tibvaxy of <£he theological gminavy 
 
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 PRESENTED BY 
 
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 Professor Walter M. Rankin 
 
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 copy I 
 
C&e Cambridge asililt for ^tftoofe. 
 JONAH. 
 
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 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
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 General Editor :— J. J. S. PEROVVNE, IJ, 
 Dean of Peterborough. 
 
 l oct y j 01 
 JONAH, 
 
 WITH NOTES AND INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE VEN. T. T. PEROWNE, B.D., 
 
 ARCHDEACON OF NORWICH ; 
 LATE FELLOW OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 
 
 EDITED FOR THE SYNDICS OF THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
 Cambridge : 
 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
 Kantian; CAMBRIDGE WAREHOUSE, r 7, Paternoster Row 
 
 ffiamfcrfoge: DEIGHTON, BELL, AND CO. 
 
 1879 
 
 [J/I Rights reserved \ 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. Introduction. page 
 
 Chapter I. The Author 9 
 
 Chapter II. Historical Character of the Book ... n — 15 
 
 Chapter III Object of the Book 15 — 19 
 
 Chapter IV. Analysis of Contents 19—20 
 
 II. Text and Notes 25—58 
 
 III. Note A. The Great Fish 59—60 
 
 Note B. Nineveh 60—62 
 
 IV. Index 63 
 
 %* The Text adopted in this Edition is that of Dr Scrivener's 
 Cambridge Paragraph Bible. A few variations from the ordi- 
 nary Text, chiefly in the spelling of certain words, and in the 
 use of italics, will be noticed. For the principles adopted by 
 Dr Scrivener as regards the printing of the Text see his Intro- 
 duction to the Paragraph Bible, published by the Cambridge 
 University Press. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
 i. There is no reason to doubt that Jonah was himself the 
 author of the book which bears his name. There is nothing 
 inconsistent with that view in the contents of the book. No 
 other satisfactory theory of authorship has been suggested. 
 The candour of the writer, supposing him to be relating his 
 own history, finds a parallel in the case of other inspired writers 
 both in the Old and New Testaments. The graphic style of 
 the book harmonises with the vigorous and resolute character 
 of Jonah as pourtrayed in its pages. 
 
 2. Of Jonah himself very little is known beyond what we 
 gather from this book. There is however one other mention of 
 him in the Old Testament, which furnishes us with some 
 particulars concerning him. In 2 Kings xiv. 25, we read of 
 Jeroboam II, king of Israel, that "he restored the coast of Israel 
 from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the plain, ac- 
 cording to the word of the Lord God of Israel, which He spake 
 by the hand of His servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, 
 which was of Gath-hepher." It can hardly be doubted that the 
 Jonah thus spoken of is the same person as the Jonah of this 
 book. Both are prophets. Both are sons of Amittai. And 
 when it is remembered that neither the name Jonah, nor the 
 name Amittai, occurs anywhere else in the Old Testament, it 
 appears most improbable that there should have been two 
 distinct persons, both prophets, both bearing the same un- 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 common name, and both sons of a father with the same un- 
 common name 1 . 
 
 3. Assuming then, as we may reasonably do, their identity, 
 we learn from the passage in Kings, 
 
 (a) That Jonah was a prophet of the Northern kingdom 
 (Israel) ; 
 
 {I?) That his birthplace was Gath-hepher 2 , a town of 
 Lower Galilee, not far from Nazareth, in the tribe of Za- 
 bulon ; 
 
 (c) And that he exercised the prophetical office, either 
 before the reign of Jeroboam II. or very early in that reign 3 . 
 
 He would thus be a contemporary of Hosea 4 and Amos 5 , if 
 indeed he was not earlier than they, and therefore one of the 
 most ancient, if not the most ancient of the prophets whose 
 writings we possess. 
 
 1 Jonah means a dove, Amittai, true. The latter name, which is 
 thought by some to be identical with Matthew, has given rise to the 
 tradition that Jonah was the son of the widow of Zarephath, whom 
 Elijah raised to life, and on receiving whom at his hands she said, 
 " Now by this I know that thou art a man of God, and that the word of 
 the Lord in thy mouth is truth" 1 Kings xvii. 24. An equally uncertain 
 tradition makes him also " the boy who attended Elijah to the wilder- 
 ness," and "the youth who anointed Jehu." 
 
 2 Called Gittah-hepher, Josh. xix. 1 3. It is in all probability the 
 same as the modern village of el-Meshhad, where by a constant tradition 
 from the time of Jerome to the present day, the tomb of Jonah is 
 pointed out. See Smith's Bib. Diet. Art. Gath-hepher, and Pusey 
 Commentary on Jonah, Introd. p. 1. 
 
 3 Ewald writes : " It follows clearly from the words in 1 Kings xiv. 
 2 5 — 2 7 that this Jonah uttered the prediction neither long before nor 
 long after the accession of Jeroboam II., especially as the king, accord- 
 ing to all appearance, won his great victories very early. Jonah's pre- 
 diction therefore must fall in with the childhood of Jeroboam or in 
 the first commencement of his reign." Hist, of Israel, vol. IV. p. 124, 
 note 1. Carpenter's Translation. According to the ordinary chronology 
 Jeroboam's rei^n was from B.C. 823 to B.C. 782. 
 
 4 Hosea i. 1. 5 Amos i. 1. 
 
INTRODUCTION. u 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE BOOK. 
 
 1. The thoughtful student of the book of Jonah cannot fail 
 to observe that it differs in some important particulars from the 
 other prophetical writings of the Old Testament. 
 
 (a) In form it is a story and not a prophecy. It is an 
 account of what befel a prophet, and not a record of his 
 predictions. 
 
 (b) In style it is almost dramatic. Its teaching, what- 
 ever it may be, is rather acted before our eyes than uttered for 
 our ears. 
 
 (c) Moreover, the miraculous or supernatural element 
 enters in an unusual degree into the contents of this book. 
 Seldom, if ever, do we find so many and so great wonders 
 accumulated in the compass of so brief a narrative. 
 
 The question has accordingly been raised, whether this book 
 is not rather to be regarded as an allegory or parable or 
 romance, either founded on fact, or altogether independent of 
 any real basis, than as a history of what actually happened. 
 
 2. It can hardly be doubted that this question really owes 
 its origin to the miraculous character of the book of Jonah. 
 Amongst the principal advocates of the non-historical theory 
 of the book are those who deny the possibility of miracles. 
 With a marvellous amount of ingenuity, but with an entire 
 want of agreement among themselves, these writers have pro- 
 posed a great variety of interpretations of the book of Jonah, 
 including even the suggestion, of which it would be difficult 
 to say whether it be more improbable or more irreverent, that it 
 
12 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 is to be regarded as a Jewish adaptation of a heathen mythical 
 legend 1 . 
 
 3. Without going however to any such lengths as these, 
 'without doubting the possibility of miracles, or denying the 
 canonicity and inspiration of the book of Jonah, it may still 
 be open to us to consider the question of its historical character. 
 May it not be, we may ask, all that the most devout Christian 
 holds it to be, and yet be not a history, but a divinely originated 
 parable or allegory ? 
 
 4. To the question thus modified it may be objected in 
 reply, that even in this form it is really suggested by the 
 miracles with which this book abounds. But for them, it may 
 well be doubted whether anyone would ever have taken the 
 book of Jonah to be anything but history. Are then the 
 miracles, for into this the enquiry resolves itself, really such as 
 to warrant the question? We think not. When fairly examined 
 they lose much of that character of the merely marvellous, 
 which to a cursory and mistaken view they have some of them 
 appeared to wear. By such probable explanations as will be 
 given of each of them in its place below, they may be brought 
 properly within the sphere of the Gospel miracles themselves, 
 as being for the most part accelerations and adaptations of 
 the known powers and processes of nature, the normal, if 
 extraordinary working, as Holy Scripture reveals it to us, of a 
 living and ever-present God. And if this be so, then the question 
 falls to the ground together with the supposed necessity for 
 asking it. 
 
 5. But even were it otherwise, were there anything in these 
 pages which when rightly explained lay beyond the sphere of 
 humble and intelligent faith, are we really gainers by transferring 
 them from the region of history to that of parable or allegory ? 
 It is not the wont of the sacred writers to make use of portents 
 or prodigies in their allegorical or parabolic teaching. It is 
 
 1 The story of Perseus and Andromeda, in one or other of its forms 
 or modifications. The whole theory is fully stated and as fully refuted 
 by Dr Pusey, Introduction to Commentary on Jonah, pp. 261 — 263. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 one of the recognised distinctions between canonical and 
 apocryphal writings, that whilst the latter often abound in 
 legends and marvels, the former never transgress the limits of 
 the possible, even in their figurative teaching. Even from a 
 literary point of view, higher considerations apart, the allegori- 
 cal character of the book of Jonah cannot be satisfactorily 
 maintained. On that hypothesis it is out of harmony as a 
 whole. What may be called the setting of the allegory is 
 too exact, too detailed, too closely in accordance with facts, 
 to be in keeping with the allegory itself. The book is com- 
 posed of two elements which will not properly fuse together. 
 One whole section of it at least, Jonah's psalm of thanksgiving 
 in the second chapter, is quite out of place. Most pertinent in 
 a true history, it becomes in an allegory a discord and an 
 intrusion. 
 
 6. Nor is it easy to understand why the writer of an 
 allegory, free to choose his characters at will, should have 
 selected a known prophet of God as the subject of so great mis- 
 conduct and reprobation. If the introduction of a prophet were 
 necessary, to heighten the contrast and to enforce the moral of 
 his teaching, would not that end have equally been answered by 
 a fictitious name, or by the omission of the name altogether? 
 If Jonah did not act as this book represents him to have done, 
 it is incredible that a Jewish writer should have ascribed conduct 
 such as this to him, and that the fiction in which he ascribed it 
 should have found a place in the Jewish Canon. This con- 
 sideration is fatal to such a theory of the origin of the book 
 of Jonah, as that which has been proposed by a recent com- 
 mentator 1 . He supposes the book to be in form a kind of 
 historical romance, written long after the time of Jonah, and 
 founded either upon a tradition which credited Jonah "with 
 a missionary journey to distant and powerful Nineveh," or upon 
 a "real fact," a political "legation from the king of Israel to 
 the king of Assyria," which however this later writer was unable 
 to conceive of, except under a religious aspect, the moral re- 
 
 1 Kalisch, Bible Studies, Part II, pp. r22, 123, i},^ 134. 
 
i 4 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 formation of the Assyrians to whom Jonah was sent. But 
 when, in pursuit of this arbitrary theory, he comes to deal with 
 the "ill-feeling" exhibited by Jonah, and asks, "Was the author 
 justified in imputing to an old and honoured prophet such 
 bitterness, nay, such meanness?" he has no better answer than 
 this to give, "we must, therefore, ascribe that feature to the 
 author himself, who thus wronged both his hero and his com- 
 position." 
 
 7. There remains however another argument for the histori- 
 cal character of the book of Jonah, which is the weightiest of all, 
 and which would to a Christian mind appear to be of itself 
 conclusive. In a well-known passage in the Gospels our Lord 
 makes a double reference to the book of Jonah. 
 
 (a) To the request for a sign, addressed to Him by the 
 Scribes and Pharisees, He replies, "An evil and adulterous 
 generation seeketh after a sign ; and there shall no sign be given 
 to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas : for as Jonas 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 1 ." 
 It is difficult to see how, if Jonah's incarceration in the fish 
 were merely an allegory, it could have been referred to by our 
 Lord in language such as this. The whole Old Testament 
 history not excluding even its minor incidents was, as St Paul 
 teaches us, allegorical 2 ; allegorically intended by its divine 
 Author, and to be interpreted allegorically by His Church. 
 But to recognise this is not to invalidate the historical truth 
 of the narrative. It is true history, but representative history ; 
 history which foretells throughout Christ and the good things 
 to come. With this view the parallel which our Lord draws 
 between what befel Jonah and what should befal Himself exactly 
 coincides. There is no departure from the firm basis of historical 
 fact on which our holy religion rests ; no endangering the 
 literal truth of the second member of the comparison by admit- 
 ting the unreality of the first. 
 
 (b) But even if it were conceded that our Lord's 
 
 1 Matthew xii. 39, 40. 3 Galatians iv. ?|. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 15 
 
 words so far are compatible with the non-historic view, 
 there follow in the same place other words of His, which 
 are plainly repugnant to any such interpretation, "The men 
 of Nineveh," He goes on to say, "shall rise in judgment with 
 this generation, and shall condemn it, because they repented 
 at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is 
 here 1 ." Is it possible to understand a reference like this on the 
 non-historic theory of the book of Jonah? The future Judge is 
 speaking words of solemn warning to those who shall here- 
 after stand convicted at His bar. Intensely real He would make 
 the scene in anticipation to them, as it was real, as if then pre- 
 sent, to Himself. And yet we are to suppose Him to say that 
 imaginary persons who at the imaginary preaching of an ima- 
 ginary prophet repented in imagination, shall rise up in that 
 day and condemn the actual impenitence of those His actual 
 hearers, that the fictitious characters of a parable shall be 
 arraigned at the same bar with the living men of that genera- 
 tion. 
 
 On all these grounds then it would seem that the book of 
 Jonah can only be regarded as actual history. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 OBJECT OF THE BOOK. 
 
 i. It has been held by some, that the chief object of this 
 book is to teach the nature and efficacy of true repentance. 
 "So obvious," says a recent writer, "is the main idea which 
 pervades the book and stamps it with the character of perfect 
 unity — the idea of the wonderful power of true repentance — that 
 it seems surprising that this point should ever have been 
 mistaken, and should have called forth the most varied and 
 
 1 Matthew xii. 41. 
 
16 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 most fanciful views 1 ." That we have in the book of Jonah two 
 striking examples of repentance and its happy results, one of 
 individual repentance in the case of Jonah himself and of his 
 deliverance and restoration to his office and mission ; the other 
 of national repentance in the case of the Ninevites, and that 
 they hold an important place in the moral teaching of the book, 
 is undoubtedly true. The latter of them is thought worthy by 
 our Lord Himself to be singled out from the history of the Old 
 Testament as a typical example of repentance 2 . But to teach 
 repentance is not the main object of this book. To regard it as 
 such is to miss altogether the proper aim and design of the 
 author. It is to leave unexplained the flight of Jonah and his 
 reluctance to be the messenger of mercy to Nineveh. It is practi- 
 cally to expunge the last chapter of the book, and to make its 
 teaching culminate in the words, "And God saw their works, 
 that they turned from their evil way ; and God repented of the 
 evil that He had said that He would do unto them; and He did 
 it not 3 ." The lesson of repentance is only a part, however 
 important, of the higher and wider lesson which this book is 
 designed to teach us. 
 
 2. Still more prominent when we study the book as a whole 
 is the object of the writer to shew in its true colours the unloving 
 exclusiveness which too often characterised the Jew, and to 
 rebuke the grudging narrow-mindedness that would deny all 
 favour from the God of Israel to the Gentile world. It is the 
 spirit of the elder brother in the parable that the author is 
 commissioned to reprove. By that spirit Jonah was actuated, 
 as he himself confesses (c. iv. 2.). It was the source of all that 
 was unworthy in his conduct as here described. It was at the 
 root of his disobedience at the first, and of his subsequent 
 
 1 Kalisch, Bible Studies, Part II., The Book of Jonah, p. 265. 
 
 8 Matthew xii. 41. 
 
 3 Ch. iii. 10. One of these writers at least is candid enough to con- 
 fess this consequence of his view. " It may be admitted," says Kalisch, 
 "that if this chapter (iv.) were wanting, it would hardly have been 
 missed, and that, without it, the story would have concluded almost as 
 satisfactorily as it does in its present form." 
 
INTRODUCTION. 17 
 
 displeasure. It prompted him to throw up his office as a 
 prophet, and abandon his privileges as an Israelite, to relinquish 
 alike the service and the favour of his God, rather than be His 
 instrument of blessing to a heathen nation. It found vent in 
 the ungenerous anger and petulant complaints, with which the 
 unwelcome reprieve of the sentence on Nineveh was received by 
 him. Taught by the discipline of God to see this spirit in its 
 true light, he exhibits it (if as is most probable he was himself 
 the author of this book) in his own personal history, in all its 
 deformity and injustice, as a lesson to others. He exalts the 
 Gentile in comparison of the Jew. He places the heathen 
 sailors in the storm in favourable contrast with himself, the 
 prophet of God, and by implication at least, the penitent 
 Ninevites in like favourable contrast with impenitent Israel. 
 "With noble disregard of self he is content to pass out of view at 
 the close of the book silenced and disgraced, that so he may the 
 better point the moral with which he is charged. Yet not even 
 this, taken alone and simply in itself considered, is the proper aim 
 and object of the book of Jonah. Like the teaching of repent- 
 ance, it is an integral part of a larger aim. 
 
 3. Three Acts, as it were, in a drama, three movements, so 
 to speak, in an oratorio, this book contains. Each of them is 
 full of interest, replete with instruction, the work of a master's 
 hand. In the first, Jonah himself is the central figure. His 
 conversion is its subject. At its commencement he is self- 
 willed and refractory. At its close he is submissive and obedi- 
 ent. The Flight, the Storm, the Imprisonment in the fish, the 
 Prayer, the Deliverance, are the several scenes in this Act. Its 
 beginning and end are marked by the words, "Now the word of 
 the Lord came unto Jonah, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh. ..but 
 Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the 
 Lord" (c. i. 1—3) ; "And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah 
 the second time, saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh. ..So Jonah arose 
 and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord" 
 (c. iii. 1—3). The second Act as we have called it concentrates 
 our attention on "that great city" Nineveh. Its repentance 
 and salvation are now the engrossing theme. In the simple 
 
 JONAH 2 
 
iS INTRODUCTION. 
 
 grandeur of its vast size, imagination being left to complete the 
 picture, to fill in that great area with royal palaces and crowded 
 marts and gardens and vineyards and parks and pleasances, 
 the city stands before us. Scene follows upon scene in quick 
 and lifelike succession. The solitary stranger enters Nineveh 
 as "a voice crying," not in the wilderness but in the city, no 
 word or deed of his within its precincts recorded but this, that 
 as he went he said "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be over- 
 thrown." The scene changes. "Lamentation and mourning 
 and woe" are heard in every quarter of that vast city, "All joy 
 is darkened, the mirth of the land is gone." Costly ap- 
 parel is exchanged for sackcloth. Sumptuous fare gives place 
 to fasting. Even the lower animals are included in the uni- 
 versal sorrow and humiliation. Business and pleasure alike 
 cease. Nineveh is one vast temple of penitence and prayer. Yet 
 another and no less striking scene brings this act to a conclu- 
 sion. Their prayer is heard, their repentance is accepted, their 
 city is spared, the stream of their life purified and renewed 
 returns to its accustomed course. The cloud that hung threat- 
 eningly over their city is dispersed, and the sun shines forth 
 upon it again. "And God saw their works, that they turned 
 from their evil way, and God repented of the evil, that He had 
 said that He would do unto them : and He did it not" (c. iii. 10). 
 But this, however morally grand and impressive, is not the 
 climax of the history. The teaching of the book of Jonah does 
 not end here. There remains another Act in which the prophet 
 himself is again the chief character. Jonah displeased at the 
 result of his mission, irritated and complaining, weary of life, 
 and praying that he may die; Jonah sojourning in the hut 
 which he has built him on the hill-side without the walls of the 
 city, watching thence with evil eye the fortunes of Nineveh; 
 Jonah exceeding glad of the shady plant which God had 
 mercifully prepared to overshadow his booth and screen him 
 from the heat, vexed and angry even unto death again when 
 that welcome alleviation is withdrawn; Jonah convinced and 
 silenced by the divinely-drawn contrast between his own selfish 
 sorrow for a plant, and God's large and liberal pity for the 
 
INTRODUCTION. 19 
 
 populous city of N,ineveh — these are the scenes pourtrayed with 
 the same brevity and vigour as before in this final Act or 
 chapter of the work. 
 
 4. But the book of Jonah is complete as a whole as well as 
 thus complete in its several parts. The three Acts make one 
 drama, the three movements form one composition. For 
 the true harmonising "idea," which while it gives unity to 
 the whole adds force and lustre to the several parts, we are 
 indebted to the teaching of the New Testament. It is by the 
 light of the later revelation that we discern the meaning and 
 unity of this portion of the earlier. Our Lord, as we have seen 
 already, regards Jonah as a type of Himself. He teaches us to 
 see in this book an historical parable, a prophecy in act. As 
 Jonah was swallowed by the fish, so Christ was laid in the 
 heart of the earth. As Jonah after three days was cast up alive 
 and unharmed on dry ground, so Christ rose again the third day 
 from the dead. As Jonah went forth from his living prison to 
 preach to the Ninevites (the only instance of a Jewish Prophet 
 sent to the heathen), so Christ after His resurrection went forth, 
 not in His own person, but by the agency of His Church, to 
 preach the Gospel in all the world. The typical teaching of 
 the book may be summed up, as has been said, in the words of 
 St Paul, "That Christ should suffer, and that He should be the 
 first that should rise from the dead, and should shew light unto 
 the people (of Israel), and to the Gentiles 1 ." Thus the lesson of 
 repentance and the rebuke of exclusiveness take a higher, 
 because in fact a Christian form, while the claim of this book to 
 a place in the canon of Old Testament prophecy is amply 
 justified. The history of Jonah is a part of that great onward 
 movement, which was before the Law and under the Law, which 
 gained strength and volume as the fulness of the times drew 
 near, but which could only find its consummation in the Incar- 
 nation and work of Him in whom all distinctions of country 
 and race were to be for ever broken down, in Whose name 
 repentance and remission of sins were to be preached among 
 
 Matthew xii. 40, 41 ; Acts xxvi. 23. 
 
 2 — 2 
 
2 o INTRODUCTION. 
 
 all nations 1 , in Whom all nations of the earth were to be blessed, 
 Who was to be at once a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the 
 glory of His people Israel. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS. 
 
 The book of Jonah may conveniently be divided into four 
 sections, corresponding almost exactly with the four chapters in 
 our English Bibles. 
 
 I. yonatts disobedience and punishment, ch. i. i — 17. 
 
 Jonah, sent on a divine mission to Nineveh, refuses to go, and takes 
 ship to flee to Tarshish, i. 1 — 3. 
 
 Overtaken by a storm sent by God to arrest him in his flight, he is, 
 at his own request, cast into the sea by the sailors, after all their efforts 
 to save the ship have proved unavailing. The sea then becomes calm, 
 i. 4 — 16. 
 
 J I. JonaJCs prayer and deliverance, ch. i. 17 — ii. 10. 
 
 Swallowed alive by a great fish, prepared by God for the purpose, 
 Jonah remains in the belly of the fish three days and three nights, 
 i. 17. 
 
 He offers a prayer of thanksgiving for the deliverance from death by 
 drowning already accorded him, mingled with confident expectation of 
 yet further rescue, ii. 1 — 9. 
 
 At the command of God the fish casts him up on dry land, ii. 10. 
 
 III. J 'onah 's preaching and its result, ch. iii. 
 
 Profiting by the chastisement he has undergone, Jonah promptly 
 obeys a second command to go to Nineveh, iii. 1 — 3. 
 
 He delivers there his startling message, ' ' Yet forty days, and Nineveh 
 shall be overthrown," iii. 4. 
 
 The Ninevites believe God and repent, and the threatened judgment 
 is averted, iii. 5 — 10. 
 
 IV. Jonatis displeasure and its rebuke, ch. iv. 
 
 on displeases Jona 
 . 1—4. 
 
 1 Luke xxiv. 47. 
 
 This result of his mission displeases Jonah exceedingly, and he com- 
 plains to God against it, iv. 1 — 4. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 21 
 
 Still hoping, as it would seem, that Nineveh may be overthrown, 
 he constructs for himself a booth without the walls, and sits beneath 
 its shade to watch the fate of the city, iv. 5. 
 
 God causes a shady plant to spring up quickly and cover his booth, 
 so as to shelter him from the burning heat of the sun ; but the comfort 
 thus afforded him is speedily withdrawn by the sudden withering of the 
 plant, iv. 6, 7. 
 
 His grief for the loss of the plant is made the occasion by God of 
 rebuking his want of pity for Nineveh, and of justifying His own 
 merciful compassion in sparing that great city with its teeming popula- 
 tion and exceeding much cattle, iv. 8 — 11. 
 
"^W^i 
 
 
 i3fc 
 
JONAH. 
 
 i — 3. JonaJts Disobedience. 
 
 Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of 1 
 Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, 2 
 and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up be- 
 fore me. But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the 3 
 presence of the Lord, and went down to Joppa; and he 
 
 Ch. I. 1—3. Jonah's Disobedience. 
 
 1. Now the word, &c] Lit., "And the word," &c. There is no 
 reason to conclude from this that the Book of Jonah is only a fragment 
 of a larger work. Many books of the Old Testament begin with 
 "And." In some cases (e.g. Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, 1 Samuel) 
 they do so, because the writer wishes to mark the fact that the book so 
 commencing is a continuation, a second or third volume so to speak, of 
 what he has written before. In other cases, as here and in Ezekiel i. r, 
 the author begins his work with the words, "And it was," "And it 
 came to pass," because, though he may have written nothing before 
 himself, yet there is a reference in his ozvn mind to the national records 
 that had gone before, and he consciously takes up the thread of past 
 history. See Maurer on Ezek. i. 1. 
 
 2. Nineveh\ On the E. bank of the Tigris, the capital of the ancient 
 kingdom and empire of Assyria, and "the most magnificent of all the 
 capitals of the ancient world." The building of it is mentioned as early 
 as Gen. x. n. In the time of Jonah it appears to have been at the 
 zenith of its glory. 
 
 that great city] See note on c. iii. 3, and Note B. 
 
 3. Tarshish] Probably Tartessus, an ancient mercantile city of the 
 Phoenicians, in the S. of Spain, of which the site is supposed to have 
 been "between the two arms by which the Guadalquivir flowed into the 
 sea." See Smith's Bib. Diet. Art. Tarshish. " God bid him go to 
 Nineveh, which lay North-East from his home, and he instantly set him- 
 self to flee to the then furthermost West." — Pusey. 
 
 from the presence of the Lord] This may mean from standing before 
 the Lord or being in His presence, as His servant or minister (Deut. x. 8, 
 
 Kings xvii. 1, Matthew xviii. 10, Luke i. 19. See Dr Pusey, Commentary 
 on Jonah, p. 247, note d.) ; i. e. he renounced his office of prophet rather 
 
26 JONAH, I. [v. 3. 
 
 found a ship going to Tarshish : so he paid the fare thereof, 
 and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from 
 the presence of the Lord. 
 
 than obey so unwelcome a command. It may, however, only refer to 
 that special presence of God in the Holy Land, which all Jews recognised. 
 Either view is compatible with a belief on the part of Jonah in the om- 
 nipresence of God (Ps. cxxxix.). It is said of Cain (Gen. iv. 16) that 
 he "went out from the presence of the Lord" (and the Heb. phrase 
 is the same as here), when he forfeited the favourable regard, together 
 possibly with some local manifestation of the presence of the Almighty. 
 
 The reason of Jonah's disobedience is given by himself, ch. iv. 1. 
 Knowing well the lovingkindness of God, he anticipated that He would 
 spare the Ninevites on their repentance, and he could not bring him- 
 self to be the messenger of mercy to heathen, much less to heathen who 
 (as the Assyrian inscriptions state) had already made war against his 
 own people, and who as he may have known were destined to be their 
 conquerors. See the statements of his probable contemporary, Hosea, 
 ix. 3, xi. 5. 
 
 Joppd\ Now Jaffa, the well-known port of Palestine on the Mediter- 
 ranean. It was 50 miles from Gath-hepher. 
 
 "Jaffa is one of the oldest cities in the world. It was given to 
 Dan (?), in the distribution of the land by Joshua, and it has been known 
 to history ever since. It owes its existence to the low ledge of rocks, 
 which extends into the sea from the extremity of the little cape on 
 which the city stands, and forms a small harbour. Insignificant as it is 
 and insecure, yet there being no other in all this coast, it was sufficient 
 to cause a city to spring up around it even in the earliest times, and to 
 sustain its life through numberless changes of dynasties, races and 
 religions, down to the present hour. It was in fact the only harbour of 
 any notoriety possessed by the Jews throughout the greater part of their 
 national existence. To it the timber for both the temples of Jerusalem 
 was brought from Lebanon ; and no doubt a lucrative trade in cedar 
 and pine was always carried on through it with the nations who had 
 possession of the forests of Lebanon. Through it also nearly all the 
 foreign commerce of the Jews was conducted until the artificial port of 
 Caesarea was built by Herod." 
 
 "The harbour, however, is very inconvenient and insecure. Vessels 
 of any considerable burden must lie out in the open roadstead — a very 
 uneasy berth at all times; and even a moderate wind will oblige them 
 to slip cable and run out to sea, or seek anchorage at Haifa, sixty miles 
 distant. The landing also is most inconvenient, and often extremely 
 dangerous. More boats upset and more lives are lost in the breakers at 
 the north end of the ledge of rocks that defend the inner habour, 
 than anywhere else on this coast. I have been in imminent danger 
 myself, with all my family in the boat, and never look without a shudder 
 at this treacherous port, with its noisy surf tumbling over the rocks, as 
 if on purpose to swallow up unfortunate boats." — Thomson, Land and 
 Book, pp. 514 — 516; see also Smith's Bible Diet. Art. Joppa. 
 
vv. 4, 5.] JONAH, I. 27 
 
 4 — 16. JonaKs Punishment The Storm and its 
 consequences. 
 
 But the Lord sent out a great wind into the sea, and there 4 
 was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to 
 be broken. Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every 5 
 man unto his god, and cast forth the wares that were in the 
 
 4—16. Jonah's Punishment. The Storm and its 
 consequences. 
 
 No sooner does Jonah decide upon his course of action and think 
 himself now secure of its accomplishment, than God arrests him by the 
 judgment of the storm. 
 
 4. sent out] Lit., as in margin, cast forth, indicating the sudden- 
 ness and violence of the storm. The same word occurs and is rendered 
 "cast forth" in E. V. in vv. 5, 12, 15. 
 
 Josephus speaks of a violent wind called " the black North wind," 
 which he says sometimes visited the sea off the coast of Joppa. And 
 we read of " a tempestuous wind called Euroclydon" in another part 
 of the same sea, which rushing down the highlands of Crete suddenly 
 caught the ship in which St Paul was sailing, and brought on a tempest 
 scarcely less severe than that to which Jonah was exposed (Acts xxvii. 
 14). The modern name Levanter is a witness to the prevalence of such 
 winds in those seas. 
 
 was like to be broken] Lit., thought to he broken, as in the margin. 
 A vivid image or personification in keeping with the graphic style of 
 this book. The same word " broken," i.e. "broken up," or " broken 
 in pieces," is used of a ship that is wrecked in 1 Kings xxii. 48. Comp. 
 Acts xxvii. 41. 
 
 5, 6. The conduct of the heathen mariners stands in striking and 
 favourable contrast with that of the Jewish prophet. They call upon 
 their gods and use every effort to save the ship. lie, moody, miserable, 
 and weary with mental conflict and bodily fatigue, is sunk in deep 
 sleep, and has to be roused to consciousness and prayer by the 
 reproaches of the heathen captain. 
 
 5. the mariners] The Hebrew word is formed from the word for 
 salt, and denotes those occupied with the salt sea. So we sometimes 
 speak of a sailor asa" salt." 
 
 See note on next verse, and for the whole description of their terror 
 and their prayer comp. Ps. cvii. 23 — 30 ; Matt. viii. 23 — 27. 
 
 every man unto his god] They were probably Phoenicians, who had 
 the carrying trade between Joppa and Tarshish. This would account 
 for their multiplicity of gods. The crew, however, may have been com- 
 posed of men of different nations. Comp. 
 
 " All lost ! to prayers, to prayers ! All lost ! " 
 
 Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act I. Sc. V. 
 
 the wares] It is doubtful whether this includes the cargo. It may 
 
28 JONAH, I. [v. 6. 
 
 ship into the sea, to lighten it of them. But Jonah was gone 
 
 down into the sides of the ship j and he lay, and was fast 
 
 6 asleep. So the shipmaster came to him, and said unto him, 
 
 only mean the furniture of the ship, moveables, spare tackling, etc. 
 In St Paul's shipwreck a similar course was taken (Acts xxvii. 19), but 
 the cargo was not thrown overboard till a later period (ver. 38). Jonah's 
 ship may have been, like St Paul's, a corn ship. The export of corn 
 from Joppa was very considerable. See 1 Kings v. 9 ; Ezek. xxvii. 17; 
 Acts xii. 20. 
 
 to lighten it of them] Rather, to lighten (the burden) from upon 
 them (the mariners), i. e. to make matters easier for them. Comp. 
 Exod. xviii. 22, where the same Hebrew phrase is rendered "it shall be 
 easier for thyself." 
 
 the sides of the ship] The Hebrew word is not the same as that 
 rendered " ship" earlier in the verse. It occurs nowhere else in the 
 O. T., but the verb from which it is derived signifies to 'cover'' or ' board 
 over' (1 Kings vii. 3, 7), so that it is probably used to denote that it 
 was a decked vessel in which Jonah sailed, and that he had, as we should 
 say, gone down below. The "sides of the ship " are what we should 
 call the bottom of the ship, the part in which the two sides meet. The 
 same expression is used of the innermost recess of a cave, the point of 
 meeting of the two sides (1 Sam. xxiv. 3). 
 
 was fast asleef] Jonah had probably fallen asleep before the storm 
 commenced, and slumbered too deeply to be roused by it, or by the 
 commotion on board. Our Lord's sleep amidst the storm on the lake 
 (Mark iv. 38) furnishes at once a comparison and a contrast. Kalisch 
 quotes in illustration of the heavy sleep of sorrow the case of the 
 disciples in the Garden; " He found them sleeping for sorrow," Luke 
 xxii. 45; and the words of Sallust, "primo cura, dein, uti segrum 
 animum solet, somnus cepit," Bell. Jng. c. 71. 
 
 6. the shipmaster] Lit., the chief of the sailors, i.e. the captain. 
 The word here for sailors (which is singular and used collectively) is not 
 the same word as that rendered mariners in v. 5, It is formed from the 
 Hebrew word for a rope, and means properly those who handle the 
 ropes. Both words occur again (and it is the only other place in the 
 O. T. where either of them is found) in the description of the maritime 
 greatness of Tyre in Ezekiel xxvii. The word used in this verse is 
 there rendered in vv. 8, 27, 29, pilots, and the mention of their wisdom 
 in v. 8 has been thought to justify this distinction. It should be 
 observed, however, that the contrast there is between mere rowers (for 
 so, and not mariners, the other word in that verse should be rendered) 
 who were hired from Sidon and Arvad, and skilled sailors, who were 
 the product of Tyre herself. The word rendered mariners in v. 5 of 
 this chapter and in Ezek. xxvii. 9, 27, 29, appears to be a more 
 general word, including all seafaring persons. The Hebrews, not 
 being a maritime nation, make but little use of nautical terms. We 
 have in addition to the words just mentioned the expressions, " ship- 
 men that had knowledge of the sea" (lit., " men of ships, knowing the 
 
v. 7.] JONAH, I. 29 
 
 What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy God, if 
 so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not. 
 
 And they said every one to his fellow, Come, and let us 7 
 cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon 
 
 sea")> 1 Kings ix. 27 (comp. 2 Chron. viii. 18); "They that go down 
 to the sea in ships," Psalm cvii. 23, or simply, " They that go down to 
 the sea," Isaiah xlii. 10. 
 
 What meanest thou, sleeper?] Lit, What (is there) to thee, 
 sleeping? i.e. Whatreason hast thou for sleeping? The E. V. apparently 
 takes the participle "sleeping" as a vocative, "O sleeper?" What 
 meanest thou by sleeping! would perhaps be the best translation. It is 
 an exclamation of indignant surprise at the unreasonableness of Jonah's 
 conduct. The word for sleep here and in v. 5 means heavy or deep 
 sleep, such as Adam's (Gen. ii. 21), or Sisera's (Judg. iv. 21). LXX. ri 
 
 God] This abstract use of the word (lit., "the God") immediately 
 after ''thy God" in this verse, and the mention in v. 6 that the 
 mariners "cried every man unto his god," is remarkable. It would 
 seem to imply, as Calvin argues, that behind and above the many gods 
 whom the heathen invented for themselves, they retained the idea, 
 vague perhaps and indistinct for the most part, but starting into promi- 
 nence in times of danger and distress such as this, of one supreme God 
 by whose providence the world is governed, and in whose hand are the 
 life and safety of all men. 
 
 will think upon us] Some would render, " will brighten, or shine 
 upon us," i.e. will be propitious or favourable to us ; but there seems 
 no reason to depart from the E.V. 
 
 7. Finding their prayers as unavailing as their efforts, the sailors 
 conclude that the storm is sent upon them by the gods as a judgment 
 for some crime committed by one of their number; and they proceed 
 to cast lots to discover who the culprit is. Instances of a similar belief 
 on the part of the heathen have been adduced from classical authors 
 (see Rosenmuller and Maurer in loc. ). A story is told by Cicero (de 
 Nat. Deor. III. 37) of Diagoras, how that when he was on a voyage, 
 and the sailors, terrified by a storm which had befallen them, charged 
 him with being the cause of it, he pointed to other vessels in the same 
 plight with themselves, and asked them whether they thought that they 
 too carried Diagoras. Horace, in a well-known passage, affirms that he 
 would not suffer a man, who had provoked the anger of the gods, to 
 put to sea in the same boat with him, because the innocent in such 
 cases were not unfrequently involved in a common punishment with the 
 guilty (Hor. Od. lib. III. c. 2. 26 — 30). The truth, which underlay this 
 wide spread conviction, is taught us in its pure form in such histories as 
 those of Achan (Josh, vii.) and Jonathan (1 Sam. xiv. 36 — 46). 
 
 for whose cause] Lit., on account of (that) which (refers) to whom, 
 i.e. on whose account. The same expression occurs in v. 12 {"for my 
 sake"), and, though in the Hebrew in an uncontracted form, in v. 8 
 
30 JONAH, I. [vv. 8, 9. 
 
 s us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah. Then 
 said they unto him, Tell us, we pray thee, for whose cause 
 this evil is upon us; What is thine occupation? and whence 
 comest thou? what is thy country? and of what people art 
 
 9 thou? And he said unto them, I am a Hebrew; and I fear 
 the Lord, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and 
 
 the lot fell upon Jonali\ An illustration of Prov. xvi. 33 ; comp. 
 Josh. vii. 18; 1 Sam. xiv. 42. It is worthy of note that the use of the 
 lot, though frequently mentioned and sanctioned in the O.T., and 
 employed even after the Ascension in the choice of an Apostle to fill 
 the place of Judas, never occurs in the Bible after the day of Pentecost. 
 It would seem to have been superseded and rendered needless by the 
 gift which conferred "a right judgment in all things." 
 
 8. for whose cause'] The lot has detected Jonah, but they will not 
 condemn him unheard. They will give him an opportunity of clearing 
 himself, or like Achan (Josh. vii. 19), of making confession with his 
 own lips. The judicial fairness and calmness of these heathen men, 
 their abstinence from anger and reproach for the wrong done them, 
 their sense of the sanctity of human life, their fear of punishing the 
 innocent, are very strikingly brought out in the whole of this exciting 
 scene. 
 
 "Even in their supreme danger the mariners were anxious not only to 
 avoid all violence, but all haste. While the fury of the waves and the 
 tempest constantly increased, and every instant was precious to those 
 who prized their lives, they patiently instituted an investigation with 
 almost judicial calmness. Though fully trusting to the reality of the 
 decision by lot, they were resolved neither to execute the judgment 
 without the offender's confession, nor to execute it in an arbitrary 
 manner." Kalisch, who quotes the words of Philo: "One might see in 
 the scene a terrible tribunal: for the ship was the court of justice, the 
 judges were the sailors, the executioners were the winds, the prisoner at 
 the bar was the prophet, the house of correction and prison of safe 
 keeping was the whale, and the accuser was the angry sea." 
 
 What is thine occupation, &c] This crowding together of questions 
 in their excitement is very true to nature. It has been compared with 
 the well-known passage in Virgil, AZn. VIII. 112 — 114. 
 
 9. The emergency recals Jonah to his true self. All the better part 
 of his character now comes out. His conduct throughout the remainder 
 of the chapter is dignified and manly, worthy of a servant and prophet 
 of Jehovah. 
 
 a Hebrew] This is the name by which the Jews were known to 
 foreigners (comp. the use of it by Juvenal and other classical writers). 
 It is quite in keeping with Biblical usage that Jonah employs it in 
 describing himself to the heathen sailors. Had he been addressing 
 one of his own countrymen, he would have spoken of himself as an 
 Israelite. 
 
 I fear the Lord] Rather, I fear Jehovah. They knew already 
 
vv. 10— 12.] JONAH, I. 31 
 
 the dry land. Then were the men exceedingly afraid, and 10 
 said unto him, Why hast thou done this? For the men knew 
 that he fled from the presence of the Lord, because he had 
 told them. Then said they unto him, What shall we do unto « 
 thee, that the sea may be calm unto us? for the sea wrought, 
 and was tempestuous. And he said unto them, Take me up, 12 
 and cast me forth into the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto 
 
 (v. 10) that he was a worshipper of Jehovah, and that he had offended 
 Him, and was fleeing from His presence. But hitherto they had only 
 looked upon Jehovah as a god, one of many, with whom they had no 
 concern. Comp. Pharaoh's contemptuous question, "Who is Jehovah, 
 that I should obey his voice, to let Israel go ? I know not Jehovah, 
 neither will I let Israel go." Ex. v. 2. Now, however, when Jonah 
 added that Jehovah was the God of heaven, who had made the sea and 
 the dry land, while the tempest raged still to confirm his words, "The 
 men were exceedingly afraid." 
 
 10. Why hast thou done this?] Rather, What is this that thou 
 hast done ? A question not of enquiry, but of amazement and re- 
 proach. Comp. Gen. iv. 10. 
 
 11. What shall we do unto thee] No doubt in their thus appealing 
 to Jonah to tell them what was to be done, instead of at once ridding 
 themselves of him as the acknowledged cause of their calamity, we may 
 recognise their reverence for Jehovah, and in a measure also for His 
 servant. At the same time it was only natural and reasonable that, 
 having learned of him the cause, they should seek to know from him 
 the cure of their trouble. "Since you are a worshipper of the most High 
 and Almighty God, you ought to know how the anger of your God can 
 be appeased." — Rosenm. 
 
 may be calm unto us] Lit., may be quiet from upon us, i. e. from 
 pressing upon us and being hostile to us. The word used for being 
 quiet or silent in this and the next verse only occurs beside in Ps. cvii. 
 30, of quiet after a storm at sea, and in Prov. xxvi. 20, of the ceasing 
 of strife. 
 
 wrought, and was tempestuous] Lit., "was going and being 1 tossed, 
 i. e. according to the Hebrew idiom, became increasingly tempestuous. 
 So in Gen. viii. 3, "the waters returned from off the earth continually," 
 is literally, "returned to go and to return," i.e. returned increasingly, or 
 more and more. 
 
 12. cast me forth into the sea] "The question is raised whether 
 Jonah ought of his own accord to have offered himself to death ; for his 
 doing so seems to be a sign of despair. He might, indeed, have sur- 
 rendered himself to their will, but here he, as it were, incites them to 
 the deed. Cast me into the sea, he says, for in no other way will you 
 appease God, than by punishing me. He seems like a man in despair 
 when he thus goes at his own instance to death. But without doubt 
 Jonah recognised that he was divinely summoned to punishment. It is 
 uncertain whether he then conceived a hope of preservation, whether, 
 
32 JONAH, I. [vv. 13, 14 
 
 you : for I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon 
 
 13 you. Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring it to the 
 land; but they could not: for the sea wrought, and was 
 
 14 tempestuous against them. Wherefore they cried unto the 
 Lord, and said, We beseech thee, O Lord, we beseech thee, 
 let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not upon us 
 innocent blood : for thou, O Lord, hast done as it pleased 
 
 that is, with a present confidence, he rested on the grace of God ; but, 
 however that be, one may gather that he goes forth to death because he 
 perceives and is assuredly persuaded that he is in a manner summoned 
 by the open voice of God. And so there is no doubt that he patiently 
 undergoes the judgment which the Lord has brought against him." — 
 Calvin. 
 
 13. rowed hard] Lit., digged. The word is used for digging or 
 breaking through a wall, job xxiv. 16; Ezek. xii. 5, 7. The figurative 
 use of it does not occur again in the O. T., where, as has been before 
 observed, the references to maritime affairs are very few, but the figure 
 itself is common in other languages. Rosenm. compares the phrases 
 "infindere sulcos," "arare aquas," "scindere freta." Virg. JEn. v. 142, 
 Ovid, Trist. III. Eleg. XII. 36, Metamorph. XI. 463. They used their 
 utmost endeavours to bring her to land again, but in vain, for the tem- 
 pest, so far from abating, only raged more furiously. 
 
 14 — 16. The openness of these heathens to religious impressions ; 
 the readiness with which they acknowledged Jehovah (hitherto to them 
 an unknown God), and addressed no longer to their own gods {y. 5), 
 but to Him their most earnest and humble prayers ; their submission to 
 His will {v. 14), and the worship which they subsequently paid and 
 promised Him (v. 15), are all brought out in bold relief, and in strong 
 and (in pursuance of the object of this Book) intended contrast with 
 the conduct of His own people Israel in turning from Him to idols. 
 These heathens, too, reverence and would fain save from death a prophet 
 of Jehovah who has come to them unbidden, and has well-nigh com- 
 passed their destruction; Jerusalem "killed the prophets and stoned 
 them that were sent unto her" for her salvation. They shew the 
 utmost tenderness for a single life ; Jonah, the prophet of the Lord, is 
 worse than regardless of "more than sixscore thousand" human souls. 
 
 14. for this man's life] i. e. for having taken it away. Lit., in the 
 life of this man, according to a well-known use of this Heb. prepo- 
 sition in the sense of ' in the place of,' ' in exchange for.' So Gen. 
 xxix. 18, "I will serve thee for (lit. 'in,' in exchange for) Rachel;" 
 and Deut. xix. 21, " life for (in) life," &c. 
 
 lay not upon us innocent blood] i. e. the guilt of having shed innocent 
 blood. Comp. Deut xxi. 8. 
 
 for thou, O Lord, &c] The death of this man is no doing of ours. 
 We are only carrying out Thy declared will. Hold us not, therefore, 
 responsible for it. " That Jonah betook himself to this ship of ours, 
 
w. 15—17.] JONAH, I. 33 
 
 thee. So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the is 
 sea: and the sea ceased from her raging. Then the men 16 
 feared the Lord exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice unto 
 the Lord, and made vows. 
 
 i. 17 — ii. 10. Jonah's Prayer and Ddivera?ice. 
 Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up 17 
 
 that the tempest was raised, that Jonah was taken by lot, that he passed 
 this sentence upon himself, all this comes of Thy will." — Rosenm. 
 " 15. they took up] With respect and' reluctance, with no struggle on 
 his part, or violence on theirs. 
 
 her raging] Lit., her anger. "Maris ira," Ovid. Met. I. 330, 
 "iratum mare," Hor. Epod. II. 5, 6, are quoted by the commentators. 
 
 16. feared the Lord exceedingly] They had feared exceedingly before 
 (v. 10, where the Heb. expression is the same as here), but their fear 
 then was vague and indefinite, now it recognised as its object Jehovah, 
 the God of Jonah. 
 
 offered a sacrifice] It would certainly seem to be implied, that im- 
 mediately on the ceasing of the storm the sailors offered a sacrifice to 
 Jonah's God, in acknowledgment of what He had already done, and at 
 the same time vowed that they would present to Him other gifts and 
 offerings when He should have brought them safe to land. We know 
 but little of the ships of the ancients, but some of them were of con- 
 siderable size, and there is no difficulty in supposing that there may 
 have been one or more live animals suitable for sacrifice on board 
 Jonah's ship. 
 
 I. 17 — II. 10. Jonah's Prayer and Deliverance. 
 
 Cast into the sea at his own request by the sailoi-s, Jonah is swallowed 
 alive by a large fish, and remains uninjured inside it for three days and 
 three nights, i. 1 7. While there, he offers a prayer of thanksgiving to 
 Almighty God (ii. 1 — 9), at whose command the fish, at the end of the 
 three days and three nights, vomits up Jonah on the dry land, ii. 10. 
 
 17. had prepared] Rather : assigned, or appointed. (LXX. wpoai- 
 ra£e.) The same word and tense are used of the gourd, the worm, and 
 the East wind, ch. iv. 6, 7, 8. They do not necessarily imply any 
 previous or special p-eparation, much less the creation of these various 
 agents for the purpose to which they were put ; but merely that they 
 were appointed to it by Him, whom "all things serve." He sent the 
 fish there to do His bidding. The word is rendered "appointed" in 
 Job vii. 3, Dan. i. 5, 10; and "set" in Dan. i. 11. 
 
 "By God's immediate direction it was so arranged that the very 
 moment when Jonah was thrown into the waves, the 'great fish' was 
 on the spot to receive him ; God charged the animal to perform this 
 function, as He afterwards 'spoke to' it {v. 10), or commanded it, to 
 vomit out the prophet on the dry land." — Kalisch. 
 
 a great fish] Probably a shark. Sec note A. 
 
 JONAH n 
 
JONAH, I. II. [w. 17; 1,2; 
 
 Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days 
 2 and three nights. Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his 
 2 God out of the fish's belly, and said, 
 
 three days and three nights] At this point the transaction becomes 
 clearly miraculous. The swallowing of Jonah by the fish may have 
 been in the course of the ordinary working of divine Providence. His 
 preservation within it for so long a time plainly belongs to that other 
 working of Almighty God which, though it be no less after the counsel 
 of that Will (Ephes. i. n) which is the highest and only Law, appears 
 to us to be extraordinary, and which we therefore call miraculous. 
 
 A comparison of 1 Cor. xv. 4 with Matt. xii. 40 shows that the period 
 of Jonah's incarceration in the fish was divinely ordered to be a type of 
 our Lord's being "three days and three nights in the heart of" the 
 earth." This is the only passage in the O. T., if we except Hosea 
 vi. 2, in which there is any prophetical intimation of the length of time 
 between our Lord's burial and resurrection. 
 
 Ch. II. — 1. Then Jonah prayed] What follows, w. 2 — 9, is rather 
 a thanksgiving than a prayer. The same, however, may be said of 
 Hannah's utterance (1 Sam. ii. 1 — 10), which is introduced by the same 
 word ("Hannah prayed''''). Comp. Acts xvi. 25, where Alford renders 
 "praying, sung praises," or "in their prayers were singing praises," 
 and remarks that "the distinction of modern times between prayer and 
 praise arising from our attention being directed to the shape rather than 
 to the essence of devotion, was unknown in these days : see Col. iv. 2." 
 It has, indeed, been held (Maurer) that Jonah does pray here, and that 
 the past tenses {v. 2, &c.) are in reality present and only in form past, 
 because they are literal quotations from some of the Psalms. It is 
 simpler, however, to suppose, with the great majority of commentators, 
 that Jonah had prayed to God in the prospect and the act of being cast 
 into the sea, while he was being buffeted by the waves and sinking into 
 the depths, and in the agony of being swallowed by the fish. During 
 all this time, whether his lips spoke or not, his mind was fixed in that 
 intent Godward attitude and posture which is the truest prayer. Now, 
 however, when he finds himself alive and unharmed in that strange 
 abode, he prays no longer, but offers thanksgivings for the measure of 
 deliverance already granted him in answer to those former prayers, 
 mingled with joyful anticipations of the yet further deliverance which 
 the last verse of the chapter records. It seems probable that Jonah's 
 prayer was offered at the end of the three days and nights, and was 
 followed immediately by his release. How the three days and nights 
 were spent by him, whether in unconsciousness, as some have thought, 
 or in godly sorrow and repentance, like Saul at Damascus, as others 
 have. held, we have no means of knowing. 
 
 his God] When Jonah flees in disobedience it is "from the presence 
 of Jehovah;" when he prays in penitence, it is to "Jehovah his God." 
 Comp. "O Lord my God," v. 6, and "my God," Psalm xxii. 1. 
 
 2. and said] The prayer which follows falls naturally into three 
 parts or divisions. In each of these the two elements of danger and 
 
v. 2.] JONAH, II. 35 
 
 I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord, and 
 he heard me; 
 
 deliverance, of need and help, appear. But they enter into them in 
 very different proportions. Faith grows, and the prospect brightens at 
 each fresh stage of the hymn. The first rises to prayer, the second to 
 confidence, the third to thankfulness and praise. 
 
 I. w. i — 4. 
 
 (1) Introduction, containing the general subject of the hymn : I 
 
 cried and was heard, I was in trouble and was delivered. 
 v. 1. 
 
 (2) Description of the danger and distress, v. 3. 
 
 (3) Faith triumphing over despondency and prompting to prayer, 
 
 v. 4. 
 
 II. vv. 5, 6. 
 
 (1) More vivid description of the danger and distress, w. 5, 6a. 
 
 (2) Deliverance not only prayed for, but possessed, v. 6b. 
 
 III. w. 7—9. 
 
 (1) Prayer, offered in danger and distress, has been heard, v. 7. 
 
 (2) God, no longer forsaken, but sought and recognised as the 
 
 fountain of mercy, has granted deliverance which shall be 
 acknowledged with sacrifices of thanksgiving and vows 
 joyfully paid. vv. 8, 9^. 
 
 (3) All salvation, as this typical instance shows, is of God. v. gb. 
 
 The prayer is remarkable for its many resemblances in thought and 
 expression to passages in the Book of Psalms. The words of the 
 Psalter, however, are not exactly and literally quoted, but its ideas 
 and phrases are freely wrought into the prayer, as if drawn from the 
 well-stored memory of a pious Israelite, familiar with its contents, and 
 naturally giving vent to his feelings in the cherished forms, which were 
 now instinct for him with new life and meaning. The manner in which 
 our English literature (not only sacred, but secular and even profane 
 and infidel) abounds in Scripture imagery and phraseology may help us 
 to understand how coincidences of this kind may have arisen, without 
 any deliberate intention on the part of a later writer to copy from an 
 earlier, or even any direct consciousness that he was doing so. 
 
 by reason of mine affliction} Rather, as in E. V. margin, out of 
 mine affliction, i. e. out of the midst of it, while it still compassed me 
 about. The time referred to is when he was in the sea. 
 
 The first half of this verse is identical in the Ffeb. words, though not in 
 their order, with Ps. cxx. 1, except that in the Psalm we have "in," 
 instead of "from" or "out of" mine affliction, and a lengthened form 
 of the word for affliction is used. The coincidence cannot, however, be 
 properly said to affect the date of the Book of Jonah. The Psalm, it is 
 
 3—2 
 
36 JONAH, II. [w. 3, 4. 
 
 Out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my 
 
 voice. 
 For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of 
 
 the seas; 
 And the floods compassed me about: 
 All thy billows and thy waves passed over me. 
 Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight; 
 
 4 
 
 true, belongs to a collection which "in its present form must have been 
 made after the return from Babylon," but it by no means follows that 
 no ode of the collection had been composed before that time. Besides, 
 the whole sentence is, both in language and idea, too commonplace, so 
 to speak, to be safely insisted upon as a quotation at all. Two quite 
 independent writers may easily have lighted on it. And moreover, if 
 quoted at all, it may owe its origin no less probably to Psalm xviii., 
 between which and the prayer of Jonah the resemblance, though less 
 exact in this particular verse, is as a whole more close and striking. 
 Comp. Ps. xviii. 6 (1st clause). 
 
 of hell] The unseen world, the place of the dead, amongst whom, 
 when cast into the sea, he seemed already to be numbered. Comp. Ps. 
 xviii. 5, "the sorrows of hell (or rather "the bonds of the unseen 
 world") compassed me about." 
 
 3. hadst cast] There is no pluperf. tense in the Heb. language. 
 There is no need, however, here to depart from the more literal ren- 
 dering castedst or didst cast. See note on v. 1. 
 
 the deep] The same word is used (in the plur.) literally of Pharaoh 
 and his host, Ex. xv. 5, "They sank into the bottom," and meta- 
 phorically, Micah vii. 19. 
 
 the floods] Lit., the river. Used of the current or flowing xt£- the 
 sea. "And the flowing (of the sea) surrounds me." Gesenius: 'das 
 stromen.' The same word occurs in the same sense, Ps. xxiv. 2. 
 
 All thy billows, &c] Lit., "all Thy breakers and Thy long rolling 
 ■waves." Comp. "Quanti montes volvuntur aquarum." Ovid. Trist. 
 1. ii. 19. The whole clause occurs again in Ps. xlii. 7, though there it 
 is used metaphorically and here literally; or rather, to the metaphorical 
 sense is here superadded the literal. For by calling them "Thy" 
 breakers and waves, Jonah shews that to him, as to the Psalmist, the 
 sense of God's punishment and displeasure was the soul of his affliction. 
 
 4. Then I said, ike] The first clause of this verse may, perhaps, 
 be a reminiscence of the first clause of Ps. xxxi. 22 (Heb. 23), though 
 there the words "in my haste" are added, and a different verb ("cut 
 off" instead of "cast out") is used. "Jonah substitutes the stronger 
 word, / am cast forth, driven forth, expelled, like the mire and dirt 
 (Is. Ivii. 20). which the waves drive along, or like the waves themselves 
 in their restless motion (io.), or the heathen (the word is the same) 
 whom God had driven out before Israel (Ex. xxxiv. 11), or as Adam 
 from Paradise. (Gen. iii. 24.)" — Pusey. 
 
w. 5, 6.] JONAH, II. 37 
 
 Yet I will look again toward thy holy temple. 
 
 The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: 
 
 The depth closed me round about, 
 
 The weeds were wrapt about my head. 
 
 I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; 
 
 The earth with her bars was about me for ever: 
 
 thy holy temple] Not the heavenly temple or dwelling-place of God, 
 but the literal temple. This is not, however, an expression of Jonah's 
 confident belief that, outcast as he now seemed to be, he would certainly 
 be delivered, and visit again, and behold once more with his bodily 
 eyes the temple on Mount Sion. It is the then present thought and 
 resolution with which, when he said "I am cast out of Thy sight," he 
 corrected and overcame his unbelieving despondency. "One thing is 
 left me still, one resource is still open to me, I will still pray, I will 
 look (mentally) yet again towards Thy holy temple." The phrase "to 
 look towards the temple," denoting prayer, has its origin in the prayer of 
 Solomon at the dedication of the Temple. See i Kings viii. 29, 30, 48, 
 and comp. Dan. vi. to. The fact that Jonah was a prophet of the 
 Northern Kingdom is no valid objection to this view. The Temple on 
 Mount Sion was the only centre of the true worship of Jehovah, and was 
 recognised as such by all faithful Israelites. But it would be enough 
 to say with Calvin, "He had been circumcised, he had been a wor- 
 shipper of God from his youth, he had been educated in the Law, he had 
 been a constant participator in the sacrifices : under the name of the 
 Temple he briefly comprehends all these things." 
 
 5. compassed me about] It would be better, perhaps, to render 
 surrounded me, in order to show that this is a different word from that 
 in v. 3, and then in the second clause of this verse, where the word is 
 the same as in v. 3, to render compassed me about, instead of closed me 
 round about. 
 
 to the soul] i.e. so as to endanger my soul, or life. Comp. Ps. lxix. 1 
 (where similar language is used figuratively) and Jer. iv. 10. 
 
 the weeds] The Heb. word is suph, which so often occurs in the 
 name Red Sea (lit., sea of suph). "The suph of the sea, it seems quite 
 certain, is a seaxveed resembling wool. Such sea-weed is thrown up 
 abundantly on the shores of the Red Sea." — Smith's Bible Diet., Art. 
 Red Sea. 
 
 6. bottoms] Lit., as in margin, " cuttings off," the mountains being 
 poetically conceived of as stretching away their roots or ridges to the 
 lowest depths of the sea, and there ending or being cut off. 
 
 her bars] Lit, (as for) the earth, her bars, &c. The idea is that 
 the gates of the earth were not only closed, but barred and made fast 
 upon him, shutting him into the unseen world. The same word is used 
 of Samson carrying away the gates of Gaza, "bar and all," i.e. pro- 
 bably a wooden beam used to hold fast the gates when they were 
 closed. Judg. xvi. 3. Comp. " Let not the pit shut her mouth upon 
 me," Ps. lxix. 15. 
 
38 JONAH, II. [w. 7, 8. 
 
 Yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O 
 
 Lord my God. 
 When my soul fainted within me I remembered the 
 
 Lord: 
 And my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy 
 
 temple. 
 They that observe lying vanities forsake their own 
 
 mercy. 
 
 from corruption] Rather, from the pit. 
 
 7. fainted] Lit., covered itself; with reference to the film and 
 darkness that comes over eye and mind in fainting and exhaustion. 
 Comp. Pss. cxlii. 3, cvii. 5, where the same Heb. word occurs. 
 
 thine holy temple] at Jerusalem, as in v. 4. 
 
 8. observe lying vanities] Comp. Ps. xxxi. 6, where the same Heb. 
 word is rendered "regard." By "lying vanities" we are to under- 
 stand "all inventions with which men deceive themselves" (Calvin), 
 all false, and therefore vain and disappointing objects of trust and con- 
 fidence. Idols and false gods are no doubt included, but the sentiment 
 is conceived and expressed in the most general form, and therefore 
 embraces Jonah's own case. He had observed the lying vanity, the 
 deceitful promise of his own will and his own way, as opposed to God ; 
 and not only had he found that God was stronger than he, but he had 
 been brought to see and confess that in such a course he had been his 
 own enemy. 
 
 forsake their mvn mercy] Rather, their mercy. Some (as Kalisch, 
 for example) would render, "they forget their kindness," i.e. "they 
 quickly and heedlessly forget the mercies they have enjoyed ; the word 
 forsake being taken in the sense of deserting, or dismissing, viz. from 
 their thoughts," and " their mercies," as analogous to the phrase, the 
 sure mercies of David (Isai. Iv. 3), "the benefits conferred upon or 
 enjoyed by David." But, apart from the meaning thus arbitrarily given 
 to the word "forsake," the sentiment attributed to the writer is unsatis- 
 factory and untrue. "The suppliant declares," writes Kalisch, "I was 
 in distress, I prayed and was saved ; and now, unlike the idolaters who 
 gracelessly forget the bounties they have received, I shall evince my 
 gratitude to Jehovah by the voice of praise and by sacred gifts." But 
 it is not true that the idolaters in this sense " forget the benefits they 
 have received," as ch. i. 16 shows, and as the heathen temples filled 
 with votive offerings in acknowledgment of deliverance abundantly 
 testify. 
 
 By "their mercy" we are to understand God, who is the only source 
 of mercy and loving-kindness to all His creatures. The sentiment is 
 similar to that which is figuratively expressed by the prophet Jeremiah : 
 " They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed 
 them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water." (ii. 13.) 
 So God is called, " my mercy," Ps. cxliv. 2 (margin), the same word 
 being used as here. 
 
vv. 9, 10; 1—3.] JONAH, II. III. 39 
 
 But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanks- 9 
 
 giving; 
 I will pay that that I have vowed. 
 Salvation is of the Lord. 
 
 And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out 10 
 Jonah upon the dry land. 
 
 1 — 10. Jonah's Preaching and its result. 
 
 And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second 3 
 time, saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and 2 
 preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. So Jonah 3 
 arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the 
 
 9. But I] in contrast to my former self, and to the whole body of 
 those of whom I then was one, will humbly claim and gratefully acknow- 
 ledge my share in "my Mercy." " I will sacrifice unto Thee," &c. 
 
 Salvation is of the Lord] Comp. Ps. iii. 8, Rev. vii. 10. This is at 
 once confession and praise, a Creed and a Te Deum. It is the sum of 
 his canticle, the outcome of all he has passed through. Deliverance in 
 its fullest sense is already his in faith and confident anticipation. But 
 God alone is the Author of it, and to Him alone shall the praise for it 
 be ascribed. This point reached, Jonah's punishment has done its 
 work, his discipline is at an end. 
 
 Ch. III. 1—10. Jonah's Preaching and its result. 
 
 Sent a second time by God on a mission to Nineveh, Jonah promptly 
 obeys, vv. 1 — 3a. He enters into Nineveh and delivers his message, 
 vv. 3/; — 4. The Ninevites believe God and repent, vv. 5 — 9 ; and are 
 spared, v. 10. 
 
 1 — 4. Jonah's Preaching. 
 
 1. the second time] Like St Peter (John xxi. 15 — 17), Jonah is not 
 only forgiven, but restored to his ofiice, and receives anew his com- 
 mission. 
 
 2. that great city] Calvin explains this repeated mention of the 
 greatness of Nineveh (comp. i. 2), as intended to prepare Jonah for the 
 magnitude of the task before him, lest when he came face to face with 
 it he should be appalled and draw back. But perhaps the true key is 
 to be found in iv. 11, where the same expression "the great city" 
 occurs as an argument for God's compassion. It is on no mean errand 
 of mercy, not to save a few only from destruction, that I bid you go. 
 
 preach unto it the preaching] Lit., cry to it the crying. The word 
 is rendered cry, i. 1. 
 
 3. arose, and went] Before, he arose and fled. He is still the same 
 man. There is still the same energy and decision of character. But he 
 is now "as ready to obey as before to disobey." 
 
4^ JONAH, II I. [v. 3. 
 
 Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three 
 
 was] It lias been asserted that the use of the past tense here, "ac- 
 cording to all sound rules of interpretation, must be understood to imply 
 that, in the author's time, Nineveh existed no longer," (Kalisch). No- 
 thing, however, can safely be determined from the use of a tense in such 
 cases. The clause "Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city," &c., 
 is evidently a part of the narrative, and prepares the way for verse 4. 
 It simply states what Nineveh was, and what Jonah found and saw it to 
 be, when he visited it. It is not a historical note, like that which is 
 introduced with reference to the building of Hebron, Numbers xiii. -22. 
 St John writes (v. 1) "Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep-gate a 
 pool." It might be argued (as it has been) that because he uses the 
 present tense, Jerusalem must have still been standing when he wrote 
 his Gospel. Yet it might with equal force be concluded (and it is a 
 proof of the unsatisfactory nature of this sort of criticism) that because 
 he says that Bethany was nigh unto Jerusalem (xi. 18), that "Jesus 
 went forth with His disciples over the brook Kedron, where was a 
 garden" (xviii. 1), and that "in the place where He was crucified there 
 was a garden" (xix. 41), the city and its environs were already laid 
 waste when he wrote. 
 
 exceeding great] Lit., great to God. The expressions of this kind 
 which occur in the Bible may be divided into two classes. They all 
 alike spring out of the devout habit of the Hebrew mind, which recog- 
 nises God in everything, and sees Him specially in whatever is best and 
 greatest upon earth. But this habit of mind finds expression in two 
 somewhat different ways. Sometimes, at the contemplation of what is 
 more than ordinarily grand or beautiful, the pious mind rises at once to 
 God, and recognises Him in His works. A thing so great, so fair, 
 must be the work of His hands. " By the greatness and beauty of the 
 creatures proportionably the Maker of them is seen." 
 
 "Who made you glorious as the gates of Heaven 
 
 Beneath the keen full moon? 
 
 God ! let the torrents, like a shout of nations, 
 Answer ! and let the ice-plains echo, God ! " 
 
 Hence such expressions as "mountains of God," Ps. xxxvi. 6; "cedars 
 of God," Ps. lxxx. 10; "trees of Jehovah," Ps. civ. 16; the explanation 
 being added in the last of these instances (comp. Num. xxiv. 6), "which 
 He hath planted." The other class of expressions are those in which 
 the excellence of the object contemplated appears to suggest to the 
 mind that it will bear the scrutiny of God's judgment, that even before 
 Him, or as referred to Him, it is what the writer asserts it to be. To 
 this class the expression here belongs. "Nineveh was a city, great, not 
 only to man's thinking, but to God's." (Comp. ch. iv. n.) In like 
 manner we have, "a mighty hunter before the Lord," Gen. x. 9; " fair 
 to God," Acts vii. 20. 
 
 of three days 1 journey^ The most probable and most generally received 
 opinion is that these words refer to the circuit of Nineveh, and that the 
 
v. 4. 1 JONAH, III. 41 
 
 days' journey. And Jonah began to enter into the city a 4 
 
 writer intends by them to say that the city was so large, that it would 
 take a man, walking at the usual pace, three days to go round it. This 
 would give about 60 miles for its circumference. See note B. 
 
 4. And Jonah began to enter into the city\ Calvin well brings out 
 the moral grandeur of the scene which this verse so simply and briefly 
 describes ; the promptitude of Jonah's action, in entering without delay 
 or hesitation or enquiry, immediately, as it would seem, upon his 
 reaching the city, upon his difficult and dangerous task; his boldness, 
 as a helpless and unprotected stranger, in standing in the heart of "the 
 bloody city," and denouncing destruction upon it. It was, indeed, to 
 "beard the lion in his den" to adventure himself on such an errand 
 into "the dwelling of the lions and the feeding place of the young 
 lions, where the lion, even the old lion, walked, and the lion's whelp, 
 and none made them afraid." (Nahum ii. 11.) 
 
 a days journey] " He began to perambulate the city, going hither 
 and thither, as far as was possible, in the first day." (Maurer.) And 
 as he went he cried. In him was personified the description of the 
 wise King of Israe' : 
 
 "Wisdom crieth without; 
 
 She uttereth her voice in the streets: 
 
 She crieth in the chief place of concourse, 
 
 in the openings of the gates : 
 
 In the city she uttereth her words, 
 
 Turn ye at my reproof." 
 
 Proverbs i. 20 — 23. 
 
 Some have supposed that, as a day's journey would suffice to traverse 
 from one side to the other a city, of which the dimensions were such 
 as have been assigned (v. 3) to Nineveh, and as, moreover, Jonah is 
 found afterwards (iv. 5) on the east side of Nineveh (i. e. the opposite 
 side to that on which he would have entered it in coming from Pales- 
 tine), we are intended here to understand that he walked quite through 
 the city in a single day, uttering continually as he went "his one deep 
 cry of woe." The other view, however, is more natural, and it en- 
 hances the idea of the impressibility of the Ninevites, and their readiness 
 to believe and repent, which it is evidently the design of the inspired 
 writer to convey, if we suppose that while the preacher himself was seen 
 and heard in only a portion of the vast city, his message was taken up 
 and repeated, and sped and bore fruit rapidly in every direction, till 
 tidings of what was happening came to the king himself (v. 6), and in 
 obedience to the yet distant and unseen prophet, he issued the edict 
 which laid the whole of Nineveh, man and beast, abashed and humbled 
 before the threatened blow. 
 
42 JONAH, III. [v. 4. 
 
 day's journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and 
 Nineveh shall be overthrown. 
 
 Yet forty days] "He threatens the overthrow of the city uncon- 
 ditionally. From the event, however, it is clear that the threat was to 
 be understood with this condition, 'unless ye shall (in the mean time) 
 have amended your life and conduct.' Comp. Jer. xviii. 7, 8." — 
 (Rosenm.) God's threatenings are always implied promises. 
 
 overthrown] The word is the same as that used of the destruction of 
 Sodom and Gomorrha, both in the history of that event (Gen. xix. 25, 
 29), and in subsequent reference to it (Deut. xxix. 23 [Heb. 22]). Not 
 necessarily by the same means, (comp. "overthrown by strangers," 
 Isai. i. 7,) but as complete and signal shall the overthrow be. The use 
 of the participle, lit., Yet forty days and Nineveh, overthrown, is 
 very forcible. To the prophet's eye, overlooking the short interval of 
 forty days, Nineveh appears not a great city with walls and towers and 
 palaces, and busy marts and crowded thoroughfares, but one vast mass 
 of ruins. 
 
 It may be asked whether the whole of Jonah's preaching to the 
 Ninevites consisted of this one sentence incessantly repeated. The 
 sacred text, taken simply as it stands, seems to imply that it did. Wq 
 have indeed here "the spectacle of an unknown Hebrew, in a pro- 
 phet's austere and homely attire, passing through the splendid streets of 
 the proudest town of the Eastern world;" but not (except so far as 
 imagination completes the picture) of his "uttering words of rebuke 
 and menace, bidding the people not only to make restitution of their 
 unlawfully acquired property, but to give up their ancestral deities for 
 the one God of Israel." (Kalisch.) To an oriental mind (and Almighty 
 God is wont to adapt His means to those whom they are to reach) the 
 simple, oft-repeated announcement might be more startling than a 
 laboured address. "Simplicity is always impressive. They were four 
 words which God caused to be written on the wall amid Belshazzar's 
 impious revelry; Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin. We all remember the 
 touching history of Jesus the son of Anan, an unlettered rustic, who, 
 ' four years before the war, when Jerusalem was in complete peace and 
 affluence,' burst in on the people at the feast of tabernacles with one 
 oft-repeated cry, 'A voice from the East, a voice from the West, 
 a voice from the four winds, a voice on Jerusalem and the temple, a 
 voice on the bridegrooms and the brides, a voice on the whole people;' 
 how he went about through all the lanes of the city, repeating, day and 
 night, this one cry; and when scourged until his bones were laid bare, 
 echoed every lash with 'Woe, woe, to Jerusalem,' and continued as his 
 daily dirge and his one response to daily good or ill-treatment, 'Woe, 
 woe, to Jerusalem.' The magistrates and even the cold Josephus 
 thought that there was something in it above nature." (Puscy.) 
 
vv. 5, 6.] JONAH, III. 43 
 
 5 — io. The happy Result ofjonatts Preaching. 
 
 So the people of Nineveh believed God, and pro- 5 
 claimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest 
 of them even to the least of them. For word came unto 6 
 
 &— 10. The happy Result of Jonah's Preaching. 
 
 5. believed God] Or, believed in God. Three things their faith 
 certainly embraced. They believed in the God of the Hebrews, as 
 the true God. They believed in His power to execute the threat which 
 He had held out. They believed in His mercy and willingness to 
 forgive the penitent. And this was marvellous faith in heathen, con- 
 trasting favourably with that of the chosen people. "So great faith" 
 had not been found, "no not in Israel." What they knew of the 
 Hebrews and their God (for doubtless they recognised in Jonah a Jewish 
 prophet) may have contributed to the result. That they knew also the 
 miraculous history of Jonah's mission to them, and so were the better 
 prepared to credit him, appears to be plainly taught us by our Lord. 
 It is difficult to understand how Jonah should have been " a sign unto 
 the Ninevites," corresponding in any way to the sign, which by His 
 resurrection the "Son of man" was to "the men of that generation," 
 (Luke xi. 30 with Matthew xii. 38 — 41,) unless they were aware that 
 he had passed, as it were, through death to life again, on his way to 
 preach to them. How that information reached them we have no 
 means of judging certainly. Of course it may have come to them 
 from the lips of Jonah himself, though we have seen reason (see note 
 on v. 4) to regard that as improbable. Alford speaks of "his preaching 
 after his resurrection to the Ninevites, announcing (for that would neces- 
 sarily be involved in that preaching) the wonderful judgment of God in 
 bringing him there, and thus making his own deliverance, that he might 
 preach to them, a sign to that people." 
 
 6. For word came unto'] Rather, And the matter reached. The 
 introduction of the word "for" for "and" in E. V. is of the nature of 
 a gloss. Our translators appear to have taken the view that v. 5 
 states generally the effect of Jonah's preaching upon the Ninevites, 
 and that w. 6 — 9 relate more particularly how the fast mentioned 
 in v. 5 was brought about. "They proclaimed a fast," I said, "and 
 it was by a royal edict that they did so, for the report of what was 
 going on was brought to the king, and he too was moved like his 
 people, and both inaugurated in his own person and instituted by his 
 authority a national fast." The statement in v. 5, however, is not neces- 
 sarily proleptical. It may be intended by the writer to describe the 
 effect produced in each district of the city as Jonah reached it, before the 
 Court had any knowledge of what was going on. The people were 
 first impressed, and then their rulers. The tide of penitence and hu- 
 miliation rose higher and higher, till it reached and included the king 
 and his nobles, and what had been done by spontaneous action, or local 
 authority, received the final sanction and imprimatur of the central 
 
44 JONAH, III. [v. p 
 
 the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and 
 
 he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sack- 
 
 7 cloth, and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be pro- 
 
 government. Whichever view be adopted, the literal translation should 
 be retained. 
 
 he arose from his throne, &c] It is in favour of the view that the 
 people did not wait for the royal edict to commence their fast, that the 
 king himself seems to have been the subject of immediate and strong 
 emotion, as soon as the tidings reached him. He first, as by a resistless 
 impulse, humbled himself to the dust, and then took measures, out of 
 the depth of his humiliation, that his subjects should be humbled with 
 him. 
 
 The outward form which the humiliation both of king and people 
 took was that common in the East (comp. Ezek. xxvi. 16; and see 
 Dictionary of the Bible, Article Mourning), as we know both from sacred 
 and secular writings. In the case of the king of Assyria it is the 
 more remarkable both because of his characteristic pride as "the great 
 king" (2 Kings xviii. 19, 28), and because of the pomp and luxury with 
 which he was ordinarily surrounded. No greater contrast could well 
 be conceived than between the royal "robe" and "sackcloth," or be- 
 tween the heap of "ashes" and the king's "throne." "In the bas- 
 relief I am describing," writes Layard, "the dress of a king consisted 
 of a long flowing garment, edged with fringes and tassels, descending to 
 his ankles, and confined at the waist by a girdle. Over this robe a 
 second, similarly ornamented and open in front, appears to have been 
 thrown. From his shoulders fell a cape or hood, also adorned with 
 tassels, and to it were attached two long ribbons or lappets. He wore 
 the conical mitre, or tiara, which distinguishes the monarch in Assyrian 
 
 bas-reliefs, and appears to have been reserved for him alone Around 
 
 the neck of the king was a necklace. He wore ear-rings, and his arms, 
 which were bare from a little above the elbow, were encircled by armlets 
 and bracelets remarkable for the beauty of their forms. The clasps 
 were formed by the heads of animals, and the centre by stars and 
 rosettes, probably inlaid with precious stones." {Nineveh, abridged 
 edition, 1851, p. 97.) 
 
 Of the throne the same writer says, " The thrones or arm-chairs, sup- 
 ported by animals and human figures, resemble those of the ancient 
 •Egyptians, an d °f the monuments of Kouyunjik, Khorsabad and Per- 
 sepolis. They also remind us of the throne of Solomon, which had 
 ' stays (or arms) on either side on the place of the seat, and two lions 
 stood by the stays. And twelve lions stood there, on the one side and on 
 the other, upon the six steps.'" 1 Kings x. 19, 20. (lb. p. 164.) 
 
 his robe] The same word is used of Achan's "goodly Babylonish 
 garment," Josh. vii. 21, which this may have resembled. But it is also 
 used of a garment of rough hair-cloth, Gen. xxv. 25 ; Zech. xiii. 4, and 
 of Elijah's hairy "mantle," or cloak, 1 Kings xix. 13, 19. The root- 
 meaning of the word is size, amplitude. 
 
v. 7-] JONAH, III. 45 
 
 claimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of 
 the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, 
 herd nor flock, taste any thing : let them not feed, nor drink 
 
 7. and published] This word is not a participle, though likely to 
 be taken for one in the E. V. It is literally, "And lie caused a pro- 
 clamation to be made, and said, &c. 
 
 the decree] The word here used is not properly a Hebrew word. It 
 occurs frequently in the Chaldee of Daniel and Ezra to denote a 
 mandate or decree of the Babylonish and Persian monarchs. Dr 
 Pusey rightly sees in the employment of it here a proof of the 
 "accuracy" of Jonah as a writer. He observes, "This is a Syriac 
 word ; and accordingly, since it has now been ascertained beyond all ques- 
 tion that the language of Nineveh was a dialect of Syriac, it was, with 
 a Hebrew pronunciation (the vowel points are different here from 
 those in Daniel and Ezra), the very word used of this decree at 
 Nineveh." 
 
 and his nobles] Lit., his great men, or grandees, Prov. xviii. 16. 
 We have a similar association of his nobles with himself by Darius the 
 Mede, when he caused the stone which was laid upon the mouth of the 
 den, into which Daniel had been cast, to be sealed "with his own signet 
 and with the signet of his lords, that the purpose might not be changed 
 concerning Daniel" (Dan. vi. 17). In the present case, however, it 
 would seem that it was not in the exercise of a constitutional right, but 
 by a voluntary act on the part of the king, that the nobles were 
 associated with him in the edict which he issued. Kalisch observes, 
 " It would be unsafe to infer from this passage that the nobles were in 
 some manner constitutionally connected with the government of the 
 kingdom, and thus tempered its arbitrariness, as we know now from 
 the monuments, no less than from the records of history, that 'the 
 Assyrian monarch was a thorough Eastern despot, unchecked by 
 popular opinion, and having complete power over the lives and pro- 
 perty of his subjects, rather adored as a god than feared as a man.' " 
 (Layard, Nin. and Babyl. p. 632). May not this association of his 
 nobles with himself have been "fruit meet for repentance," an abdica- 
 tion, in some sort, of the haughty arbitrariness of his power, an humbling 
 of himself "under the mighty hand of God"? 
 
 saying] The decree, thus introduced, extends to the end of v. 9. 
 
 man nor beast, herd nor flock] The Hebrew word for " beast here 
 means tame or domestic animals, and probably refers only to "beasts of 
 burden," horses, mules, and the like. So Ahab says to Obadiah 
 when the famine was in Samaria, "peradventure we may find grass to 
 save the horses and mules alive, that we be not deprived of beasts " 
 (1 Kings xviii. 5). "Herd and flock" will then be an additional clause, 
 not amplifying, but distinct from "beast," and the covering with 
 sackcloth, in v. 8, will thus be confined to those animals which were in 
 man's more immediate use, and many of which, with their gay and costly 
 trappings and harness, had been the ministers of his pomp and pride. 
 or, as employed in war, had been the instruments of' his "violence." 
 
4 5 JONAH, III. [v. 8. 
 
 i water: but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and 
 cry mightily unto God : yea, let them turn every one from his 
 
 The extension of the fast to all, and of the sackcloth to some at least, of 
 the animals in Nineveh, is probably without exact parallel in extant history. 
 The Speaker's Commentary rightly points out that " the voluntary fast- 
 ing of animals, wild as well as tame, at the death of Daphnis, described 
 by Virgil, Eclog. v. 24 — 28, which has often been referred to, is plainly 
 a mere poetic fancy." But the description in the text is quite in keeping 
 with the common instinct and practice of mankind. Men have always 
 been wont to extend the outward signs of their joy or sorrow to every- 
 thing under their control. Our dress, our food, our houses, our equipage, 
 our horses, our servants, all wear the hue of the occasion for which 
 they are employed. "Man, in his luxury and pride, would have 
 everything reflect his glory and minister to pomp. Self-humiliation 
 would have everything reflect its lowliness. Sorrow would have every- 
 thing answer to its sorrow. Men think it strange that the horses at 
 Nineveh were covered with sackcloth, and forget how, at the funerals 
 of the rich, black horses are chosen, and are clothed with black velvet " 
 (Pusey). In the extreme case of Nineveh, the instinct may well have 
 been indulged to an extreme. Like all other common instincts of our 
 nature, it had a true origin, for the destiny of man and of the lower 
 creation is inseparably connected (Gen. i. 26, 28; Rom. viii. 19 — 23). 
 The effect upon the Ninevites of seeing "their deserts set before them 
 as in a mirror or a picture " (Calvin), all that belonged to them involved 
 with them, through their guilt, in a common danger with themselves — 
 all creation, as it were, threatened and humbled for the sin of its 
 lord — may well have been to incite them powerfully to repentance. 
 The appeal to the compassion of Almighty God, who "preserveth man 
 and beast" (Ps. xxxvi. 6; comp. ch. iv. 11), may well have been 
 strengthened by the mute misery of the innocent beasts (Joel i. 20). 
 But, apart from these considerations, the requirements of the history are 
 fully satisfied by regarding the act of the king of Nineveh as instinctive, 
 called for by the urgent circumstances of the case, and coloured by the 
 demonstrativeness of oriental character. 
 
 8. and ay mightily] These words are to be restricted to "man." 
 They do not include, as some have thought (comparing Joel i. 18, 20), 
 "beast" as well. The addition "mightily" favours the restriction, and 
 so also does the exact order of the Hebrew: "Let them be clothed 
 with sackcloth, man and beast (the parenthesis is inserted here as 
 
 qualifying what precedes only), and let them cry and let them 
 
 turn," &c. 
 
 let them turii\ The prominence of the moral element in the repent- 
 ance of heathen Nineveh is very striking. Complete as was the out- 
 ward act of humiliation, the king's decree implies that it would be 
 worthless without a corresponding moral reformation. The tenth verse 
 tells us that it was to this that God had respect, " He saw their works, 
 that they turned from their evil way," and the heathen king seems 
 clearly to have understood that it would be so. Here again, the favour- 
 
v. 9-] JONAH, III. 4 7 
 
 evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. Who 9 
 can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his 
 
 able light in which these heathen show, in comparison with the chosen 
 people, is most marked. Frequent and indignant is the remonstrance 
 of the Hebrew prophets against the attempt of their countrymen to 
 gain the favour or avert the displeasure of Almighty God by fasting 
 and sackcloth, while the heart remained unchanged and the life un- 
 renewed. "Is it such a fast that I have chosen?" is God's own 
 indignant question to His people by the prophet Isaiah (ch. lviii.). 
 
 the violence that is in their hands] "Violence" was their chief sin, 
 as all we learn of the Assyrians, both from sacred and secular history, 
 shows. Comp. Nahum ii. ir, 12, iii. 1, and Isaiah x. 13, 14. The form 
 of expression, in their hands, the hand being the instrument of violence, 
 is the same as in Ps. vii. 3 (Heb. 4), and elsewhere. 
 
 9. Who can tell] Comp. Joel ii. 14, where the Hebrew is the 
 same. Calvin well explains the doubtful form assumed by the king's 
 decree. "How can it be," he asks, "that the king of Nineveh re- 
 pented earnestly and unfeignedly, and yet spoke doubtfully of the 
 grace of God ?" I answer, that there is a kind of doubt which may be 
 associated with faith; that, namely, which does not directly reject the 
 
 promise of God, but which has other things as well in view No 
 
 doubt the king of Nineveh conceived the hope of deliverance, but in 
 the mean time he was still perplexed in mind, both on account of 
 the preaching of Jonah, and on account of his consciousness of his own 
 
 sins The first obstacle (to his immediate certainty of forgiveness) was 
 
 that dreadful preaching, Nineveh after forty days shall perish Then 
 
 again, the king, no doubt, when he pondered his sins might well waver 
 a little." 
 
 God will turn] Lit. , the God, i. e. the One supreme God. See note 
 on i. 6, and comp. 1 Kings xviii. 39. This acknowledgment by the 
 Assyrians of Jehovah, the God of the Jews, as "the God" is all the 
 more remarkable, because, as Kalisch points out (though he unhappily 
 sees in the description of this chapter, not an historical fact, magnifying 
 the grace of God and the efficacy of true repentance, but the "aspiration " 
 of a later writer for "that time when 'the Lord shall be One and His 
 name One' "), it is contrary to all else we know of them. "The prophet 
 Nahum declares distinctly, among other menaces pronounced against 
 Nineveh, ' Out of the house of thy gods will I cut off the graven image 
 and the molten image' (i. 14; comp. iii. 4); the Books of Kings state 
 by name the Eastern idols Nibhaz and Tartak, Nergal and Ashima, 
 Adrammelech and Anammelech (2 Kings xvii. 30, 3r) ; in the remark- 
 able account of Sennacherib's war against Hezekiah, the former, 
 through the mouth of one of his chief officers, bitterly taunts the Hebrew 
 king with his futile reliance on his national god, whose nature the 
 Assyrian understands so little that, in his opinion, Hezekiah must have 
 incurred Jahveh's wrath, for having deprived him of all the heights and 
 of all the altars except that solitary one in Jerusalem ; and he places, in 
 fact, Jahveh on the same level of power with the gods of Hamath and 
 
4 8 JONAH, III. [v. 10. 
 
 10 fierce anger, that we perish not? And God saw their works, 
 that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of 
 
 Arpad, or any Syrian idol (2 Kings xviii. -22, 30, 33, 34). And, on the 
 other hand, all Assyrian monuments and records, whether of a date 
 earlier or later than Jeroboam II., disclose the same vast pantheon 
 which was the boast of king and people alike — Asshur, ' the great lord 
 ruling supreme over all the gods,' with his twelve greater and four 
 thousand inferior deities presiding over all manifestations of nature and 
 all complications of human life ; for the Assyrians at all times saw their 
 strength and their bulwark in the multitude of their gods, and considered 
 that nation feeble and defenceless indeed, which enjoyed only the pro- 
 tection of a single divinity." 
 
 10. that they turned from their evil way] " See what removed that 
 inevitable wrath. Did fasting and sackcloth alone? No, but the 
 change of the whole life. How does this appear? From the prophet's 
 word itself. For he who spake of the wrath of God and of their fast, 
 himself mentions the. reconciliation and its cause. And God saw their 
 works. What works? that they fasted? that they put on sackcloth? 
 He passes by these and says, that everyone turned f 7-0 m his evil ways ; 
 and God repented of the evil which He had said that He would do 
 unto them. Seest thou that not the fast plucked them from the peril, 
 but the change of life made God propitious to these heathen? I say 
 this, not that we should dishonour, but that we may honour fasting. 
 For the honour of a fast is not in abstinence from food, but in avoid- 
 ance of sin. So that he who limiteth fasting to the abstinence from 
 food only, he it is who above all dishonoureth it. Fastest thou? Show 
 it me by thy works." St Chrysostom, On the Statues, Horn. iii. 4, 
 quoted by Pusey. 
 
 God repented] When we regard the relations of Almighty God to 
 men and His dealings with them from the divine side, so far as it 
 is revealed to us and we are able to comprehend it, then they are all 
 foreseen and planned and executed in accordance with His perfect fore- 
 knowledge. Then there is no place for repentance, no room for 
 change. "Known unto God are all His works from the beginning of 
 the world." But when we alter our stand-point, and regard them from 
 the human side, when from the pure heights of contemplation we come 
 down to the busy field of action, free scope is given in the aspect 
 in which God then presents Himself to us for human effort and prayer 
 and feeling, then His purpose waits upon our will. Both of these 
 sides are freely and fearlessly set forth in Holy Scripture. On the one 
 side, "God is not a man that He should lie, neither the son of man 
 that He should repent" (Num. xxiii. 19). With Him "is no variable? 
 ness, neither shadow of turning" (James i. 17). On the other side we 
 read, "It repented the Lord that He had made man on the earth, and 
 it grieved Him at His heart" (Gen. vi. 6); "God repented of the evil 
 that He had said that He would do unto them, and He did it not." 
 Both views are equally true, and they are in perfect harmony with each 
 other, but Holy Scripture never attempts to harmonise them, nor is it 
 
v. i.] JONAH, III. IV. 49 
 
 the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and 
 he did it not. 
 
 i — ii. Jonah's Displeasure, and its Rebuke. 
 But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very 4 
 
 wise for us to attempt to do so ; we cannot look upon both sides of the 
 shield at once. 
 
 he did it not] It is obvious that this statement, and indeed the whole 
 account of the repentance of the Ninevites, is to be taken within the 
 limits which the history itself prescribes. There is nothing here to 
 contradict the subsequent relapse of the Ninevites into sin, their filling 
 up the measures of their iniquities, and the consequent overthrow of 
 their city and extinction of their national life. But none of these 
 things are here in view, the present fills the whole picture, and fills it 
 grandly. They are sinners. They are threatened. They repent. They 
 are saved. 
 
 The fact that no reference has been discovered amongst extant 
 Assyrian monuments to the mission of Jonah and its results may be 
 reasonably accounted for. The Assyrian records of this particular 
 period are singularly meagre in comparison of those of the immediately 
 preceding and succeeding reigns. The subject-matter of this event in 
 the national history is not such as the monuments are wont to record. 
 Wars and victories and material works chiefly occupy them. Moral 
 reformation is foreign to their theme. The marvellous manner in which 
 recent discoveries have come in confirmation of the statements of Holy 
 Scripture leave it open to us, however, to believe that some such 
 confirmation of the history of Jonah may yet reach us from secular 
 sources. 
 
 Ci-i. IV. 1 — 11. Jonah's Displeasure, and its Rebuke. 
 
 Greatly displeased at the clemency of God towards Nineveh, Jonah 
 confesses that it was the expectation that that clemency would be exer- 
 cised, which rendered him unwilling to undertake the divine mission at 
 the first, and in his annoyance and chagrin requests that he may die, 
 i — 3. Met by the calm appeal to reason, which however he is in no 
 mood to entertain, Docst thou well to be angry? Jonah goes out of the 
 city, and constructs in the immediate vicinity a booth or hut, under 
 the shelter of which he may dwell and watch, till the forty days are 
 expired, what the fate of Nineveh will be, 4, 5. Intending to correct 
 and instruct him by an acted parable, in which he himself should bear 
 the chief part, God causes a wide-spreading plant to spring up and 
 cover his booth with its refreshing shade. But scarcely has Jonah 
 begun to enjoy the welcome shelter trom the burning rays of the sun 
 thus afforded him, when God, in pursuit of His lesson, causes the plant 
 JONAH 4 
 
50 JONAH, IV. [v. 2. 
 
 2 angry. And he prayed unto the Lord, and said, I pray 
 
 to be attacked by insects, which rapidly strip it of its protecting leaves 
 and cause it to wither away, 6, 7. Once again, the hand that governs 
 all things sets in motion, like the blast of a furnace, the burning wind 
 of the desert, and the sun's unbroken rays pour down on the now de- 
 fenceless head of Jonah, so that faint and weary, beneath the weight of 
 bodily distress and mental disappointment, he urges anew his pas- 
 sionate complaint, Better for me to die than to live ! 7, 8. And now 
 the parable is complete, and only needs to be applied and interpreted. 
 Thou couldst have pity upon a short-lived plant, which cost thee and 
 which owed thee nothing ; thou art angry and justifiest thine anger, 
 even unto death, for its loss ; and shall not I, the Maker and the Lord 
 of all, have pity upon a great city, which, apart from its adult popu- 
 lation who might seem to have deserved their doom, numbers its six- 
 score thousand innocent children, and "very much cattle" — they too 
 ' ' much better than " a plant ? 9 — 1 1 . 
 
 1. it displeased Jonah, &c.~\ Lit. It was evil to Jonah, a great 
 evil, and it (viz. anger) kindled to him. Comp. Nehem. ii. 10. It 
 is clear that the immediate cause of Jonah's anger and vexation was the 
 preservation of Nineveh and the non-fulfilment of the threat which he 
 had been sent to pronounce. It was the anticipation of this result, 
 founded on the revealed character of God, that made him decline the 
 errand at first {v. 2). It was the realisation of it that so greatly troubled 
 him now. But why this result of his mission should have thus affected 
 him it has not been found so easy to decide. Some have thought — but 
 the view has nothing to commend it— that his annoyance was purely 
 personal and selfish, and that he was stung by the disgrace of appearing 
 as a false prophet in the sight of the heathen because his predictions 
 had not been verified. Others with better show of reason have assigned 
 to his displeasure the more worthy motive of jealousy for the honour 
 of God, in whose name and with whose message he had come to 
 Nineveh, and on whom he thought the reproach of fickleness and in- 
 constancy would fall. "He connected," writes Calvin, "his own 
 ministry with the glory of God, and rightly, because it depended on His 
 authority. Jonah, when he entered Nineveh, did not utter his cry as a 
 private individual, but professed himself to be sent by God. Now, if the 
 proclamation of Jonah is found to be false, the disgrace will fall upon 
 the author of the call himself, namely on God. There is no doubt, 
 therefore, that Jonah took it ill that the name of God was exposed to 
 the revilings of the heathen, as though He terrified without cause." 
 It is far more satisfactory, however, to suppose that Jonah was dis- 
 pleased that the mercy of God should be extended to heathen, and 
 especially to heathen who were the enemies and future oppressors of his 
 own people, and that he himself should be the messenger of that 
 mercy. This view falls in entirely with the exclusive spirit which marks 
 the Old Testament dispensation, while it brings out into bold relief the 
 liberal and Catholic spirit of the New Testament, which it is the object 
 of this book to inculcate. 
 
3,4-1 JONAH, IV. 
 
 thee, O Lord, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my 
 country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish : for I knew 
 that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, 
 and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil. Therefore z 
 now, O Lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it 
 is better for me to die than to live. Then said the Lord, 4 
 
 2. he prayed] His better mind had not altogether forsaken him. 
 He did not as before flee from the presence of the Lord, but betook 
 himself to Him, even in his irritation and discontent. 
 
 I fray thee] A particle of entreaty. In I. 14 it is translated " we 
 beseech thee." 
 
 I fled before] Lit. I prevented or anticipated to flee. That is, I fled 
 before something could happen. LXX. irpoi<t>0acra rod <pvyeiv. The 
 ellipsis has been variously supplied. "'I anticipated or prevented 
 (another charge) by escaping'; that is 'I fled before' another charge 
 could reach me." — Kalisch. " I anticipated (the danger which threatens 
 me) by fleeing to Tarshish." — Gesenius. "I hastened my flight." — 
 Rosenmiiller. 
 
 for I knew, &>c.] In common with all Israelites Jonah knew the 
 character of God to be what he here describes it, from His ancient reve- 
 lation to Moses (Exodus xxxiv. 6), repeated frequently by prophets and 
 psalmists (Numbers xiv. 18; Psalm ciii. 8, cxlv. 8), and renewed in 
 exactly the same terms as here by the prophet Joel (ii. 13). Knowing 
 that God threatens that He may spare, and warns that He may save, 
 Jonah rightly understood from the first that his mission to Nineveh was 
 a mission of mercy, and therefore he was unwilling to undertake it. 
 
 3. take... my life from me] So had Moses prayed (Numbers xi. 15) and 
 Elijah (1 Kings xix. 4), both with better cause, and in nobler spirit, but 
 both in the same utter weariness of life as Jonah. No one of them, 
 however, attempts to take his own life. They all regard it as a sacred 
 deposit, entrusted to them by God and only to be relinquished at His 
 bidding, or in accordance with His will. Comp. v. 8 below. 
 
 4. Doest thou well to be angry ?] Two other translations of these 
 words have been suggested. One, which though perhaps possible is 
 far-fetched and highly improbable, is, " Does (my) doing good (that is, 
 to Nineveh in sparing it) make thee angry ? " the reproof then being 
 similar to that in Matthew xx. 15, "Is thine eye evil because I am 
 good ? " The other, which is given in the margin of our English Bibles, 
 "Art thou greatly angry?" is fully borne out by the Hebrew, but, as 
 has been truly said, it "is in this context almost pointless." But the 
 rendering of the text is in accordance with Hebrew usage (comp. "They 
 have well said all that they have spoken," Deut. v. 28 [Heb. -25]; 
 "Thou hast well seen," Jer. i. 12) and gives a much more forcible 
 sense. It is the gentle question of suggested reproof, designed to still 
 the tumult of passion and lead to consideration and reflection. God 
 does not as a judge condemn Jonah's unreasonable anger, but invites 
 him to judge and condemn himself. 
 
 4—2 
 
52 JONAH, IV. [vv. 5, 6. 
 
 
 
 5 Doest thou well to be angry? So Jonah went out of the 
 city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him 
 a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he might see 
 
 b what would become of the city. And the Lord God pre- 
 
 5. So Jonah went out of the city] It has been proposed to take the 
 verbs in this verse as pluperfects : "Now Jonah had gone out of the 
 city, and abode on the east side of the city, &c." The verse will then 
 be a parenthesis introduced to relate what had really taken place before 
 Jonah's anger and complaint. In point of time it will precede the first 
 verse of the chapter. It is doubtful, however, whether such a ren- 
 dering is grammatically allowable ; nor is there any reason for adopting 
 it. The course of the narrative flows regularly on throughout the chap- 
 ter. Jonah while still in the city comes to know that Nineveh will be 
 spared. In bitter displeasure he complains to God, and is rebuked 
 (vv. i — 4). Still cherishing the hope of vengeance, fostered possibly 
 by the question in v. 4, which his distempered mind might interpret 
 to mean, "Do not judge too hastily what My purposes may be," he 
 will not abandon the city altogether. He will linger yet awhile in its 
 precincts, and watch what its fate shall be. 
 
 on the east side of the city] where it was skirted by hills. Probably 
 he chose some eminence from which he could command a view of the 
 city. 
 
 a booth] of twigs and branches, such as the Israelites were directed to 
 dwell in for seven days at the feast of tabernacles (Lev. xxiii. 42 ; Neh. 
 viii. 14 — 16). Such were the "tabernacles" which St Peter proposed 
 to make on the Mount of Transfiguration. 
 
 till he might see what would become of the city] We are not told whe- 
 ther this was before or after the forty days had expired. If it was 
 before, then we must suppose that Jonah, and possibly the Ninevites 
 also, had some direct intimation that God would spare the city, and 
 that Jonah in his reluctance to accept the result still tarried in the 
 neighbourhood, in the hope that on the appointed day the blow would 
 fall. If however we suppose that the forty days had elapsed without 
 the threatened judgment being executed, and that it was by this that 
 Jonah and the Ninevites knew that God had repented Him of the evil, 
 we can only conclude that Jonah hoped for some later punishment upon 
 the people of Nineveh, provoked it might be by their speedy relapse 
 into sin. "The days being now past, after which it was time that 
 the things foretold should be accomplished, and His anger as yet taking 
 no effect, Jonah understood that a respite of the evil has been granted 
 them, on their willingness to repent, but thinks that some effect of His 
 displeasure would come, since the pains of their repentance had not 
 equalled their offences. So thinking in himself apparently, he departs 
 from the city, and waits to see what will become of them." — St Cyr. 
 quoted by Pusey. 
 
 6. prepared] Rather, appointed. And so in vv. 7, 8. See i. 
 17, note. 
 
v. 6.] JONAH, IV. 53 
 
 pared a gourd, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it 
 
 a gourd] This is the only place in the Old Testament in which the 
 Hebrew word here translated gourd occurs. It is quite a different word 
 which is rendered gourd in i Kingsiy^jjOj and (of architectural orna- 
 ments) in i Kings vi. 18 (margin), vn. 24. It is an old controversy, 
 dating back as far as the times of Jerome and Augustine, whether 
 Jonah's plant was a gourd or not. It is now generally admitted that it 
 was not, but that the plant intended is the ricinus communis or castor- 
 oil plant. This plant satisfies all the requirements of the history. The 
 name kikaion here used in the Hebrew is akin to the word kikeia 
 or fciki ( Herodot. II. 94), which ancient authors tell us was used by the 
 Egyptians and others for the castor-oil plant. That plant is a native 
 of North Africa, Arabia, Syria and Palestine, and is said by travellers 
 to grow abundantly and to a great size in the neighbourhood of the 
 Tigris. It is succulent, with a hollow stem, and has broad vine-like 
 leaves (much larger, however, than those of the vine), which from their 
 supposed resemblance to the extended palm of the hand have gained 
 for the plant the name of Palma Christi, or palmchrist. It grows with 
 such extraordinary rapidity that under favourable conditions it rises to 
 about eight feet within five or six months, while in America it has been 
 known to reach the height of thirteen feet in less than three months. 
 Jerome also bears testimony to the rapidity of its growth. It is, he 
 says, "a shrub with broad leaves like vine-leaves. It gives a very 
 dense shade, and supports itself on its own stem. It grows most abund- 
 antly in Palestine, especially in sandy spots. If you cast the seed into 
 the ground, it is soon quickened, rises marvellously into a tree, and in 
 a few days what you had beheld a herb you look up to a shrub." — 
 Pusey. 
 
 made it to come up] Or, it came up. The naturally rapid growth of 
 the plant was miraculously accelerated. As in other miracles of Holy 
 Scripture Almighty God at once resembled nature and exceeded na- 
 ture. " We know that God, when He does anything beyond the course 
 of nature, does nevertheless come near to nature in His working. 
 This is not indeed always the case ; but we shall find for the 
 most part that God has so worked as to outdo the course of 
 nature, and yet not to desert nature altogether.... So too in this place, 
 I do not doubt that God chose a plant, which would quickly grow up 
 even to such a height as this, and yet that He surpassed the wonted 
 course of nature." (Calvin.) In like manner, our Lord, when at the 
 marriage-feast in Cana He turned the water into wine, "was working 
 in the line of (above, indeed, but not across or counter to) His more 
 ordinary workings, which we see daily around us, the unnoticed 
 miracles of every-day nature." " He made wine that day at the mar- 
 riage in those six water-pots which He had commanded to be filled with 
 water, Who every year makes it in the vines. For as what the servants 
 had put into the water-pots was tnrned into wine by the working of the 
 Lord, so too what the clouds pour lorth is turned into wine by the work- 
 ing of the same Lord. This however, we do not wonder at, because it 
 
54 JONAH, IV. [w. 7, 8. 
 
 might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his 
 7 grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd. But God 
 
 prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and 
 s it smote the gourd, that it withered. And it came to pass, 
 
 when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement east 
 
 happens every year: its frequency has made it cease to be a marvel." 
 St Augustine, quoted by Trench On the Miracles. 
 
 a shadow over his head] His booth or hut, made as we have seen of 
 twigs and branches, the leaves of which would naturally soon wither, 
 was far from being impervious to the rays of the sun. The living plant 
 rising above the booth and covering it with its broad shadow would 
 prove a most welcome addition. 
 
 from his grief] Lit. his evil, the same word as in v. i. The gloomy 
 and dissatisfied condition of his mind had been aggravated by physical 
 causes. The heat and closeness of his booth had added to the weariness 
 and oppression of his spirit. The palmchrist with its refreshing shade 
 by ministering to his bodily comfort had tended also to calm and soothe 
 the agitation of his mind. We need not look for any deeper meaning 
 in the words. It is surely a mistake to say that Jonah "must have 
 looked upon its sudden growth as a fruit of God's goodness towards 
 him (as it was) and then perhaps went on to think (as people do) that 
 this favour of God showed that He meant in the end to grant him 
 what his heart was set upon." (Pusey.) The object of the writer is 
 not to tell us what inferences Jonah drew from the sudden growth of the 
 plant, but what was the object and intention of Almighty God in 
 causing it to grow up over him. He sent it to refresh him as a step in 
 His lesson of correction and amendment ; He did not send it to mislead 
 him. The force of the rebuke inverses io, u, in which the chapter 
 culminates and which turns entirely upon Jonah's joy and grief for the 
 plant, is greatly weakened if we import into that joy and grief such 
 moral elements. 
 
 7. a worm] This of course may mean a single worm which either 
 by attacking the root or gnawing the stem, still young and tender and 
 not yet hardened by maturity, suddenly destroyed the palmchrist. It 
 is better, however, to take the word in its collective sense, worms, as in 
 Deut. xxviii. 39 ; Isaiah xiv. 1 1, and other passages. Thus the special 
 intervention of Almighty God again accommodates itself to nature. 
 "The destruction may have been altogether in the way of nature, 
 except that it happened at that precise moment, when it was to be 
 a lesson to Jonah. • On warm days, when a small rain falls, black 
 caterpillars are generated in great numbers on this plant, which, in one 
 night, so often and so suddenly cut off its leaves, that only their bare 
 ribs remain, which I have often observed with much wonder, as though 
 it were a copy of that destruction of old at Nineveh.' " — Pusey. 
 
 8. a vehement east wind] Margin, silent. This, or sultry, is probably 
 the true meaning of the word. " We have two kinds of sirocco," 
 writes Dr Thomson, "one accompanied with vehement wind which 
 
v. 8.] JONAH, IV. 55 
 
 wind; and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he 
 fainted, and wished in himself to die, and said, It is better 
 
 fills the air with dust and fine sand The sirocco to-day is of the 
 
 quiet kind, and they are often more overpowering than the others. 
 I encountered one a year ago on my way from Lydd to Jerusalem. 
 There is no living thing abroad to make a noise. The birds hide in 
 thickest shades ; the fowls pant under the walls with open mouth and 
 drooping wings ; the flocks and herds take shelter in caves and under 
 great rocks ; the labourers retire from the fields, and close the windows 
 and doors of their houses ; and travellers hasten, as I did, to take 
 shelter in the first cool place they can find. No one has energy enough 
 to make a noise, and the very air is too weak and languid to stir the 
 pendent leaves of the tall poplars." Land and Book, pp. 536, 537. 
 The occurrence of this wind at sunrise is referred to as a usual thing 
 by St James, i. 11, where the same Greek word (kolvgwv) is used for 
 " burning heat " as is used by the LXX. here. 
 
 fainted] It is the same word as occurs in Genesis xxxviii. 14, 
 " covered her with a veil" veiled herself, the reference being either 
 to the film that comes over the eyes in fainting and exhaustion, or to 
 the clouding of the mental powers from the same cause. This word is 
 used again of fainting from thirst in Amos viii. 1 3, and a similar word 
 in the same metaphorical sense in ch. ii. 7 of this book, where see 
 note. 
 
 zuished hi himself to die] Lit. asked for his life to die. Exactly the 
 same expression occurs with reference to Elijah when he was fleeing from 
 the wrath of Jezebel, 1 Kings xix. 4. The meaning of the phrase 
 seems to be that the prophet, both in the one case and in the other, 
 recognizing that his life was not his own, but God's, asked for it of 
 Him as a gift or boon, that he might do with it what he pleased. 
 Then the object with which he asked for it, the way in which he would 
 have it disposed of, is expressed by the word "to die," or " for death." 
 Hezekiah might have asked for his life, as indeed he did, in his grievous 
 sickness, but it was not "to die," but "to live." The example of 
 Elijah may perhaps have been in Jonah's mind when he penned these 
 words, or even when he gave vent to his impatient desire to die. If 
 the Jewish tradition that Jonah was the son of the widow of Zarephath 
 and the " servant " whom he left at Beersheba, 1 Kings xix. 3, could be 
 accepted, this would be the more probable. The cases of the two 
 prophets were however in reality very different. Both were weary of 
 life. Both desired to die. Both gave expression to their desire in the 
 same words. But here the resemblance ends. Elijah's was a noble 
 disappointment. "On Carmel the great object for which Elijah had 
 lived seemed on the point of being realised. Baal's prophets were 
 slain, Jehovah acknowledged with one voice : false worship put down. 
 Elijah's life aim — the transformation of Israel into a kingdom of 
 God — was all but accomplished. In a single day all this bright picture 
 was annihilated. " (Robertson.) But Jonah's was a far less worthy grief. 
 
5 6 JONAH, IV. [vv. 9, 10. 
 
 9 for me to die than to live. And God said to Jonah, Doest 
 
 thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well 
 
 ,d to be angry, even unto death. Then said the Lord, Thgu hast 
 
 It was not that God's kingdom was overthrown in Israel, but that it 
 was extended to the heathen world, that made him weary of his life. 
 Elijah grieved because he had failed in his efforts to convert and save 
 Israel ; Jonah because he had succeeded in converting and saving 
 Nineveh. 
 
 It is better er=<r.] The words "// is" which, as the italics in E.V. 
 show, are not in the original, are better omitted : " And said, Better 
 for me to die than to live.'''' 
 
 The excess of Jonah's joy and grief over the bestowal and loss of 
 the gourd was partly due to his sanguine and impulsive character. 
 But the influence here ascribed to physical circumstances over the mind, 
 especially when it is burdened with a great grief, is very true to nature. 
 "We would fain believe that the mind has power over the body, but 
 it is just as true that the body rules the mind. Causes apparently 
 the most trivial : a heated room — want of exercise — a sunless day — 
 a northern aspect — will make all the difference between happiness and 
 unhappiness, between faith and doubt, between courage and indecision." 
 (Robertson.) 
 
 9. even unto deat/i] "Art thou rightly angry for the palm christ? 
 I am rightly angry, {and that) tmto death:" i. e. " my anger is so great 
 that it well-nigh kills me, and even in that excess it is justified by the 
 circumstances." In like manner it is said of Samson that "his soul was 
 vexed unto death" by the urgency of Delilah (Judges xvi. 16), and 
 our Lord exclaims in the garden, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, 
 even unto death" (Matt. xxvi. 38), where Alford observes, "Our 
 Lord's soul was crushed down even to death by the weight of that 
 anguish which lay upon Him — and that literally — so that He (as regards 
 His humanity) would have died, had not strength {bodily strength up- 
 holding His human frame) been ministered from on high by an angel, 
 Luke xxii. 43." The question in its more general form, "Doest thou 
 well to be angry?" {v. 4) is here narrowed to a single issue, "Doest 
 thou well to be angry for the palmchrist V And Jonah, in his un- 
 reasoning irritation, accepts and answers it on that single issue, and 
 thus unwittingly prepares the way for the unanswerable argument 
 which follows. 
 
 10, 11.] The final appeal is forcible and conclusive, a grand and 
 worthy climax to this remarkable book. The contrasts are striking and 
 designed : Thou and I (the pronouns are emphatic, and each of them 
 introduces a member of the comparison), man and God ; the short-lived 
 palmchrist and Nineveh that great city ; the plant that cost thee nothing, 
 the vast population, thesixscore thousand children, the very much cattle, 
 which I made and uphold continually. Jonah is met upon his own 
 ground, the merely human sentiment of compassion, regard for what 
 is useful and good after its kind, sorrow for its loss, unwillingness to 
 see it perish. The higher moral ground is ior the time abandoned. 
 
v. ii.] JONAH, IV. 57 
 
 had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, 
 neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and 
 perished in a night: and should not X s P are Nineveh, that " 
 great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons 
 that cannot discern between their right hand and their left 
 hand; and also much cattle? 
 
 The repentance of the Ninevites is not brought into consideration. 
 But the lower ground is a step to the higher. " The natural God- 
 implanted feeling is the germ of the spiritual." 
 
 10. for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow] 
 The principle on which the contrast implied by these words rests 
 is that the effort which we have bestowed upon any object, the degree 
 in which our powers of mind or heart or body have been expended 
 upon it, in a word what it has cost us, is a measure of our regard for it. 
 No claim of this kind had the plant on Jonah. No single effort had 
 he made for it. He had not planted, or trained, or watered it, yet 
 he pitied it, and mourned for its decay with a yearning tenderness. 
 But on Almighty God, though the contrast is rather implied than 
 expressed, all creation has such a claim in fullest measure. He 
 " labours" not indeed ; He speaks, and it is done; He wills, and it is 
 accomplished. Yet in all things that exist He has the deepest interest. 
 He planned them, He made them, He sustains them, He rules them, 
 He cares for them. His tender mercies are over all His works. " This 
 entire train of thought," as Kalisch well remarks, "is implied in the 
 following fine lines of the Wisdom of Solomon : ' The whole world is 
 before Thee as a drop of the morning dew ; but Thou hast mercy upon 
 
 all and overlookest the sins of men, in order that they may amend; 
 
 for Thou lovest all the things that are, and disdainest nothing that 
 Thou hast made. ...Indeed Thou sparest all, for they are Thine, O 
 Lord, Thou lover of souls.' Wisd. xi. 22 — 26." 
 
 came up in a night &c] lit. was the son of a night, and perished 
 the son of a night, i.e. it came into existence and reached maturity 
 (comp. for this sense of was, And God said Let light be, and light was, 
 Gen. i. 3) in a single night, and no less rapidly (not literally in a 
 single night, for it was when the morning arose) withered away. 
 
 11. that cannot discern &=c] The idea that the whole population 
 of Nineveh is thus described, the reference being to their moral con- 
 dition of heathen ignorance and darkness, has nothing to recommend it. 
 On the contrary, the moral susceptibility of the Ninevites, although they 
 are heathen, is, as we have seen, a prominent feature in the history. 
 The reference is no doubt to the children of tender age who were as 
 yet incapable of moral discrimination, and could not therefore be 
 regarded as responsible agents. The same thought is expressed, with- 
 out a metaphor, by the phrases, " having no knowledge between good 
 and evil," Deut. i. 39; "Knowing to refuse the evil, and choose the 
 good," Isaiah vii. 15, 16. Between these helpless and innocent children, 
 together with the great multitude of unoffending animals which the 
 
5S JONAH, IV, 
 
 vast area of Nineveh contained, and the plant over which Jonah 
 mourned, regarded simply as objects of human compassion, all moral 
 considerations apart, the comparison lies. 
 
 Any attempt to compute the whole population of Nineveh from 
 the data thus given must necessarily be precarious, from the difficulty 
 of deciding at what age the line is to be drawn. But in any case the 
 total would not be excessive, for the population of so large an area as 
 we have seen that Nineveh enclosed. 
 
NOTE A. THE GREAT FISH. 
 
 There is no reason to suppose that the fish which swallowed Jonah 
 was not naturally capable of swallowing him whole. The old objection, 
 that it is said to have been a whale, and that the gullet of a whale is not 
 large enough to allow of the passage of a man, rests, as is now generally 
 known, upon a mistake. Jonah's fish is not really said to have been 
 a whale. Even if it were, it might be urged that one kind of whale, 
 "the sperm whale (Catodon macrocephahis) has a gullet sufficiently large 
 to admit the body of a man" (Smith's Bible Diet., Art. Whale), and 
 that if whales are not now found in the Mediterranean, they may have 
 been "frightened out of it" by the multiplication of ships, and may 
 have been common there in Jonah's time, when "navigation was in its 
 infancy, ships were few and small, and they kept mostly along the 
 shores, leaving the interior undisturbed." (Thomson, The Land and 
 the Book, pp. 68, 69.) But in fact the common idea of Jonah being 
 swallowed by a whale has no real warrant in holy Scripture at all. 
 Our Lord, indeed, is made to say in our English Bibles that Jonah 
 was "in the whale's belly" (Matt. xii. 40); but the word (ktjtos) used 
 by Him to denote Jonah's fish is taken from the Greek translation of the 
 Book of Jonah, with which He and His hearers were familiar, and 
 cannot be restricted to a whale, or to any of the so-called Cetaceans. 
 It means "any sea-monster, or huge fish," and is used of a "seal, or 
 sea-calf, and later especially of whales, sharks, and large tunnies." 
 (Liddell and Scott, Lex. s. v.). The Bible then does not say that 
 Jonah was swallowed by a whale. The O. T. simply speaks of "a 
 great fish," and the N. T. employs a strictly equivalent term. Here 
 we might be content to leave the question. We are not bound to show 
 what the fish was. It is, however, interesting to enquire whether any 
 particular fish can with probability be fixed upon, and the rather because 
 the choice of an agent ready to hand and naturally fitted for the work 
 accords with that "economy" of the miraculous which is characteristic 
 of holy Scripture. Now it has been satisfactorily proved that the com- 
 mon or white shark (Carcharias vulgaris) is found in the Mediterranean, 
 and well-authenticated instances have been given of its having swallowed 
 men and other large animals entire. "A natural historian of repute 
 relates, 'In 1758, in stormy weather, a sailor fell overboard from a 
 frigate in the Mediterranean. A shark was close by, which, as he 
 was swimming and crying for help, took him in his wide throat, so that 
 he forthwith disappeared. Other sailors had leaped into the sloop, to 
 help their comrade, while yet swimming ; the captain had a gun which 
 stood on the deck discharged at the fish, which struck it so, that it cast 
 
Go JONAH. 
 
 out the sailor which it had in its throat, who was taken up, alive and 
 little injured, by the sloop which had now come up. The fish was 
 harpooned, taken up on the frigate and dried. The captain made a 
 present of the fish to the sailor who, by God's Providence, had been so 
 wonderfully preserved. The sailor went round Europe exhibiting it. 
 He came to Franconia, and it was publicly exhibited here in Erlangen, 
 as also at Nurnberg and other places. The dried fish was delineated. 
 It was 20 feet long, and, with expanded fins, nine feet wide, and 
 weighed 3924 pounds. From all this, it is probable that this was the 
 fish of Jonah.'" (See Dr Pusey's Commentary on Jonah, Introd., 
 pp. 257, 258 ; Smith's Bible Diet., Art. Whale, where other instances 
 are given.) There is another fish, of which the Norwegian name is 
 Rorqual, i. e. whale with folds, which from its peculiar internal con- 
 struction is thought likely by some commentators to have been the 
 receptacle of Jonah. "The distinguishing feature of the whole genus 
 is the possession of 'a number of longitudinal folds, nearly parallel, 
 which commence under the lower lip, occupying the space between the 
 two branches of the jaw, pass down the throat, covering the whole 
 extent of the chest from one fin to the other, and terminate far down 
 the abdomen;' in the Mediterranean species ' reaching to the vent.'" 
 It has accordingly been suggested that "it may have been in the folds 
 of a Rorqual's mouth, which in the case of an individual 75 feet 
 long (such as was actually stranded at St Cyprien, Eastern Pyrenees, 
 in f828) would be a cavity of between 15 and 20 feet in length, that 
 the prophet was imbedded." {Speaker's Coni}?ientary in loc, and 
 Encycl. Brit, quoted there.) It would seem, however, that this Ror- 
 qual's throat is not large enough to swallow a man, so that on the 
 whole it is most likely that Jonah's fish was a shark. 
 
 NOTE B. NINEVEH. 
 
 It is evidently the design of the writer of this Book to give promi- 
 nence to the vast size of Nineveh. When he speaks of it, it is with 
 the constant addition, "the great city,'''' (i. 2; iii. 2; iv. 11), and the 
 addition is justified by the statements that it was "great to God," that 
 it was a city "of three days' journey," and that it contained "more than 
 sixscore thousand persons unable to discern between their right hand 
 and their left, and also much cattle " (iv. n). In seeking to verify this 
 description and to identify, with some reasonable degree of probability, 
 the Nineveh of Jonah, we have first to determine what is meant by the 
 expression "a city of three days' journey." It has been held that the 
 "three days' journey" describes the time that would be occupied in 
 traversing the city from end to end; along "the 'high street' repre- 
 senting the greatest length or ' the diameter ' of the town, which ran 
 from one principal gate to the opposite extremity." (Kalisch.) But 
 unless we are prepared to regard the "figures given in the text" as 
 
JONAH. 61 
 
 "the natural hyperboles of a writer who lived long after the virtual 
 destruction of the city, and who, moreover, was anxious to enhance the 
 impressiveness of his story and lesson, by dwelling on the vastness of 
 the population whose fate depended on their moral regeneration " (lb.), 
 we shall find it difficult to accept the gratuitous assumption that Nineveh 
 is here described as a city " about fifty-five English miles in diameter," 
 with a "high street" fifty-five miles long. Nor is it more satisfactory 
 to suppose that by a city of three days' journey is meant a city which it 
 would require three days to go all ovei\ No intelligible idea of size 
 could possibly be conveyed by such a definition. Adopting, then, the 
 more reasonable view that the "three days' journey " refers to the cir- 
 cumference of the city, and estimating a day's journey at about twenty 
 miles, we have Nineveh here described as comprising a circuit of about 
 sixty miles. Whether this large area was inclosed by continuous walls 
 we cannot certainly say. One ancient writer, indeed, (Diodorus Siculus) 
 asserts that it was, and that the walls were " ioo feet high, and broad 
 enough for three chariots to drive abreast upon " {Did. of Bible, Article 
 Nineveh) ; and he, moreover, gives the dimensions of the city as an 
 irregular quadrangle of about 60 miles in circuit. But without relying too 
 much upon his testimony, which may be regarded as doubtful, we may 
 conclude that an area such as has been described was sufficiently marked 
 out to be known and spoken of as the city of Nineveh. This vast area 
 was not, however, completely covered as in the case of our own cities, 
 with streets and squares and buildings. That was a feature unusual, 
 and almost unknown, in the ancient cities of the East. It was per- 
 haps the feature which, belonging to Jerusalem by virtue of the deep 
 ravines by which it was surrounded, and which "determined its natural 
 boundaries," and prevented its spreading abroad after the fashion of 
 other oriental cities, called forth the surprise and admiration of the 
 Jews after their return from Babylon. "Jerusalem," they exclaim, 
 "(unlike Babylon where we so long have dwelt) is built as a city 
 which is compact together." Like Babylon, Nineveh included not 
 only parks and paradises, but fields under tillage and pastures for 
 "much cattle" (iv. 11) in its wide embrace. The most probable site 
 of the city thus defined will be seen by reference to the accompanying 
 plan. It lies on the eastern bank of the Tigris in the fork formed by 
 that river and the Ghazr Su and Great Zab, just above their confluence. 
 The whole of this district abounds in heaps of ruins. Indeed, "they 
 are found," it is said, "in vast numbers throughout the whole region 
 watered by the Tigris and Euphrates and their confluents, from the 
 Taurus to the Persian Gulf." " Such mounds," it is added, "are espe- 
 cially numerous in the region to the east of the Tigris, in which Nineveh 
 stood, and some of them must mark the ruins of the Assyrian capital." 
 (Diet, of the Bible.) Four of these great masses of ruins, which will be 
 found marked on the plan, Kouyunjik, Nimrud, Karamless, Khorsabad, 
 form together an irregular parallelogram of very similar dimensions to 
 those mentioned in the text. From Kouyunjik (lying opposite Mosul) 
 on the Eastern bank of the Tigris, a line drawn in a S. E. direction, 
 parallel to the course of the river, to Nimrud is about eighteen miles. 
 From Nimrud, in a northerly direction, to Karamless is about twelve. 
 
62 JONAH. 
 
 The opposite sides of the parallelogram, from Karamless to the most 
 northerly point Khorsabad, and from Khorsabad to Kouyunjik again, 
 are about the same. These four vast piles of buildings, with the area 
 included in the parallelogram which they form, are now generally 
 identified with the site of the Nineveh which Jonah visited. For 
 fuller particulars the reader is referred to Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, 
 Article Nineveh, and to the well-known works of Mr Layard and 
 Professor Rawlinson. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Assyrian, king's robe, 44 ; king's throne, 
 ib. ; king, an autocrat, 45 ; polytheism, 
 47 
 
 booth, 52 
 
 Diagoras, story of, 29 
 
 east wind, see Sirocco 
 
 fainting, Hebrew method of describing, 
 
 38, 55 
 fasting, the true, 48 ; of dumb animals, 
 
 46 
 fish, that swallowed Jonah, not called 
 
 a whale, 59 ; probably a shark, 59, 
 
 60 
 
 gourd, 53 
 great to God, 40 
 
 Hebrew, a, 30 
 
 Jerusalem, "compact together," 61 
 Jonah, what is known of, 9, 10; birth- 
 place, 10 ; name, 10 note ; when he 
 lived, 10 ; traditions of, 10 note ; anger 
 of, 50, 51 ; sign of, 43 
 Jonah, book of, authorship, 9 : historical 
 character, 11 — 15; typical and prophe- 
 tical, 18, 19; object of, 15 — 19; analysis 
 
 of, to, 20 ; date, how affected by quo- 
 tations from Psalms, 35, and mention 
 of Nineveh, 40 
 Joppa, 26 
 
 lots, 30 
 
 mariners, 27 
 mercy, God so called, 38 
 miracles, 12 ; accommodated to nature, 
 53, 54 
 
 Nineveh, description of, 60 — 62 ; dimen- 
 sions, 40, 60, 61 ; site, 61, 62 ; popula- 
 tion, 58 
 
 prayer, wide meaning of in Holy Scrip- 
 ture, 34 
 presence, of the Lord, 25 
 
 repentance, of Jonah, 15 ; of the 
 Ninevites, 15, 43 — 46; of God, 48 
 
 shipmaster, 28 
 Sirocco, 54 
 
 Tarshish, 25 
 
 temple, looking toward the, 37 
 
 wares, 27, 28 
 
 CAMBRIDGE : HUNTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY I'KESS. 
 
The CAMBRIDGE BIBLE for SCHOOLS 
 
 ©ptntottss of ti)t prtstf* 
 
 " In many of our Grammar Schools and High Schools, at least the 
 elder lads are now 'examined' in some portion of Holy Scripture, and 
 have to 'get it up' as they would a book of Virgil or of Homer. In 
 a large proportion of these schools the Scripture Examination is con- 
 ducted by members of the Cambridge University. The examiners have 
 found, as was natural, that, while on every other subject handbooks of 
 the most accessible and serviceable kind abound, there is an absolute 
 dearth of similar manuals on the several books of Scripture. Now the 
 lads in our schools, and even the junior students of our colleges, can 
 hardly be expected to keep a long array of commentaries on their 
 shelves, or to be able to use them to much purpose even if they have 
 access to them. Hence the Syndics of the University Press have 
 decided to produce a series of the Scripture manuals of which there is 
 just now so great a need, and have selected Canon Perowne as general 
 editor of the series. No better selection could have been made. The 
 name of Dr Perowne is a guarantee for good and scholarly work ; while 
 his intimate acquaintance with the Biblical scholars of every Church 
 ■and school of thought will enable him to secure the co-operation of the 
 men best fitted to assist him. 
 
 "The first volume of the series now lies before me — a small octavo 
 of two hundred pages. Paper and type ai-e as good as can be desired . 
 And into this small volume Dr Maclear, besides a clear and able Intro- 
 duction to the Gospel, and the text of St Mark, has compressed many 
 hundreds of valuable and helpful notes. In short, he has given us 
 a capital manual of the kind required — containing all that is needed to 
 illustrate the text, i. e. all that can be drawn from the history, geography, 
 customs, and manners of the time. Of course it is part of a School 
 Bible, and does not trace the sequence of thought in the Gospel, or 
 emphasize the truths taught in it; still less does it deduce and discuss 
 doctrines. But as a handbook, giving in a clear and succinct form the 
 information which a lad requires in order to stand an examination in the 
 Gospel, it is admirable ... I can very heartily commend it, not only 
 to the senior boys and girls in our High Schools, but also to Sunday- 
 school teachers, who may get from it the very kind of knowledge they 
 often find it hardest to get. " — Expositor. 
 
 "The scheme is well started in the little book before us. Dr 
 Maclear has formed a sound conception of the kind of book needed for 
 school purposes, and has made his contribution thoroughly serviceable. 
 The text, with copious notes, is preceded by an Introduction dealing 
 briefly with the general characteristics of the Gospel according to St 
 Mark, its genuineness, integrity, the critical difficulties connected with 
 the portion xvi. 9 — 20, and such like topics. With the help of a book 
 like this, an intelligent teacher may make 'Divinity' as interesting 
 a lesson as any in the school course. The notes are of a kind that will 
 be, for the most part, intelligible to boys of the lower forms of our 
 public schools ; but they may be read with greater profit by the fifth 
 and sixth, in conjunction with the original text." — The Academy. 
 
CAMBRIDGE BIBLE FOR SCHOOLS. 
 
 "The Cambridge Bible for Schools: St Mark. — This little 
 volume forms the first part of an edition of the Bible which is being 
 issued from the University Press, under the general direction of Prof. 
 
 Perowne St Mark is edited by Dr Maclear, Head Master of King's 
 
 College School. It is a very business-like little book. The text is 
 given in paragraphs, and each paragraph has a title, which reappears as 
 a division of the notes. The introduction, which occupies twenty pages, 
 is clear and good, and concludes with an analysis of the book. There 
 are maps and an index. The notes are pointed and instructive, and 
 constantly give words and phrases from Wicliff's version, and quota- 
 tions from classical and modern authors, which add greatly to the 
 interest of the work and to its usefulness for schools. There is a good 
 list of writers who have undertaken other parts of this edition of the 
 Bible, including the editor and his distinguished brothers, Professor 
 Plumptre, Canon Farrar, Dr Moulton, and Mr Sanday." — Contemporary 
 Review. 
 
 1 ' The Gospel according to S. Mark, with Notes and Introduction, by 
 Rev. G. F. Maclear, D.D. (Cambridge University Press), is a publi- 
 cation which will be of the highest value for all teaching purposes ; it 
 is beautifully executed in all respects, and deserves a high recommend- 
 ation. The notes supply the needful facts of criticism without its 
 pedantry, and are redolent of high culture and ability. We observe 
 that it forms the first volume of a series by various editors, to bear the 
 general title of The Cambridge Bible for Schools, and which is 
 apparently intended to popularise Biblical science as far as it can be 
 done. If each of the volumes be executed as well as this, there could 
 scarcely be a more valuable gift to schools and educational institutions 
 of every grade." — Literary Churchman. 
 
 " The Gospel according to St Mark, with Notes by the Rev. G. F. 
 Maclear, D.D., is the first of a series of Text-books upon the Bible, 
 divided into handy portions, suitable for school use. The whole of the 
 Bible will be in due course annotated and published in separate parts, 
 at a moderate price, by the Syndicate of the Cambridge University Press. 
 If the succeeding books of the series shall be as well edited as the one 
 now before us, we may confidently predict a large sale for them.... Dr 
 Maclear's introductory chapters and analysis of the Gospel of St Mark 
 are excellent. They give the youthful student a sketch of the Evangelist 
 and of the leading characteristics of his Gospel. They answer his 
 questions as to where, when, for whom, and in what language it was 
 written. The notes are clear, full of information — not mere words and 
 wind. They prove that the Editor has laid under tribute the labours of 
 many writers, and that he possesses a remarkable faculty for making 
 exceedingly apt quotations from every author that he has read. Of 
 course the notes betoken an accurate and scholarly acquaintance with the 
 Greek text. This manual will be found most useful to schoolmasters 
 and Sunday-school teachers ; to them the cheapness of this book (only 
 half-a-crown) will be an additional recommendation." — John Bull. 
 
 " We welcome with enthusiasm this first fruit of the banding to- 
 gether of eminent divinity students of our Universities under the editor- 
 ship of Dr Perowne, and are not sorry that it represents the labours of 
 so experienced a scholar and teacher as Dr Maclear, upon the Gospel 
 of St Mark. We gather from it an earnest of the handy and compact 
 
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 arrangement to be looked for in the contents of the volumes to follow, 
 the ordering of the requisite introductory matter, the conciseness yet 
 sufficiency of the notes to the text, the fullness of the general index, and 
 the discreet choice of that of special words and phrases.... Amongst 
 other introductory matter are several helpful and lucid analyses ; and 
 when we come to the chapters of the text annotated in the form of 
 footnotes, it is borne in upon us that not only is all collateral in- 
 formation, historical, geographical, textual, and linguistic, pressed 
 judiciously into the allotted note-space, but the best books illustrative 
 of the subject — e.g. Stanley's "Sinai and Palestine," Tristram's "Land 
 of Israel," and Thomson's "Land and the Book," with other kindred 
 works of reference, are concisely quoted, as well as on more reflective 
 matters, Farrar's "Life of Christ."... When we add that here and there 
 some pregnant sentence of Augustine, such as "Caro premit, fides tangit," 
 
 is brought to bear on the text and that all niceties of language 
 
 are carefully traced out and explained ; we shall have shown, it may be, 
 sufficient cause why this volume, and those that follow it, if of like 
 calibre, should find a place, not only in the study of the intelligent 
 schoolboy and young biblical scholar, but also in the clergyman's 
 library, where not a little pabulum for sermon hints may be derived 
 from what is a mine of information, although contained in a succinct 
 and handy volume." — English Churchman. 
 
 "This is the first instalment of the Cambridge Bible for Schools, 
 which, we venture to predict, will be a useful assistant to the intelligent 
 reading of the Scriptures, whether we regard the high reputation of the 
 editor, Dr J. J. S. Perowne, or the list of proposed contributors, or 
 whether we judge of the whole by anticipation from the specimen now 
 before us. Anything written by Dr Maclear for the use of schools will 
 at once command respect, and this book in completeness and arrange- 
 ment fully maintains the high character of his well-known Manuals on 
 the Old and New Testaments, There are two ways of studying the 
 Scriptures: ist, by taking a wide view of the whole of a subject, as of 
 the Gospel history, in such a book as Mac tear's New Testament Manual ; 
 or, sndly, by giving a minute study to one particular book, observing 
 its special characteristics of language and style and matter, and compar 
 ing it in detail with the others. For such a purpose the present work 
 is admirably adapted. It collects all that either is known or may be in- 
 ferred of the life of the author, marshals the characteristic features of 
 the Gospel as bearing on the question of the purpose and other circum- 
 stances of its composition, and supplies a careful analysis of its contents. 
 The Gospel itself follows according to the authorised version, illustrated 
 by an abundant supply of notes occupying 168 pages. These are so full 
 that we may venture to say that nothing noteworthy is left untouched." — 
 The Church Sunday School Magazine. 
 
 '•'■The Gospel according to St Matthew, by the Rev. A. Carr. This 
 valuable series of school books is under the editorship of Professor 
 Perowne, and is doing a great and thorough educational work in 
 our schools. The volume before us condenses in the smallest possible 
 space the best results of the best commentators on St Matthew's Gospel. 
 The introduction is able, scholarly, and eminently practical, as it bears 
 on the authorship and contents of the Gospel, and the original form 
 in which it is supposed to have been written. It is well illustrated by 
 
CAMBRIDGE BIBLE FOR SCHOOLS. 
 
 two excellent maps of the Holy Land and of the Sea of Galilee." — 
 English Churchnian. 
 
 " The Book of Joshua. Edited by G. F. Maclear, D.D. We have 
 the first instalment of what we have long desiderated, a School Com- 
 mentary on the books of Scripture. If we may judge of the work con- 
 templated by the sample before us it has our heartiest commendation. 
 With Dr J. J. S. Perowne for General Editor and an eminent list of 
 well-known Biblical scholars as contributors, we have the highest 
 guarantee that the work will be completed in a scholarly, useful, and 
 reliable form. The introductory chapter of the present volume on the 
 life, character, and work of Joshua is ably and attractively written. 
 We would call special attention to the section that treats of the destruc- 
 tion of the Canaanitish nations by Divine command. This, as a subject 
 likely to be misunderstood by young Bible scholars, called for clear and 
 judicious handling, and we are glad to notice that it has been fully, and, 
 as we think, very successfully dealt with. ...The 'notes 'will be found 
 brief, terse, pointed, and suggestive. The historical illustrations are 
 apposite and felicitous. The maps and geographical explanations are 
 accurate and valuable. The book ought to be in the hands of every 
 teacher, and even clergymen will find it a valuable accession to their 
 list of commentaries. We await the issue of the remaining volumes 
 with interest." — Weekly Review. 
 
 "A very important work in the nature of a Scriptural text-book for 
 the use of students has been undertaken by the Syndics of the Cam- 
 bridge University Press — namely, the separate issue of the several books 
 of the Bible, each edited and annotated by some Biblical scholar of high 
 reputation. Among those who have undertaken to contribute to the 
 work are Canon Farrar, Professor Robertson Smith, Professor Davidson, 
 Professor E. H. Plumptre, Archdeacon Perowne, and Dr Maclear. The 
 whole series is being edited by Canon Perowne. The work is entitled 
 The Cambridge Bible for Schools, and four instalments of it have already 
 appeared — the Book of Joshua and the Gospel according to St Mark, 
 by Dr Maclear; the Gospel according to St Matthew, by the Rev. 
 A. Carr, M.A.; and the General Epistle of St James, by Professor 
 Plumptre. The method pursued in each text-book is the same. There 
 is first a biographical, historical, and critical introduction ; after which 
 follows the text, profusely illustrated and explained by notes. The 
 amount of work expended on each of the four text-books that have 
 thus far appeared is very great; and it is, moreover, work of excellent 
 quality, undertaken and performed in a broad and scholarly spirit. 
 The value of the work as an aid to Biblical study, not merely in schools 
 but among people of all classes who are desirous to have intelligent 
 knowledge of the Scriptures, cannot easily be over-estimated." — The 
 Scotsman. 
 
 "The Books of Joshua and Mark, by the Rev. G. F. Maclenr, 
 D.D.; St Matthew, by the Rev. A. Carr, M.A. ; St James, by E. H. 
 Plumptre, D.D. It is with gratitude to the Syndics of the Cambridge 
 University Press that we receive the first four specimens of their attempt 
 to supply an annotated edition of the Bible in handy portions, suitable 
 for school use, and as a preparation for the University Local Exami- 
 nations, whether in England or Scotland. In selecting the Hulsean 
 1'rofessor of Divinity, Canon Perowne, as general editor, they have 
 
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 given a guarantee of the combined orthodoxy and scholarship of the 
 work.... Each pretty little volume varies in pjice from is. 6d. to 2S. 6d. 
 Older folks than the youths who study for the University examina- 
 tions — even ministers themselves — will be glad to use such helps to 
 the critical study of the Divine Word. For travellers and holiday- 
 makers the volumes are most appropriate. To the exiles in the isolated 
 stations of India, China, and the Colonies, we commend the Cambridge 
 Bible for Schools"— Daily Reviexv (Edinburgh). 
 
 "Among the Commentaries which are in course of publication, the 
 Cambridge Bible for Schools (Cambridge University Press) deserves 
 mention. It is issued in conveniently-sized volumes, each containing 
 a Book of the Old or New Testament. We have just received two of 
 these volumes — one, on The Book of Joshua, prepared by Dr Maclear, 
 of the King's College School ; the other, by Professor Plumptre, on 
 The Epistle of St James. That they are designed for the use of schools 
 sufficiently indicates the scope of the annotations which accompany the 
 text of each of these books. That on the Book of Joshua is enriched 
 with notices of the most recent discoveries in Biblical archaeology and 
 geography. The illustrations, however, are not confined to such notices, 
 but embrace a wider exegesis. It has, moreover, two maps and a very 
 good index of the contents of the annotations. The volume on the 
 Epistle of St James is, independently of a sufficient commentary, en- 
 riched with a useful introduction, in which the authorship of the Epistle 
 and the time when written are discussed with the fulness which we had 
 a right to expect from Dr Plumptre. The series will be valuable to 
 schools; but it will by no means exhaust its usefulness there. More 
 advanced readers of Holy Scripture than are to be found in our public 
 schools will derive assistance from these handy volumes, which, when 
 completed — if completed as those already published give us reason to 
 expect — will be a welcome addition to our commentaries on Holy 
 Scripture." — John Bull. 
 
 "St Matthew, edited by A. Carr, M.A. The Book of Joshua, edited 
 by G. F. Maclear, D.D. 77ie General Epistle of St James, edited by 
 E. H. Plumptre, D.D. (Cambridge University Press). These volumes 
 are constructed upon the same plan, and exhibit the same features as 
 that on 'St Mark's Gospel,' of which we gave a full account on its 
 issue. The introductions and notes are scholarly, and generally such 
 as young readers need and can appreciate. The maps in both Joshua 
 and Matthew are very good, and all matters of editing are faultless. 
 Professor Plumptre's notes on 'The Epistle of St James' are models of 
 terse, exact, and elegant renderings of the original, which is too often 
 obscured in the authorised version." — Nonconformist. 
 
 "The issue of the Bible in sections, although not an entirely novel 
 plan, is now, we believe, adopted for the first time with a special view 
 to school use, each book in this series being intended as a separate 
 text-book, complete in itself, Avith its introduction, notes, and maps. 
 The system which has always been adopted with the best results in 
 regard to secular school-books can scarcely fail to be equally valuable 
 when applied to the sacred volume, and, as the names of the editors 
 will show, the most eminent scholars and divines of the day are being 
 employed upon the work. The text adopted in the edition is that of 
 Scrivener's Cambridge Paragraph Bible, the notes in every case being 
 printed under the text. When completed, the Bible will form a most 
 
CAMBRIDGE BIBLE FOR SCHOOLS. 
 
 valuable work for reference as well as for its more immediate purpose." 
 — Publishers' Circular. 
 
 " The General Epistle of St James , with Notes and Introduction. 
 By Professor Plumptre, D.D. (University Press, Cambridge). This is 
 only a part of the Cambridge Bible for Schools, and may be bought 
 for a few pence. Nevertheless it is, so far as I know, by far the best 
 exposition of the Epistle of St James in the English language. Not 
 Schoolboys or Students going in for an examination alone, but Ministers 
 and Preachers of the Word, may get more real help from it than from 
 the most costly and elaborate commentaries." — Expositor. 
 
 "The system of University Local Examinations has been fruitful 
 not only in encouraging education in its higher branches, but it has 
 been the means of the publication of many valuable helps to candidates 
 and students generally. No work of this class, however, will, we 
 think, be found to be more useful to all students of Scripture than that 
 now being issued by the Cambridge University Press, bearing the title, 
 "The Cambridge Bible for Schools. "...The names of the editors are 
 sufficient to denote the ability with which these books are prepared. 
 They each contain a copious introduction, and explanatory notes, which 
 throw such light upon the passages as few books of their class do. 
 The maps are well executed." — Christian Signal. 
 
 "With Mr Carr's well-edited apparatus to St Matthew's Gospel, 
 where the text is that of Dr Scrivener's Cambridge Paragraph Bible, 
 we are sure the young student will need nothing but a good Greek 
 text.... We should doubt whether any volume of like dimensions could 
 be found so sufficient for the needs of a student of the first Gospel, from 
 whatever point of view he may approach it." — Saturday Review. 
 
 "The Cambridge Bible for Schools: St Matthew, Joshua, 
 Jonah, Corinthians, and James. We have on a former occasion drawn 
 the attention of our readers to the first volume of this excellent series — 
 St Mark. The volumes indicated above have now been published, and 
 fully maintain the high standard won by the first. They furnish valu- 
 able and precise information in a most convenient form, and will be 
 highly esteemed by students preparing for examinations, and also by 
 Sunday-school teachers and others. They are particularly valuable in 
 furnishing information concerning history, geography, manners and 
 customs, in illustration of the sacred text." — The Baptist. 
 
 "The Cambridge Bible for Schools: — The First Epistle to the 
 Corinthians. Edited by Professor Lias. Jonah. Edited by Arch- 
 deacon Perowne. (Cambridge University Press.) Every freslr instal- 
 ment of this annotated edition of the Bible for schools confirms the 
 favourable opinion we formed of its value from the examination of its 
 first number. The origin and plan of the Epistle are discussed with its 
 character and genuineness. The analysis of its contents is very full and 
 clear, and will be found of great service to the teachers of the more 
 advanced classes in Sunday-schools and to the leaders of Bible-classes. 
 The notes at the foot of the text are brief, but suggestive. We should 
 recommend the committee of the City Missions, and all who have 
 charge of rural evangelization societies, to put this book into the hands 
 of their agents. The nature of the Book of Jonah is such that it 
 involves a discussion at the outset as to whether it is fable or fact, or 
 partly both. And we have, therefore, a portion of the introduction 
 devoted to that subject. The moral teaching of the book is so valuable, 
 
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 and the light it sheds upon the growth of religion amongst the Jews 
 so interesting, that these elements ought to receive the largest share of 
 an editor's attention." — The Nonconformist. 
 
 "Dr Maclear's commentary for Schools on The Book of Joshua is, 
 as may be anticipated from him, clear and compendious. The historical 
 books of the Old Testament are especially adapted for such an exegesis, 
 elucidating many minute points, which might escape the observation of 
 a less careful student. Another volume of the same* series, The Gospel 
 of St Matthew, with Mr Carr's annotations, deserves equally high 
 praise. The commentary is terse and scholarly, without losing its 
 interest for ordinary readers. The maps, the index, and the tabulated 
 information in the Appendix all enhance the usefulness of this handy 
 little volume. The name of the editor, Dr Plumptre, is in itself enough 
 to recommend the edition of The General Epistle of St James, in 
 the same series. More copious than the companion volumes, it 
 contains some lengthy notes in the form of an excursus — e.g. on the 
 personal relation of St Paul and St James the Less." — Guardian. 
 
 "The last part, the Book of Jonah, is from the hand of (The Ven. 
 T. T.) Perowne, Archdeacon of Norwich. The little work is well done, 
 written in a graceful, lucid, and cheerful style, which will be attractive 
 to young readers. The notes contain information and reflection in a 
 very just proportion, the great preponderance being given to informa- 
 tion." — The British and Foreign Evangelical Reviezv. 
 
 " The Acts of the Apostles. — Edited by J. Rawson Lumby, D.D., 
 Norrisian Professor of Divinity. — We said before, in noticing former 
 volumes, not only the schoolboy or girl, or the student preparing for 
 examination, but the general reader and devout Christian will find these 
 handy books most edifying. The editors have drawn from history, 
 geography, and the manners and customs of the East, everything that 
 will illustrate the text and make it clear to the dullest comprehension. 
 With the help of such books, Divinity is made a most interesting study, 
 and no one connected with tuition, either in our Sunday or day-schools, 
 but will here find helpful assistance. Doctrinal teaching is not at- 
 tempted — but, frequently, and especially in The Acts of the Apostles, 
 great pains are taken to enable the student, ignorant of Greek, to under- 
 stand the varied forces of the tenses of the verbs, the degrees of 
 comparison of the adjectives, and the more literal interpretation of the 
 Greek idioms." — Cambridge Chronicle. 
 
 "We believe we have already spoken of previous volumes in terms 
 of praise. Indeed, it would be difficult to speak too highly of the 
 volumes before us, especially that edited by Professor Lumby. They 
 carry on the same 'lines' as their predecessors, and are eminently 
 adapted for the needs of those schools where it is the custom to set 
 a portion of Scripture to be got up just like a book of Virgil or Homer. 
 The notes are foot-notes, and explain with clearness and brevity all 
 the points of interest, geographical, topographical, and archaeological, 
 touched upon in the text." — Educational Times. 
 
 '"'•The Book of Joshua. By the Rev. G. F. Maclear, D.D. Jonah. 
 By the Ven. T. T. Perowne, B.D. The Gospel according to St Matthew. 
 By the Rev. A. Carr, M.A. The Gospel according to St Mark. By 
 the Rev. G. F. Maclear, D.D. The Acts of the Apostles (i— xiv). By 
 J. Rawson Lumby, D.D. We cannot have a healthier intellectual 
 exercise than an impartial examination of the structure and contents 
 of Scripture, and there are no books more likely to aid such an 
 
8 CAMBRIDGE BIBLE FOR SCHOOLS. 
 
 examination than the Manuals issued by the Syndics of the University 
 Press. Works of more solid worth have not been published. The 
 text adopted throughout is that of Scrivener's Cambridge Paragraph 
 Bible. Each part contains a careful and scholarly introduction on the 
 authorship, the date, the sources, &c, of the book. The notes are 
 terse and suggestive, giving in few words the gist of elaborate re- 
 searches. They abound in fine textual criticism, no less than in valuable 
 doctrinal and ethical comments. Dr Maclear is thoroughly at home in 
 such an historical book as Joshua. He draws illustrations from all 
 quarters, especially from old English literature, and writes in a style 
 of great elegance. The volume on Jonah is a literary gem, both on 
 apologetic and hermeneutical grounds. In Mr Carr's Matthew there is, 
 in addition to keen verbal criticism and archaeological research, a deter- 
 mined effort to trace the course of thought in the inspired text, to point 
 out the nexus between the various sections and verses of the Gospel. 
 Mr Carr has all the qualifications which vigorous and refined scholar- 
 ship can give, and possesses what is of far higher value, clear spiritual 
 insight. Mr Lumby's manner of work is known to most of our readers 
 from his papers in the Expositor. His notes on the Acts will certainly 
 enhance his reputation, and form a valuable commentary on one of the 
 most important books of the New Testament. Mr Lumby has enriched 
 his pages with illustrations of singular appropriateness from the Talmud. 
 He is evidently familiar with ' this great sea ' of Jewish literature, and 
 draws from it for the elucidation of his text treasures of no ordinary 
 worth. All these books are, in fact, a valuable addition to our Biblical 
 expositions, original contributions to a subject of transcendant import- 
 ance ; and while they cannot fail to be valued by those for whom they 
 are expressly designed, we have a shrewd suspicion that they will be 
 still more highly appreciated by minds of a riper order. The maps 
 which most of the manuals contain are beautifully executed, and will be 
 a great aid to the intelligent study of the Scriptures. Canon Perowne, 
 to whom the general editorship of the series has been entrusted, may be 
 congratulated on the success which the scheme has so far achieved. 
 ' The Cambridge Bible for Schools ' is one of the most popular and 
 useful literary enterprises of the nineteenth century." — Baptist Magazine. 
 
 "The Cambridge Bible for Schools — The Second Epistle to 
 the Corinthians. By Professor Lias. The General Epistles of St Peter 
 and St Jude. By E. H. Plumptre, D.D. We welcome these 
 additions to the valuable series of the Cambridge Bible. We have 
 nothing to add to the commendation which we have from the first 
 publication given to this edition of the Bible. It is enough to say that 
 'rofessor Lias has completed his work on the two Epistles to the 
 Corinthians in the same admirable manner as at first. Dr Plumptre 
 has also completed the Catholic Epistles." — Nonconformist. 
 
 "(i) The Acts of the Apostles. By J. Rawson LUMBY, D.D. 
 (2) The Second Epistle of the Corinthians, edited by Professor Lias. 
 The introduction is pithy, and contains a mass of care fully- selected 
 information on the authorship of the Acts, its designs, and its sources. 
 
 The Second Epistle of the Corinthians is a manual beyond all 
 
 praise, for the excellence of its pithy and pointed annotations, its 
 . hi lysis of the contents, and the fulness and value of its introduction." 
 — Examiner. 
 
 camijkidge: hunted uy c. j. clay, m.a., at thk university press. 
 
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