Jonah 4:11 And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city… According to tradition, Jonah was the son of the widow of Zarephath, whom Elijah raised to life again; and the sturdy youth who stood at the prophet's side throughout that long and terrible day on Mount Carmel He was further identified with a young man whom Elisha sent to anoint Jehu to be king over Israel. Certainly he belonged to that stern order of men, and had a great "zeal for God, but not according to knowledge." He greatly needed enlargement of mind and soul; and in the end, I think, received it. And the story of this book, so far as it relates to Jonah, is a study of a typical zealot or religionist in contact with the larger purposes of the Divine loving-kindness not sympathising with them, or even understanding them; yet learning at last, perhaps after much Divine discipline, in some small measure to share them. 1. He is first of all shown in association with the rough heathen Phoenician sailors, and their humanity is seen in gracious contrast with his own temper. For he is now endeavouring to put the whole Mediterranean sea between himself and his duty, which, if faithfully performed, may save a vast city from its doom, and it is because he foresees this as a likely result that, instead of going to Nineveh, he is trying to flee into Spain. But these poor sailors will save this foreigner, bird of ill passage though he is, if they can. But Jonah emerged from the dread experience that followed, when he "went down to the bottom of the mountains. and the earth with her bars was about him for ever," unsoftened in feeling. He is as austere and pitiless as before, and thinks himself more righteous than God. It is infinitely strange that men can come forth from dark seas of peril and judgment, and, after deliverance, deny one morsel of compassion to their fellow sinners! 2. But Jonah, unreconciled to the thought of God's clemency to others, goes on his sulky way to Nineveh, "that great city, great unto God," wherein were "six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand" — little children, and, as it is humanely added, "also much cattle." He cries aloud in the broad thoroughfares and beside the massive temples his message of doom, "Yet forty days." It is said that four years before the siege of Jerusalem an unknown man traversed the city continually crying, "A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the Holy Place, a voice against the bridegroom and the bride! Woe, woe to Jerusalem!" But this voice was more immediate, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be destroyed." Now, it says a great deal for the tolerance of the people that they suffered a foreigner thus to denounce them. People do not always care to be told of their sins, and the judgment to come. "Am I therefore become your enemy," says Paul," because I tell you the truth? "Ah, there is often no surer way! But these heathen not only permitted the message to be spoken in their midst; they allowed it to resound in their consciences. They repented, after a godly sort, "they turned from their evil way." And so theirs was a repentance unto life, not to be repented of. How salutary is this grace — this turning of the mind from sin, this honest regret and resolve! 3. "But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry." It is the littleness of man, which everywhere in this book is confronted by the majesty and the magnanimity and the philanthropy of God. The prayer of Jonah that follows is the most remarkable prayer on record. Here is this narrow, parochial, inadequate man presuming to speak to the Almighty as if on level terms with Him — nay, as if he spoke from a superior eminence of wisdom and virtue! "I pray Thee was not this my saying," he cries, "when I was yet in my country?" It has all turned out, he declares, as he knew it would. But when his prayer returns into his own bosom, Jonah now becomes a spectacle unto angels and unto men. He went out of the city, and built himself a booth and waited to see what would become of the city. Perhaps the clock had not struck; perhaps there was something wrong with his chronology; perhaps the people would lapse again into sin, and the doom fall after all. Ah, how different from the spirit of Him who, when He beheld Jerusalem in its sins and foresaw its coming ruin, wept over it! 4. But Jonah did not weep over the city: He wept over himself. In his mortification and mental and physical exhaustion he thought that he wanted to die; though, when death was very near him in the deep seas, he was of another mind. But just as when his great predecessor, Elijah, in the wilderness, "requested for himself that he might die," God took no notice of the request, but inquired about his duty once and again: "What doest thou here, Elijah?" So God took no notice of Jonah's request, but inquired once and again about his temper: "Doest thou well to be angry?" And, as God taught Elijah by a nature parable, the whirlwind, the earthquake, the fire, and the still, small voice, so He taught Jonah by the parable of the gourd. "Thou hast had pity on the gourd," said God. It was a form of self-pity, no doubt; but, then, how much of our sympathy starts from a selfish root! It is a great thing when feeling splits away from a purely personal reference, and puts forth an altruistic branchlet. Time and grace may make much of a sentiment not so pure and lofty in its beginning as one would wish. Think, Jonah, think! "Thou hast had pity on the gourd." You did not make it; it was not yours; yet its short-lived glory touched you with some regret. I have made both plants and men. Ought I not to have pity on men failing and passing? Think! till you, too, pity them with Me. 5. Did Jonah learn the lesson of charity, and take a larger and a gentler mould? There is some reason to think that he did, for as the story leaves him he is still under the hand of God, and God is still speaking. The inference is that he receives the Divine admonition. He has no answer to make, and God is still with him, and not failing nor forsaking this cross-grained servant of His. We love the amiable. What a mercy it is that God loves the unamiable also, and the awkward and ignorant and dim-sighted, and is kind to the unthankful and the evil. But there is perhaps another reason for hoping that God's teaching was not in vain. In 2 Kings 14:25 we learn that Jonah prophesied with reference to the re-conquest of Moab under Jeroboam II., who "restored the coast of Israel from the entering of Hamath to the Sea of the Plain." Now, in the oracles contained in Isaiah there is one concerning Moab, not by Isaiah, but spoken, it is said, " in time past" (R.V.). By a number of eminent critics this is supposed to be the substance of Jonah's prophecy during the reign of Jeroboam II. If we can take this view we may well consider how different the tone of this prophecy is from that which we should expect from the accuser of Nineveh. It is full of tender feeling and humane regret. "I will weep with the weeping of Jazer for the vine of Sibmah: I will water thee with my tears, O Heshbon and Elealeh: for upon thy summer fruits and upon thy harvest the battle shout is fallen...Wherefore my bowels sound like an harp for Moab, and mine inward parts for Kirheres" (Isaiah 16:9 and Isaiah 16:11). We cannot recognise in these words the voice of the Jonah who went to Nineveh; and, indeed, it may be the voice of another Jonah, whom God's gentleness had made great. And, whether Jonah learned his lesson or not, the story remains — a poem, in which man is humiliated and God only exalted. "For My ways are not your ways, nor your thoughts My thoughts, saith the Lord: for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts higher than your thoughts." (A. H. Vine.) Parallel Verses KJV: And should not I spare 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? |
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