period, the narrative of this book was considered historical. (The earliest reference to it is found in Tobit xiv. 8, LXX.) The arguments which have been raised against the historical character of the recorded events, reduce themselves (comp. 3 below) to the incredibility of the reported incidents of Jonah's life ; and on a closer exami- nation (comp. 3, 7; 4, 6), to the incomprehensibility of the miracle of the fish, which, in very early times, provoked mockery and jest. (Lucian, Verce Hist., i. § 30 f. ed. Bip. ; Augustini Ep. 102, opp. ed. Migne, ii. p. 382.) They are consequently of a subjective nature. The analogies adduced in support of this miracle may be adapted to facilitate belief in this history, on the part of him who is inclined to believe, or who already believes, without such aid ; but they will hardly convince the unbeliever \_Gegner~\ ; and they were evidently not in the mind of the author, who undoubtedly intended to record a miracle, and not a natural event. [" We feel ourselves precluded from any doubt of the reality of the transactions recorded in this book, by the simplicity of the language itself; by the historical allusions in Tobit xiv. 4-vi. 15, and Josephus, Ant., ix. 10, sec. 2 ; and by the accordance with other authorities of the historical and geographical notices ; by the thought that we might as well doubt all other miracles in Scripture as doubt these (' Quod aut omnia divina miracula cre- denda non sint, aut hoc cur non credatur causa nulla sit ' Aug. Ep. cii. in Qu&st. 6 de Jona, ii. 284 ; cf. Cyril. Alex. Comment, in Jonam, iii. 367-389) ; above all, by the explicit words and teaching of our blessed Lord himself (Mat. xii. 39, 41 ; xvi. 4 ; Luke xi. 29). and by the correspondence of the miracles in the histories of Jonah and the Messiah." — Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, s. v. " Jonah." — C. E.] [O. R. Hertwig's Tables : The historical truth of the narrative, assailed as early as the time of Lucian, is defended on the following grounds : — (1.) The numerous historical and geographical statements bear in themselves a genuine his torical character; for (a.) The mission of Jonah to Nineveh entirely agrees with the historical circumstances of his time. (6.) The description of the size of Nineveh harmonizes with the classical accounts of it. (Comp. Diod. Sic. ii. 3.) (c.) The deep moral corruption is attested by Nahum. (d.) The mourning of men and cattle (chap. iii. 5-8) is confirmed by Herodotus, ix. 24. as an Asiatic custom. f2.) The fundamental idea of the book, and the psychologically faithful description of the personality of the prophet and of the other persons, — ship's crew and Ninevites, — entirely exclude fiction. Compare Harless (in his Zeitschr. fur Protest. 1851, xxi. 2) and M. Baumgarten. (8.) The compilers of the Canon believed in the historical truth of the narrative, and for that reason received it among the prophetical writings. (4.) The historical truth of the book is placed beyond all doubt by the words of Christ Matt. xii. 39 AT. ; xvi. 4 ; Luke xi. 29-32. INTRODUCTION. 3 Compare Sack (Christl. Apol.) and Delitzsch. The belief of its historical character universally prevailed, not only in the Jewish Synagogue, but also in the Christian Church, until the middle of last century. (Tob. xiv. 8; LXX. ; Joseph. Ant.) In the last and present centuries the view that the book is a fiction was and has been naintained : — (1.) An allegory: v. d. Hardt, Less, Palmer, Krahmer. (2.) A legend : Eichhorn. A tale : Augusti, Roman, Miiller, and others. (3.) A myth, with Grecian (Forbiger, Rosenm., Friedrichsen), or with Assyr.-Baby 1. ele- ments (Baur). (4.) A moral didactic fable, or parable (Pareau, Gesen., Jahn, de Wette, Winer, Enobel Niemeyer, Paulus, Ewald, and others). (5.) A prophetic didactic fiction (Koster, J'ager, Hitzig.) — C. E.] III. Symbolical Character of the Book. The main question is tbat which relates to the understanding of this book, not that con- cerning its historical contents [Gehalt], which will be answered differently, according to the degree in which the reader considers his conscience bound by the fides historica of the Holy Scriptures. Whether the events are taken from actual life or not, this much is evident, that the record of them is not tbe proper aim \_nicht Selbstzweck ist] of the book : it is intended to communicate a deeper instruction in historical form. That the book was written for the purpose of communicating such instruction is proved: — 1. From its position among the prophetical writings. The direct object of these writings is, without exception, to convey instruction in divine truth. If it be said, that the book was placed among the twelve Minor Prophets, because Jonah was its author, it may be replied, first, that of its authorship by Jonah we have nowhere any mention ; and that, according to this rule, the Lamentations ought also to be placed among the prophetical books. Just with as little propriety can an argument be founded upon the fact that the book treats of the fortunes of a prophet, for according to this rule, Micah and Malachi would have no place among the prophetical writings ; while on the other hand the books of Moses, from Exodus to Deuteronomy, and a whole series of chapters in the books of Kings, would be entitled to a place among these writing?. If in the prophets, Isaiah and Jeremiah, historical passages, or notices, are inserted, it is done that they may form the frame-work of the prophecy, serve to make it intelligible, and place it in organic connection with the facts ; but throughout these prophets the pro- phetical element is the main part, on which the whole hinges. In the book of Jonah, on the other hand, this could still less be the object, as his prophecy is revoked, and thus forms, in the totality of the book, only a thing of passing moment [yorubergehendes Moment}. More- over, that historical additions should be found in a long series of prophetical discourses is one thing, but that an entire independent book should be placed under this point of view, is quite another thing. Evidently the compilers of the Canon considered the book a purely prophetical one [Rede], whose historical manner of representation has the object of bringing its instruction within reach and of making it easily retained. 2. We find confirmation of this by inspection of the book itself, in which certain instruc- tive truths — of which more hereafter — force themselves on the notice of the reader, and stand out so prominently that the interest of the narrator evidently does not attach to the person of whom he speaks, but manifestly to the events of his life \_Ergehen dieser Person], Precisely that, which, historically viewed, must appear the chief particular of the book, namely, the sparing of Nineveh, is marked with proportionally the least emphasis. 3. In addition to these considerations, and in harmony with them, is the style of the book. This is anything but the historical style. The author neglects a multitude of things, which he would have been obliged to mention had history been his principal aim. He says nothing of the sins of which Nineveh was guilty, and which might have formed the motive for its destruction ; nothing of the long and difficult journey of the prophet to Nineveh ; he is silent about the early dwelling-place of Jonah, about the place where he was vomited out upon the land ; he does not mention whether and when Jonah offered and performed the offering and vow, which he promised and made (ii. 10) ; neither does he mention the name of the Assyrian king, nor take any notice of the subsequent fortunes of the prophet. In any case the narrative, if it were intended to be historical, would be incomplete by the frequent occurrence that circumstances, which are necessary for the connection of events, are men 4 JONAH. tioned later than they occurred, and only where attention is directed to them as havin* already happened. Should the observations mostly presented by Goldhorn and Hitzig be urged for the purpose of denying altogether that the Book of Jonah relates historical events, they must be deemed inadequate ; but they certainly prove what Hengstenberg haa fully done, that the author communicates historical events only so far as the object requires, to furnish an intelligible basis for the representation of a doctrinal object lying outside of the narrative ; that the author, if he avails himself of the facts of history for his purpose, has still employed historical data with discrimination, in the light of, and according to the idea, which he intended to represent. 4. Circumstances are found so recorded, that without the supposition of a definite design and bearing of the narrative, this form of narration would be incomprehensible. If Jonah utters thanks in the belly of the fish, and not after he is safe on shore, then there is, unlesi this arrangement of events is required by a definite design, a want of physical truth, whicl cannot be concealed by any exegetical subtilty. But the questions now arise, what are the design and teaching of the book ? and how are they made available in the narrative ? Is it a single moral lesson, of which the entire nar- rative is the foundation, after the manner of a didactic fable ? Or is the whole representa- tion symbolical, exhibiting a complete system [Zusammenhang~\ of doctrines and ideas, a delineation of an entire development in the Kingdom of God ? In answer to the first of these suppositions it can be said, that a single tenet of revelation, or of morality, is incongruous with the contents of the whole book. Each of the individual tendencies advanced by Exegetes neglects one or the other part of the book, and can, there- fore, not sufficiently explain the peculiar literary character of the whole. " There is no didactic unity in the book." (Sack.) In the manifold applications made of the book, the doctrine has been discovered in it, that God cares for other nations also (Semler) ; that He is not the God of the Jews only, but also of the heathen (D. Michaelis, Eichhorn, Bohme, Pareau, Gesenius, De Wette, Winer, Knobel, and many others) ; and the view of Gramberg and Friedrichsen amounts to essentially the same thing, according to which the conduct of the heathen and their treatment should serve as an example of repentance to Israel. But according to these views the second chapter is entirely superfluous, and Friedrichsen, with great difficulty, accommodates the first to them. The matter is not improved by discovering in the book, in addition to instruction for the Jews, an admonition to toleration for the heathen. (Griesinger). Still less satisfactory are general truths, such as those that Niemeyer, Hezel, Mbller, Meyer, Paulus, and others have found in the book : namely, " God's ways are not as our ways." "The office of prophet is arduous, but of great worth" [Kostlich~\. "Jehovah is kind and readily forgives." " God is ready to avenge and to forgive," etc. And, if convert- ing the doctrine into a special aim [Tendenz], Hitzig has developed the suggestions of Koster and Jager to the view, that the book was written to remove the doubts which might attach themselves to the non-fulfillment of prophecy (here, according to Hitzig, with special refer- ence to the alleged non-fulfillment of the prophecy of Obadiah), then the great preparations which were devoted to so insignificant an object, are not in keeping with it. Then chapters iii. and iv. would be amply sufficient. In the homiletical and catechetical use of the book, one must not leave unnoticed all those truths and definite purposes ; and he will also deter- mine, on account of their multitude, to bestow increased esteem and consideration upon the opulence of this little book, which, in four short chapters, discloses new contents to each inquirer ; but even the multiplicity of the constructions put upon it [Bestimmungen] proves that none exhausts the contents of the book to the degree that one can attribute to it the character of a didactic fable, or moral narrative. There is a still more cogent argument. The book is, as we have seen, a prophetical oec But in all prophecy, this kind of narrative is nowhere to be met with. No narrative is found there, which should solely have the object that the hearer, or reader, may draw fbom it an individual truth as a moral. On the other hand, it is quite a frequent kind of propheti eal composition to symbolize the past, present, or future destinies of a great community \n a single concrete form, so that this representative concrete appears in a whole series of relations as a symbol of that community. Of this, the Vineyard, Isaiah, chap, v., is a familiar example. Ezekiel, particularly, is full of such symbols, among wh'ch the figurative repre sentation of the fate of Jerusalem, chap, xvi., and the allegorizing of Jndah and Ephraim by (he two sisters, Aholah and Aholibah, are characteristic of this species of prophetic style INTRODUCTION. And still nearer to our purpose stands the most profound symbolical discourse of the Old Testament, Isaiah xl.-lxvi., in which everything, deserts, water, bread, light, Zion, are sym- bols, and under all these symbols the comprehension of the Israelitish national community, under the individual designation of the servant of God, occupies the highest place, since it is explained by the spirit of prophecy as the type of the true Israel manifested in Christ. That the book of Jonah is to be counted among these symbolical prophecies has by no means escaped the notice of interpreters. The anticipation of it gleams through the words of old Marck : " Scriptum est magna parte historicurn, sed ila ut in historia ipsa lateat maximi aticinii mysterium, atque ipse fads suis non minus quam effatis vatem se verum demonstret." It forms also the minimum of an originally right starting-point in the peculiar conceits, whimsically embellished by the theological mythus, of Von der Hardt, that Nineveh repre- sents Samaria, but that Jonah is an enigmatical name for the kings Manasseh and Josiah. Here belong also Herder's attempt to represent Jonah as a symbol of the order of the proph- ets, and Krahmer's view that Jonah was a warning example for his contemporaries. On the same line, and equally removed from the purely parabolical and purely historical view, lies the attempt made by several modern divines and commentators, after the example of Sack (in harmony with the common effort to guide the exegesis of the Old Testament into the profound meaning of Scripture, and into the deep questions of the close connection between the Old and New Testaments), to represent Jonah as a type of Christ. Here particularly, we may mention Hengstenberg, Delitzsch, and Keil. (See below). This typical view of the book has a strong claim to be received, if we consider the declara- tion of our Saviour (Matth. xii. 40). But notwithstanding it may be said, first, that this view does not embrace the whole book, but must, along with our Saviour's declaration, be restricted to chapter ii. ; and again, that it shares the defects of every exposition of the Old Testament given entirely from the point of view of the New Testament ; and that it is not suited to the peculiarity of the Old Testament standpoint, and to the independent signifi- cance of the book in the collection of the Canon. It is in part not enough, namely, the mere New Testament element ; in part too much, to wit, the discovery of the fulfillment already in that which is preliminary. It is certainly true that the whole Old Testament revelation receives light from the New Testament from first to last, which enables us to per- ceive its teleological connection tending onward till it reaches the goal ; and yet each state- ment and each book of the Old Testament, as a member of the organism of the Holy Scriptures, has an aim peculiar to itself. And the full authority of the typical interpretation will then first come into the true light, when one places the genuine sense already drawn from the contents of the book, under the light of the end, namely, the fulfillment. Let ua attempt an interpretation of the symbol, an interpretation standing upon its own, and that an Old Testament foundation. Jonah is a prophet ; his special mission in the book is a prophetic one. There is in the Old Testament only one community to which the prophetic vocation belongs, — namely, the people of Israel. For the purpose that in him all the tribes of the earth should be blessed, Israel was founded as a nation in his ancestor, Abraham (Gen. xii.), and God chose him as his servant, to disseminate the light, the knowledge of God's law among the heathen. (Is. xlii. 1). Jonah is Israel. Nineveh — in the view of the author of the book the type of a great heathen city — is, in a similar relation, the representative of the heathen world, as are moreover Babylon (Is. xiii. f.), and Edom (Is. lxiii.). It is selected here, because the con- tact with Nineveh marks the decisive turning-point between the old time, when Israel, joy- ful in his strength, subjected the neighboring nations, and the new time, in which prophecy, through contact with the Mesopotamian powers, became of a universal character ; because their captivity among these nations, though at first a penal calamity determined upon them, had the ultimate purpose of freeing the kingdom of God from the narrow limits of its national foundation, and of preparing its dissemination over the whole earth. Israel has the mission of preaching God's doctrine and law to the heathen world. But he has a greater desire for gain and its pursuits. He shuns his calling and goes on board a merchantman. He abandons his intimate relation to Zion and hastens far away, where no mission is assigned to him, where he thinks that the arm of God cannot reach him. For it also belongs to his ungodly prejudices to believe that God's arm and work are limited to the holy land — a prejudice which already in Jacob, the ancestor whose character represent* typically the national faults, was to his shame rebuked (Gen. xxviii. 16 f.). t) JONAH. But God reproves the fugitive. In the terrors, which must fall upon him, according tt the divine decree, Jonah does not seek God, but sleeps, while the heathen pray. Al. heathen nations — the individual members of the crew represent nations, for they pray each to his God (i. 5) —might, by their sincere idol-worship, administer a rebuke [zur Beschamung dieneii] to the godlessness of God's people, in their extreme distress. They cast the lot. which brings death to him ; this they do not of their own choice, but by the appointment of God, which they unconsciously follow. The lot falls for a war of extermination against Israel. Jonah must announce his own fate. Israel has the law, which carries the curse in itself, and, like a sword suspended by a horse-hair, hangs over the head of the nation (comp. on Micah vi. 16); he has prophecy, which, confined to him, prophecies a calamitous end to the whole nation (Micah iii. 12 i. 8). Jonah is thrown into the sea and swallowed by a monster. The sea-monster is, by no means, an unusual phenomenon in prophetic typology. It is the secular power appointed by God for the scourge of Israel and of the earth. (Is. xxvii. 1 ; comp. on ii. 1.) Israel is abandoned to the night and gloom of exile, after the catas- trophe of the national overthrow, because he neglected his vocation. Hence the fact that Jonah prays and turns to God, before his deliverance from the fish's belly, receives an illus- tration. In adversity Israel shall again seek God. In that which properly belongs to penal sufferings, he shall nevertheless, at the same time, acknowledge the gracious hand of God (Hos. ii. 16). He shall, also, in his miserable existence in a foreign land, not forget his holy calling. He shall not forget that his preservation as a nation, though as outcast, is a saving act of God. This becomes still clearer through the close relation, in which this prayer of Jonah stands to the longing and lamentations in exile, of the people of God, e. g. Psalms xlii. and lxxxviii. in which also the deeps of the sea symbolize the misery of Israel. There [in the deep] Jonah remains three days and three nights, a definite, but an ideal time (comp. on ii. 1) ; a similar time is allotted by Hosea, also, for the punishment of Israel (Hos. vi. 2). Then the fish vomits him out; the exile must have an end, for God has appointed the fish ; not of its own power and will did it swallow Jonah. But with the hoped for restoration, the vocation of Israel is not revoked. Jonah is sent the second time to Nineveh ; and he must preach that the heathen world shall perish ; for that is the will of God concerning the nations that do not obey Him (Micah v. 14). But Israel says, What shall I preach ? It is truly cause for despair, that so much has already been prophesied concerning the destruction of the heathen, and that it has come to nothing. They remain peaceful and quiet. If my preaching accomplishes its object, they will be saved, for God is merciful and gracious. (Comp. Zech. i. 11.) This instance [Moment] [of doubt and irresolu- tion on the part of Israel. — C. E.] is also portrayed in the history of Jonah. Indeed, Jonah's preaching works repentance, and, consequently, forbearance; and reproach proceeds from his mouth. God corrects him by the incident of the palmchrist. Thereby Israel, too, is instructed. There lies in the sparing of Nineveh, before the correction of Jonah, the type of the future ingathering of the multitude of the heathen before the Jewish people, which must first be humbled and broken. (Comp. Micah iv.) And the prophet who wrote the history of Jonah, has exhibited the ground of this future, momentous to his people, as one lying within the Old Testament knowledge of God and his kingdom ; in the mercy of God in view of repent- ance, and in the obduracy of Israel against the divine goodness, which quarrels with God instead of repenting. So must it truly come to pass, what Isaiah says (lxv. 1), that God is found of those who sought Him not, and who were not called by his name. (Comp. Bom. x. 20.) Upon this teleological prophecy nothing more can follow ; the book naturally closes with this according to our view. It becomes evident, according to this view, that the book is one of universal tendency, and raises the idea of Israel to a height similar to that described, Isaiah xl. ff. ; only that there the bright side fulfilled in Christ develops itself from the mission of the servant. Though here the dignity of the mission is not less marked than there, yet the natural obstacles in the character of the people are brought into the foreground, by which it came to pass that the true Israel, at last, was not received by his own, and was crucified bv contemporary Israel. Further, the reciprocal relation is hence clearly exhibited, which the Fymbolical character has had upon the treatment of the historical narrative ; and the his- torical substratum upon the symbolical representation. There is no doubt that the truth to be exhibited could have been more briefly and more directly explained in another way ^as this holds good generally in the case of parables) ; but the author found, in a history ready te INTRODUCTION. 1 his hand, 1 the profound idea, which the Spirit moved him to teach, and in order to do justice to the historical, he made casual mention in the narrative, of much which, at the first glance, might appear, from the point of view of a didactic object, as unimportant. But on the other hand, it could not fail that his design to write symbolic history made him indifferent to the pragmatic connection of the historical substratum in itself; hence the chasms and the incompleteness of statement noted by Hengstenberg, as soon as the rule of the historical style is applied to it. Hence, finally, we learn from the book itself, its typical significance in relation to the New Testament. That Israel, as he fives a unity in the complex of God's ideas [in der IdeenweU Gottes], is the type of Christ, is indubitable to every one who has once earnestly reflected upon the wonderful harmony between the image of the servant of God (Is. xlix. ff.) and Christ, and who has sought to explore the concealed vein of Old Testament history, according to the clear exposition of the Apostle Paul (Gal. iii. 16). If Jonah is a type of Israel, and Israel a type of Christ, then the typical relation already traced out in Sack (see below), is sug- gested between Jonah and Christ ; and the reference to this type, prominently presented in Matt. xii. 40, comp. xvi. 4 ; Mk. viii. 1 1 f. ; Luke xi. 29 ff. ; John xii. 23 f., is only a single, though the most important instance [Moment], Indeed it is according to the intimation of these passages, that as the sparing of Jonah in the belly of the fish and his subsequent preach- ing of repentance (Luke xi. 32), were a sign to the Ninevites, which must bring to them faith or judgment, so the preservation of Jesus in the grave, and the continued proclamation of the Risen One, are a sign to the world of judgment and of faith, by which the separation of mankind proceeds continually with inexorable power. Other relations can still be discovered without forced interpretation. It seems to me particularly worth considering how the volun- tary labors of the ship's crew (i. 13) did not gain the shore ; there was no peace until the sin-offering consecrated by God was effered. [The mission and vocation of Israel are set forth in Is. xlii. 6 : " I the Lord have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thy hand, and will keep thee, and give thee for a cove- nant of the people, for a fight of the Gentiles." " This description is entirely appropriate, not only to the Head, but to the Body also, in subordination to him. Not only the Messiah, but the Israel of God was sent to be a mediator or connecting link between Jehovah and the nations." Israel was "a covenant race or middle people between God and the apostate nations." (Alexander on Isaiah, chap. xlii. 6.) Jonah commissioned by God to preach against the great heathen city, Nineveh, is a type of Israel in his mission and vocation. " The book of Jonah contains no prediction of a direct Christian import. But he is, in his own person, a type, a prophetic sign of Christ. The miracle of his deliverance from his three days of death in the body of the whale, is the expressive image of the resurrection of Christ. Our Saviour has fixed the truth and certainty of this type. Matt. xii. 40. " Further, the whole import of Jonah's mission partakes of the Christian character. For when we see that he is sent not only to carry the tidings of the divine judgment, but also to exemplify the grant of the divine mercy to a great heathen city ; that is, to be a preacher of repentance ; and that the repentance of the Ninevites through his mission, brings them to know " a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness, and repenting Him of the evil " (Jonah iv. 2) ; — without staying to discuss whether all this be a formal type of the genius of the Christian religion, it is plainly a real example of some of its chief properties, in the manifested efficacy of repentance, the grant of pardon, and the communication of God's mercy to the heathen world." (Davison on Prophecy, pp. 200, 201.) — C. E.] [O. R. Hertwig's Tables : Without prejudice to its historical sense, the following authors admit a symbolico-typical character of the Book : — (1.) Keil, Del., Baumg., Hengst. : Jonah is a type of Christ. (Also the Church Fathers, Marck and others, on account of Matt. xii. 40.) (2.) Kleinert : Jonah is the representative of Israel in his [Israel's] prophetic vocation to the heathen world. — C. E.] IV. Date. On this point two deductions follow from the preceding exposition : first, that Jonah him- •elf could not have written this book ; second, that its composition is separated by a long i Compare H. Bwald, on the Poetical Books of the Old Testament in the Introduction to the Book of Job : the inven- Bon of a history from its inception, the production of a person intended to be historical, wholly from the imagination of the poet, are entirely foreign to antiquity, because extremely forced and remote. 8 JONAH. period from the time of Jereboam II., in whose reign its action falls. For disregarding the fact that this manner of speaking of one's self in the third person, does not occur elsewhere in the prophets, with the exception of Isaiah xxxvi.-xxxix., taken from an annalistic source, though written by the prophet, and with the exception of short introductory headings to prophetic passages (compare on the other hand, e. g., Ezekiel), and that it has also little probability, the historical style is wanting to the book, and still more, there is wanting the character of things experienced by the writer [selbsterlebter Dinge, self experienced things]. And indeed it is not well to assume either that a man should make his own fortunes the subject of a sym- bolical narrative, or that Jonah, according to the time in which he lived and the aggregate condition of prophetic knowledge of that time, should see so clearly, portrayed in the won- derful fortunes which happened to him, according to the narrative of this book, over its per- sonal significance, the lines for the whole future development of the kingdom of God and its relation to the heathen world, as they have been here exhibited in harmony with the pro- phetic revelations, which developed themselves long after the time of Jonah in the vision of the Babylonish exile ; especially because the book evidently does not advance the claim of intending to make the announcement of a germinant, though not begun future, but to furnish an understanding of the ways of God at the time present. We find that personification of Israel, its relation to the prophetic mission and to the exile, first in Isaiah xl. ff., in the Lamen- tations of Jeremiah, and especially so strongly marked in Ezekiel, that the author of this book cannot be elevated to a grade of prophecy like this. It agrees with this, that the next object of the book, according to the above acknowledged meaning of chap, ii., is exhausted in rousing and bringing the Israelites to the consciousness of their vocation, according as they, in the Captivity and after it, were situated with reference to the heathen. It cannot even be denied that the literary character of the book also gives it this place. That the psalm in the second chapter is not a prayer repeated literally from memory, but a free reproduction (whose relation to the object above stated, cannot escape the notice of the reader), is pretty gen- erally acknowledged. " Not that he uttered just these words with his mouth, and placed them in such order, for he was not in so happy a state as to compose so fine a hymn. But it is therein shown how he felt ; what thoughts were in his heart, while he was engaged in the bard struggle with death." (Luther.) The reproduction indeed depends upon passages in the Psalter. And though it might be conceded that ver. 2 is not, as would appear at first sight, borrowed from Psalm cxx. 1, written after the exile, but from Psalm xviii. 7, there still remains a series of other verbal coincidences with Psalms xlii., lxxxviii., and others, which, like these Psalms themselves can only be explained from the side of the Captivity. Just so is the description of the repentance (chap, iii.), which the Ninevites engaged in by order of their king, made up throughout of recollections of the prophetic mode of expression ; resting not only upon Joel i. 20, but also upon Ezekiel xviii. 23 ; and in general a realization of Ezekiel iii. 6. Not that thereby the historical character of this repentance would be destroyed : we find here, as in the prayer (chap, ii.), views and special references that do not admit of a general solution. But the mode of expression fixes the time of the exile as the date of the book. To this may finally be added some external peculiarities of language and representation. The richness of the language and the use of words, likewise place the book in the times of the later Hebraism. In common with Ezekiel and Jeremiah, it has the words not occurring elsewhere: nbtt, mariner, i. 5 (Ez. xxvii. 9, 27, 29); HWV, i. 6 (comp. Jer. v. 28); the form i2~i, iv. 11, compare with Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles; the word -Q37n "i. 6, with the signification to remove, to lay aside, compare with Chronicles and Esther. Further, K7J2, iii. 7, in the sense of edict, and HD^D, ship, i. 5, are words wholly foreign to the Hebrew commonwealth of letters and of North-Semitic origin. And hence, also, other phe- nomena of language, that were not impossible in the time of Jonah, but yet foreign to the old prophetic style, gain importance, as for instance, the combinations, after the Aramaic manner, of ^btT?, i. 12 ; ^b©?, i. 7 ; and the simple W itself for "IttJS, iv. 10 ; and also the periphrase of the object-accusative by means of b, iv. 6. In however small a degree a determinate meaning can be ascribed to such phenomena in language in the small compass :>f the realm of Hebrew literature, yet are they in nowise worthless, especially in a book whose author wholly omits to make any mention of himself. To this may be added the fact that an author in Jonah's time, in mentioning the city of Nineveh, would hardlj la TRODUCTION. 'iave found it necessary for the information of his readers, to subjoin : " and Nineveh was a great city," iii. 3 ; so finally, the phenomenon of our having obviously in chapters iii. and iv. two accounts, which state essentially the same thing, the one in laconic touches, the other in more minute details (a circumstance in the known style of oriental and popular narra- tive, that in general need not surprise us), and which agree verbally and intimately blend with one another. First account, C. iii., 1-5, 10; iv. 1-5. Second account, iii. 1-4, 6-10; iv. 1-3, 6-11). This observation proves two different things: first that we have to do, not with a parabolic fiction, but with a fact historically transmitted several times. Secondly, so long % space has intervened between the events and the record, that two traditions could be formed in the mean time ; that therefore a later author, and not Jonah, has compiled this account in systematic form. The unity of the book, which has been denied by Nachtigal, with much ingenuity, is internally and externally quite indivisible. The word fTOK' con- nects both the great halves in the most intimate manner ; everywhere we meet with certain standing formulae (]C1, ii- 1 ; iv. 6 ff. ; the great city, i. 2 ; iii. 3, etc.), and idioms (comp. especially the peculiar form of the hysteron-proteron i. 5-10 ; iii. 6 f. ; iv. 5) ; and the in- ternal unity follows naturally from the interpretation given under 2. To sum up, one cannot but ascribe the composition of the book to a contemporary and fellow-sufferer of Ezekiel. to whom allusions most manifold have met us in the course of exposition. But the position which it occupies among the oldest prophets, is easily explained from the circumstance that the object of the narrative, and not the author, is kept in view, and therefore Jonah, as the one who first came in contact with Assyria, properly precedes Micah, that prophet who lived under the Assyrian oppression, during its middle period, and Nahum, who announced definitely the fate of Nineveh. Luther : Some would maintain, as Jerome shows, that this prophet, Jonah, was the son of the widow at Zarephath, near Sidon, who nourished the prophet Elijah during the famine, mentioned in 1 K. xvii. 10, and 2 K. xiv. 25. The reason they assign is, that he calls himself here the son of Amittai, that is, a son of the true one, because his mother said to Elijah, when he raised him from the dead : " Now I know that the word of thy mouth is truth " (1 K. xvii. 24). Believe that who will, I do not believe it; but his father was called Amittai, in Latin Verax (true), in German Wahrlich (true), and was of Gath-Hepher, which city was in the tribe of Zebulun (Josh. xix. 13 ; 2 K. xiv. 25). The widow of Zarephath was also a heathen, as Christ informs us (Luke iv. 26) ; but Jonah confesses here (chap. i. 9), that he was a Hebrew. I say this, therefore, that where we have the means, it is very well to know at what time and in what country a prophet lived. For it has this advantage, that we can better under- stand his book, if we know the time, place, person, and history [of that period]. We find then that Jonah lived at the time of king Jeroboam, whose grandfather was king Jehu, when king Uzziah reigned in Judah, when also the prophets, Hosea, Amos, and Joel lived in the same kingdom of Israel, in other places and cities. We can infer how eminently beloved a man Jonah was in the kingdom of Israel, and how God wrought by him a great work, from the fact that through his preaching, king Jeroboam was so successful as to regain all that Hazael, king of Syria, had detached from the kingdom of Israel, to which he had done so great damage, that the prophet Elisha wept over it, before it came to pass (2 K. viii. 11). Whether Jonah counseled and assisted king Jeroboam before his experience in the whale, and at Nineveh, or after his return from that city, cannot be shown from Scripture. But it is probable that he first served and aided king Jeroboam in his country, until he had again set up and established the kingdom of Israel. After this he is sent of God out of his own country to Nineveh. For in his own country he had learned from experience how kind and gracious God was to the idolatrous kingdom of Israel ; wherefore he expected that He would also be as kind and gracious toward Nineveh, so that his proclamation would be in vain and fruitless, as he himself confesses, and is angry thereat (ch. iv. 1, 2). In short, such was the state of the world in the time of Jonah, that the supreme kingdom or empire in it, was in Assyria, at Nineveh, as it was afterward at Babylon, and subsequently *t Bome. Besides, there were at this time the other kingdoms, Syria, Israel, Judah, Edom, Moab, each independent. The kingdom of Israel prospered under king Jeroboam on Jonah's iccount ; so the kingdom of Judah was prosperous under king Uzziah. Sack : Jonah was saved from the depths of the sea, and preserved in the body of the sea- 10 JONAH. monster, for the purpose of preaching repentance to the Ninevites, a people with the common mercies of Providence thrown around them, not by themselves, but by Jehovah. They thereupon repent. This wonderful preservation for the eifective preaching of repentance took place, and was recorded just as it happened, that it might be a type of the Deliverer of the nation, who also entered the depths of the earth, and yet was preserved, and within three days was made alive, and who was to perform the great work of " preaching repentance and remission of sins among all nations" (Luke xxiv. 47), with results so much more victorious, and under the opposition of Israel. Some one besides Jonah might have preached to the Ninevites ; and Jonah might have been brought to do it in some other way than by a won- derful deliverance ; the conversion of the Ninevites had also just as little need of becoming a portion of Biblical history, as so many transient returns of an ancient people to a better state of piety, have had. But all this had to come to pass, because nothing more suitable oould be conceived whereby to typify the greatest deliverance, by means of which the most successful sermon on repentance was to become possible. As Jonah's preaching to the Nin- evites was against his will, so the preaching of Christ to the heathen was against the will of Israel : they were awakened to repentance, and the Saviour could on that account say with such significance : " No other sign shall be given to this generation than that of Jonah the prophet," since through the possibility of the repetition of this sign, — the preservation in the depths of the earth, — just the strongest proof of the reprobate character of this gen- eration was given. This is not done away by the passage in Luke xi. 30, where that genera- tion is directly compared with the Ninevites ; for this can refer only to the experience of such wonderful deliverance, and does not destroy the contrast that runs through all these pas- sages, between the baser Jews and the better ancient and modern heathen. (Comp. Matt. viii. 11.) But the differences that Jonah remained alive and Christ was made alive ; that Jonah went against his will ; and Christ, out of love, commanded [his disciples] to preach to all nations ; that Jonah afterward was angry thereat [God's sparing Nineveh], which was exactly repeated in the case of Israel ; — all these are naturally founded on the history as such, and vanish before the pervading similarity of the divine method of dealing before and after the preaching to the heathen. Be it so, that before the appearance of the Saviour, pity to the heathen, in a special manner, must have occurred to the readers of Jonah as the real sense of the book ; after that appearance, mercy displaying itself, in the giving up and pres- ervation of the Messiah, is taken as the true sense of Jonah ; and this sense is a historico- typical one. Keil : The mission of Jonah is a fact of symbolical and typical significance, which was intended not only to enlighten Israel as to the position of the heathen world in relation to the kingdom of God, but at the same time to typify the future admission of the heathen, who observe God's word, to a participation of the salvation prepared in Israel for all nations. This, however, does not exhaust the deeper meaning of the history of Jonah. It reaches 6till further and culminates in the typical character of the three days' sojourn of Jonah in the belly of the fish, of which Christ informs us, when He referred the Jews to the sign of the prophet Jonah, in the words : " As Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." (Matt. xii. 40.) In order to understand this type, that is to say, the divinely appointed con- nection between the typical event and its antitype, we are furnished with a key in the answer which Jesus gave, when, a short time before his passion, Philip and Andrew told Him, that certain Greeks, among those who had come up to worship at the feast, desired to see Him. This answer consists of a twofold statement (John xii. 23 f.) : " The time is come that the Son of Man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone ; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit ; " and xii. 32, " And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me." This answer of Jesus amounts to this : that the time for the admission of the heathen had not yet come ; but in the words, " the hour is come," etc., is contained the explanation, that the heathen have only to wait patiently a little longer, since their union with Christ, with which the reply concludes (ver. 32), is directly connected with the glorification of the Son of Man (Hengstenberg, on John xii. 20). This declaration of our Lord, that his death and glorifi- cation are necessary, in order that He may draw all men, even the heathen, to himself, or that by his death He may break down the wall of partition, by which the heathen till then had been shut out of the kingdom of God, at which He had already hinted in John x. 15, 16 INTRODUCTION. 11 teaches us to recognize the history of Jonah as an important, significant link in the chain of development of the divine plan of salvation. Niebuhr : By the way, we must call attention to the fact, that the threatened, but revoked destruction of Nineveh, has reference likely to the shock which Nineveh suffered through the revolt of Media and Babylon, and which bears wholly the character of a postponed over- throw of the kingdom. The destruction is to occur after forty days (years). Now Jonah, the son of Amittai (2 K. xiv. 25), is mentioned in connection with Jeroboam II. (about 75-34 N.) as a prophet. There is nothing said as to the time when Jonah lived. But as in those times it was the rule for prophecies to have reference only to brief periods, it is probable that Jonah was a contemporary of Jeroboam, and that he prophesied against Nineveh forty years before the revolt of Media, which began some years prior to I. N. [O. R. Hertwig*s Tables give the following summary of views respecting the date of the Book : — Keil fixes it soon after the events recorded in it, and the return of Jonah to his native land. Others place it at a later time for the following reasons : — (1.) The book contains Aramaisms, which indicate a later age than that of the events which it records. (De Wette.) (2.) Chapter iii. 3, supposes that the destruction of Nineveh had already taken place. (Ewald.) (3.) ii. 3-10, contains many reminiscences from the Psalms. (4.) Chapter ii. 5, 8, supposes that the temple had been rebuilt. (Krahmer.) For these reasons the following dates have been assumed : — (a.) The time of the Assyrian exile. (Goldhorn.) (6.) The time of Josiah. (Gesen., Rosenm., and Berth.) (c.) The time of the Babylonian exile. (Jager, Kleinert.) (rf.) The post-exile period. (Jahn, Knobel, Kdster, Ewald.) (e.) After the year 515 b. c. (Krahmer.) (/.) The third century. (Vatke, Bibl. Theol.) (g.) The time of the Maccabees. (Hitzig.) — C. E.] ["It is the uniform tradition among the Jews, that Jonah himself wrote the history of his mission ; and on this principle alone the book was placed among the prophets. For no books were admitted among the prophets but those which the arranger of the Canon bcHeved (if this was the work of the Great Synagogue), or (if it was the work of Ezra), kneiv to have been written by persons called to the prophetic office. Hence the Psalms of David (although many are prophetic, and our Lord declares him to have been inspired by the Holy Ghost), and the book of Daniel were placed in a separate class, because their authors, although eminently endowed with prophetic gifts, did not exercise the pastoral offiVe of flip Prophet. Histories of the prophets, as Elijah and Elisha, stand, not under their own names, but in the books of the prophets who wrote them. Nor is the book of Jonah a history of the Prophet, but of that one mission to Nineveh. Every notice of the prophet is omitted, except what bears on that mission. The book also begins with just that same authentication with which all other prophetic books begin. As Hosea and Joel and Mieah and Zephaniah open, "The word of the Lord that came unto Hosea," Joel, Micah, Zephaniah ; and other prophets in other ways ascribe their books not to themselves, but to God, so Jonah opens, "And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying." This inscription is an integral part of the book ; as is marked by the word, " saying." .... The words, " The word of the Lord came to," are the acknowledged form in which the commission of God to prophesy is recorded. It is used of the commission to deliver a simple prophecy, or it describes the whole collection of prophecies, with which any prophet was intrusted : " The word of the Lord which came to Micah or Zephaniah." But the whole history of the prophecy is bound up with, and a sequel of these words. " Nor is there anything in the style of the prophet at variance with this. " It is strange," continues Dr. Pusey, from whom these observations have been quoted, " that at any time beyond the babyhood of criticism, any argument should be drawn from thfc fact that the Prophet writes of himself in the third person. Manly criticism has been ashamed to use the argument as to the commentaries of Caesar, or the Anabasis of Xenophon. However the genuineness of these works may have been at times questioned, here we were on the ground of genuine criticism, and no one ventured to use an argrment so palpably 12 JONAH. Idle. It has been pointed out that minds so different as Barhebraeus, the great Jacobite his- torian of the east, and Frederick the Great, wrote of themselves in the third person ; as did also Thucydides and Josephus, even after they had attested that the history in which they so speak, was written by themselves. But the real ground lies much deeper. It is the exception, when any sacred writer speaks of himself in the first person. Ezra and Nehemiah do so; for they are giving an account, not of God's dealings with his people, but of their own discharge of a definite office, allotted to them by man. Solomon does so in Ecclesiastes, because he is giving the history of his own experience ; and the vanity of all human things, in themselves, could be attested so impressively by no one. as by one who had all which man's mind could imagine. On the contrary, the prophets, unless they speak of God's revelations to them, speak of themselves in the third person. Thus Amos relates in the first person, what God showed him in vision ; for God spoke to him, and he answered and pleaded with God. In relating his persecution by Amaziah, he passes at once to the third : " Amaziah said to Amos : Then answered Amos and said to Amaziah (Amos vii. 12, 14). In like way, Isaiah speaks of him self in the third person, when relating how God sent him to meet Ahaz, commanded him to walk three years, naked and barefoot ; Hezekiah's message to him, to pray for his people, and his own prophetic answer ; his visit, to Hezekiah in the king's sickness, his warning to him, his prophecy of his recovery, the sign which at God's command Isaiah gave him, and the means of healing he appointed." Dr. Pusey instances the other prophets, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Haggai, Moses ; in the New Testament, St. John, who styles himself, when referring to himself, " the disciple whom Jesus loved." " As for the few words which persons who disbelieved in miracles selected out of the book of Jonah as a plea for removing it far down beyond the period when those miracles took place, they rather indicate the contrary. They are all genuine Hebrew words or forms, except the one Aramaic name for the decree of the king of Nineveh, which Jonah naturally heard in Nineveh itself. u A writer, 1 equally unbelieving, who got rid of the miracles by assuming that the book of Jonah was meant only for a moralizing fiction, found no counter-evidence in the language, but ascribed it unhesitatingly to the Jonah, son of Amittai, who prophesied in the reign of Jeroboam II. He saw the nothingness of the so-called proof, which he had no longer any interest in maintaining. " The examination of these words will require a little detail, yet it may serve as a speci- men (it is no worse than its neighbors) of the way in which the disbelieving school picked out a few words of a Hebrew prophet or section of a prophet, in order to disparage the gen- uineness of what they did not believe." I will condense Dr. Pusey's remarks on the words in question. The words are these : — (1.) " The word sephinali, lit. ' a decked vessel,' is a genuine Hebrew word from saphan, covered, ceiled. The word was borrowed from the Hebrew, not by Syrians or Chaldees only, but by the Arabians, in none of which dialects is it an original word. A word plainly is original in that language in which it stands connected with other meanings of the same root, and not in that in which it stands isolated. Naturally, too, the term for a decked vessel would be borrowed by inland people, as the Syrians, from a nation living on the sea-shore, not conversely. This is the first occasion for mentioning a decked vessel. It is related that Jonah went in fact ' below deck,' ' was gone down into the sides of the decked vessel.' Three times in those verses, when Jonah did not wish to express that the vessel was decked, he uses the common Hebrew word, oniyyah. It was then of set purpose that he, in the same verse, used the two words, onii/yah and sephinali. 2. " Mallach is also a genuine Hebrew word, from melach, salt sea, as dXuvi, from aAs, ' salt,' then (masc.) in poetry, ' brine.' 3. " Rab hachobel, ' chief of the sailors,' ' captain.' Rab is Phoenician also, and this was a Phoenician vessel. Chobel, which is joined with it, is a Hebrew, not Aramaic word. 4. " Ribbo, ' ten thousand,' they say is a word of later Hebrew. It occurs in a Psalm of David and in Hosea. 5 " Vith'ashehath, 'thought, purposed,' is also an old Hebrew word. The root occurs in Job, a Psalm, and tin- Cantiqles. In the Syriac it does not occur, n:r in the extant Chaldee^ In the sense in which it is used by Jonah. 1 Paulua. INTRODUCTION. 13 6. " The use of the abridged forms of the relative she for asher, twice in composite words beshellemi, beshelli (the fuller form, baasher lemi, also occurring), and once in union with the noun shebbin. " There is absolutely no plea whatever for making this an indication of a later style, and yet it occurs in every string of words, which have been assumed to be indications of such style. It is not Aramaic at all, but Phoenician and Old Hebrew. In Phoenician, esh is the relative. which corresponds the more with the Hebrew in that the following letter was doubled, as in the Punic words in Plautus, syllohom, siddoberim, it enters into two proper name.-, both of which occur in the Pentateuch, and one, only there ; Methushael, ' a man of God,' and Mishael, the same as Michael, ' Who is like God ? ' lit. ' Who is what God is ? ' Probably it occurs also in the Pentateuch in the ordinary language. Perhaps it is used more in the dialect of North Palestine. It is frequently used in the Song of Solomon. In Ecclesiastes it occurs sixty- six times. Of books which are really later, it does not occur in Jeremiah's prophecies, Ezekiel, Daniel, or any of the six later of the minor prophets, nor in Nehemiah or Esther. It occurs only once in Ezra, and twice in the first Book of Chronicles, whereas it occurs four times in the Judges, and once in the Kings, and once probably in Job. 7. " Manah, ' appoint, or prepare,' occurs in a Psalm of David. 8. " Taam, ' decree.' This is a Syriac word, and accordingly, since it has now been ascer- tained beyond all question, that the language of Nineveh was a dialect of Syriac, it was, with a Hebrew pronunciation, the very word used of this decree at Nineveh. The employment of the special word is a part of the same accuracy with which Jonah relates that the decree 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. " Out of the eight words, or forms, three are naval terms, and since Israel was no seafaring people, it is in harmony with the history, that these terms should first occur in the first prophet who left the land of 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." (Pusey's Tntrod. to the Book of Jonah.) The writer of the article on Jonah, in Kitto's Biblical Cyclopmdia, is of the opinion, that the Chaldaisms in the book may be accounted for by the nearness of the Canton of Zebulon, to which Jonah belonged, to the northern territory, whence by national intercourse Aramaic peculiarities might be insensibly borrowed. — C. E.] V. Literature. Separate Commentaries. — [M. Luther, Der Proph. Jona ausgel., Wittenb., 1520. 8vo. — C. E.] J. Leusden, Jonas illustratus (Obadiah), Traj., 1656. 12mo. A. Pfeiffer, Prcelec- tiones in Proph. Jona, Viteb., 1671. 4to (3 vols. ibid. 1701). Joh. Gerhardt, Adnotatt. in Amos et Jonah, Jen., 1676. 4to. F. A. Christianus, Jonas illustratus, Lps., 1683. J. Cocceius, Comm. in Jonam, in Opp. t. iii., Francof. ad M., 1689. H. A. Grimm, Der Prophet Jonas auf, s Neue iibersetzt, mit erlduternden Anmerkungen, Diisseld., 1789. Sibthorp, Auslegung des Buchs Jona, Stuttg., 1843. Fr. Kaulen, Lib. Jonce expos., Mog., 1862. Treatises and Monographs. — H. v. d. Hardt, Jonas in Carcharia, Helmst., 1718 ; Jonas sub Sillicyprio, H. 1718 ; JEnigmata Jona;, H. 1719 ; Elias, Elisa, Jonas ex Hist, et Geogr. vetere restituti, H., 1719 ; Das Licht Jona aus der Geschichte der Gessuriter, H. 1720 ; JEnigmata prisci Orbis, H. 1723. V. Seelen, Examen hypoth. exeg. de Jona cenigmatico. in meditt. exegg., Lub. 1732. J. Th. Lessing, Observationes in vatt. J. et Nahuini., Chemn., 1780. Th. E. Piper, Diss. Critico-biblica, Historiam J. a Recentiorum Conatibus Vindicatam sistens, Gryph., 1786. Thaddaus Adam, Die Sendungsgesch. d. Proph. Jona*, Kritisch untersucht u. v. Widersprii- chen gerettet, Bonn, 1786. J. Ch. Hopfner, Curarum critt. exegett. in LXX. vers. vatt. J. specimen, Lps., 1787, f. 4. B. Kordes, Observation um in Oracc. J. specimen, Jenae, 1788. H. Benzenberg, Ein Paar Recensionen aus Herzensgrund, Frkf. u. Lpz., 1789. L. N. Fallesen, Prophetie Jonas, in Magazin for Religionslcerere, Kjbbenh, 1792, Bd. 2. H. C. Griesdorf, De verisimiUima I. Jonoe interpretandi Ratione, W., 1794, 2 Th. Paulus, Zweck der Parabel Jonah, in den Memorabb., 1794, S. 35-38. J. G. A. Moller, Jonah eine moralische Erzahlung ; ibid. S. 157 f. J. C. Nachtigall, Uber das Buch mit der Aufschrift Jonas, in Eichh. Bibliothek, 1799, S. 221 ff. Sonnenmayer, Meine Ansicht der Stelle Mail-.*, xii. 38 ff. in Augusti, s. Man- itschrift, 1802. 1, 4, S. 255 ff. J. D. Goldhorn, Excurse zum Buch Jonas, Lpz., 1803. J. H. Verschuir, De A ryumt nto Libelli Jonas, ejusque Veritas Histnrica, in Opp. ed. Lotze, Traj., 1810, 14 JONAH. P. Friedrichsen, Kritische Ubersicht der verschiedenen Ansichfen uber Jonas, Lpz., 1817; 2 AufL, 1841. J. C. Reindl, Die Serdungsgesch. des Prophet en Jonas nach Nineveh, Bamb., 1826. Forbiger, Coram, de Lycophr. Cassandri v. 31-37, cum epimetro de Jona, Lps., 1827. Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, 1834, n. 27-29. G. Laberenz, De vera Libri Jonas interpretatione, Fuld., 1836. Ch. F. Bbhme, Uber das Buck Jonah, in Illgens Zeitschr, 2836, I. S. 195 ff. F. Ch. Baur, Der Prophet Jonas, ein assyrisch-babylonUches Symbol., Ebendas. 1837, 1. 90 If. A. W. Krahmer, Der Schriftforscher, I. Kassel, 1839. Jiiger, Uber den sittlich-religiosen Endzweck d. B. J. u. s. w. in der (Baur-Kern'schen) Tub. Zeitschr., 1840, I. 35 ff. F. De- litzsch, Etwas uber das Buch Jonah; in the Rudelbach-Guericke'schen Zeitschr., Lpz., 1840, II. M. Baumgarten, Uber die Zeichen des Propheten Jonas, ibid., 1842, II. 1 f. . . . Vgl. aus- eerdem, Semler, Apparat. ad Liber. V. T. Interpretationem, p. 269. Niemeyer, Charakteristik, der Bibel, Theil 5. Eichhorn, Einleitung (4 Aufl.), 1823, f. sec. 576 ff. Pareau, Institut. interpret, 1822, p. 534. Sack, Christliche Apologetik, 1826, S. 345 ff. M. v. Niebuhr, Geschichte Assur's und Babel's, 1857 ; Beilage iii., Jonah und Nineveh, S. 274 ff. Devotional and Practical. — Lavater, Predigten uber das Buch Jonas, Zurich, 1773, 2 Aufl. in 2 Banden, Winterth. 1782. Hbselen, Jonas Bekehrtes Ninive, 54 Reden, Lpz., 1816. Ed. Neander, Der Prophet Jona. Predigten, Mitau, 1842. Quandt, Jonas der Sohn Amithai, Berlin, 1866. [See Gen. Lit. of the Minor Prophets.— C. E.] [Hugh Martin, The Prophet Jonah : His Character and Mission to Nineveh, London and New York. 1866. Patrick Fairbairn, Jonah : His Life, Character, and Mission, viewed in Connection with the Prophet's own Times, and Future Manifestations of God's Mind and Will in Prophecy, T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1849. — C. E.] JONAH. CHAPTER I. The Prophet's Commission to preach against Nineveh, and his Attempt to evade it (jrers. 1-3). A Violent Storm arises ; Alarm of the Sailors : Means adopted for their Safety ; Detection of Jonah ; he is thrown into the Sea, and is sival- lowed by a Fish (vers. 4-16). — C. E.] 1 Now [And] the word of the Lord [Jehovah] came unto [was communicated to] 2 Jonah, 1 the son of Amittai. 2 Arise, 3 go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry 4 [pro- 3 claim] against it ; for 5 their wickedness is [has] come up before me. But [And] Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord [Jehovah], and went down to Joppa ; and he \_omit, he] found a ship 6 going to Tarshish : so he paid [and paid] the fai'e thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish 4 from the presence of the Lord [Jehovah]. But [And] the Lord [Jehovah] sent out 7 a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty [great] tempest in the sea, 5 so that [and] the ship was like to be broken. 8 Then [And] the mariners 9 were afraid, and cried every man [each] unto his god, and cast forth the wares 10 that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it of them. 10 But [And] Jonah was gone down [had gone down] into the sides [the interior] of the ship ; u and he lay, and 6 was fast asleep. So [And] the shipmaster 12 came [came near] to him, and said unto [to] him, What meanest thou, O sleeper ? Arise, call upon [to] thy God, if so be that [perhaps] God 13 will think upon us, that we perish not [and we shall 7 not perish]. And they said every one to his fellow [to each other], Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know [and we shall know] for whose cause 14 [on ac- count of whom] this evil is upon us. So [And] they cast lots, and the lot fell upon 8 Jonah. Then said they [And they said] unto [to] him, Tell us, we pray thee, for whose cause this evil is upon us ; 15 What is thine occupation ? and whence coni- 9 est thou ? what is thy country ? and of what people art thou ? And he said unto [to] them, I am an Hebrew ; and I fear the Lord [Jehovah], the God of heaven, 10 which [who] hath made \_omit, hath] the sea and the, dry land. Then were the men [And the men were] exceedingly afraid, and said unto [to] him, Why hast thou done this ? 16 [What is this thou hast done ?] For the men knew that he fled [was fleeing] from the presence of the Lord [Jehovah], because he had told 11 them. Then said they [And they said] unto [to] him, What shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us [may subside from against us] ? for the sea wrought and was tempestuous 17 [was increasing and rushing tempestuously]. 12 And he said unto [to] them, Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea, so shall the sea [And the sea shall] be calm unto you [subside from against you] : for I 13 know that for my sake 18 this great tempest is upon you. Nevertheless [And] the men rowed 19 [broke through, viz., the waves] hard to bring it to the land [to bring to land] ; but they could not, for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous [was in- 14 creasing and rushing tempestuously] against them. Wherefore [And] they cried unto [to] the Lord [Jehovah], and said, We beseech thee, O Lord [O now Jeho- vah], let us not perish for this man's life, 20 and lay not upon us innocent blood • 15 for thou, O Lord [Jehovah], hast done as it pleased thee. So [And] they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea : und the sea ceased [stood] from its raging 16 JONAH. 1 6 Then [And] the men feared the Lord [Jehovah] exceedingly, and offered a sacri fice unto the Lord [Jehovah], and made vows. TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL. [1 Ver. 1. — n^T", Jonah, signifies a dove. p Ver. 1. — V-lttN, Amittai, means veracious, or truthful. [8 Ver. 2. — D-lp, arise, used before another verb as a term of excitement. [4 Ver. 2. — K^p, cry, proclaim in the manner of a herald, or prophet. [6 Ver 2. — ^3, for, may be used here as the relative conjunction that; but it probably assigns a reason for Um SMnmand, and hence it is rendered because. [• Ver 3- — n s 2S, ship, generally any large merchant-ship. [7 Ver. 4. — 7^l2r"F, Hiphil of V-1T2, to throw down at full length, to prostrate. [8 Ver. 4. — "QtSTlV Hilton, use d metaphorically of inanimate things ; to be about to do, or suffer: the ship uxu about to be broken, was on the point of foundering. Gesenius' Heb. Lex. sub 3t£7n. [9 Ver. 5. — n^rTvSrT, the mariners, from H^XS, salt, the quality of the water which they navigate. [10 Ver. 5. — D N v3, vessels, a general term comprehending wares. The suffix DFT refers to the persons, not to the wares. [11 Ver. 5. — J! S^QDn ^.TO'T'^ tue sides, or two sides of the vessel. Sephinah is derived from Saphan, to cover ; It signifies a decked vessel. [12 Ver. 6. — ^3nn 3"1, the master of the rope-men. [18 Ver. 6. — D^nbsn, the god, with the article. [14 Ver. 7. — *72^)W!l,for that which is to whom : compounded of the preposition 2, the relative pronoun W, con- tracted from "ltt'S, the preposition V, and the interrogative ^72. [15 Ver. 8. — The words ^b ilS-TH n^"1H ^72*7 ~ltPH3, are omitted in two of Kennicott's MSS. in the *■ T T T T • : V -: "' Soncin. edition of the prophets, and in the Vatican copy of the LXX. : and Kennicott's MS. 154, omits ^!2 V. Henderson. [16 Ver. 10. — jT W2 nS-TTttt, VVhat is this thou hast done ! not, why hast thou done this ? [17 Ver. 11. — Tjbin, going, ~13?^j tossing : they are both participles. [18 Ver. 12. — * vt^S, on my account, compounded of the preposition 3, the relative 27, contracted as in v. 7, the preposition 7, and the pronominal suffix \ [19 Ver. 13. — Vlfrn^l, broke through, "inn signifies to break through a wall, and metaphorically to break through the waves. J20 Ver. 14. — t£7523, for the sake of the soul, or life, as in 2 Sam. xiv. 7. See also Deut. xlx. 21. — C. B.] EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL. Ver. 1-3. The Command and the Flight. Com- pare on ver. 1 the Introduction, § 2, p. 13. " The narrative begins, according to usage, with the copula [conjunction vav. C. E.], because every event in time follows upon an antecedent one ; and the record of that event is always only a continua- tion of something prior, and separately considered forms a fragment." (Hitzig, Compare Ruth i. 1 ; 1 Sam. i. 1.) [" From the circumstance that the book com- mences with the conjunction 1, commonly rendered and, some have inferred that it is merely the frag- ment of a larger work, written by the same hand ; but though this particle is most commonly used to connect the following sentence with something which precedes it, and is placed at the beginning of historical books to mark their connection with a foregoing narrative, as Ex. i. 1 ; 1 Kings i. 1 ; Ezra '. 1 ; yet it is also employed inchoatively where ihere is no connection whatever, as Ruth i. 1 ; Esth. 1. 1 ; and, as specially parallel, Ezek. i. 1. It serves to otner purpose in such cases than merely to qualify the apocopated future, so as to make it rep resent the historical past tense." (Henderson, Corn, on Jonah, chap. i. l.j " 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 revela- tions, and uniting this new revelation to all those which had preceded it. The word And, then joins on histories with histories, revelations with revela- tions, uniting in one the histories of God's works and words, and blending the books of Holy Scrip- ture into one Divine book." (Pusey, Com. on Jo- nah, chap. i. 1 .) " Sometimes a book commences with the relative past form of the substantive verb, in consequence of the writer's viewing it as the continuation of a preceding one (Lev. i. 1 ; Num. i. 1 ; Josh. i. 1 ; Jud^-. i. 1). Books are also found to rommence in this manner which have no actual reference to a preceding one; in such cases the writer plunges at once in medias res, regarding what he is al»out to record as connected to foregoing events, at least in the order of time (Ezek. i. 1 ; Jonah i. 1 ; Ruth L I ; Esther i. 1). (Noidheimer'sJETe6. Gram. Syntax §976, 2).— C. E.] CHAPTER I. 11 Ver. 2. Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, on the left bank of the Tigris, is called the great city, «ar' efox')"! here as in Gen. x. 12, where the addi- tional clause, " the same is a great city," includes the four previously, separately named cities, which, in a wider sense, constituted the city of Nineveh. It was, according to Diodor. ii. 3, the greatest city of antiquity. Its circumference was four hun- dred and eighty furlongs — one hundred and fifteen furlongs greater than that of Babylon. Its diam- eter was (Herodotus, v. 25) : ['J J one hundred and fifty furlongs ; consequently a good day's jour- ney. Upon its walls, 10U feet high, flanked with fifteen hundred towers, each two hundred feet high, four [some say three, C. E.] chariots could drive abreast. The three days' journey, which, accord- ing to chap. iii. 3, one could travel within the city, cannot appear an incredible statement, if we con- sider that it rilled, together with the adjoining cities united to it by the same fortifications, the whole space between the rivers Tigris, Khosr, the Upper or Great Zab, the Gasr Su, and the mountainous boundary of the valley of the Tigris on the east ; and that the rubbish and ruin covered mounds, which indicate the locality of the desolated city, and which tor twenty-five years have been accessi- ble to the investigations of learned men, occupy an area of about eighteen square miles [German miles = 378 Eng. sq. miles — C. E.| Comp. Ewald, Bib. Jour., x. 52 ff. ; J. Oppert, Expe'd. Scientifique en Me'sopotamie, Paris, 1862, ii. 67, 72, 82 f. ; M. v. Niebuhr, Hist, of Assyria and Babylon, p. 274 ff.) ^Niueveh, according to Gen. x. 11, was built by Nimrod. The verse should probably be read : "Out of that land he [Nimrod] went forth into Asshur [Assyria], and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth and Calah." According to the Greek and Roman authors, it was founded by Ninus, the mythical founder of the Assyrian em- pire ; and its name appears to be derived from his, or from that of an Assyrian deity, Nin, correspond- ing, it is conjectured, with the Greek Hercules. In the time of Jonah, it had probably attained to its greatest extent. It formed a trapezium, and con- sequently could have no one diameter. Its sharp angles lay towards the north and south, and its long sides were formed by the Tigris and the moun- tains. The average length was about twenty-five English miles ; the average breadth, fifteen. This large extent of area includes Nineveh in its broad- er sense, which was a union of four large prime- val cities. Nintveh proper, including the ruins of Kouyunjik, Nobbi Yunas, and Ninua, is situated at the northwestern corner, near the Tigris. Nim- rud, supposed to be the later capital, and which, in the opinion of Rawliuson, Jones, and Oppert, was the ancient Calah, is at the southwestern corner, between the Tigris and Zab ; a third large city, whicli is now without a name, and which has been explored lea*t of all, is oa the Tigris itself, from three to six English miles to the north of Nimrud ; and the citadel and temple-mass, now named Khor- sabad, is situated on the Khosr. (Compare Keil and Delitzsch on the Minor Prophets ; Kitto's Bib- lical Cyclopedia ; Smith's Dictionary of the Bible ; Layard's Nineveh and its Remains; Rawlinson's Herodotus, Book I., Appendix, Essay vii.) — C. E.] Preach against it is God's command to Jonah ; that is, go and deliver to its face, a call to re- pentance [Eine Busspredigt]. He does not say, preach merely concerning it ; for Jonah, as other 1 [Herodotus mentions Nineveh, Book I. 103, 106, 185, 196; BookH. 160. — C. E.] 2 prophets did, could have done that in nis own land Neither does he say merely to it ; for that would have been expressed by ••?? or v. But God will have him preach against Nineveh, because its wick' edness had come up before Him as in former time* the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah had dona (comp. Gen. xviii. 21, with G>n. vi. 5). Ver. 3. Jonah arose, but to nee, and that from the presence of Jehovah, that is, from the people and land of Israel, to which he imagined the pres- ence of God to be limited, as Jacob, when he was astonished at discovering the presence of God be- yond the home of his father [Vaterlichen Erde\. (Gen. xxviii. 16.) [" The belief in the omnipresence of God was a part of the faith of Abraham's house. And that God was even present here he did not first learn on this occasion (as Knobel seems to think), but it is new to him that Jehovah, as the covenant God, revealed Himself not only at the consecrated altars of his fathers, but even here." (Lange on Gen. xxviii. 16.) "It has been asked, ' How could a. Prophet im- agine that he could flee from the presence of God ''. ' Plainly he could not. Jonah, so conversant with the Psalms, doubtless knew well the Psalm of David, ' Whither shall I go from thy Spirit, and whither shall I flee from thy presence ( ' He could not but know, what every instructed Israelite knew. And so critics should have known that such could not be the meaning. The words are used, as we say, ' he went out of the king's presence,' or the like. It is, literally, he rose to flee from being in the presence of the Lord, i. e., from standing in his presence as his servant and minister." (Intro- duction to the Prophet Jonah, by the Rev. E. Ii. Pusey, D. D., p. 247.) Dr. Pusey illustrates his interpretation by a large number of references to the use of the expression \]3yO, in the notes to the passage quoted above. The explanation of Keil and Delitzsch (Com. on Jonah, chap. i. 3) is essentially the same : " from the face of Jehovah, *'. e., away from the presence of the Lord, out of the land of Israel, where Je- hovah dwelt in the temple, and manifested his presence (comp. Gen. iv. 16); not to hide him- self from the omnipresent God, but to withdraw from the service of Jehovah, the God-King of Is- rael." Henderson (Com. on Jonah, chap. i. 3), says: HV"P "*22, which strictly means the face, per- son, or presence of Jehovah, is sometimes employed to denote the special manifestation of his presence, or certain outward and visible tokens by which He made Himself loealjy known. Thus God prom- ised that hi* presence (^22), i. e., the sensible tokens of his presence, should accompany the Hebrews on their march to Canaan (Ex. xxxiii. 14. Comp. Ps. ix. 3 ; lxviii. 2, 8). It is also employed in ref- erence to the place or region where such manifesta- tions were vouchsafed, as Gen. iv. 14, where it obviously signifies the spot where the primitive worship was celebrated, and sensible proofs of the divine favor were manifested to the worshippers (1 Sam. i. 22; ii. IS; Ps. xlii. 3 (2)). In like manner, the place where Jacob had intimate com- munion with God, was called by that patriarch ,-S^2, the face, or manifestation of God (Gen xxxii. 30). The interpretation, therefore, of Davie Kimchi, " He imagined that if he went out of the land of Israel, the spirit of prophecy would not 18 JONAH. rest upon him," is perhaps not wide of the mark. Jarchi to the same effect : " The Shekinah does not dwell out of the land." Though, as Theodoret observes, he well knew that the Lord of the uni- verse was everywhere present, yet he supposed that it was only at Jerusalem he became apparent to men ; irKoKa.fxfia.vaiv Se '6/j.ojs eV liSvt] 'XepouaaX^fji airrbv TrotetcOat tyjv inKpaveiav." — C. E.] The psychological motive of the flight is not mentioned. That which Jonah assigns (chap. iv. 2), is hardly to be considered with Keil 1 as prag- matically exact and sufficient, since in that place it rather makes the impression of being an attempt to palliate a guilty conscience, which is glad to seize upon even the semblance of right. His con- cern for the time being, was to throw off obedience to God, and for that purpose various motives — ease, indolence, and fear of men — concurred, — a state of mind of which every servant of God can readily conceive from the analogy of his own expe- rience. That he actually intended an entire aban- donment of duty, the circumstance that he fled as far as possible proves. To Tarshish, or Tartessus? which was the most remote of the Phoenician trading-places known in the Old Testament, and situated not far from the mouth of the Bastis (Guadalquivir). He takes the direct road thither, first to Joppa, which, in the time of Solomon (2 Chron. ii. 16), was a well- known seaport on the Mediterranean (Josh. xix. 46), for the purpose of there embarking in a ship, whose appointed fare (^Hpti?) he paid. Ver. 4-16. God arrests Jonah. Jehovah, from whom Jonah intends to flee, is Lord of the sea, and the winds are his servants (Ps. civ. 4). One of these servants he sends forth in haste into the sea to draw Jonah from his purpose. Ver. 5. The sailors, heathen from different na- tions, do what behooves honest and prudent men : they pray and resort to the usual precautionary measures, by throwing the wares into the sea, in order to unburden themselves of them. (CrP73?E does not refer to the wares, but to the ship's com- pany (Ex. xviii. 22).) But he, whom the storm particularly concerns, deems himself secure in the sides of the ship, i. e., in the hold (comp. Am. vi. 10; Is. xiv. 15). There he is fast asleep. " Tarn quietus est et animi tranquilli, ut ad navis interiora descendens somno placido perfruatur." (Hierony- mus.) The verbs in the last sentence of the verse should be rendered in the pluperfect, as in the last clause of verse 10. [" Jonah had gone down into the hold, and had there fallen fast asleep." — C. E.] [This act of Jonah is regarded by most com- mentators as a sign of an evil conscience. Marck 1 ["The motive of his flight was not fear of the difficulty of carrying out the command of God, but, as Jonah him- self Bays in chap. iv. 2, anxiety lest the compassion of God ihould spare the sinful city in the event of its repenting. He had no wish to cooperate in this ; and that not merely because ' he knew by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that the repentance of the Gentiles would be the ruin of the Jews, and as a lover of his country, was actuated not so much by envy Ol the salvation of Nineveh, as by unwilling- ness that his own people Should perish,' as Jerome supposes, but also because he really grudged salvation to the Gentiles and feared leel their conversion to the living God should infringe upon the privileges of Israel above the Gentile world, and put an end to its election as the nation of God " (Keil and Delitzsch, Com. on Jonah, chap. i. 3, and note at the bottom of the page.) — 0. Ii.] * [Calvin i« of the opiniou that Tarshish means Cilicia, supposes that he had lain down to sleep, hoping the better to escape either the dangers of sea and air, or the hand of God ; others that he had thrown himself down in despair, and being utterly ex- hausted and giving himself up for lost, had fallen asleep ; or as Theodoret expresses it, being troubled with the gnawings of conscience and overpowered with mourning, he had sought comfort in sleep and fallen into a deep sleep. Jerome, on the other hand, expresses the idea that the words indicate "security of mind" on the part of the prophet "he is not disturbed by the storm and the sur- rounding dangers, but has the same composed mind in the calm, or with shipwreck at hand;" and whilst the rest are calling upon their gods, and casting their things overboard, " he is so calm and feels so safe with his tranquil mind, that he goes down to the interior of the ship and enjoys a most placid sleep." The truth probably lies between these two views. It was not an evil conscience, or despair occasioned by the threatening of clanger, which induced him to lie down to sleep ; nor was it his fearless composure in the midst of the danger of the storm, but the careless self-security with which he had embarked on the ship to flee from God, without considering that the hand of God could reach him even on the sea, and punish him for his disobedience. This security is apparent in his subsequent conduct." (Keil and Delitzsch, Com. on Jonah, chap. i. 5). Pusey and Cowles intimate that he may have been fatigued by his journey to Joppa, and that " sorrow and remorse completed what fatigue be- gan."-C.E.] Ver. 6. But God knows where to find each one (comp. Am. ix. 2). The captain [7211 collect.] came to him and said : What meanest thou, O sleeper ? Hieronymus : " Quid tu sopore deprim- eris ? Vox stupentis et acriter redarguentis, ac si dixisset : quoznam est tibi tanti soporis causa et ratio et excusatio ? cum procella somnum omtiem satis in- terdicat et vigil iam exigat periculum? " — Marck. Arise, pray to thy God. Perhaps God s will think upon us, think mercifully that we perish not (compare the derivatives of the root HWV (Job xii. 5; Ps. cxlvi. 4). The heathen is obliged to admonish the servant of God of his duty, and to remind him of the fact that his God is a merci- ful God. [Pusey quotes from Chrysostom the following passage : " The ship-master knew from experience, that it was no common storm, that the surges were an infliction borne down from God, and above hu- man skill, and that there was no good in the mas- ter's skill. For the state of things needed another the principal city of which was Tarsus, the native place of the Apostle Paul. But it is uow generally agreed that it was Tarshish in Spain. The name occurs in Gen. x. 4, among the sons of Javan, who are supposed to have peopled the southern parts of Europe (comp. I's. lxxii. 10 ; Is. lxvi. 19). In Ezckiel xxvii. 12, and Jeremiah x. 9, it is men- tioned as sending to Tyre silver, iron, tin, and lead. It u mentioned in Isaiah, chap, xxiii. in connection with Tyre. In several passages of the Bible, ''ships of Tarshish " are spoken of, especially in connection with Tyre. The name is probably of Phoenician origin. — 0. E.] 3 [The Hebrew is EiwSn, the God. The German rs> •/ : t ' tains the article, Dn Gott. Pusey : " He does not eaft Jonah's God, thy God, as Darius says to Daniel, thy God, but also the God, acknowledging the (lod whom Jtoab worshipped to be the GOil." — 0. E.] CHAPTER I. 19 Master, who ordereth the heavens, and craved the guidance from on high. So then they too left oars, sails, cables, gave their hands rest from row- ing, and stretched them to heaven and called upon God." — C.E.] Ver. 7. But God intends to make a complete exposure of Jonah. [Luther fills up, in an ingen- ious way, the break in rhe continuity of thought between vers. 6 and 7. On a momentary survey of the evil, which he had caused, Jonah was filled with such a pungent feeling of repentance and con- fusion, that he is speechless from deep compunc- tion, and does not, because of shame, find courage to make an open confession, because he considers the disgrace intolerable. Therefore God must suf- fer still something more to come to pass, in order to drive him to confession.] ] The lot falls upon him. " Fuyitivus hie sorte deprehenditnr, pod viri- bus sortium, sed voluntate ejus, qui sorte n regebat in- certas" (Hieronymus.) [The fugitive is detected by lot, not from any virtue in lots themselves, but by the will of Him, who governs uncertain lots.] Ver. 8. His own confession must convict him, that he intended to flee from a God, of whose wide, unlimited power he could not be ignorant (Matt, xii. 37). ["When Jonah had been singled out by lot as the culprit, the sailors called upou him to confess his guilt, asking him at the same time about his country, his occupation, and his parentage. The repetition of the question, on whose account this calamity had befallen them, which is omitted in the LXX. (Vatican), the Soucin. prophets, and Cod. 195 of Kennicott, is found in the margin in Cod. 38-t, and is regarded by Grimm and Hitzig as a marginal gloss that has crept into the text. It is not superfluous, however, still less does it oc- casion any confusion ; on the contrary, it is quite ia order. The sailors wanted thereby to induce Jonah to confess with his own mouth that he was guilty, now that the lot had fallen upon him, and to disclose his crime (Ros. and others). As an indirect appeal to confess his crime, it prepares the way for the further inquiries as to his occupation, etc. They inquired about his occupation, because it might be a disreputable one, and one which ex- cited the wrath of the gods ; also about his parent- age, and especially about the land and people from which he sprang, that they might pronounce a safe sentence upon his crime" (Keil and Delitzsch, Com. on Jonah, chap. i. 8). " Questions so thronged have been admired in human poetry," St. Jerome says. For it is true to nature Th y think that someone of them will draw forth the answer which they wish. It may he that they thought that his country, or people, or parents, were under the displeasure of God. But perhaps more naturally, they wished to " know all about him," as men say. These questions must have gone home to Jonah's conscience. What is thy business ? The office of prophet which he had left. Whence comest thou ? From stand- ing before God as his minister. What thy coun- try, of what people art thou ? The people of God, whom he had quitted for heathen ; not to win them to God, as He commanded ; but not knowing what they did, to abet him in his flight Ver. 9. " Jonah answers the central point to which all these questions tended : ' I am a He- brew.' This was the name by which Israel was known to foreigners. It is used in the Old Testa- 1 [Though it does not appear that Jonah confessed his sin to the captain of the ship, yet there is no reason to doubt that he obeyed the awakening call (ver. 6). — C E.] ment, only when they are spoken of by foreigners, or speak of themselves to foreigners, or when the sacred writers mention them in contrast with for eigners." (Pusey, Com. on Jonah, chap. i. 8, 9.) " He does not say a Jew, as the Targum wronglw renders it ; for that would have been false, since he was of the tribe of Zebulun, which was in the kingdom of Israel, and not of Judah : nor does he say an Israelite, lest he should be thought to be in the idolatry of that people, but a Hebrew, which was common to both" (Dr. Gill, Com. on Jonah, chap. i. 9). And I fear Jehovah, the God of heaven, which made the sea and dry land. S]V has been rendered correctly by the LXX. adftofiai, colo, re- vereor ; and does not mean " I am afraid of Je- hovah against whom I have sinned" (Abarbanel). By the statement, "I fear," etc., he had no inten- tion of describing himself as a righteous or inno- cent man (Hitzig), but simply meant to indicate his relation to God, — namely, that he adored the living God who created the whole earth, and, as Creator, governed the world. For he admits di- rectly after, that he has sinned against this God, by telling them, as we may see from ver. 10, of his flight from Jehovah. He had not told them as soon as he embarked in the ship, as Hitzig sup- poses, but does so now for the first time, when they ask about his people, his country, etc., as we may see most unmistakably from ver. 10, b. In ver. 9, Jonah's statement is not given completely ; but the principal fact, namely, that he was a Hebrew and worshipped Jehovah, is followed immediately by the account of the impression which this acknowl- edgment made upon the heathen sailors ; and the confession of his sin is mentioned afterwards as a supplement, to assign the reason for the great fear which came upon the sailors in consequence." (Keil and Delitzsch, Com. on Jonah, chap. i. 9.) — C. E.] Ver. 10. The heathen perceive the bearing and extent of this confession. Danger teaches to take heed to the word (Is. xxviii. 19). [See the Hebrew and Luther's German translation of Is. xxviii. 19. — C. E.] Great fear of the great God, who pursues them closely [is at their heels] seizes upon them. The second half of the verse is an explanatory clause added by the narrator, from which it is evi dent that the reply of Jonah (ver. 9), does not give the exact words that he uttered, but only their sub- stance in condensed form. Indeed, if the question (10, a), is admitted to be intelligible, he must have told them of his flight. [What hast thou done ! H^WS nrf-TTlD, is not a question as to the nature of his sin, but au exclamation of honor at his flight from Jehovah, the God of heaven and earth, as the following ex- planatory clauses, 121, -137-p ^3 clearly show The great fear which came upon the heathen sea- men at this confession of Jonah, may be fully ex- plained from the dangerous situation in which they found themselves, since the storm preached the omnipotence of God more powerfully than worda could possibly do." (Keil and Delitsch, Com. on Jonah, chap. i. 10.) — C. E.] Ver. 11. Still more evident is it from this verse that Jonah must have told them that he was a ser- vant of God consecrated by a special call ; for they do not cast him into the sea immediately, but ap- ply to him with a kind of awe for instructions wha to do. Moreover, afterward (vers. 13, 14), they exert themselves most strenuously to bring him tc 20 JONAH. land, to preserve his life for the execution of his divine commission ; and only when they do not succeed, do they throw him into the sea. 1 The participle T|~?n, ver. 11, frequently stands as an auxiliary verh, with the idea of continuance, increase : the sea continued to rage (2 Sam. iii. 1 ; xv. 12). Ver. 12. Jonah pronounces his own sentence. " Non tergiversatur, von dissimulat, non negat, sed qui conjessus erat de fuga poznam libenter assumit se cu- viens perire ne propter se et cderi pereant." ( Hierony- mus.) [He does not refuse, or prevaricate, or deny ; but having made confession concerning his flight, be willingly submits to the punishment, de- siring to perish, and not [to] let others perish on his account.] With the same resignation, with which the prophets are accustomed to announce the sad fate of their nation, he utters his own sen- tence as a divine oracle, and joins with the tone of prophecy the promise of deliverance. Ver. 13. The holier he seems to the men, the greater is their dread of putting him to death. Will not God have mercy upon them, if they re- store him again to the mission, from which he was intending to escape, if they put him on shore ? They row hard [ ^£10*3, literally, broke through, namely, the surging waves] to bring the ship to dry land ; Cyrill : irpoo-Ke7\ai rijv vuvV- the object can be omitted as being easily understood, a usage common to the German.' 2 But they do not succeed. It must be evident to them that the word of the prophet must indeed be accomplished. He is a servant [Mann] of Jehovah, whom they are about to sacrifice ; therefore it is natural that they should pray, not to their own gods, but to Je- hovah to pardon them because of the victim. Ver. 14. — O Jehovah, we beseech thee, let us not perish for the sake of the soul of this man. ""T-?^ has not arisen from S3"?S (Keil), whereby a useless accumulation of synonymous words would arise, but it is the usual particle of entreaty, contracted from S2T1S, which is just as readily joined with positive requests (2 Kings xx. 3). The 2 pretii [the beth of price, reward, exchange. — C. E.] stands here as in Micah i. 5. The added petition, impute not to us innocent blood, does not mean, suffer us not to destroy in this man an innocent person (Hitzig) ; but vS ?n3 has the meaning of imputation and retribu- tion. Against them Jonah had done no wrong ; with respect to them he is guiltless ; and in his mission as a prophet, he stands or falls to his God alone : this they feel ; no worldly power has a right to pass sentence upon the prophet of God (Jer. xxvi. 19). [N*P2 is irregularly written with W, as in Joel iv. 19.] But God showed them that they must serve Him as his executioners. For thou, O Jehovah, hast done as it pleased thee. Thou hast determined it. This is their justification. The lot and the word of the prophe, are to them the finger of God. 1 [Perhaps it is too much to assume that the strenuous ffforts of the sailors were put forth principally to effect the landing of the fugitive prophet ; they had regard to their own safety, as the casting of Jonah into the sea proves. — C B.] 2 [The literal translation of the Hebrew is, " They rowed hard to bring to the dry land." The object of the verb ren- tered to bring, n;im.-l , ship, 18 omitted. — C. E.l Ver. 1 5. The prediction of the pi >phet if- ful- filled. The sea stood still [ceased] from its rag ing. Ver. 16. The result of the fulfilled prophecy is that the fear of God on the part of the heathen manifests itself in action : they offer a sacrifice and make vows, — the sacrifice immediately, the vows for the time of landing. [According to the Rabbins, Grotius, and some others, they did not actually offer a sacrifice, but only purposed to do it before Jehovah, i. e., at Je- rusalem ; but it is more natural to conclude that they sacrificed some animal that was on board, and vowed that they would present greater proofs of their gratitude when they returned from their voy- age. Michaelis thinks they intended to perform their vows when they reached Spain. « Quin; ubi transmissce steterbit trans ceqiiora classes; Et positis aris jam vota in litore solves." — iEneid iii. 403. Henderson's Com. on Jonah, chap. i. 16. — C. E.] DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL.4 See Introduction iii. p. 16. HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL. There is no escape from the Almighty God. For (1.) He has so arranged the world, that the work of every individual is counted upon ; and his work is not allowed to stand stiil, but must be accom- plished. Ver. 1, 2. (2.) Distance is no protection against Him ; for to Him belong heaven and earth, the sea and the dry land. Ver. 3, f. 9. (3.) To Him the winds and waves are subject ; for He has made all things. — Ver. 4, 9. (4.) To Him also are subject everywhere, in involuntary fear, tha erring hearts of men (ver. 5, 6) ; whoever, then, expects to find in them a refuge against God, is deceived. (5.) Even things seemingly accidental must obey Him, whenever He intends to carry out his purpose. — Ver. 7. (6.) Everything, however far from, or near to Him it may be, must finally be- come an instrument in his hand (ver. 11-15), and cooperate for the glorifying of his name. Ver. 16. Ver. 1. Whoever would speak the word of God to others, must have received it himself. For the office of the ministry a regular call is reouisite. — ■ Ver. 2. Let no man say, that there is, or can be anywhere, a sphere of life so distant, that God can entirely lose sight of it. The Lord has always an eye and a heart for those also, who are with- out. And he who would be his servant and has not such a heart, is a servant like Jonah, that is, an undutiful one. The sins of Nineveh are not specified. The savage desire for wars and thirst for conquest, which characterized the Assyrians, were certainly sins enough before God; yet there may have been others. God's call to repentance is always a call of grace; his call of grace always a call to repentance. Jonah and Paul, Rom. i. 5. — Ver. 3. What God appoints to thee to do, do it without gainsaying. He who gives the burden gives also the shoulders to bear it. He who flees increases the burden. He who flees from God is foolish and commits folly. Jonah must 8 [See Henderson's Com. m Jonah, i. 14, and Gesenius Hebrew Lexicon, s. v. — C. E.] 4 [For the heading of this part of the Commentary Kleinert has chosen the compound word Reir/isgedanken. which means thoughts connected with the history and de- velopmer:: of the kingdom of God. His reasons for choos- ing ttiis term in preference to dogmalisch-et/iiscke Gnin'tz* dan/ten are aiveu in the Preface, pp. vi.. vii. — C. B I CHAPTER I. 21 have known in his heart that it is impossible to escape from God (ver. 9). It so happens that if, regardless of Divine direction, we take our own course, we will afterward be obliged to acknowl- edge ourselves blind and foolish. — Ver. 4. Had the Book of Jonah originated from heathen fables, as some assert, the Lord would not have sent the wind upon the sea; but the god of heaven [Jupiter] would have made an alliance with the god of the winds [iEolus] and with the god of the sea [Nep- tune] against Jonah. How simple and sublime is the religion of the Old Testament ! Distress teaches to pray. If thou dost not know and teach this, thou wilt always be a poor comforter. If the Lord seizes thy heart with violent alarms from anguish of conscience, throw thy wares into the sea. What is thine must perish, and if thou dost not surrender it, thou must thyself suffer ship- wreck. — Ver. 6. It is a sad thing and a bad sign, if the unbelieving, and those in the congregation weak in faith, must tell the minister what becomes him to do. Happy he whose conscience is awak- ened and quickened by an admonition so shameful to him. Of whom the Lord thinks, him He also helps (Ps. xl. 17 (17)). It often occurs that the Lord must say : Verily, I have not found such faith in Israel. — Ver. 7. Human means to learn the will of God, in doubtful cases, are iu them- selves of no avail ; but God can make use of them, if there is true earnestness in those who employ them, and if they know no better means (comp. Jish. 7). But when men, by means of prayer, can receive the Holy Spirit, then they should seek the will of God, not by lots, but by prayer (Matt. vii. 11). — Ver. 8. Jonah might purposely have left his birth and vocation in darkness. Whoever engages in his calling with half a soul, likes to avoid con- fession ; he suffers himself to be considered as a heathen, and puts himself on a level with this world. Where the fear of God is not, there is the fear of man. And moreover, the fear of man is most unprofitable. Whoever frankly and honestly, humbly and heartily, acknowledges the Lord among men, will soon discover that it is the phantom off- spring of fear to imagine that one will reap from the acknowledgment only disgrace and not a bless- ing. Such was not even the case among the heathen ; for when Jonah made his confession, they honored him (ver. 10-14). Reflect how many souls may be guided by the Lord to thee, to whom, by confession at proper time, thou mayest have it in thy power to render a service for eternity. The commission [of the minister] is not confined to Jerusalem and Bethel, not to the baptismal font and altar, not to the confessional and pulpit, not o canonicals ; but it is in thy heart and mouth, \nd it shall, therefore, never depart from thee (Deut. xxx. 14). — Ver. 13. So has the heathen world also struggled to come to land ; but it could not until Christ was buried in death (Rom. i.-iii ). — Ver. 15. There are deeds of violence by which God's will is carried into effect. But it does not, therefore, follow that he who performs them is guiltless; but he stands in need of repentance and forgiveness. — Vers. 15, 16. This is also a shadow of things to come. O, that it were only come to this, — that all the heathen world would thank God, that death, which swallowed up Christ, has no more power over us. Luther : Thus God is wont, when his great wrath is at hand, to send his word before and save some. We have now the same grace and great ight of the Divine word; therefore it is certain that a great destruction is near; since God intends to rescue some before it comes. — Ver. 2. We re- gard the history with indifference, because we view it from without, and it does not concern us. But should the like occur in our time, we woidd think that we never yet heard of a more foolish and more impossible thing, than that a single man should enter such an empire, with a proclamation to repent. Now God's works are wont to appear, at first, so foolish and impossible, that reason must despair of their accomplishment and scoff; but it is well tor us to believe, for God accomplishes them. — Ver. 3. The ancient holy fathers were especially inclined to exculpate the prophets, apostles, and great saints. But we adhere strictly and inflexibly to the Word of God, and admit that Jonah, in this instance, committed a great sin, on account of which he would have been eternally condemned, had he not, in the number of the elect, been written in the book of life. This is a signal token of grace that God seeks Jonah and punishes him so soon after his sin, and does not suffer him to profit by it, or to continue long therein. — Ver. 5. The natural light of reason extends thus far, that it considers God kind, gracious, merciful, and mild. This is a great light; but it fails in two particulars. In the first place, it believes indeed that God has power and knowledge to do, to help, and to give; but that He is willing also to do such things for it, it knows not ; therefore it does not continue steadfast in its opinion. In the second place, reason cannot correctly bestow the predicate of Deity upon that being to whom it belongs. It knows that God is ; but who and what He is, who has a right to be called God, it knows not. Each one called upon his god, that is, upon the object of his fancy, or that which he con- sidered God ; therefore, they were all in error in regard to the only true God. — Ver. 7. Where men devoid of understanding are, they set about things in a wrong, perverted way, allow the sin to remain in the mean time, and consider only how they may get rid of their anguish- This does not help: they must consequently despair. But where men of understanding are, they turn away their minds from their anguish and think mostly of their sins ; they confess them and get rid of them, though they should remain eternally in anguish, and they re- sign themselves to it, as Jonah does here. — Ver. 10 ff. The faith of Jonah against trials (for that he maintained his faith his deliverance proves) : (1.) He takes the sin upon himself from others, and acknowledges that he alone deserved death. (2.) He consents also to be brought to shame be- fore God. (3.) He chooses death, bitter and un- certain. If God so deal with us as to permit us to see life in death, or if He show us the place and abode of our souls, whither they must go and where they must remain, then death would not be bitter, but it would be like a leap over a shallow stream, on both sides of which one feels and sees a firm ground and shore. But now He does not show us here anything of the kind, but we must spring from the iirm shore of this life into the abyss. (4.) He bears in death the wrath of God. (5.) More than this, he must die ilone; he has none to com- fort him ; the people in the ship sail away and leave him in the midst of the sea as certainly drowned and lost. (6.) To die simply is not enough : he must yet enter the jaws of the fish. Starke: Ver. 1. Jonah came out of Galilee that was, therefore, a false declaration of the Phar- isees (John vii. 52). From this, one sees how per- nicious are all deep-rooted prejudices. Whoevci will rightly exorcise the office of the ministry must 22 JONAR indeed be a Jonah, which, translated into English, signifies a dove. He mast cherish the simplicity of the dove (Matt. x. 16). — Ver. 2. He must also not love ease, but cheerfully and willingly take upon himself toil and hardship. The greater cities are, the greater are their sins. God bears tor a long time, and rinds with him no uncon- ditional decree for the destruction of the great majority and the election of a small minority. — Ver. 3. To rest on the divine will places man in the highest tranquillity. Him who forsakes God and duty, God, on the other hand, forsakes with his grace and assistance. — Ver. 4. If we follow our carnal nature [Fleisch und Bint], it will bring us into much company improper for us. It is no small act of kindness, if He punish the sinner severely soon after the commission of his sin. On account of the sin of one man many others often fall into great distress. — Ver. 5. It is very proper, in danger, to make use of natural means for pres- ervation. — Ver. 6. Even the heathen acknowl- edged the power of prayer : it is a shame, if many among Christians should doubt it. — Ver. 7. So also they acknowledged that there is a God, who rules over the human race, exercises the office of Judge among men, and, in consequence of this, brings the guilty to just punishment. — God has many ways of bringing our sins to light before his face (Ps. xc. 8). — Ver. 8. None should be con- demned without trial. Even the law of nature grants to each one the right of defense. Just as it is a duty and necessity readily and willingly to hear those who bring us to account for our life and eon duct, so also ought each Christian, as often as he is accused by his conscience and brought, as it were, before court, to consider the charges of con- science, confess his wrong, and reform. — Ver. 9. There is nothing so secret [so fein gesponnen, so finely spun], that it shall not finally come to light (Luke viii. 17). Confession of our sins should also be made, that God may be honored and glo- rified, and that the ignorant and unbelieving may be better instructed. — Ver. 10. The fact that the heathen had heard from Jonah, how (iod held the Ninevites in abhorrence, and would destroy the whole city, with its inhabitants, if they did not repent, may have contributed (for each one could easily make the application to himself) not a little to their fear, which was merely slavish. God never ■ iocs e-il to the sinner, but always good. He also intends all his dealings with him for good. That which delights the sinner is not a true good, but an imaginary shadow: it is not genuine pleasure, but pure disgust [Urdust], Why then does he sin ? (iod knows how to propagate the true religiou miraculously. — Ver. 11. In important matters one should undertake nothing without the advice of honest teachers. — Ver. 12' It is the nature of love not to seek its own, but rather to suffer harm than to bring others into it; rather to lose its life than to suffer the lives of the innocent to be en- dangered (John iii. 16). — No one should take away his own life, though he may have forfeited it. — Ver. 13. Against the divine will no human toil nor labor can prevail. — Ver. 14. Though in divine chastisements it is oue's duty to subordinate one's will to the divine, yet one ought not, on that ac- rount, to cease to call upon God for the removal aid mitigation of the chastisement. — Ver. 15. He who has God for his enemy has all nature for bis enemy ; but to him who has (.iod for his friend, ill creatures hear goodwill. When God has ex- ecuted his just sentence, then everything is again •t peace. — Ver. 16. God permits nothing so evil to come to pass, but that He knows to bring some good out of it; for his counsels are wonderful and He carries them out gloriously. Men should ap- ply divine judgments upon others for the purpose of bringing themselves to a saving knowledge of God. Pfaff : Ver. 2. Great cities, great sins, great judgments; but so much the greater necessity that they be warned by the prophets of the Lord and rebuked by them. — Ver. 3. Teacher and preacher must not shun the cross, otherwise they forsake the Lord. Thou also, my soul, must follow the call of God, though He lead thee in the paths of extreme suffering [Kreuzesweye] ; and. thou must not seek to escape from this call. — Ver. 5. Tribula- tion drives to God, and that is the greatest blessing, which lies hidden in the cross. — Ver. 10 ff. A single person can often bring a great calamity and the punishment of God upon a community. There- fore, it is necessary that the authorities watch and punish and remove offenses. We have good rea- son to entreat God that He will not punish the whole land on account of the ungodly. Quandt : The book of Jonah is the missionary hook of the Old Testament. — Ver. 3. There is in the conduct of Jonah a twofold sin, — disobedience to God and flight from God. Even Christians defy their God from dread of disgrace. Errors of the heart draw after them errors of the understanding : from religious perversity spring erroneous opinions. Elight from God is also in our time a widespread folly. — Ver. 5. Even the sleep of Jonah belongs to his flight. Judas fled still farther, when he hanged himself. — Ver. 6. The children of the world have always a feeling that the God of the pious [Christians] is more powerful than what they, in their delusion, reverence and worship. — Ver. 8. It is not to be overlooked that Jonah first mentions the sea. The words of Jonah are not so much a confession of faith as a confession of re- pentance. — Ver. 10 ff. When the orator, Cyprian, read the history of the prophet overwhelmed by the waves, his soul was violently agitated : it be- came a means of his conversion; and the result was that he became an eminent teacher of the church. F. Lambert : Ver. 1. It gives to us miserable sinners great confidence in God that He received, among his servants, David, Jonah, Peter, Paul, and others, notwithstanding they sinned noto- riously Rieg ek : Ver. 2. Of such as, in their declension, have wandered still farther from God, it is said " their sins have como up before inc : I have hear. the cry of them," etc. But of them who hav< intimate communion with God. or in the midst of whom the Lord Jesus s-iill walks, ii is said, "I know thy works." — Ver. 3. He who has become sensible of his deficiencies, will consider the fool- ishness of God wiser than all human wisdom, from the fact that, in his word, instead of many notable works, which lie might have mentioned as having been achieved by many of bis servants, He rather exposes their weaknesses and failings ; be- cause not merely brilliant and great examples are necessary for our imitation ; but also examples for our encouragement, that we may rouse ourselves from the thoughtlessness of sin. >eck forgiveness, and seize the hand of God extended for our re- eovery. From the circumstance that Jonah im mediately found a ship, according to his wish, he obstinately persists in his purpose. But even to a flight undertaken in disobedience, everything in external circumstances may accommodate itself. CHAPTER I. 23 If a man is in the right way, it must he deter- mined by other indications [than favoring external circumstances. — C. E.] Hiebonymus : Ver. 4. Great is he who flees in this insUnce ; but still greater is He who pursues him. Schmieder : Ver. 5. Jonah is in a quiet, con- cealed corner of the ship. He shunned the light. Augustine : Ver. 9. Si homovelat, Deusrevelat. Si homo tegit, Deus detegit Si homo agnoscit, Deus ignoscit. Rieger : Ver. 10 ff. The entire connection of events revealed God's just displeasure at the flight of Jonah ; but at the same time it must have pre- pared him for the future courageous execution of his mission. For the fact that Jonah found such abundant evidence that a deep impression of the fear of God had been produced in the consciences of these strange people, and that great earnestness in calling upon God had been awakened in them, must have been adapted to prepare him to under- take, with less reluctance, the commission to preach against a strange city. The godly sorrow and repentance, which Jonah experienced, pro- duced in him also the legitimate revenge (2 Cor. vii. 11), for he said : take me and cast me into the sea. Yet he does not throw himself into the sea. Such a difference is found between an awakened and a despairing conscience. Schliek : Ver. 1 5. He chose the sea for himself instead of going to Nineveh : the sea detained him by the hand of the Lord : the sea was the _ place into which the hand of the Lord plunged him for punishment. Schmieder: Ver. 16. This was not a genuine conversion to God ; had it been, they would have abandoned forever the worship of all other gods beside Jehovah, and not merely honored Him, together with their gods, with offerings. [Calvin : Ver. 2. Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it. God designed in this way to try Jonah, whether he would prefer his com- mand to all the hindrances of the world. And it is a genuine proof of obedience, when we simply obey God, however numerous the obstacles which may meet us and may be suggested to our minds, and though no escape may appear to us ; yea, when we follow God, as it were, with closed eyes, wherever He may lead us, and doubt not but that He will add strength to us, and stretch forth also His hand, whenever need may require, to remove all our difficulties. — Ver. 3. All flee away from the presence of God, who do not willingly obey his commandments. — Ver. 4. Though the Lord may involve many men in the same punishment, when He especially intends to pursue only one man, yet there is never wanting a reason why He night not call before his tribunal any one of as, even such as appear the most innocent. — Ver. 5 Hardly any religion appears in the world, when God leaves us in an undisturbed condition. This passage teaches, that men are constrained by necessity to seek God; so also, on the other hand, it shows that men go astray in seeking God, except they are directed by celestial truth, and also by the Spirit of God. Marckius ;! Ver. 3. God not only suffers the wicked to advance prosperously in their sins, bat does not immediately restore the godly in their declensions ; nay, He gives them every facility for a time in their downward course, in order that they may know themselves more, and that the glory of God may become thereby more manifest. Foolish then is the sinner, who, having begun life prosper- ously, concludes that the end will be equally happy. — Ver. 6. We see in this instance the great danger in which unconscious sinners are often in- volved, that the solace sought by them departs from them, that a dead sleep remains, and even increases under God's judgment, and that in the performance of duty the gorily are sometimes more slothful than the ungodly. The servants of God are sometimes surpassed, reproved, and stinmlated, by those far below them, yea, even by brute animals : a salutary admo- nition, from whatever quarter it may come, ought never to be despised. Matthew Henry : Ver. 3. Providence seemed to favor his design, and gave him an opportunity to escape : we may be out of the way of duty, and yet may meet with a favorable gale. The ready way is not always the right way. — Ver. 6. If the professors of religion do an ill thing, they may ex- pect to hear of it from those who make no such profession. Pusey : Ver. 5. God, whom they ignorantly v)or- shipped, while they cried to the gods, who, they thought, disposed of them, heard them. They escaped with the loss of their wares, but God saved their lives and revealed Himself to them. God hears ignorant prayer, when ignorauce is not willful and sin. A heathen ship was a strange place for a prophet of God, not as a prophet, but as a fugitive ; and so, probably, ashamed of what he had completed, he had withdrawn from sight and notice. Hedid not embolden himself in his sin, but shrank into himself. The conscience most commonly awakes when the sin is done. It stands aghast at itself; but Satan, if he can, cuts off its retreat. Jonah had no retreat now, unless God had made one. — C. E.] 1 [These extracts from Marckius are takea ftcm the do*m appended to Calvin ■ Commentary on Jonah. — 1. M.] 24 JONAH. CHAPTER H. \Jo ink's Hymn of Thanksgiving and Praise for his Deliverance from the Bowels of the Fish. — C. E.] 1 Now [And] the Lord [Jehovah] had prepared 1 [appointed] a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. 2 And Jonah prayed to Jehovah his God from the bowels of the fish and said) 3 I cried to Jehovah out of my distress : And He answered me : Out of the womb of Sheol 2 I cried : Thou heardest my voice. 4 Thou castedst me into the deep, 3 Into the heart of the seas ; And the stream 4 surrounded me ; All thy breakers and thy billows passed over me. 5 And I said : I am cast out from before thine eyes ; Yet I will look again towards thy holy temple. 6 Waters encompassed me even to the soul : 8 The abyss surrounded me ; Sea- weed 6 was bound to my head. 7 I went down to the foundations 7 of the mountains ; The earth — her bars were behind me forever : And thou didst raise my life from the pit, Jehovah, my God. 8 When my soul fainted 8 within me, I remembered Jehovah: And my prayer came to Thee, Into thy holy temple. Those observing lying vanities Forsake their own mercy. 9 10 But as for me, I will sacrifice to thee With the voice of thanksgiving. What I have vowed I will perform. Salvation * belongs to Jehovah. 11 And Jehovah spake to the fish, and it vomited Jonah upon the dry land. TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL. [1 Ver. 1. — n3I3, Piel of H^tt, does not mean to create, but to allot, to appoint. [« Ver. 3 — viSttJ "jtDSQ, out of the womb of the under world The usual derivation of VlStt? is from 7SD9, lo ask, to demand; but Gesenius says the true etymology is vi37tt7, cacily, from v2M£7. Compare the German Hblie, hell, originally the same with Hohle, a hollow, cavern. [8 Ver. 4. — n^^l'P, the deep is defined by " the heart of the seas " — the deepest part of the ocean. [4 Ver. 4. — "in 3, stream, current, flood — the current or tide of the sea. Compare Pfl. xxiv. 3. [S Ver. 6 — ti?23"117, even lo, or to the very soul, i. e., to the extinction of the animal life. [6 Ver. 6. — ^O, a 'ff°i or weed, which abounds at the bottom of the sea, and from which the Arabian Gulf takM the name of P)^D"lZj the sea of weeds. [7 Ver. 7 — COVf?, sections, cuttings, clefts. Vulgate, extrema monttum. Septuagint, eU a, Trap8a\is, iS and Hitzig would point "rj^ "rj^ for TI^S, how; but both without any authority. Such sudden transitions from fear to hope are frequently expressed in Scripture." (Henderson On Jonah.) — C. E.] [" The thought that it is all over with him is met by the confidence of faith that he will still look to the holy temple of the Lord, that is to say, will once more approach the presence of the Lord, to worship before Him in his temple, — an assurance which recalls Ps. v. 8 (7)." " The figure of bolts of the earth that were shut behind Jonah, which we only meet with here ("T37?, from the phrase "1?? f/771 " 1 ?9» to shut the door behind a person : Gen. vii. 16 ; 2 K. iv. 4, 5, 33 ; Is. xxvi. 20), has an analogy in the idea which occurs in Job xxxviii. 10, of bolts and doors of the ocean. The bolts of the sea are the walls of the sea-basin, which set bounds to the sea, that it can- not pass over. Consequently the bolts of the earth can only be such barriers as restrain the land from spreading over the sea. These barriers are the weight and force of the waves, which prevent the land from encroaching on the sea. This weight of the waves, or of the great masses of water, which pressed upon Jonah when he had sunk to the bot- tom of the sea, shut or bolted against him the way back to the earth (the land) just as the bolts that are drawn before the door of a house, fasten up the entrance into it ; so that the reference is neither to " the rocks jutting out above the water, which prevented any one from ascending from the sea to the land," nor " densissima terroz compages, qua abysms tecta Jonam in hoc constitntum occludebat* (Marck), Keil and Delitzsch. — C. E.] ter. This explanation is necessary in order to uni;nds at the bottom of the sea, and from which the Arabian gulf takes the name of ^D'O*, the sea of weeds. Kimchi explains it by ^P12, the papyrus, or bul- rush. Gesenius refines too much when he attaches to ttJ'Qn in this place the idea of binding round the head like a turban. Assuredly Jonah had no such idea in his mind. He rather describes how he felt, as if entangled by the sedge or weeds through which he was dragged." (Henderson, On Jonah.) — C. E.] Ver. 7. To the extremities, i. e., to the foun- dations of the mountains, which lie deep under the sea (Ps. civ. 4 (3); xviii. 16 (15)), I dived down ; the earth — her bars — the beams with which her foundation structure is fastened (Ps. civ. 5) — were around me [Hitzig: behind me; then I seemed thrust out from the land of the living, (Jer. xi. 19)] for ever; so thought the sinking prophet; for present sufferings and the perils of death made upon his miud the impression of the everlasting and the inevitable (Ps. xiii. 2 (1)). Thou didst raise my life from the pit (nnC7, as in Job xvii. 14), Jehovah my God (Ps. xxx. i (3)). Strophe III. Ver. 8. Casts once more a glance upon his afflic- tion : "When my soul (Ps. cxlii. 4) fainted to dying (Ps. xlii. 5) within me ; in order to include with it directly the deliverance : Jehovah (a beau- tiful inversion) I remembered (Ps. xlii. 7 (6)), and my prayer came to Thee into Thy holy temple, from which pravers are heard (Ps. xviii. 7 (6)). The conclusion (vers. 9, 10) places in an anti- thetic manner, which is of frequent occurrence in the Psalms, the vow of the pious man, who, through divine grace, has resolved to lead a new life, in contrast with the destruction of the un- godly, whom God does not deliver. Ver. 9. Those who observe lying vanities — the Piel of "l^*-" like the Hithpael (Mich. vi. 16), for the intensive degree of the Kal signification — forsake their own mercy. The reference to the heathen sailors, which the earlier interpreters. almost without exception, give to this verse, is, according to the description of them in the first chapter, certainly altogether unauthorized. The thought is entirely general, but (from the scope of the whole) with parenetical, secondary application to the Israelites, who in calamity did not seek their help in God, but in idols (D^vQH, comp. Pent, xxxii. 21). These apostates come by the short and energetic expression, in harmony with Gen. xxiv. 27, into direct opposition to God, who never abandons his mercy. 1DT1 is the gracious cond'tioB of the 2 N "TDn, the pious (Is lvii. 1). [" "^PC, lit. their mercy, or goodness ; by meton- ymy for their Benefactor, i.e. God, the author and source of all goodness; the supreme good. Comp. Ps. cxliv. 2, where David calls God "Ipn. The word properly signifies kindness or benignity, and most appropriately designates Him who is good to all, and whose tender mercies are over all his works." (Henderson, On Jonah.) So also Keil aud Delitzseh and Pusey. — C. E.J Ver. 10. But I, says Israel, conformably to Ps 1. 14, will sacrifice to thee with the voice of thanksgiving. What I have vowed I will pay. With the joyful ascription, salvation belong to Jehovah, the whole prayer closes, like Ps. iii. That is the salvation, which He will give to his people, after their affliction, at the time of the con- summation, looking to which the true Israel, even in the belly of the fish, in the sorrows of banish- ment and exile, praises Him (Is. xxvi. 2 ; xxv. 10 ; Gen. xlix. 18). Ver. 11. The Deliverance. Jehovah spake to the fish and it vomited up Jonah on dry land. Xlpoo-TaTTtTai iraKiv to kt)tos Qzia rivl tea.) anroffitTw Swa/Adi 8(ov npbs rb avrtS doxovv Kivov/xevov. Cvril. Cocceins, in order to bring the miracle nearer to the natural understanding, refers to the statements of Gregory Nazianzen and Oppian, concerning certain fish, which swallow their young when danger threatens, and vomit them out again. He refers also to the accounts in Pliny and Athenaens, that an entire man clad in armor has been found in the belly of a great sea-monster (Pliny, Canicula, Athen. Carcharias). There were found, says Keil, on the authority of Oken (Animal Kingdom, vol. iii. p. 55 ft'., 1836), about a dozen of tunny-fish, undigested, in a shark caught in Sardinia; and in another even an entire horse. (This fish can erect and lay its teeth at pleasure, because they are fastened only in the cellular tissue [Hautzeflrn]). Rondelet says that he has seen one on the west coast of France, through whose throat a fat man could easily pass. In the year 1758, a sailor, dur- ing a storm, fell overboard from a frigate into the Mediterranean sea, and was immediately seized by a shark and disappeared. The captain of the vessel caused a cannon, which was standing on the deck, to be discharged at the shark, the ball of which struck it, so that it vomited out the sailor, who was then taken up alive and only a little injured, into a sloop that had come to his assistance, and thus saved. On the other side, Cornelius a Lapide attempts to explain the vomiting, at least, as a natural occurrence produced by the uncomforta bleness of the fish. We think "that no service is done either to the matter or to the interpretation [Versldndniss] of the book by this rationalizing apologetic attempt (sec above, p. 2), and especially in reference to the latter question we are of the opinion of Theodoret, who calls subtle inquiries concerning these things an a.v6-nro% TTo\\rn*a.\p.oo- vvrj, a foolish officiousness. DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL' (See above, pp. 5, 6, 9, 10.) ' HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL. Eternal Redemption in Time. Introduction — Israel, a prefiguration of Christendom ; Jonah, 1 [Reicfugedanlcen. See note, p. 20. — C. K ] M JONAH. • type of Israel. Corap. vcr. 8 with 1 K. viii. 46 n\ 1. We still wander in the place of imprisonment, 2, 4, oa, 6, Tab. [Daily sins and the common. guilt of the human race encompass us within and without; our body is au earthly house, in which our immortal part lies shut up; around us is the sighing of the creature, which longs for the glori- ous manifestation of the sons of God.] 2. But we are redeemed, ver. 3, 5b, "c-10. [The fact is absolute and eternal : the appropriation is effected in time, and that through faith, which is a certain, confident apprehension of that which is still invisible, 5b, 8. Whoever renounces it [faith] has no part in redemption (ver. 9). In the service of God we bring that which is eternal into time, and think as if we were perfected; because the beginning of redemption, planted in us, includes within it its completion (vers. 3, 10). Ver. 1. In that which for the moment seems most painful and most insupportable, the gracious haud of our God is often very near to us. Every- thing which God sends has its fixed time and ap- pointed end ; a time not longer than we are able to bear it. Thou who complainest of affliction, hast thou ever thought what grace it is on the part of God that thou art alive? — Ver. 2. There is no place so desolate and dark that it cannot be turned into a temple of God by the praying saint. — Ver. 3. There is no failure in God's answer, but the failure is in calling upon Him. Can we need hit- man mediators, in order to be heard by Him, who hears the voice of him who cries from the bosom of hell? The invocation of saints is a relapse into a practice, that is far below the teachings of the Old Testament. — Ver. 4. We ought never to for- get, that wherever we are, we are placed there by God [wir von Gott dahin (jethan sind] , and that all the waves and billows that go over us are his ■waves and billows. In the Old Testament God Bends the tempest of the waves and billows. In the New Testament He commands them to be still ; in both they are obedient to Him. — Ver. 5. With the natural man arises first defiance, then despair : with the redeemed man strength is realized out of despair by the power of the spirit. The declara- tions of faith are all paradoxes and contrasts. Because I suffer, I shall be glorified. — Ver. 6 ff. If I descend to hell, behold Thou art there. Such is the anguish of the hour of death that one no longer perceives aught of love around him, but all around the head and on every side waters, which go even to the soul, so that the spirit faints within us. God's temple is near in all places. But who ever speaks of it as Jonah does here, it is evident that he also loves the visible place, where God's honor dwelleth. Whoever despises this place, to him that truth will not come to remembrance in the time of trouble. The want of the means of grace is not damnable to him only, whose soul does not despise thein. — Ver. 9. Where lying vanities take up their abode in the heart, there is the con- tempt of God, or there it grows ; it is there also where man either makes earthly things God's, or forms for himself delusive ideas concerning God. Falling from a state of grace, may happen alto- gether insensibly ; but it certainly commences with a divided heart. — Ver. 1 0. The" history of Jonah is a shadow of future tilings ; he leaves it to the heathen to bring a sacrifice (i. 16), he himself oilers thanksgiving. — Ver. 11. Turn the prison of the world into the temple of God, and it will not be able to detain thee. God does not leave his saints in hell (Ps. xvi. 10). We are buried with Christ by baptism nnto death; that like as Christ wa! raised up from the dead, even so we also should walk in newness of life (Horn. vi. 4). Luthek : Ver. 3. Two great and necessary les- sons : 1. That we should before all things run speedily to God, and cry to Him in trouble and make our complaints to Him. Canst thou ca' 1 and cry, then there is no more danger. For even hell would not be hell, nor continue hell, if in it one could call upon ani cry to God. Nature of course cannot do otherwise, nor be otherwise, than as it feels. But now while it feels God's wrath and punishment, if it regards Him as an angry tyrant it cannot rise above such feelings and pressthrough to God. Therefore, since Jonah has gone so far as to cry, he has won. 2. That we also feel in our hearts, that it is such a cry as God will answer. This is nothing else than to call with true faith of heart. For the head does not erect itself, nor do the hands raise themselves, before the heart is raised. What hell is before the last day, I am not posi- tive. That it is a particular place, where lost souls are now constantly kept, as painters portray and as gluttons preach, I do not believe; for the devils are not yet in hell (Eph. vi. 12 ; John xiv. 30). Therefore, the Scriptures use the word Sheol with propriety, for the purpose of designating the last agonies of death. But at the last day it will cer- tainly become a different thing. — Ver. 5. The idea of his being cast out from God's countenance, has in the first place a reference to his body; for he felt in his heart that he must die ; in the second place, to his soul, as if he were eternally cast out from God. — Ver. 8. The powers and energies of his soul yielded to despair. But that he thinks of the Lord and begins to believe, is not the work of his soul ; the spirit and no one else can think of the Lord. When the remembrance of the Lord enters the heart, then a new light arises ; then life once more sheds forth its rays ; then the heart again re- ceives courage to call ; and then too he is certainly heard. In the Old Testament all prayers were re- quired to come to the mercy-seat; so now in the New Testament all prayers must come to Jesus Christ. — Ver. 9. Jonah reproves in this verse those devoid of understanding, who seek holiness by their own deeds, and hypocrites, who do not trust in God's grace alone, but in their own works. — Ver. 10. Where the saints in the Scriptures speak of paying vows and do not express any one [vow] in particular, we must understand the common vow of all, who are God's people, namely, that we will have no God but Him alone. — Ver. 11. Now everything is reversed : that which before tended to death must now tend to life. Starke : Ver. 1 . God can preserve a man miraculously against the course of nature (1 K. xvii. 4 ff.). — Ver. 2. God is not only the God of all believers in general, but also of each one par- ticularly (Ps. lxiii. 2). — Ver. 3. Nothing can better excite a man to gratitude toward God than to consider diligently the trouble and danger from which God has delivered him. — Ver. 4. It is great misery to lie in the water; but the greatest is to be cast out from God. — Ver. 5. When we have bodily trouble, it ordinarily so arouses the guilty conscience, that our distress is doubled. In the hour of death Satan is most active with his temptations, and would like to cast us into despair. — Ver. 6. God, moved by righteous judgment and wise design, often visits with many trials and af- flictions of different kinds those who have already exercised true repentance. — Ver. 7. It is a spe- cial, gracious work of the Holy Spirit, if He givet CHAPTER II. 2*9 to believers, in the midst of their troubles, not only a good hope of the diviue aid, but also strengthens them in the faith, so that they consider it as al- ready actually attained (Ex. xiv. 13 ; 2 Chron. xx. 13 ff" ). — Ver. 8. When we come into the pains of death, and our mouth can no longer speak, then should our heart sigh to God. — Ver. 10. One should keep his vows (Eccles. v. 4). — Ver. 11. God gives beyond our asking and our understand- ing. The almighty hand of God will one day restore to life those who have perished in the waters (Rev. xx. 13). Pfaff : Ver. 4. 0, how good it is for the soul to feel the anger of the Lord and to be driven into straits ; for thereby it is brought right to God, and its faith is strengthened. — Ver. 5. A child of God longs for the temple and public service of God, in order to praise the Lord becomingly in the con- gregation and to be quickened by the mutual prayer of the pious. Qcandt : Our Lord has interpreted to us, in the New Testament, the history contained in this chapter as a prophecy of Him ; as a sign of his death, of his descent to Hades, and of his resur- rection. On this account this chapter acquires a glory, which the other three have not. — Ver 1 . If a man should be received unhurt into a fish's body, according to the course of nature he cannot breathe and live a single hour. At all events the Lord wrought a miracle in the case of Jonah ; we can in his case altogether dispense with natural history. With many repentance is a mere specu- lation on the act of bestowing grace, — a specula- tion that fails, when the Lord leads the soul still deeper into judgment or misery. Not so with Jonah. — Ver. 2. Jonah was very well acquainted with the Psalter and had committed to memory many a prayer of the saints. This was of great advantage to him now, as his prayer shows. There is good reason why a man should come before the throne of the Merciful One, with his own words, instead of set forms. But in times of spiritual drought a manual has also its advantages. — Ver. 4. With Thou and Thine Jonah clings to the same Divine hand, which punishes him, and therefore this hand must raise him from the deep to a high place. — Ver. 8. ff. Jonah trusts that God, who had delivered his soul, would now also do the less and save his body. By faith he sees his deliverance as already accomplished, and for that reason prom- ises to God offerings of thanksgiving. Augustine : Ver. 1 . Jonah prophesied of Christ, not so much by his words as by sufferings ; and evidently more clearly than if he had an- nounced his sufferings and resurrection by words. Marck : God often makes an end of temptation contrary to human expectation (1 Cor. x. 13), and never denies his favor, because He cannot deny Himself (2 Tim. ii. 13). Lavater : That Jonah could draw breath in the belly of the fish, or receive as much air as he had need of, was just as possible as that a child can live in its mother's womb. Burck: Ver. 2. Wonderful change (i. 6) — he :nade little haste to pray ; he suffered himself to be driven to it. Now in the deepest misery he prays not only most earnestly, but most confidently. Theodoret : Ver. 3. I, says he, who hereto- fore thought that thou dwellest only in Jerusalem, and only there revealest thyself to the prophets, found thee present in the belly of the fish, etc. Burck : We have in this prayer an example of the right use of the Psalter. Even the holy men af God, who were partakers of the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, have tot refused to appeal tj and to cite formally the b( oks of Scripture, which ex- isted already in their time. A strong argument for the authority of tiie holy Scriptures. Riegek : We should in this sign consider Jonah particularly as a type of the deep humiliation of the Son of God in the midst of the earth and of his reviving from the dead, that event, whose light ever afterward falls on all the paths of life, other- wise still so deep and dark. Rieger : To attain good by means of the wrath which one experiences is no small matter. It is as if one were obliged to pass through nothing but spears and swords. Many expressious in the prayer of Jonah are taken from the Psalms. So in similar circumstances something out of the Scriptures will occur, often only after a long time, to the memory of the sufferer. Rieger : Ver. 5. What an eternal sting do all our humiliations carry with them, when three days and three nights can become as long to a man as if he were forever isolated. Burck : Ver. 7. Here first, in the end of his prayer, Jonah ventures to use the direct and •on- fident address : Jehovah, my God, doubtless with the most heartfelt delight. Before he had humbly and anxiously abstained from it. Hieronymus : Ver. 9. Those who not merely practice vanity (for all is vanity, therefore all prac- tice it), but observe it as if they loved it and found a treasure in it. Schmieder : Ver. 10. All help comes from tha Lord, even where He helps through means ; there- fore we should not trust in the means, whether tilings or persons, but in the Lord, and thank Him first for all help. — Ver. 1 1 . The instinct of beasts can be controlled by the will of God. (Com p. Dan. vi. 22.) Schlier : What was likely to be the effect upon Jonah, who experienced such a miraculous inter- position on the part of his God ! What was likely to be the effect upon others, who heard of it, for the report of the miracle soon spread abroad. Even the heathen fables know something of it. [In the poem, Cassandra, ascribed to Lycophron, and in a fragment of the logographer Hellenicus, cited by the Scholiasts on Homer's Iliad, xx. 14."), it is related, that Hercules delivered Hesione by entering into the belly of a sea-monster, to which she was exposed, whose entrails he tore in pieces and came out again in safety ; and the church fathers state that the myth ascribes to his stay in the monster's belly three days' continuance.] [Calvin: 9 (10.) It must be noticed here that the worship of God especially consists in praises, as it is said in Ps. L : lor there God shows that he regards as nothing all sacrifices, except they an- swer this end — to set forth the praise of his name. It was indeed his will that sacrifices should be of- fered to Him under the law; but it was for the end just stated ; for God cares not for calves and oxen, for goats and lambs; but his will was that He should be acknowledged as the Giver of all bless- ings. Hence He says there " sacrifice to me the sacrifice of praise." Matthew Henry : Ver. 2. No place is amiss for prayer. / will that men pray everywhere wherever God casts us we may find a way o;joii heavenward, if it be not our own fault. — Ver. 10 Jonah's experience shall encourage others, in all ages, to trust in God, as the God of their salvation . all that read this story, shall say it with assurance, say it with admiration, that salvation is of th« Lord, and is sure to all that belong to Him. au JONAH. Posey: 7 (8). But when it came to the ut- most, then he says, 2" remembered the Lord, as though, in the intense thought of God then, all his former thought of God had been forgetfulness. So it is in every strong act of faith, of love, of prayer; its former state seems unworthy of the same of faith, love, prayer. It believes, loves, prays, as though all before had been forgetfulness — Ver. 9 (10). God seems often to wait for the full resignation of the soul, all its powers and will to Him. Then He can show mercy healthfully, when the soul is wholly surrendered to Him. S« on this full confession Jonah is restored. — C. E. CHAPTER III. *\The Renewal of Jonah's Commission (vers. 1, 2). His Preaching to the Ninevites (vers. 3-4). Humiliation and Reformation of the Ninevites (vers. 5-9.) Re- versal of the Divine Sentence (ver. 10). — C. E.] 1 And the word of the Lord [Jehovah] came [was communicated] unto Jonah 2 the second time, saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, ana preach unto 3 it the preaching [make the proclamation to it] that I bid thee. So [And] Jonah arose, and went unto [to] Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord [Jehovah]. Now [And] Nineveh was an exceeding great city [a great city to God] of three 4 days' journey. And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey [a journey of one day], and he cried [proclaimed], and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall 6 be overthrown. So [And] the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them. 6 For [And] word came [had come] unto [to] the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he [omit he] laid his robe from him [put off his robe from him], and 7 covered him [himself] with sack cloth, and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be pro- claimed and published [and said] through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing : let 8 them not feed, nor drink water : But [And] let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God : yea [and] let them turn every one from his 9 evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell 8 [knoweth] if [but that] [the] God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger ] [glow of anger], that we perish not ? And [the] God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way ; and God repented of the evil that [which] he had said that he would do unto them ; and he did it not. TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL. [1 Ver. 2.— nS^n, that which is proclaimed, proclamation ; to icjjpvyfAa, (LXX.); pradicatio (Vulgate) [i Ver. 7.— E37t2 — Ql?t3 Dan. iii. 10, 29, a technical term for the edicts of the Assyrian and Babvlonian kings. [8 Ver. 9. — 3ni ,| "' , n, who is knowing ?_C. E.] EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL. Ver. 1-9. The preaching of Repentance by Jonah in Nineveh and its Result. Ver. 1, 2. God sends the prophet, _ the^ second time, to make his proclamation — his Kriah — against Nineveh ; the same that was to be put in his mouth. "O^, part. fut. as in Is. v. 5. ["O^ signifies, according to the idiomatic use of the par- ticiple, about to tell, and suggests the idea of a proximate futurity. — C. E.] Ver. 3. Jonah is made wiser by the chastise- ment which be experienced, and does not again attempt to evade the call. Now Nineveh was a great city (comp. the Introduction, p. 9) before God [fur Gott]. The datimis ethicus designates not an inward peculiar relation of Nineveh to God, as in the passage (Actsvii. 20) quoted by Hitzig; but it corresponds to the phrase " before God," which is applied to Nimrod, the founder of the city (Gen. x. 9), and denotes here the world-position of the city, there of the person. Men may appear great to their people; cities to their possessors, or spectators, and still not occupy a world-position. (Deut. i. 28). C" ^ribsb nbi-13 "TO, a city great to God. This phrase has been variously explained. Some, with Kimchi, deem it merely a superlative form ; Gesenius construes the 7 instrumentally, great through God, i. e., through his favor. Others consider it to be equivalent to D^rwS \?5v be- fore God, Gen. x. 9. Thus the Targum ^ Dl^. Of this last interpretation I approve, as it was most natural to refer the size of a city, of m hicb CHAPTER III. the Hebrews could form no adequate conception, to the Divine estimation. I have accordingly ren- dered the words literally, as our preposition to is often used to note opinion, or estimate." Hender- son On Jonah. " But Nineveh was a great city to God (le'lohim), i. e., it was regarded by God as a great city. This remark points to the motive for sparing it (cf. ch. iv. 11; in case its inhabitants hearkened to the word of God." Keil and Delitzsch. " Niru-eeh teas an exceeding great city ; lit. great to God, i. e., that would not only appear great to man who admires things of no account, but what, being really great, is so in the judgment of God who cannot be deceived. God did account it great, who says to Jonah, Should not I spare Nineveh that great city, which hath more than six score thousand that cannot discern between their right and their left? It is a different idiom from that, when Scripture speaks of the mountains of God, the cedars of God. For of these it speaks, as having their firmness or their beauty from God, as their Author." Pusey. " The phrase ' an exceeding great city,' stands in the Hebrew, ' a city great to God,' i. e., great before Him, — great as to Him, in his estimation. The Hebrews were accustomed to express their highest ideas of the superlative degree by using the name of God, t. g., ' mountains of God,' etc. The sense of this passage may be somewhat more specific, representing the city as great in its relations to God, and not merely as very great apart from these relations." Cowles. See Lauge on Gen. x. 9 ; also the note by T. L. — C.B.] Three days' journey — accusative of measure, as in Gen. xiv. 4. Since (comp. on i. 2) the direct diameter of the city was only a day's journey, then the circum- ference is either designated by "?]!?£!£? ( tfl i s sig- nification of ^T^lIPi though consistent with the statement that the circumference of the city was four hundred and eighty stadia in extent, cannot be maintained), or the way (comp. Ez. xlii. 4), which united together the market-places of the different individual cities forming the great aggre- gate [complexes] , and which it was, therefore, necessary io travel over, in order to go entirely through th'2 city. Ver. 4, in which "JJ7nZ2 desig- nates the way which Jonah travelled over, during the first day ("TiTS Ci > , Ges. sec. 120, 4), points to the latter supposition. So certain is he of his message, avid so impressed with the urgency of his mission, that he immediately begins to enter into the city, before obtaining a survey of it, and com- mences to preach on the first day's journey. His sermon is short, but powerful : Yet forty days and Nineveh shafi be overthrown. Forty days are here a lound number, meaning after a short time, whose term fonah measures by the period of the deluge. Th'J LXX. translate it by a still more rigid formula, — Yet three days. This shortening of the time, however, would not har- monize with the facts of the case, since no time would have been left to the Ninevites for repent- ance, 1 for Jonah required three days to go tl rough the city. The word employed to denote the de- itruction is the old prophetical technical term i For the Heb. Text are Aqu., Syuun , Theodot., Syr.; ills:, HieroD., Theodoret, Aug. Lange, Bibelwerk O. T., "n^n, evertere (Is. i. 7 ; xiii. 19), which every- where points back to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha. (Original passage, Gen. xix. 25.) [Ver. 4. " Its greatness amounted to a ' three days' walk.' This is usually supposed to refer to the circumference of the city, by which the size of a city is generally determined. But the statement in ver. 4, that Jonah began to enter into the city the walk of a day. i. e., a day's jou rne.\ , is appar- ently at variance with this. Hence ilitzig has come to the conclusion that the diameter of the city is intended, and that, as the walk of a day in ver. 4 evidently points to the walk of three days in ver. 3, the latter must also be understood as re- ferring to the length of Nineveh. But according to Diod. ii. 3 the length of the city was one hun- dred and fifty stadia, and Herod, (v. 53) gives just this number of stadia, as a day's journey. Hence Jonah wotdd not have commenced his preaching till he had reached the opposite end of the city. This line of argument, the intention of which is to prove the absurdity of the narrative, is based upon the perfectly arbitrary assumption that Jonah went through the entire length of the city in a straight line, which is neither probable in itself, nor implied in ""l^ll S12. This simply means to enter, or go into the city, and says nothing about the direction of the course he took within the city. But in a city, the diameter of which was one hundred and fifty stadia, and the circum- ference four hundred and eighty stadia, one might easily walk for a whole day without reaching the other end, by winding about from one street in f o another. And Jonah would have to do this to find a suitable place for his preaching, since we are not warranted in assuming that it lay exactly in the geographical centre, or at the end of the street which led from the gate into the city. But if Jonah wandered about in different directions, as Theodoret says, ' not going through the city, but strolling through market-places, streets,' etc., the distance of a day's journey over which he travelled must not be understood as relating to th" diameter or length of the city ; so that the objec- tion to the general opinion, that the three days' journey given as the size of the city refers to the circumference, entirely falls to the ground. More over, Hitzig has quite overlooked the word ^O s T in his argument. The text does not affirm that Jonah went a day's journey into the city, but that he ' began to go into the city a day's journey, and cried out.' These words do not affirm that he did not begin to preach till after he had gone a whole day's journey, but simply that he had commenced his day's journey in the city when he found a suit- able place and a fitting opportunity for his proc- lamation. They leave the distance that he had really gone, when he began his preaching, quite indefinite ; and by no means necessitate the as- sumption that he had only begun to preach in the evening, after his day's journey was ended. All that they distinctly affirm is, that he did not preach directly he entered the city, but only after he had commenced a day's journey, that is to say, had gone some distance into the city. And this is in perfect harmony with all that we know about the size of Nineveh at that time. The circumference of the great city Nineveh, or the length of the boundaries of the city of Nineveh in the broadest sense, was, as Niebuhr says (p. 277), 'nearly ninety English miles, not reckoning the smallei vindings of the boundary; and this would be juS 32 JONAH. three day's travelling for a good walker on a long journey.' 'Jonah,' he continues, begins to go a day's journey into the city, then preaches, and the preaching reaches the ears of the king (cf. ver. 6). He therefore came very near to the citadel as he went along on his first day's journey. At that time the citadel was probably in Nimrod (Calah). Jonah, who would hardly have travelled through the desert, went by what is now the ordinary caravan road past Amida, and therefore entered the city at Nineveh. And it was on the road from Nineveh to Calah, not far off the city, possibly in the city itself, that he preached. Now the distance between Calah and Nineveh (not reckoning either city), measured in a straight line upon the map, is eighteen and a half English miles.' If, then, we add to this, (1) that the road from Nineveh to Calah or Nimrod hardly ran in a perfectly straight line, and therefore would be really longer than the exact distance between the two parts of the city according to the map, and (2) that Jonah had first of all to go through Nineveh, and possibly into Calah, he may very well have walked twenty Eng- lish miles, or a short day's journey, before he preached. The main point of his preaching is all that is given, namely, the threat that Nineveh should be destroyed, which was the point of chief importance, so far as the object of the book was concerned, and which Jonah of course explained by denouncing the sins and vices of the city." Keil and Delitzsch. — C. E.] Ver. 5. Then the men of Nineveh believed God. That the Babylonians had a great respect for divination, so that what is here related does not appear strange (Keil), may appear apologet- ically an important observation ; but this was Erobably not in the mind of the writer: it was is intention to relate something extraordinary. Moreover, he would not have employed the ex- pression "believe," but the more common "inD, fear, or a similar word. (See moreover below at ver. 8.) The word believe here, as often elsewhere, is used with special reference to the appropriation of prophetical instruction to the soul's inner life (Is. vii. 9 ; Hab. ii. 4), without however excluding the element of justification, when confidence is ex- ercised in the mercy of God. Its fruits, ver. 5 ft'., are those which are required from preaching, re- pentance, and conversion (Joel ii. 15 ff.). And this repentance was indeed a general one, a re- Eentance of the people, as it was carried out by ringing over to it all the inhabitants, the king, and even the beasts. Ver. 6 ff. is only a fuller recital of the brief historical statement in ver. 5, and should, according to the context, be rendered in the plu- perfect : For the matter had come to the King of Nineveh, etc., to ver. 9. Our author is fond of such pluperfect adjuncts (i. 5-10). Following the natural, epic character of the narrative, we have retained the aorist in the translation. The king rises from his throne (comp. 2 Sam. xiii. 31), and lays aside his royal robe (comp. Josh. vii. 21), puts on a mourning-dress and sits in ashes — all a sign of sorrow and repentance (Ez. xxvi. 16). The verbs in ver. 7 ff. have the indefinite sub- t'ect " one " : one proclaimed and said in Nineveh >y the command of the king and his nobles also, etc. The royal heralds are meant, to whom the ixecution of the ES'tS (a north-Semitic word = TTTin, comp. Dan. iii. 29 f. ) was committed. That the beasts were included in the public humil ■Ation is nothing unusual in the East. When Masistios fell at Plataja, the Persians, in honoi of him, sheared the hair from their horses. (Herod. ix. 24. Comp. Brissonius, be Regni Persarum Principiis. ii. c. 206 ) Horses hung with black- were, in the time of Chrysostom, frequently seen at funeral processions, and they are frequently to be seen at the present day. The custom has its foundation in the lively feeling of the mutual adaptation of man and nature. (Comp. Joel i. 18, and the description of the great grief in the fifth Eclogue of Virgil [also JEneid, xi. 89, c. e.].) Besides it is especially mentioned here as a reason, just as " great and small " ver. 5, that not merely repentance of sin, but also compassion toward guiltless creatures should move God to spare them (iv. 11). But it is not required to press to the utmost the separate applications of the royal edict, in the interest of the fides historica, otherwise we would be obliged to infer from ver. 8 that the cat- tle were clothed in mourning and that their low- ing was taken for prayer, which was certainly not so. The strength of the expressions paints the depth of the repentance, and ver. 8 b shows the reason of their use by the king and by the narra- tor, who reproduces the edict : and let them turn every one from his evil way (Ez. xviii. 23), etc., that we perish not (comp. i. 6). It is too strongly asserted that this result of Jonah's denunciation of doom is psychologically incomprehensible in itself ( Hitzig), because he spoke as a foreigner to a foreign people in a foreign language. But the esteem of antiquity for the oracles of the gods [Gotterstim- men] is known ; and the fact that the limits of national worship were thereby left undetermined, in proof of which we cite the well-known fact that Crcesus consulted the Grecian oracles (comp. Ezr. i. 1 ff. ; Gen. xli; Numb, xxii ; Luke vii). And the more threatening these oracles were, the more certain were they to obtain belief, as is natu- ral, since the threatenings of divine punishment have a powerful ally in the conscience of man. If one reflects on the excitement, which ruled the souls of men about the y r ear 1000 a. d. ; on the results which the discourses of a Peter of Amiens, Capistrano, and others of their time had, though delivered in a language not understood ; and con- siders that awe in which holy men were held by antiquity, of which even profane writers afford frequent examples, then the psychological difficulty vanishes, and there is no need of bringing the affinity of the Hebrew and Assyrian languages to our help, in order to find the resul t possible. It is injudicious to remove, in the interests of apolo- getics, everything miraculous from the narrative ; but it is equally so to push, in the interest of po- lemics, the miraculous to silliness. Another psycho- logical motive to repentance on the part of the Ninevites our Lord indicates, Luke xi. 30, when by the expression o-rj^eio^ roh Ntvevirats, he un- doubtedly brings to light that the account of the wonderful events of his life formed an essential part of Jonah's sermon on repentance. (Comp. Luke xi. 32, and the Ob. of Luther on ver. 4 be low.) With reference to D > n7S!~r, vers. 9, 10 (comp. i. 6) Burck remarks : " Non hie adkibetur nomen Jehovah, quia de populo gentili sermo est, Jehoi(» coynitio sublimior, quam Dei." Ver. 11. The Compassion. As faith expects, so it conies to pass. (Comp. Ex. xxxii. 12, 14.) God locked upon the Ninevites : He turned his coun- tenance, with kind thoughts, toward them. (Comp ver. it. 1, 6.) CHAPTER III. 33 [" But however deep the penitential mourning of Nineveh might be, and however sincere the re- pentance of the people, when they acted according to the king's command ; the repentance was not a lasting one, or permanent in its effects. Nor did it evince a thorough conversion to God, but was merely * powerful incitement to conversion, a waking up out of the careless security of their life of sin, an endeavor to forsake their evil ways which did not last very long. The statement in ver. 10, that " God saw their doing, that they turned from their evil ways ; and He repented of* the evil that He had said that He would do to them, and did it not" (cf. Ex. xxxii. 14), can be reconciled with this without difficulty. The re- pentance of the Ninevites, even if it did not last, showed, at any rate, a susceptibility on the part of the heathen for the word of God, and their will- ingness to turn and forsake their evil and ungodly ways ; so that God, according to his compassion, could extend his grace to them in consequence. God always acts in this way. He not only for- gives the converted man, who lays aside his sin, and walks in newness of life ; but He has mercy also upon the penitent who confesses and mourns over his sin, and is willing to amend. The Lord also directed Jonah to preach repentance to Nin- eveh ; not that this capital of the heathen world might be converted at once to faith in the living God, and its inhabitants be received into the cov- enant of grace which He had made with Israel, but simply to give his people Israel a practical proof that He was the God of the heathen also, and could prepare for Himself even among them a people of his possession. (Keil and Delitzsch.) Dr. Pusey expresses himself unwarrantably, when he says : " But, what Scripture chiefly dwells npon, their repentance was not only in profession, in belief, in outward act, but in the fruit of gen- uine works of repentance, a changed life out of a changed heart Their whole way and course of life was evil ; they broke off, not the one or other sin only, but all, their whole evil way. Dr. P. has inserted the adjective " whole " before " evil way." It is not used by the sacred writer. The repentance of the Ninevites was — though in some instances, it may have been more — a public con- fession and humiliation ordered by the" king and his nobles." — C. E.]. DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL. 1 See Introduction, p. 5 ff. HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL. The repentance of the Ninevites, a model of a genuine national repentance. 1. It hears God's proclamation and asks not why? vers. 1-4. 2. It springs from faith and is accompanied by faith 1 vers. 5, 9. 3. It bows itself under the curse of the common guilt, and not a single person asks : how much have I deserved ? ver. 6. ff. 4. It is united with the purpose of amendment. On ver. 1 . The Lord does not withdraw his calls. (Comp. John xxi. 16.) It is a great and enduring grace to be called by Him. Ver. 2. No one should undertake, of his own absolute power, to threaten others with the Divine wrath and punishment. Preachers, who speak from their own mind, have 1 [JUiihsgedanken, see not*, p. 20. — C. E.]. no right to do so. Therefore, consider well and pray for the Holy Spirit, and entirely humble thy- self, and forget thyself, if thou hast in mind to, ot must perform such a duty. Ver. 3. Whoever feels that he is sent of God should not be afraid of the greatest city. As many as the Lord intends shall hear Him, will hear Him. — Ver. 4. Speak promptly and delay not. In God's kingdom every moment is precious. The time, when He puts his word in thy mouth, is the right time ; not that which thou fanciest for thyself. — Ver. 5. Because the Ninevites believed, they repented. Repentance comes not from the law alone ; but from the law and faith. Prom the law alone comes death. Children are not innocent. — Ver. 6. It becomes a king, who takes precedence in everything, to take the lead also in repentance. (Ps. li.) In repentance and especially before God, all are on a level ; purple is of no avail, but only a broken heart. Magistracy is of God's ap- pointment ; but those who possess it are neverthe- less sinners. — Ver. 7. It is a good work and be- longs to the office of the magistrate to foster true piety. The state has not merely the negative duty of providing that those who observe their religious festivals [Feiertage] be not disturbed, but also a positive duty. There is no state conceivable with- out having duties to discharge to religion and the church. The kingdom of God can subsist without it, but not the reverse. To repentance belongs necessarily the purpose of amendment. — Ver. 9. The heathen do not despair of God's mercy, though they do not yet know Christ. It is worse than heathenish to doubt that God is gracious and ready to forgive. — Ver. 10. The repentance of God is included in his gracious decree. It is the harmonizing of [die Auseinandersetzung zwischen, lit., the settlement between] wrath and forgiveness, justice and love. Wrath is not the final end; but it has for its end and object, love. Law with- out the Gospel would be an ungodly thing: the Old Testament cannot subsist without the New. Woe to him who makes light of the wrath of God : he can never taste of love. Luther : Ver. 1. It is therefore written that we may bear in mind, that nothing is to be under- taken without God's word and command. For the first command of God having been violated by disobedience, had not God renewed it, Jonah would not have known, whether be should do it, or not. (Comp. Num. xiv. 1 ff". ; Deut. i. 41 f.) The Israelites at first would not fight at God's com mand; afterward they wished to do so of their own accord and were beaten. (1 Pet. iv. 11.) — Ver. 2. Nineveh, the city of God. God cares also for the heathen. (2 Kings v. 1 ; Jer. xxv. 9.) — Ver. 4. He doubtless did not confine himself in preaching to these words ; his proclamation is briefly reported. — Ver. 5. They do some things, which God does not command. Therefore He, afterward, ver. 10, does not commend their fasting and sackcloth, but that they turned from their evil way. God saw their earnestness ; therefore He permitted the foolish things — that the animals should fast, etc., — to be acceptable to Him, which He would not have beheld with favor, had the earnestness been wanting. Free will, or our own power, does not produce such earnestness ; but faith by the power of the Holy Spirit. — Ver. 9. The king speaks as if he doubts. But he doubts not ; for doubt does not call upon God and em- ploy such earnestness. A truly penitent heart stands with fear in the contest, and fights against despair ; but as it has not yet won, it speaks as if M JONAH. it were uncertain. If there were no faith, it would not hold out anndst such toil and trouble. There- fore, words are rather a sign that faith is there. — Ver. 10. Here the works are commended ; what shall we say against it? Here the legalists have :he advantage, yes, a fine advantage! Look at the text. It says, God saw their works, that is, they pleased Him. But what kind of works were they ? The text shows : They turned from their evil way. Such works do and teach, then we will not refuse to thee the praise of works; but we will help thee to extol them. To turn from one's evil way is not a trifling work ; it includes, not fasting and sackcloth, but faith in God from the heart, and the loving of our neighbor as ourselves ; that is, it requires the whole man to be pious and just in both body and soul. For God requires the whole man, and dislikes half-converts and hypo- crites. Starke: Ver. 1. God's purpose and command must succeed and be accomplished ; for it cannot be hindered or frustrated by any human designs. God by means of the ministry saves sinners by sinners. — Ver. 2. God even during the time of the Old Covenant, sought the salvation of the heathen. — Ver. 3. Nineveh, a great city to the Lord, should surely have been devoted to God : God had wrought for it (iv. 10). nadr)fj.a.Ta, nad-fifxara, nocumetita, documenta, poor in spirit, rich in faith (armselig macht gottselig, Is. xxviii. 19). God can well tolerate great cities, if they only give place to Him and his word. — Ver. 4. Since God has still his own everywhere, these most likely were the first to have been awakened, and to have served as coadjutors in the preaching of repentance. — Ver. 5. Credidit Ninive et Israel incredulus per- severat ; credidit praputium, et circumcisioperma.net injidelis. Where the Word of God is preached sincerely and purely, there it brings fruit in its season, if not in all, at least in some. (1 Thess. ii. 13.) Jonah did in his mission, as did the Apos- tles. Wherever thev came, they did not seek first Fermission fVciu the magistrate; but they rested their aucnority] upon the command of Christ. — Ver. 7. It is well for the masses of a commu- nity, when pious magistrates have also pious ser- vants around them. It is a strong proof of sin- cere repentance for sins committed to remove every occasion to lust out of the way. — Ver. 8. One must prove his repentance by external acts. It is a peculiar instance of Divine justice that God suffered Israel to be destroyed by the same people, who repented at the voice of his prophet, while on the contrary, the Israelites had despised all the prophets from Samuel down. God's decree has always a fundamental reference to conversion [hat die Ordnung der Bekthrung im- tner zum Grunae]. Pfaff : God does not change his commands. He repeats his calling grace. He calls the sinner twice, thrice, yea, even to the end. — Ver. 4 : A preacher must speak the truth frankly [deutsch], and not sugar it over and deprive it of its power by ornaments and flattery. One must plainly say to sinners that they are hastening to destruction. — Ver. 7. Here we find established the right of the magistrate in spiritual things; especially in regard to the externals of Divine worship and its rijiht ordering. — Vers. 9, 10. It is certain that bestows his grace upon the penitent. QUANDT : Ver. 1. With God nothing is impos- sible, truly, the heart must suffer itself to be broken, otherwise even God cannot break it by his Almighty power The same word of God which was n jected and despised by us in former times, if received by us with devotion, when it comes to as the second time and we in the meantime have become different persons. Many individuals and families want nothing but the cross to bring them back. — Ver. 3. Alas ! Jonah has more followers in the way of flight than in the way of obedience. — Ver. 4. Three ways may be pursued on receiv- ing such a terrible message — despair, frivolous mockery, repentance and conversion. The Nine- vites chose the third. — Ver. 9. Faith disappoints nobody. — Ver. 10. That Nineveh was converted was a wonder. With us, it is a wonder, if we are not converted. Marck : Ver. 1. God is so good and s^ indul- gent to the weaknesses of his servants, that even after repeated proofs of his grace, He makes known his will to them, not once, but oftener, in order that they may have no pretext of ignorance, but may know the true object of their redemption, namely, to obey the commands of their Redeemer and to manifest his glory. Bukck : God does not utterly reject him, who has failed once ; but He rather gives him a new opportunity of correcting former faults. Rieger : To him, who comes out of trouble, danger, and sickness, God commonly permits an opportunity soon to occur, when he can pay his vows. Schlier : In renewing the command, God says not a word about the guilt of Jonah; for Jonah is humbled. In the miracle of his deliverance he has learned what obedience is, although he does not yet know what Divine compassion toward the perishing heathen is. Burck : Ver. 4. Preaching is usually effica- cious, from the very first, among those who do not receive the Word in vain. There is very little hope of those, who have heard the Word of God proclaimed by the same messenger, not merely many days, but years, without becoming better, even if they should have the opportunity of hear- ing the same preaching a thousand years. Marck : Ver. 5. There is not only a very close connection between evil, guilt, and punishment, so that they are commonly mutually dependent, but also the good is connected by intimate bonds, since from one virtue of one man other virtues of others flow, and the Divine blessing follows virtue. This is illustrated by the obedience of Jonah, with which the repentance of the Ninevites and the Di- vine compassion were closely connected. Rieger : The exercises of repentance are here described for the most part by the outward cir- cumstances that accompanied them, — quite differ- ent from what is practiced at the present day, when one would perform the several acts of re- pentance, devotion, and prayer, in such a quiet way as to be scarcely perceived by those who are nearest about him. But where there is genuine earnestness within, there the outward manifesta- tion is not so readily suppressed. Burck : Ver. 6. There is a difference between a court, which is a stranger to the true religion, and one that is attached to it in only a hypocrit ical way. The former is more easily moved ; the latter, in consequence of God's decree, is more hardened. Bochart: Ver. 7. This edict, issued to the Ninevites, in order to appease the anger of God ; the edict of Darius (Dan. vi. 26 if.) ; that of Neb- uchadnezzar (Dan. iii. 20), and others, were just so many preparations for the conversion of the heathen, which followed the advent of Christ. In CHAPTER IV. 35 this way God's goodness and glory became gradu- ally, and in a certain measure, known to the na- tions, which were strangers to Israel ( Exodus v. Schmieder : Ver. 8. The understanding may call the penitential acts on the part of the beasts foolish; but the heart will seize upon them, be- cause they show deep contrition of heart ; and this is certainly the main point here. Hieronymus : Ver. 10. God soon changed his purpose, because He saw that their works were changed. He did not hear words, such as Israel was wont to say : " All that God has said will we do" (Ex. xix. 8; xxiv. 3); but He saw works. He will rather that the ungodly turn from their evil way, than that they should die. (Ez. xviii. 23, 32). Talmud : Dear brethren, sackcloth and fasting avail nothing; but repentance and good works. For it is not said of the Ninevites, etc. Burck : How far are God's thoughts removed from the thoughts of man, even from the thoughts of men, who seem unto others to be sound in the faith. Rieger : The Lord Jesus bears testimony to this repentance of the people of Nineveh ( Matth. xii. 14), that, in its good consequences, it will ex- tend to the day of judgment; and hence, in spar- ing thorn, God must have been sincerely and kindly in earnest. But because Nineveh fell back into its former sins, it was overthrown by the wrath of Jehovah scarcely a century after this salutary con- version . so also it befell Jerusalem, because it did not acknowledge and receive Him, of whom Jonah was a type. [Calvin : Ver. 3. He went, then, according to the command of Jehovah ; that is, nothing else did he regard but to render obedience to God, and to suffer himself to be wholly ruled by him. We hence learn how well God provides for us and for our salvation, when he corrects our perverseness ; though sharp may be our chastisements, vet as this benefit follows, we know that nothing is bet ter for us than to be humbled under God's hand, as David says in Ps. 119. — Ver. 10. God had re- spect to their works — what works ? not sackcloth, not ashes, not fasting ; for Jonah does not now mention these; but he had respect to their works, beeause they turned from their evil way. Fairhairn: ''Why should God have sent his prophet to admonish us of sin, and foretell his ap- proaching judgment, a prophet, too, who has him- self been the subject of singular mercy and for- bearance ? If destruction alone had been his object, would he not rather have allowed us to sleep on in our sinfulness? And why, in particu- lar, should these forty days have been made to run between our doom and our punishment'? Surely this bespeaks some thought of mercy in God ; it must have been meant to leave the door still open to us for forgiveness and peace." So un- doubtedly they reasoned, and, as the event proved, reasoned justly. Pusey : Ver. 10. And he did it not. God willed rather that his prophecy should seem to fail, than that repentance should fail of its fruit. But it did not indeed fail, for the condition lay expressed in the threat. Cowles : Ver. 10. Works meet for repentance will infallibly secure the reversal of threatened and impending doom. God's immutability is that of principle — not of plan and action. He im- mutably hates and punishes sin : hence, when a sinner becomes a penitent, God turns from threat- ened vengeance to free pardon. — C. E. 1 CHAPTER IV. 'Jonah repines at God's Mercy to the Ninevites. God employs a Palmchrist as a means to reprove and instruct him. — C. E.J I 2 But [And] it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry. 1 And he prayed unto [to] the Lord [Jehovah], aud said : I pray thee [Ah ! now], O Lord [Jehovah], ivas not this my saying, when [while] I was yet in my country ? Therefore I fled before [I anticipated it by fleeing] unto Tarshish : for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and 3 repentest thee of the evil. Therefore now, O Lord [And now, O Jehovah] take, I beseech thee, my life from me ; for it is better for me to die than to live [my 4 death is better than my life]. Then [And] said the Lord [Jehovah said], Doest 5 thou well to be angry ? 2 So [And] Jonah went 3 out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him [for himself] a booth, and sat under it in the 6 shadow [shade], till he might [should] see what would become of the city. And the Lord [Jehovah] God prepared a gourd [palmchrist] and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be [to be] a shadow [shade] over his head, to deliver him from 7 his grief [distress]. So [And] Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd. But God prepared [appointed] a worm when the morning rose [at the rising of the dawn] 8 the next day, and it smote the gourd [palmchrist] [so] that it withered. And it came to pass, when the sun did arise [at the rising of the sun], that God prepared [appointed] a vehement [sultry] east wind; and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah 36 JONAH. that [and] he fainted, aud wished in himself [asked his soul, i. e., asked for l nm self] to die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live [my death is better 9 than my life]. And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well [is it right] to be angry for the gourd [palmchrist] ? And he said, I do well [It is right] to be angry, even 10 unto death. Then [And] said the Lord [Jehovah], Thou hast had pity on [wast grieved for] the gourd [palmchrist], for the which [on which] thou hast not labored, neither madest it [and which thou hast not caused to] grow ; which came 4 11 up in a night [which was the sou of a night], and perished in a night: And should not I spare [have pity upon] Nineveh, that great city, wherein [in which] are more than sixscore thousand persons, that cannot discern [distinguish] be tween their right hand and their left hand ; and also [omit, also] much cattle. 5 TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL. [1 Ver. 1. — *l7 *^n*l [ an S er l was kindled to him, i. e., he was angry. Sometimes this formula expresses the feeling of grief, sadness. In the Hithpa. the verb signifies to fret one's self, Vs. xxxvii. 1, 7, 8. The LXX. sometimes render it by Avire'ojuai, iv. 4. [2 Ver. 4. — TfV PHI"! StS^rTrl, Keil and Delitzsch :« Is thine anger justly kindled?" Henderson :« Art thou much vexed " ? UK)'' HPT is used adverbially. Compare Deut. ix. 21 ; xiii. 15 ; and 2 Kings xi. 18. LXX. : Ei 6Spa kekvnno-ai v of the Greeks. Besides Hier- onymus, Pliny, h. iv. 15, 7, mentions the Ricinus plant, which grows wild in Arabia, Egypt, and Syria, and shoots up rapidly to the height of a tree. It has at first a herbaceous, then a woody stem, hollow within, full of knots and joints; large petiolate, peltate leaves, which, according to Niebuhr, when broken off, or injured, wither in a few minutes, and which are moreover liable to perish quickly, from the fact that, in a gentle rain, black caterpillars, or worms 0*127 AP\, ver. 7), of a middling size, are produced on them, which strip the plant of all its foliage in a single night. (Niebuhr, Description of Arabia, p. 148. Rumpf, Herb. Amboin, iv. 95.) Such a plant God caused to shoot up, about the time when Jonah was thoroughly convinced of the fruitlessness of his waiting, and when he had already given vent to his ill humor (ni7"1), in order to recover him from it was distinguished by the name el-keroa', by Rauwalf ( Trav., p. 52), it was noticed in great abundance near Tripoli, where the Arabs called it el-kerua ; while both Hasselquist and Robinson observed very large specimens of it in the neighborhood of Jericho ( !t Ricinus in altitudinem arborU insignis," Hasselq., p. 555 ; see also Robins., i. 553). SmithV Dictionary of the Bible, s. v « Gourd." — C. E.] 38 JONAH. his discontent. 1 ( V instead of the ace. Ew., sec. 292 e.). This succeeds. To his great petulance, ver. 1, eoon succeeds great joy. Ver. 7. A worm (the sing, used collectively, as in Dent, xxviii. 39), comes at the command of God, during the night — at the rising of the sun, next morning. (Comp. Gen. xix. 15,23.) And it smote, destroyed (Am. iv. 9) the plant, so that it withered. And as if this were not enough, God, to attain his disciplinary purpose with Jonah, appointed, in the third place, ver. 8, the silent, that is, the deadly sultry east wind, whose scorching beat is proverbial throughout the Old Testament (Ez. xvii. 10). The glowing heat of the sun beat upon Jonah, so that he fainted (Amos viii. 13), was out of his mind. Then were suggested those petulant words, that we have already heard, ver. 3 : he wished in himself to die, literally, he asked as to his soul to die (ace. c. inf. 1 Kings xix. 4; Is. liii. 10; Ew., sec. 336 b), and said, it is better for me to die than to live. Ch. B. Mich. : " Prce- stat me mori, quam sic vivere." Ver. 9. And God said to Jonah : Dost thou right to be angry for the gourd ? namely, on account of its destruction. Dt^rTH is not used adverbially (Keil), but as an auxiliary construed with the impersonal 3 sing, mn (comp. Deut. /. 25). The short question : Dost thou well to be angry 1 comprised within itself, by aposiopesis at ver. 3 above, the whole dialogue, vers. 9-1 1 ; here it is analyzed into its elements. Jonah answers : I do right to be angry, even unto death, that is, to the bottom of my soul, even to weariness of life. (Comp. Matt. xxvi. 38.) God now convicted him from his own words (comp. Matt. xii. 37 ; Luke xix. 22), how wrong was his whole anger, in which this momentary vexation only forms an element with a fresh stim- ulus, but which had its origin in the sparing of Nineveh, by a conclusion a minori ad majus. Ver 10. Thou art grieved for the gourd, for which thou hast not labored .... and perished. Bin-lailah, a son of the night, of a night's duration. (Comp. Ex. xii. 5, and the Syriac translation of Deut. xxiv. 15.) It is evi- dent from ver. 10, why a rapidly growing plant should shoot up over Jonah. If it had been of slow growth, he would have watered and nursed it ; consequently the reproof would not have been so forcible. L]3 instead of ?j? on account of the following liquids. Num. xiv. 38.] Ver. 11. And should not I . . . . who can- not distinguish between the right hand and the left ( W* sensu prcegnanti, as in 2 Sam. xix. 36 [35 A. V.]), who cannot consequently be very guilty ; and besides much cattle, which are not guilty at all, and which are of much greater worth than a ricinus plant? By the 120,000 mentioned in the relative clause, must be understood young children (comp. Is. vii. 15). The limit of this period of life, in the East (e. g., among the Per- sians), is usually the seventh year. If we assume 1 That nyi has reference to the ill humor of the T T prophet ver. 1, is, considering the simple tenor of the nar- rative, which does not hinder that ver. 5 ff. must be con- sidered as preceding ver. 1, most probable. We cannot well think of the phy8 : cal illness produced by the glow inn hea: Df the Ban: the sufllx points too definitely to an al- (wady known evil. It wou' 1 ritiier be possible to view the the ratio, fixed by statistics, of those under seven years of age to the whole number of the popula don as 1 : 5, we have for all Nineveh the not im- probable number of 600,000 inhabitants. This would give, as in the province of Naples, 40,000 persons to the square [German] mile (comp. at i. 2). The English Admiral Jones, from a survey of the extent of the ruins, without any refer- ence to the statement in this verse, has estimated the population of the city, at about the same num- ber. (Comp. Journal of the Asiatic Society, vol. xv. p. 29. M. v Niebuhr, Assyria and Babulon, p. 278 f.) " * DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL.* See Introduction, p. 6. HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL. Jonuh, a type of the misery and vanity of the hu- man heart. (Homily). 1 . The impatience of the human heart compared with the long-suffering of God. When God for- gives, it is angry. When God is patient, it is im- patient, ver. 1. And yet Jonah, too, was saved onl r - by grace. 2. The idea of its own honor compared with the great heart of God, who readily foregoes his own honor, when the salvation of men is concerned (iii. 10). But Jonah would have preferred that all men should perish, that his office and vocation should be relinquished, to the mortification of the idea of his own honor, ver. 2, a. 3. Its bitterness compared with the kindness of God. God speaks comfort; but the human heart extracts irom his consolatory words a sting, ver. 2, b. 4. And so inconsiderate is the human heart of the most precious gifts, even of life itself, that on account of the empty shadow of honor, it even thinks that it should despise its own life, ver. 3 But how seriously does God speak of death. 5. In short, how little can the heart, notwithstand- ing all instruction, dive into the deep thoughts of God ! And yet, at the same time, it is always ready to maintain that it is right, against God, vers. 1-3. 6. In such miserable selfishness, it is destitute of all love, and lurks for the ruin of others ; it wishes that others should be judged and judges them it- self; but it does not like to judge itself. 7. It always has only real pleasure in that which happens to its advantage ; and should it be some- thing of the most trifling importance, it is more highly prized by it than all the great mercy vouch- safed to others, vers. 6, 7. 8. Therefore, is life full of misery. For these short pleasures, on account of which we neglect the eternal good, soon come to an end. And we do not afterward think that they were favors for which we ought to be thankful, however transient they may have been ; but imagine that thoy were our own, that we had a right to them and therefore a right to complain, ver. 8. And what bitter complaints ! 2 Cor. iv. 17. 9. And if God's ways are ever so clear before our eyes, yet our eyes are closed that we cannot matter, in such a way that the whole perverted condition of the prophet's soul is meant by n27~l, which God in- tended to cure by means of the ricinus, or rather by th« lesson connected with its with^rin?. By this the difficulty mentioned before would also be solved. J [ H, ichfgtdanlcen S*« note, p. 20. — ('. E-l CHAPTER IV. sy perceive them, and we will continually grope in darkness, unless God open our eyes by his spirit, *ers. 9-11. Ver. 1 . Here we see how it would be, if God would allow each one his own will. It is well that He alone sits at the helm. God's messengers are in great danger of forgetting that they are messengers and that they act merely under authority. The sin- ful heart is ever ready to act the Lord, and it won- ders when it is forsaken by God. — Ver. 2. There are even wicked prayers. It is not a mark of piety, therefore, to disburden one's heart before God, but to pray in the name of Jesus, according to the pat- tern of Luke xxii. 42. Man is always eloquent in exculpating himself. If the heart is in a wrong state, it distorts God's Word, and applies it ac- cording to its own pleasure. — Ver. 3. Suppose the Lord had taken Jonah at his word ? How in- considerately does a man speak, who does not bridle his tongue. The sorrow of the world works death. — Ver. 5. Some say that God, out of re- spect to his justice, has delight in viewing the punishment of the lost; that Abraham also, when Lazarus lay in his bosom, reveled in God's pleas- ure in the torment of the rich man. These look upon God and Abraham in the same light that they do upon the prophet Jonah. (Luke ix. 55.) His heart even breaks for the souls of the con- demned, and if they would be saved, He would save them. (Matt. xii. 31.) — Ver. 6. The crea- ture was made for men ; and the death of the crea- ture is, in every way, instructive to men To a heart devoid of peace, the good gifts of God are only a source of vexation. — Ver. 7. " When the morning rose " ! Often, at the moment when every thing seems to smile, misfortune is on the way. With the rising star of fortune comes also always a misfortune, even though we do not see it at the moment. Hence the injunction to be always prepared, always humble. — Ver. 11. At first sight, it appears as if common guilt and sin were denied in this verse, since God speaks of the chil- dren, as if they, like the cattle, did not deserve punishment. But He says only that the severe punishment, which Jonah expected, was not de- served by these relatively to many others, whose death Jonah himself would not desire. The fact that the Ninevites were spared on account of their repentance, would have been sufficient to reprove him for this (Ez. xviii. 23) ; but God would bring before the eyes of Jonah his uncharitableness in that he did not consider the relatively innocent and harmless creatures in his blind zeal to see vile sinners perish. The Scriptures have regard for beasts also. (Deut. xxii. 6 ; Rom. viii. 18 ff.) These have no part in the sin of man, but in his punish ment. As they appear here by their participation in the repentance of the Ninevites, so at other times, in the Old Testament, they appear by their blood for the curse of sin. Yet this is only a shadow of things to come. Luther : How can such a state of grace and such untoward conduct in Jonah be consistent with one another 1 We cannot deny that he was unreasonably angry, and did wrong, for God pun- ished him for it. We must also acknowledge that be had faith and was acceptable to God, because God spoke so kindly with him and gave him a sign. We should observe from these facts (1) how won- derfully God deals with his saints, so that no one may inconsiderately judge or condemn anyone on account of works alone. (2.) We should learn, how God permits his dear children to act very foolishly »nd commit grave faults, as Christ did with the Apostles, in the Gospel, for the consolation of all be- lievers who sometimes sin and fall. (3.) We should see how kindly, fatherly, and amiably God deals with and treats those, who confide in Him in trouble. It is a daily sinning on the part of his children, which the Father graciously suffers. With the ungodly He does not deal thus : they cannot reconcile themselves to his dealings, but are alto- gether insolent and intractable. Starke : Ver. 1. Even well-meaning minds can fall into an indiscreet zeal for God and criticise his wise government according to their weak and sor- did ideas, although they do not break out into open murmurs against Him. — Ver. 2. To excuse sin, which deserves punishment, is presumptuous- ness. — Ver 3. There is a great difference between a well-regulated desire for a happy departure from this world and one that is inordinate and self- willed, which arises from impatience, and, alas often enters into well-disposed minds. — Ver. 4 As often as thou art provoked to be angry, ask thyself at once, am 1 justly angry ? Teacheri should be moderate in their zeal and seek to re- store the erring by friendly words: the example of God admonishes them to this. — Ver. 6. God has always been accustomed to guide men by ex- ternal things and visible signs to the consideration of heavenly things. Hieronymus hits upon the thought that the Jewish people, who have sat under the shadow of ordinances and ceremonies are hereby represented. — Ver. 7. Even the very least animals must serve the powerful government of God. — Ver. 8. We must not be too much de- lighted by our success nor too much distressed by our misfortune. — Ver. 9. One must really be astonished at God's love to men, manifested in his patience with his servants. Jonah is nothing else but a little, naughty, spoiled child. — Ver. 10. God has pity upon little children. He loves them tenderly, numbers them exactly, and oftentimes spares old people on their account, whom He would otherwise destroy on account of their sins. Did God love the little children in Nineveh so well, and was He pleased to spare the city oil their account, then how can he reject those, who are born in Christen- dom, but die without baptism ? Pfaff : Ver. 1. Men are much more wrathful and vindictive than God ; for God soon repents of the punishment, provided men comply with the condition of repentance. — Ver. 4. Even prophets commit faults. Guard thyself against impatience, and learn composedness and self-denial. Nothing adorns the conduct more, than entire self-abnega- tion and submission to the will of the Lord, com- bined with efforts to accomplish it. What a dreadful thing ambition is ! To wish rather to die than to be humbled ! It must not be so, but thou must willingly bow and humble thyself, if God's honor is thereby advanced. — Ver. 8. Let no one wish for death from a desire to escape the cross. Quandt : Ver. 1. There is joy among the an- gels of God over one sinner that repents ; among us there is joy at the success of the mission ; with. Jonah there is indignation. This did not arise from the circumstance that the repentance of Nin- eveh was not sincere and honest ; but Jonah's own repentance was not sincere. He had retained the principal part of his old man at his conversion. — Ver. 3. Even other holy men have had such dark hours. (Num. xi. 15; Job vii. 15 f. ; 1 Kinga xix.) Notwithstanding Jonah's preaching had the proper effect. The faith of the preacher does not work faith in the hearers, but the preaching ot faith. — Ver. 5. The word of God, ver. 4, waa de 40 JONAH. signed to convince the prophet of how little reason there was for his anger ; but it had exactly the opposite effect. He explained it in his own favor ; as if God meant to say : Wait yet a little ; and he goes forth to wait. The piety of the heathen is a matter of total indifference to him, but curiosity and a mischievous delight in the miseries of others abide with him. This is instructive to Christians in their relation to the missionary cause. — Ver. 8. Before, Jonah was angry at God's mercy ; now he is angry at his seeming unmercifulness. This is a movement in the right direction There is in- struction connected with this. — Ver. 1 1 . The old, obstinate Jonah has displayed himself enough in this book ; now, at the close, he vanishes, and God, in the end, stands, with his word, alone and ma- jestic : the new Jonah is lost in Him. March. : Ver. 1 . Although all the works of God are entirely irreprehensible, yet there is not one among them, which may not be censured by some one ; and the degree of censure is in propor- tion to the want of understanding on the part of the fault-finder. Rieger : Before we find fault with Jonah, we should consider well first what would be the result if we were to describe our thoughts and feelings concerning many events in the government of God as frankly as Jonah does here. The worst is that our wickedness remains hidden in us, and we con- ceal it from ourselves and others. We must also judge Jonah according to his times and tempta- tions ; for it could easily be that a man of God should have little regard for the heathen, since Peter, in New Testament times, had to be in- structed concerning them. Moreover the solicitude that the Ninevites, inexperienced in the ways of God, might turn his long suffering into contempt and despise his threatenings, was not unfounded. In our estimate in general of the faults and offenses of others, it should be borne in mind, that God knows how our temper exposes us on the one hand to peculiar temptations, but also on the other makes us useful for some purpose ; hence no one should cling to the defects of others, but should in advance turn to good account the good qualities with which they are endowed. The vehement dis- position of Jonah had plunged him into these faults, but what useful purpose this very disposi- tion served in his office, must not be forgotten. That is a wicked art of our hearts, of which Sol- omon says, The sluggard is wiser in his own con- ceit, than seven men that can render a reason : namely he who never undertakes anything, com- mits, after his way of thinking, fewer faults, and is well pleased with his own conceit. Burck : Ver. 2. Thou hast not to consider what God will accomplish by thee, or without thee, but what He requires of thee and what becomes thee. God bears with much murmuring and impa- tience on the part of his servants. — Ver. 3. Jonah did not pr*y for the destruction of the Ninevites, but for his own death. They are the readiest to -ic this, who know least the severity of God in 'he sentence of death. But Jonah has already endared a tenfold death in the sea. And now zeal for nis office and for the honor attached to it by God presses upon him to such a degree that he wishes rather to die than to live. But God can require an offering from us such as He pleases : He did not now require the surrender of Jonah's life, but a patient waiting ; and therefore Jonah found an- other kind of death and of a more salutary sort, than if God had taken his life away [in answer to his prayer]. — Ver. 6. The best way to refute a murmurer consists not in arguments, but in deeds. March : God does not always lead sinners in the same manner to the right way; but at one time by severe chastisements, at another by kind- ness in word, or deed. Cocceids : We always think that our affliction is something sacred, and yet it is often worldly; for how often are we obliged to see that it is miti- gated by worldly consolation ! Rieger : Ver. 7 ff. With others we often think that a word and a remonstrance should be enough ; but in our case we experience, that we first became acquainted with ourselves under the actual dispensations of God, and thus too are made thoroughly healthy. Such is the vanity of our heart that it can be made glad and be troubled about trifling things. And yet God uses this ex- perience in us as a means of discipline. If we are too much delighted with a gourd, He knows that nothing more than a worm-hole is required to sober us again. Burck : Ver. 11. The book begins and closes with the words of God. Jonah is silent, and imi- tates, without doubt, the example of Job. (Job xl. 3 f.) [Matthew Henry : Ver. 1 . Jonah was mirab- ilis homo, as one calls him, an amazing man ; the strangest, oddest, and most out-of-the-way man, for a good man and a prophet, as one shall ever hear or read of. Puset : Ver. 2. Jonah, at least, did not mur- mur or complain of God. He complained to God of himself. — Ver. 3. Impatient though he was, he still cast himself upon God. By asking of God to end his life, he, at least, committed himself to the sovereign disposal of God. Keil : Children who cannot distinguish between right and left, cannot distinguish good from evil, and are not yet accountable. Cowles : Ver. 2. It is awful that a sinner, plucked himself as a brand from the burning, and living on mercy alone, should object to God's showing the same mercy to his fellow sinners. — Ver. 11. Who can estimate the amount of sparing mercy which the guilty of our world owe, in this life, to God's pity for infants and for the sentient but unsinning animal rates ? — C E.] Date Due i- - V