Jonah 1:6 So the shipmaster came to him, and said to him, What mean you, O sleeper? arise, call on your God, if so be that God will think on us… Jonah is justly no favourite with us, though conspicuously a prophet of the Lord. Hardly one prophet's name is pronounced with so little respect. He was a real saint, with too much of the remaining elements of a sinner. His conduct on receiving his commission does appear very strange. We must accept his own explanation, given in chapter 4., which seems to amount to this, — he felt in danger of being disgraced as a prophet, the denunciation being to be uttered in positive, not conditional, terms. How abominably considerations of self may interfere with obedience to God! The purpose of his voyage betrays a most unworthy conception of the Divine Being, whatever was exactly the prophet's notion. He may have been under the influence of a notion, that God maintained a peculiar jurisdiction over Judea, and a less absolute one beyond; though he knew that it must extend, with awful authority at least to Nineveh. He may have thought that, if he went far enough away, God would do without him, and appoint some other agent. He slept, but it is not wise to sleep in guilt. The God that is disobeyed on land can make the sea avenge Him. There is no situation more pitiable than that of a religious man who has disabled himself to take the benefit of his religion. Jonah's associates had various gods, but they could all pray earnestly .to their objects of adoration. He could not; he who knew the real Lord of the land and the ocean. There must soon have been manifested some peculiarity of circumstances in the storm, indicating that it was of a nature extraordinary and judicial. The mariners referred it to the avenging power to point out the criminal by "casting lots." There follows the decision of the lot, a Series of questions and expostulations. Jonah's answers were perfectly explicit. The honesty he showed made the mariners think it best to inquire of himself what they should do to him. His ready, explicit answer and self-devotement, no doubt, made them much more reluctant to do what he directed them, it would strike them as generous and heroic. They rowed hard. But the necessity became imperative at length. Jonah was sacrificed, but he was a willing sacrifice. Think of the prophet in his living tomb. The "belly of hell," that is, the grave. Short of death, is it possible to conceive so strange a transition of state and feelings? By degrees the amazing fact that he did really live, and continue to live, would bring him to the distinct sense of a miraculous and protective Providence over him. Every moment would add strength to his impression of the Divine presence, and he came at length to a state of thought and faith and hope capable of prayer. What is given as the prophet's prayer is doubtless the brief recollection, afterwards recorded' of the kind of thoughts which had filled his mind during his dark sojourn, with the addition of some pious and grateful sentiments caused by the review. The final result of these mental exercises no doubt was a full consent of his will, that He who had sent him hither should send him anywhere else He pleased, even to Nineveh. Our Lord declares all this to be a type of Him. We may trace the analogy in the being consigned to the deep, and to the grave, in order that others might be saved; — the duration of time the same in the dark retirement; — the coming to light and life again, for the reformation of mankind. (Hercules was fabled to have had the same three days in a fish.) We follow Jonah to Nineveh, and there leave him, It does not appear that he showed any "signs and wonders." There was a speedy humiliation and repentance, to which God graciously responded, but at which Jonah was angry. (John Foster.) Parallel Verses KJV: So the shipmaster came to him, and said unto him, What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not. |
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