Bible Commentary

Expositor's Bible Commentary Jonah 1:1 Now the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, THE GREAT REFUSAL Jonah 1:1-17 WE have now laid clear the lines upon which the Book of Jonah was composed. Its purpose is to illustrate God’s grace to the heathen in face of His people’s refusal to fulfill their mission to them. The author was led to achieve this purpose by a parable, through which the prophet Jonah moves as the symbol of his recusant, exiled, redeemed, and still hardened people. It is the Drama of Israel’s career, as the Servant of God, in the most pathetic moments of that career. A nation is stumbling on the highest road nation was ever called to tread. "Who is blind but My servant, Or deaf as My messenger whom I have sent?" He that would read this Drama aright must remember what lies behind the Great Refusal which forms its tragedy. The cause of Israel’s recusancy was not only willfulness or cowardly sloth, but the horror of a whole world given over to idolatry, the paralyzing sense of its irresistible force, of its cruel persecutions endured for centuries, and of the long famine of Heaven’s justice. These it was which had filled Israel’s eyes too full of fever to see her duty. Only when we feel, as the writer himself felt, all this tragic background to his story, are we able to appreciate the exquisite gleams which he flashes across it: the generous magnanimity of the heathen sailors, the repentance of the heathen city, and, lighting from above, God’s pity upon the dumb heathen multitudes. The parable or drama divides itself into three parts: The Prophet’s Flight and Turning (chapter 1); The Great Fish and What it Means (chapter 2); and The Repentance of the City (chapters 3 and 4). The chief figure of the story is Jonah, son of Amittai, from Gath-hepher in Galilee, a prophet identified with that turn in Israel’s fortunes by which she began to defeat her Syrian oppressors, and win back from them her own territories-a prophet, therefore, of revenge, and from the most bitter of the heathen wars. "And the word of Jehovah came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Up, go to Nineveh, the Great City, and cry out against her, for her evil is come up before Me." But "he arose to flee." It was not the length of the road, nor the danger of declaring Nineveh’s sin to her face, which turned him, but the instinct that God intended by him something else than Nineveh’s destruction; and this instinct sprang from his knowledge of God Himself. "Ah now, Jehovah, was not my word, while I was yet upon mine own soil, at the time I made ready to flee to Tarshish, this-that I knew that Thou art a God gracious and tender and long-suffering, plenteous in love and relenting of evil?" { Jonah 4:2 } Jonah interpreted the Word which came to him by the Character which he knew to be behind the Word. This is a significant hint upon the method of revelation. It would be rash to say that, in imputing even to the historical Jonah the fear of God’s grace upon the heathen, our author were guilty of an anachronism. We have to do, however, with a greater than Jonah-the nation herself. Though perhaps Israel little reflected upon it, the instinct can never have been far away that someday the grace of Jehovah might reach the heathen too. Such an instinct, of course, must have been almost stifled by hatred born of heathen oppression, as well as by the intellectual scorn which Israel came to feel for heathen idolatries. But we may believe that it haunted even those dark periods in which revenge upon the Gentiles seemed most just, and their destruction the only means of establishing God’s kingdom in the world. We know that it moved uneasily even beneath the rigor of Jewish legalism. For its secret was that faith in the essential grace of God, which Israel gained very early and never lost, and which was the spring of every new conviction and every reform in her wonderful development. With a subtle appreciation of all this, our author imputes the instinct to Jonah from the outset. Jonah’s fear, that after all the heathen may be spared, reflects the restless apprehension even of the most exclusive of his people-an apprehension which by the time our book was written seemed to be still more justified by God’s long delay of doom upon the tyrants whom He had promised to overthrow. But to the natural man in Israel the possibility of the heathen’s repentance was still so abhorrent that he turned his back upon it. "Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the face of Jehovah." In spite of recent arguments to the contrary, the most probable location of Tarshish is the generally accepted one, that it was a Phoenician colony at the other end of the Mediterranean. In any case it was far from the Holy Land; and by going there the prophet would put the sea between himself and his God. To the Hebrew imagination there could not be a flight more remote. Israel was essentially an inland people. They had come up out of the desert, and they had practically never yet touched the Mediterranean. They lived within sight of it, but from ten to twenty miles of foreign soil intervened between their mountains and its stormy coast. The Jews had no traffic upon the sea, nor (but for one sublime instance to the contrary) had their poets ever employed it except as a symbol of arrogance and restless rebellion against the will of God. It was all this popular feeling of the distance and strangeness of the sea which made our author choose it as the scene of the prophet’s flight from the face of Israel’s God. Jonah had to pass, too, through a foreign land to get to the coast: upon the sea he would only be among heathen. This was to be part of his conversion. "He went down to Yapho, and found a ship going to Tarshish, and paid the fare thereof, and embarked on her to get away with her crew to Tarshish-away from the face of Jehovah." The scenes which follow are very vivid: the sudden wind sweeping down from the very hills on which Jonah believed he had left his God; the tempest; the behavior of the ship, so alive with effort that the story attributes to her the feelings of a living thing-"she thought she must be broken"; the despair of the mariners, driven from the unity of their common task to the hopeless diversity of their idolatry-"they cried every man unto his own god"; the jettisoning of the tackle of the ship to lighten her (as we should say, they let the masts go by the board); the worn-out prophet in the hull of the ship, sleeping like a stowaway; the group gathered on the heaving deck to cast the lot: the passenger’s confession, and the new fear which fell upon the sailors from it; the reverence with which these rude men ask the advice, of him, in whose guilt they feel not the offence to themselves, but the sacredness to God; the awakening of the prophet’s better self by their generous deference to him; how he counsels to them his own sacrifice; their reluctance to yield to this, and their return to the oars with increased perseverance for his sake. But neither their generosity nor their efforts avail. The prophet again offers himself, and as their sacrifice he is thrown into the sea. "And Jehovah cast a wind on the sea, and there was a great tempest, and the ship threatened to break up. And the sailors were afraid, and cried every man unto his own god; and they cast the tackle of the ship into the sea, to lighten it from upon them. But Jonah had gone down to the bottom of the ship and lay fast asleep. And the captain of the ship came to him, and said to him, What art thou doing asleep? Up, call on thy God; peradventure the God will be gracious to us, that we perish not. And they said every man to his neighbor, Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know for whose sake is this evil come upon us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. And they said to him, Tell us now, what is thy business, and whence comest thou? what is thy land, and from what people art thou? And he said to them, A Hebrew am I, and a worshipper of the God of Heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. And the men feared greatly, and said to him, What is this thou hast done? (for they knew he was fleeing from the face of Jehovah, because he had told them). And they said to him, What are we to do to thee that the sea cease raging against us? For the sea was surging higher and higher. And he said, Take me and throw me into the sea; so shall the sea cease raging against you: for I am sure that it is on my account that this great tempest is risen upon you. And the men labored with the oars to bring the ship to land, and they could not, for the sea grew more and more stormy against them. So they called on Jehovah and said, Jehovah, let us not perish, we pray Thee, for the life of this man, neither bring innocent blood upon us: for Thou art Jehovah, Thou doest as Thou pleasest. Then they took up Jonah and cast him into the sea, and the sea stilled from its raging. But the men were in great awe of Jehovah, and sacrificed to Him and vowed vows." How very real it is and how very noble! We see the storm, and then we forget the storm in the joy of that generous contrast between heathen and Hebrew. But the glory of the passage is the change in Jonah himself. It has been called his punishment and the conversion of the heathen. Rather it is his own conversion. He meets again not only God, but the truth from which he fled. He not only meets that truth, but he offers his life for it. The art is consummate. The writer will first reduce the prophet and the heathen whom he abhors to the elements of their common humanity. As men have sometimes seen upon a mass of wreckage or on an ice-floe a number of wild animals, by nature foes to each other, reduced to peace through their common danger, so we descry the prophet and his natural enemies upon the strained and breaking ship. In the midst of the storm they are equally helpless, and they cast for all the lot which has no respect of persons. But from this the story passes quickly, to show how Jonah feels not only the human kinship of these heathen with himself, but their susceptibility to the knowledge of his God. They pray to Jehovah as the God of the sea and the dry land; while we may be sure that the prophet’s confession, and the story of his own relation to that God, forms as powerful an exhortation to repentance as any he could have preached in Nineveh. At least it produces the effects which he has dreaded. In these sailors he sees heathen turned to the fear of the Lord. All that he has fled to avoid happens there before his eyes and through his own mediation. The climax is reached, however, neither when Jonah feels his common humanity with the heathen nor when he discovers their awe of his God, but when in order to secure for them God’s sparing mercies he offers his own life instead. "Take me up and cast me into the sea; so shall the sea cease from raging against you." After their pity for him has wrestled for a time with his honest entreaties, he becomes their sacrifice. In all this story perhaps the most instructive passages are those which lay bare to us the method of God’s revelation. When we were children this was shown to us in pictures of angels bending from heaven to guide Isaiah’s pen, or to cry Jonah’s commission to him through a trumpet. And when we grew older, although we learned to dispense with that machinery, yet its infection remained, and our conception of the whole process was mechanical still. We thought of the prophets as of another order of things; we released them from our own laws of life and thought, and we paid the penalty by losing all interest in them. But the prophets were human, and their inspiration came through experience. The source of it, as this story shows, was God. Partly from His guidance of their nation, partly through close communion with Himself, they received new convictions of His character. Yet they did not receive these mechanically. They spake neither at the bidding of angels, nor like heathen prophets in trance or ecstasy, but as "they were moved by the Holy Ghost." And the Spirit worked upon them first as the influence of God’s character, and second through the experience of life. God and life-these are all the postulates for revelation. At first Jonah fled from the truth, at last he laid down his life for it. So God still forces us to the acceptance of new light and the performance of strange duties. Men turn from these, because of sloth or prejudice, but in the end they have to face them, and then at what a cost! In youth they shirk a self-denial to which in some storm of later life they have to bend with heavier, and often hopeless hearts. For their narrow prejudices and refusals, God punishes them by bringing them into pain that stings, or into responsibility for others that shames, these out of them. The drama of life is thus intensified in interest and beauty; characters emerge heroic and sublime. "But, oh the labor, O prince, the pain!" Sometimes the neglected duty is at last achieved only at the cost of a man’s breath; and the truth, which might have been the bride of his youth and ‘his comrade through a long life, is recognized by him only in the features of Death. The Expositor's Bible Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com . Used by Permission.

Now the Word of the Lord came unto Jonah. Jonah 1:1-3 Jonah, the runaway prophet J. O. Keen, D. D. The commission may be viewed — I. IN ITS SOURCE. It is — 1. Supreme, as the Word of the Lord. 2. Peremptory; it is absolute, imperative, final. 3. Honourable. As associating the commissioned with the commissioner.Investing him with royal rights, privileges, honours. II. IN ITS RECIPIENT. Jonah. 1. In his filial relationship: the son. 2. In his official capacity: prophet. Learn —(1) That in the economy of moral purposes God makes use of creature agency.(2) That appointments in this economy are specific and sovereign.(3) That the rewards of faithfulness in Christian service will be promotion here, and coronation hereafter. III. IN ITS PURPORT. "Arise, go to Nineveh." It is — 1. A summons to activity. Shake off dull sloth. Rouse thee from careless ease.(1) The physical plays an important part in the execu tion of Divine purposes.(2) The will too must give its sanction, or all the activ ities will be held in restful subjection. Where there is no will-power a man is a mere tool in the hands of others. 2. A call to arduous duty. Note —(1) Its sphere. "Nineveh, that great city." In God's great busy world there is a definite sphere for everyone.(2) Its spirit. "Cry against it." Energy was to rise to its highest point. To cry requires energy of soul; a vivid realisation of sin, and moral courage. ( J. O. Keen, D. D. ) The behests of God Joseph Parker, D. D. We are apt to think that this coming of the Word of the Lord to men in ancient times was so special a circumstance that it has no application to ourselves. How rarely it occurs to us that he who spoke to the prophets in times past is now speaking unto us as directly and vividly, by the ministry of the Holy Ghost. How are we to understand that the Word of the Lord has come to us? Have we a strong conviction of duty? That is the Word of the Lord. We should ask, not "what is expedient?" but "what is right?" If a thing is right, then it is a revelation from God; it is a testimony of the Holy Ghost in my heart; and at all risks it must be done. No man knows what he is, and what he can do, until he knows the severity of the behests of God. Our call, like Jonah's, is to go wherever wickedness is, and cry against it. Every child of God is to be a protesting prophet. Every earnest man is to have no difficulty in finding the word of condemnation when he comes into the presence of sin. In Jonah we have a man falling below the great occasions of life. Every man has some great chance put into his hands. How possible it is to be doing instead some little peddling work, to be mistaking fuss for energy, and an idle industry for that holy consecration which absorbs every power. It is said that Jonah "paid his fare." How particular some of us are about these little pedantries of morality! Many of us are making up by pedantries what we are wanting in the principles of our life. We have good points without having a good soul; we have beautiful characteristics without having a solid and undoubted character. Jonah has paid his fare, but he has forsaken God. Can a man like that do anything right? It is said that the mariners " cast forth their wares." The bad man never suffers alone. This bad man causes a loss of property. He paid his fare, but it was taken out again in the loss of the wares. Wickedness is the cause of social loss What a crying out for gods there is in the time of trouble! Note the instinctiveness of the religious element that is in man. We are all religious. What was wrong was found out at last, in the case of Jonah, and they cast him into the sea, which then ceased from its raging. Nothing is ever settled until it is settled right. ( Joseph Parker, D. D. ) Jonah H. J. Foster. was a man of the northern kingdom, — an Israelite prophet, who had been foretelling the highest prosperity to which the Ten Tribes ever attained, and the widest extension which, under Jeroboam II., their territory ever received. Nineveh was a Gentile, that is to say, a heathen city; the very city, moreover, from which were to come those judgments and the destruction which prophets like Jonah's contemporary, Amos, were about this time beginning to announce as certain to fall upon Israel at no very distant date. Jonah, the Israelite, then, was sent to a heathen city, and — whether he knew it or not — to that particular enemy of his country from which there was most to fear. To an Israelite patriot, with even the smallest intimation of this, how natural to say, "To Nineveh?" No, let Nineveh go on and sin, and perish; the sooner the safer for my country. To warn Nineveh, and so to turn away its doom — what is that but to keep alive the fire which is to consume our Samaria and our national life? In any case, whether Jonah felt any patriotic difficulty or not, the religious difficulty was great enough. To go to heathen people with God's message, one of mercy as he saw clearly, quite as much as of judgment — that alone was repugnant to all his instincts. "No; rather let me no longer be one of the prophets who stand in the presence of Jehovah, ready for any errand, awaiting His commands. Rather let me lay down my office, and go out from before His face. Let me die first!" That is the heart of a good man, but of a narrow one. It is not the heart of the God even of the Old Testament. It is sometimes made matter of reproach to the New Testament, and to Christianity, as it is there expounded, that it makes little or no account of patriot ism. There is some truth in the criticism; but why? Patriotism has often been a noble thing; but it is really a narrow thing, narrower, at any rate, than the heart and view of God. The patriot sees and loves his fellow-countrymen; God only sees man! He loves Israel, even to idolatrous Israel of the Ten Tribes. But God loves the world. God so loved the world that He would have one of the earliest, if not the earliest, of the prophetic writers to go and offer His mercy to a heathen city, the enemy of His people. ( H. J. Foster. ) The character of Jonah R. A. Redford, M. A. One of the most remarkable facts about the Book of Jonah is, that while he himself is so prominent in it, yet there is not a word from beginning to end of comment upon his character and conduct. No word is said of his state of mind, his sense of sin, his repentance, his return to the attitude of submission and prompt obedience to the Divine command. The facts are set before us in the barest, most naked simplicity, without one single sentence of reflection. The only probable and consistent view of the work is, that Jonah wrote it himself. He therefore said as little about himself as possible. He told the facts with all their weight of meaning against his own character, just as they were, without a line of exculpation or condemnation. 1. The first point at which the narrative may be said to touch the personal character of the prophet is the flight to Joppa. Here is a man, conscious of special inspiration and authority, doing direct violence to the Word of the Most High! We must begin our study with this conviction — Jonah meant nothing throughout like determined rebellion against God. From the first he seems to have understood the mission to have been one of mercy, and not of destruction. The man had laid hold of the thought of Divine goodness and compassion. Jonah's sin was not apostasy from God. He simply shrunk from the mission. The struggle in Jonah's mind must have been the result either of personal feeling or of mistaken ideas. It may have been personal feeling that lay at the root of his conduct. There was personal danger. He did not care to preach to heathen. But his feelings were founded on false ideas about God, and about the people of God, and their vocation. Another view may be taken of Jonah's mind. He anticipated the result of his mission, and did not like it. His prediction would be falsified in the result. And a mission to the stronghold of heathenism seemed quite a new departure in the religious history of Israel. It seemed to Jonah a change in the Divine action, so stupendous that he could not drive out of his mind doubts as to the authority of the message. 2. Look at another point, — the sleep into which the prophet fell instantly that he went down into the ship is quite consistent with a state of perplexity and fear. He was so wearied with the mental strain and struggle, so burdened with the weight of a reproachful conscience, that he gladly hid himself from the faces of his fellow-men, and sought the darkness and solitude of his sleeping place, where nature asserted its demands, and he was soon wrapt in unconsciousness. When he was awakened he had no crime to confess, such as heathen men would understand, and condemn by the light of moral law. Jonah's character was defective rather than corrupt. Like the Apostle Peter, he needed a great deal of teaching, but the root of his piety was sound and deep. He put himself at once into the hands of the chastising Jehovah. ( R. A. Redford, M. A. ) Jonah regarded as a type James Simpson. 1. In his solemn discovery and apprehension. Sin hath entered among us, and the Creator is angry. Some victim is awanting to pacify His just indignation; but where is the sacrifice to be found? At length a merciful Heaven interposes, and the sacrifice is revealed. 2. In the generous self-devotement of the prophet. Applied to the doctrine of substitution, everything is plain, everything is instructive. 3. In his descent to the place of the dead. Two circumstances in the descent of Jonah. (1) His descent to the grave. "Out of the belly of hell." (2) In the midst of all this suffering the prophet was yet alive. 4. In the doctrine of Messiah's resurrection. 5. In the mission of Jonah to the Gentiles. His was just the commission of Jesus. To the lost sheep of the house of Israel He first turned His eyes; then He sent His disciples to the four winds of heaven, saying, "Preach the Gospel to every creature." ( James Simpson. ) Go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it. &&& Jonah 1:2 The comparative corruption of great cities James Simpson. Proposition. That though by no means exclusively, yet in cities that are great and luxurious, integrity is exposed to peculiar snares, and depravity cherished to an extraordinary growth. I. EXPLAIN THIS PROPOSITION. 1. We confine human depravity to no combination of circumstances. In some situations, it is true, the poison may evolve its noxious qualities more fully and freely than in others; but in one way or another it makes itself manifest in all. It is not intended to represent this depravity as in itself essential to our nature. Sin is not essential, but accidental, to our nature. 2. It should also be observed, that in great cities there are even advantages which are nowhere else to be so fully enjoyed. The children of this world, wise in their generation, instantly discern the advantages of city situations, in reference to their particular pursuits. Beside the civil and intellectual, there are moral and religious advantages which, in more sequestered situations, we can scarcely hope to enjoy. In cities there is an easy and regular access to the ordinances of grace. 3. There are peculiar temptations, to which more obscure situations are liable. In solitude the mind is in danger of being filled with prejudices, and the heart with passions, which at once destroy present tranquillity and endanger future well-being. II. ILLUSTRATE THE SUBJECT BEFORE US. That in populous cities corruption peculiarly prevails. Consider — 1. The multitude of transgressors. 2. The aggravated nature of the sins there particularly indulged. 3. The individual sinner usually attains a degree of presumptuous hardness, not common in less frequented scenes. III. THE CAUSES FROM WHICH THIS PECULIAR DEPRAVITY PROCEEDS. 1. The depravity of the heart is the groundwork of the whole. 2. Neglect of parental instruction. 3. The infectious power of example. 4. The chilling influence of the world. 5. The seducing influence of luxury. ( James Simpson. ) Every man his call Joseph Parker, D. D. This same event comes to every man. Do not suppose that Jonah is a lonely creature afar off in the ages somewhere, having an experience unique and incommunicable. The experience of Jonah is the experience of every good man. What is your call in life? To go wherever wickedness is, and cry against it. Nineveh has perished, but Ninevitish iniquity is upon our streets, is throwing its shadow upon our thresholds, is sending a keen wail of pain and blasphemy through the very air that blows about us. Every child of God is to be a protesting prophet. Every earnest man is to have no difficulty in finding the word of condemnation when he comes into the presence of sin. If we could realise this call, all the Lord's people would be prophets. Is it not a burden to speak against wickedness? Where is the man that dare do it? It is easy to condemn wickedness generally. The difficulty is to say to the individual — "Thou art the man." Almost anybody can stand up before a thousand people, and speak against iniquity in the mass. But he must be a lion from God that dare say to the individual criminal," I charge you, in the name of the Living One, with doing things that are wrong." Still, it is well that we should have men who stand up in the midst of cities, and who let the cities know that there are eyes upon them that see things in moral relationships, and aspects, and consequences: and woe betide the cities of the earth when the voice of the prophet is no longer heard in them. It is a harsh voice, it is a piercing cry; but believe it, and regeneration comes, and restora tion and lost peace return, and things are set right before the face of God. ( Joseph Parker, D. D. ) Jonah's commission Samuof Clift Burn. The city to which he was com missioned was remarkable for its magnitude and its wickedness. 1. Nineveh was a great city in many respects. (1) It was of great antiquity ( Genesis 10:9-12 ). (2) It was great in respect of its power. It was the chief city of the mightiest monarchy in the world. (3) In respect of its wealth. (4) In respect of its extent. Probably sixty miles in circumference. (5) In respect of its population. Probably 600,000 persons resided within its walls. 2. Nineveh was a guilty city. Cruelty was the characteristic vice. No man in Nineveh was secure from the violence to which its people were prone. 3. Nineveh was a Gentile city. It was this circumstance which chiefly rendered the commission addressed to Jonah so remarkable. It was so unusual that it startled Jonah. God displayed His interest in the welfare of mankind at large, even at that remote and unripe epoch. The Israelites were slow to learn that God did thus interest Himself in the welfare of the Gentiles. Now consider the disobedience of Jonah to the mandate addressed to him. The prophet's object was to flee from the presence of the Lord; i . e. , to get as far as possible beyond the range of those manifestations of the Divine presence which were peculiar to Palestine and its neighbourhood. Jonah sought to escape from such a consciousness of the Divine presence as he had been accustomed to experience in his own country, and may have regarded as peculiar to it. The presence of the Lord had become intolerable to Jonah from the moment that his want of sympathy with the Divine will in relation to Nineveh had become apparent to himself. Moreover, Jonah was an official of high rank in the theocracy, and his words may mean, "I will resign my office rather than undertake this duty." But he had no right to resign the office he held in the service of Jehovah. His guilt and presumption are apparent; but have we not been as guilty and presumptuous as he; shrinking from duties that we knew were laid upon us? ( Samuof Clift Burn. ) Jonah sent to Nineveh Boston Homilies. A natural interpretation of the book is this, — Jonah had as great contempt for the heathen as his bigoted brethren of Israel. He was sent on a mission of mercy to his political enemies. As he had never learned to love his enemies, he fled from so distasteful a service. He was disciplined in the stomach of a fish till he was willing to deliver formally the commission given. He preached in Nineveh, still hating those who, if spared, might overthrow Israel. He was further disciplined by the lesson of the gourd. He at last learned the lesson of pity, and rejoiced in the good that accrued to his enemies, singing, "Salvation is of the Lord." I. THE PROPHET'S COMMISSION TO BLESS HIS ENEMIES. About God sent Jonah with a message to Nineveh, which was regarded by Israel as its natural enemy. II. JONAH'S REFUSAL TO ACCEPT A MISSION OF MERCY TO HIS FOES. Jonah was not a son of Satan, but a wilful servant of the Lord, who, by reason of false views, failed to comprehend Jehovah's broad policy in the government of this world. III. HOW GOD HUMILIATED HIS PROPHET BEFORE HEATHEN SAILORS. Humiliating must have been the confession that he who knew move about holy things than all others on board was afraid to trust and obey his own God. IV. HOW THE HEATHEN SAILORS MADE FRIENDS WITH JONAH'S GOD. The prophet's acknowledgment of his fear of Jehovah struck a nameless terror to the consciences of the crew. They did their best to save him from his fate, but all was in vain. When Jonah was cast overboard, and the storm ceased, they felt that Jonah's God was the true God, and must henceforth be their God. ( Boston Homilies. ) God speaking to man in mercy Homilist. I. GOD SPEAKING TO MAN IN MERCY. 1. Here He speaks. "The Word of the Lord." His Word to Jonah, like His word to all men, was clear, brief, weighty, practical. 2. Here He speaks to an individual. He speaks to all men in nature, conscience, history; but in sovereignty He singles some men out for special communications. 3. Here He speaks to an individual for the sake of a community. "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city." Why does God call it a great city? To men it was considered "great," great in numbers, pomp, pretensions, masonry. But to God it could only be great in sin, for sin is a great thing to God; it is a black cloud in His universe. For the sake of this city, in order to effect its moral reformation, and therefore to save it, Jonah receives a commission. "Arise," shake off thy languor, quit thyself for action, and to work out the ideas of the Infinite. No other creature on earth has this power.(2) God's method of helping humanity. God enlightens, purifies, and ennobles man by man. We have this "treasure in earthen vessels." II. MAN FLEEING FROM GOD IN DISOBEDIENCE. "But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish, from the presence of the Lord." Here is a threefold revelation of man. 1. His moral freedom. God did not coerce Jonah, did not drive him to Nineveh. Man has power to resist God — a greater power, this, than can be found in all the heavenly orbs, or in the whole history of material organisms. This power invests man with all but infinite importance, links him to moral government. "Ye do always resist the Spirit of God." 2. His daring depravity. Alas! men have not merely the power but the disposition to oppose God. This is their guilt and their ruin; it is what men are doing everywhere, trying to break the shackles of moral responsibility, trying to elude the Infinite. 3. His egregious folly. His endeavouring to escape from God was —(1) Not merely an impulse, but a resolution. Had it been a sudden wish it would have been bad. He "rose up." He rallied and marshalled his energies.(2) Not merely a resolution, but an effort. He "went down to Joppa." The probability is, that he went with the greatest speed to Joppa, the Jaffa of this day. When he reached the spot, how long he was about the quays in search of a suitable vessel.(3) Not merely an effort, but a persevering effort. It was not one or two or three spasmodic efforts and then over. When he found a suitable vessel he "paid the fare thereof." Ah, what fares men pay in the career of sin! ( Homilist. ) Jonah's commission Thomas Jones, of Creaton. 1. When God has a work to do He is never at a loss for agents to accomplish His purposes. The Lord, on some occasions, fixes on instruments which appear to us the least suitable. All fitness is of God; He finds none fit for His service till He makes them so, and He can qualify the most defective. Should any ask why God fixed upon Jonah, and preferred him before any man on earth for this important service? We answer that God giveth no account of His matters; and though His footsteps are in the great deep, He never errs in judgment. The Word of the Lord came to Jonah. He knew who spoke to him, and what He said, — yet he was disobedient to the heavenly call. 2. The commission which God gave to Jonah. Great cities are great evils, seminaries of vice, and schools for profligacy. The more the fallen children of men herd together, the more deeply they corrupt one another. Cities may be great in many respects, and yet little in God's account, because they are low in all real excellence. 3. Nineveh was ripe for destruction. Mark carefully, that all our sins go up before God, and are registered in His book of remembrance, with a view to the day of judgment. Cry against this "great city." "Their" sins have .cried long and loud against Me, and now My vengeance from heaven shall cry against them. When sinners kindle anger in the bosom of God, who is love itself, great must be their guilt, and tremendous will be their judgments when love turns to wrath. Nineveh is ripe for ruin; God is coming in His wrath against it; yet He halts by the way, and sends His messenger first, to say that He Himself is coming. ( Thomas Jones, of Creaton. ) The reasons for Jonah's mission to Nineveh A. Raleigh, D. D. Jonah was a suitable agent, but he was not indispensable. God called him, but He could do without him. To be the bearer of such a message as that which is here recorded could not in itself be pleasant, but it was highly honourable. To refuse to speak in such a case, at Divine bidding, was almost to take part with the wrong-doers, and is recorded in this book, by Jonah's own hand, to his personal discredit. There is but this one reason for the mission stated here; but there were at least several other reasons in reserve — some gently hinted, some unrevealed until ages afterwards. God, as we know, not only kindled in the indignation of justice against what was wrong, but He longed for the repentance of the wrong-doers, and for the manifestation of His mercy among them when thus penitent. He thought, too, of the future; of the use He would make of that people when His people should be led among them captive. As He sent Joseph into Egypt, He will send Jonah into Nineveh, to provide a remedy for a coming evil, a home for a captive people. He thought, too, of the far future of the world, and of the spiritual use to be made of the penitence of that wicked people in the proclamation of His mercy by the Gospel. He has made the Ninevites "a pattern" to all cities and ages — a proof that shall be known as long as history remains, that if a whole city, full of sinners, turn unto the Lord, they shall live. Whether Jonah knew much of these and such like reasons or not, it is certain that he knew quite enough to make the road to Nineveh, far and difficult as it might be, the Lord's highway of duty and life to him; and any way else he could find, the devil's road of crookedness, danger, and death. ( A. Raleigh, D. D. ) But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish. Jonah 1:3 The refusal to obey a God-given charge A. Maclaren, D. D. Jonah sullenly resolved not to obey God's voice. What a glimpse into the prophetic office that gives us! The Divine Spirit could be resisted, and the prophet was no mere machine, but a living man who had to consent with his devoted will to bear the burden of the Lord. One refused, and his refusal teaches us how superb and self-sacrificing was the faithfulness of the rest. Jonah represents the national feelings which he shared. He refused because he feared success. God's goodness was being stretched rather too far if it was going to take in Nineveh. His was the spirit of the prodigal's elder brother. Israel was set among the nations, not as a dark lantern, but as the great candlestick in the temple court proclaimed, to ray out light to all the world. Jonah's mission was but a concrete instance of Israel's charge. All sorts of religious exclusiveness, contemptuous estimates of other nations, and that bastard patriotism which would keep national blessings for our own country alone, are condemned by this story. Note the fatal consequences of refusal to obey the God-given charge. Jonah only meant to escape from service. The storm is described with a profusion of unusual words, all apparently technical terms, picked up on board. No wonder that the fugitive prophet slunk down into some dark corner, and sat bitterly brooding there, self-accused and condemned, till weariness and the relief of the tension of his journey lulled him to sleep. It was a stupid and heavy sleep. Over against the picture of the insensible prophet is set the behaviour of the heathen sailors, or "salts," as the story calls them. Their conduct is part of the lesson of the book. Their treatment of Jonah is generous and chivalrous. They are so much touched by the whole incident that they offer sacrifices to the God of the Hebrews, and are, in some sense, and possibly but for a time, worshippers of Him. All this holds up the mirror to Israel, by showing how much of human kindness and generosity, and how much of susceptibility for the truth which Israel had to declare, lay in rude hearts beyond its pale. Jonah's conduct in the storm is no less noble than his former conduct had been base. The burst of the tempest blew all the fog from his mind, and he saw the stars again. His confession of faith; his calm conviction that he was the cause of the storm; his quiet, unhesitating command to throw him into the wild chaos foaming about the ship; his willing acceptance of death as the wages of his sin — all tell how true a saint he was in the depths of his soul. The miracle of rescue is the last point. Jonah's repentance saved his life. The wider lesson of the means of making chastisement into blessing, and securing a way of escape — namely, by owning the justice of the stroke, and returning to duty — is meant for us all. The ever-present providence of God, the possible safety of the nation, even when in captivity, the preservation of every servant of God who turns to the Lord in his chastisement, the exhibition of penitence as the way of deliverance, are the purposes for which the miracle was wrought and told. ( A. Maclaren, D. D. ) Jonah's soft-will A. Raleigh, D. D. The main features of the ease are clear, and from these we draw the principles and lessons to be enforced. On the one hand, there is a Divine commission and command distinctly and authoritatively given, with some of the reasons for it annexed, although with others certainly not fully revealed. On the other hand, there is a state of reluctance and suspense ever verging towards actual disobedience — expressing itself, now in remonstrance, now in request for exemption, now in moody and distrustful silence. The situation is none so rare. The principles involved, and the lessons arising, are for all time. The supreme and unchallengeable obligation of the Divine will when clearly expressed. There can be no higher obligation to man or angel than that. That will is always in harmony with the eternal principles of truth and goodness. When God "speaks" to a servant, there can be no pretence for delay or non-compliance, much less for disobedience. Obedience, promptly, fully given, is the most beautiful thing that walks the earth. Prompt and simple obedience, when we are sure that God speaks, is the way to clearness, virtue, honour, strength, safety, and peace. 2. The exceeding danger of a mood of hesitation or remonstrance. We should watch with great self-jealousy the moral hesitations of the will, and the silent petitionings for delay or exemption. All such heart movements are fraught with peril. Divine light is given for "walking" and "working." In most, if not all of the critical moments of life, duty is revealed very quickly, and made very plain and clear. In matters of expediency and prudence, wait for the afterthoughts. In matters of conscience and present duty, take the first thoughts that arise, for they are the Divinest. Happy is he whose action is as quick as the impulse that calls for it! whose daily obedience has in it the fresh colours of newborn convictions! whose feet sound the echo of God's "Arise"! ( A. Raleigh, D. D. ) Jonah's motive in his flight Thomas Harding. This dereliction of duty could not arise from imperfect acquaintance with God's will. That is nowhere intimated in the narrative. It was deliberate disobedience. 1. The arduousness of the duty may have been one cause of the sin. He shrank from the service because of the hardships he supposed to be involved in it. He thought of the journey; of the probable reception of his message by the Ninevites; and of possible violence done to himself by them. If God calls to arduous duty, He is prepared to give all needed grace for doing it. 2. The mortification of his own vanity. God's mercy and forbearance on repentance Jonah feared would be a personal dishonour to him as a prophet. Rather than subject himself to the possibility of such mortification Jonah chose to decline the duty altogether. This motive argues a painful obtuseness of right human feelings. Learn — 1. In the prosecution of arduous and self-denying duties to seek the help of God, and not throw off our responsibilities by shunning them. Responsibility can only be met by the conscientious discharge of duty. Human nature often shrinks, as Jonah did, from this duty, but let us be faithful to God, and depend on Him for strength and blessing. 2. And let us discharge all our obligations to our fellew-men from a sincere desire to benefit them and please God. Let us not mingle personal vanity with any of our religious endeavours, nor be too anxious about our fame and reputation. Our record is on high, our judgment is with our God. ( Thomas Harding. ) Jonah's soft-persuasions to disobedience A. Raleigh, D. D. How did he persuade himself to enter on a course of disobedience to the Divine will so open and declared? 1. It was a long way. 2. The thing to be done was very difficult. 3. It would be natural that he should despair of any great success. 4. He may have thought that, in the event of attaining a spiritual success, failure must come in another way. His own reputation would suffer. Over-consciousness of personal character, and over-carefulness for the Divine honour, were not of old, are not now so very uncommon. 5. The prophet had some dark forecast of evil to his own country from the probable turn which matters would take, if his mission at Nineveh should be successful. We cannot pass any severe and overwhelming judgment on Jonah. There is too much reason to fear that his kind of disobedience is not at all uncommon. Far oftener than many suppose, great and gifted spirits have shrunk back from great responsibilities. See cases of Moses, Gideon, etc. ( A. Raleigh, D. D. ) The story of Jonah Henry C. M'Cook, D. D. The Book of Jonah is a prophetic history. It sets forth in object-lessons truths which bring us very near to the heart of the Gospel. I. THE SCORNED MESSAGE OF MERCY. The prophet was the recipient of a Divine message. He was to declare to the people of Nineveh their sins, and summon them to repentance. This should have been an acceptable and agreeable duty. Why should Jonah have closed his ear against the Divine Word, shut up his heart against compassion for Nineveh, and fled from his duty? The answer uncovers at once God's compassion and Jonah's sin. Jonah's fault lay in narrowing the compassion of Jehovah, and exaggerating the claims of the chosen people. His pride of race overrode his humanity; his sectarian zeal consumed his charity. 1. What shall we say of one who refuses to enter upon a work of salvation such as this? Jonah sinned against God and humanity. 2. If we seek downward for the tap-root of Jonah's fault, where do we find it? In false views of God's nature. 3. There are still men and women — good but misguided people — who hold that the salvation of God is limited to their Church. In the light of Jonah's story, we may regard all such people with sincere pity, even while we condemn their presumptuous bigotry. II. THE SINNER PUR

1:1-3. It is sad to think how much sin is committed in great cities. Their wickedness, as that of Nineveh, is a bold and open affront to God. Jonah must go at once to Nineveh, and there, on the spot, cry against the wickedness of it. Jonah would not go. Probably there are few among us who would not have tried to decline such a mission. Providence seemed to give him an opportunity to escape; we may be out of the way of duty, and yet may meet with a favourable gale. The ready way is not always the right way. See what the best of men are, when God leaves them to themselves; and what need we have, when the word of the Lord comes to us, to have the Spirit of the Lord to bring every thought within us into obedience. 1:4-7 God sent a pursuer after Jonah, even a mighty tempest. Sin brings storms and tempests into the soul, into the family, into churches and nations; it is a disquieting, disturbing thing. Having called upon their gods for help, the sailors did what they could to help themselves. Oh that men would be thus wise for their souls, and would be willing to part with that wealth, pleasure, and honour, which they cannot keep without making shipwreck of faith and a good conscience, and ruining their souls for ever! Jonah was fast asleep. Sin is stupifying, and we are to take heed lest at any time our hearts are hardened by the deceitfulness of it. What do men mean by sleeping on in sin, when the word of God and the convictions of their own consciences, warn them to arise and call on the Lord, if they would escape everlasting misery? Should not we warn each other to awake, to arise, to call upon our God, if so be he will deliver us? The sailors concluded the storm was a messenger of Divine justice sent to some one in that ship. Whatever evil is upon us at any time, there is a cause for it; and each must pray, Lord, show me wherefore thou contendest with me. The lot fell upon Jonah. God has many ways of bringing to light hidden sins and sinners, and making manifest that folly which was thought to be hid from the eyes of all living. 1:8-12 Jonah gave an account of his religion, for that was his business. We may hope that he told with sorrow and shame, justifying God, condemning himself, and explaining to the mariners what a great God Jehovah is. They said to him, Why hast thou done this? If thou fearest the God that made the sea and the dry land, why wast thou such a fool as to think thou couldst flee from his presence? If the professors of religion do wrong, they will hear it from those who make no such profession. When sin has raised a storm, and laid us under the tokens of God's displeasure, we must consider what is to be done to the sin that raised the storm. Jonah uses the language of true penitents, who desire that none but themselves may fare the worse for their sins and follies. Jonah sees this to be the punishment of his iniquity, he accepts it, and justifies God in it. When conscience is awakened, and a storm raised, nothing will turn it into a calm but parting with the sin that caused the disturbance. Parting with our money will not pacify the conscience, the Jonah must be thrown overboard. 1:13-17 The mariners rowed against wind and tide, the wind of God's displeasure, the tide of his counsel; but it is in vain to think of saving ourselves any other way than by destroying our sins. Even natural conscience cannot but dread blood-guiltiness. And when we are led by Providence God does what he pleases, and we ought to be satisfied, though it may not please us. Throwing Jonah into the sea put an end to the storm. God will not afflict for ever, He will only contend till we submit and turn from our sins. Surely these heathen mariners will rise up in judgment against many called Christians, who neither offer prayers when in distress, nor thanksgiving for signal deliverances. The Lord commands all creatures, and can make any of them serve his designs of mercy to his people. Let us see this salvation of the Lord, and admire his power, that he could thus save a drowning man, and his pity, that he would thus save one who was running from him, and had offended him. It was of the Lord's mercies that Jonah was not consumed. Jonah was alive in the fish three days and nights: to nature this was impossible, but to the God of nature all things are possible. Jonah, by this miraculous preservation, was made a type of Christ; as our blessed Lord himself declared, Mt 12:40.