Now Yahweh’s word came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach against it, for their wickedness has come up before me.”
But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of Yahweh. He went down to Joppa, and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid its fare, and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of Yahweh. But Yahweh sent out a great wind on the sea, and there was a mighty storm on the sea, so that the ship was likely to break up. Then the mariners were afraid, and every man cried to his god. They threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten the ship. But Jonah had gone down into the innermost parts of the ship, and he was laying down, and was fast asleep. So the ship master came to him, and said to him, “What do you mean, sleeper? Arise, call on your God! Maybe your God will notice us, so that we won’t perish.”
They all said to each other, “Come! Let’s cast lots, that we may know who is responsible for this evil that is on us.” So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. Then they asked him, “Tell us, please, for whose cause this evil is on us. What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? Of what people are you?”
He said to them, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear Yahweh, the God of heaven, who has made the sea and the dry land.”
Then the men were exceedingly afraid, and said to him, “What have you done?” For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of Yahweh, because he had told them. Then they said to him, “What shall we do to you, that the sea may be calm to us?” For the sea grew more and more stormy. He said to them, “Take me up, and throw me into the sea. Then the sea will be calm for you; for I know that because of me this great storm is on you.”
Nevertheless the men rowed hard to get them back to the land; but they could not, for the sea grew more and more stormy against them. Therefore they cried to Yahweh, and said, “We beg you, Yahweh, we beg you, don’t let us die for this man’s life, and don’t lay on us innocent blood; for you, Yahweh, have done as it pleased you.” So they took up Jonah, and threw him into the sea; and the sea ceased its raging. Then the men feared Yahweh exceedingly; and they offered a sacrifice to Yahweh, and made vows.
Yahweh prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv1–17 As I have before observed, Jonah seems here indirectly…
As I have before observed, Jonah seems here indirectly to intimate, that he had been previously called to the office of a teacher; for it is the same as though he had said, that he framed this history as a part of his ordinary function. The word of God then was not for the first time communicated to Jonah, when he was sent to Nineveh; but it pleased God, when he was already a Prophet, to employ him among other nations. It might have been then, that he was sent to Nineveh, that the Lord, being wearied with the obstinacy of his own people, might afford an example of pious docility on the part of a heathen and uncircumcised nation, in order to render the Israelites more inexcusable. They made a profession of true religion, they boasted that they were a holy people; circumcision was also to them a symbol and a pledge of God’s covenant; yet they despised all the Prophets, so that their teaching among them was wholly useless. It is then probable that this Prophet was taken away from them, that the Ninevites by their example might increase the sin of Israel, for in three days they turned to God, after Jonah had preached to them: but among the Israelites and their kindred he had, during a long time, effected nothing, when yet his authority had been sufficiently ratified, and thus, as we have already said, in their favor: for Jonah had predicted, that the kingdom of Israel would as yet stand; and however much they deserved to perish, yet the Lord fulfilled what he had promised by the mouth at his servant. They ought then to have embraced his doctrine, not only because it was divine, but especially because the Lord had been pleased to show his love to them.
I do not indeed doubt, but that the ingratitude of the people was in this manner arraigned, since the Ninevites repented at the preaching of Jonah, and that for a short time, while the Israelites ever hardened themselves in their obstinacy. And hence some have refinedly expounded that passage in Matthew 12:39-41, ‘This perverse generation seeketh a sign, and a sign shall not be given to it, except the sign of Jonah the Prophet,’ as though this intimated, that the Gospel was to be preached to the Gentiles, inasmuch as Jonah was taken away from his own nation, and was given as a teacher to foreign and heathen nations. They therefore suppose, that we are to understand this as a prophecy respecting the future call of the Gentiles, as though Christ had said, that he would hereafter go to the Gentiles, after having found the wickedness of the chosen people past recovery. But as Christ expressly applies this comparison, we ought not to draw his words here and there. He indeed confines the similitude to one particular thing, that is, “As Jonah had been three days in the whale’s bowels, so also he would be three days in the bowels of the earth;” as though he had said, that in this he would be like to Jonah, for he would be a Prophet brought to life again. And this was said designedly by Christ, because he saw that he was despised by the Jews, and that his labors were in vain: “Since ye now hear me not, and regard me as nothing, know that I shall be hereafter a new Prophet, even after my resurrection; so at length I shall begin to speak more effectually both to the Jews and to the Gentiles, as Jonah converted Nineveh, after having returned again to life.” This then is the simple meaning of the passage. Hence Jonah was not a type of Christ, because he was sent away unto the Gentiles, but because he returned to life again, after having for some time exercised his office as a Prophet among the people of Israel. They then who say that his going forth was a token of the call of the Gentiles, adduce indeed what is plausible, but it seems to be supported by no solid reason; for it was in fact an extraordinary thing. God, then, had not as yet openly showed what he would do at the coming of Christ. When Naaman the Syrian was converted to the faith, (2 Kings 5:15) and a few others, God changed nothing in his ordinary proceedings: for there ever existed the special call of the race of Abraham, and religion was ever confined within the ancient limits; and it remained ever true, that God had not done to other nations as he had to the Jews, for he had revealed to them his judgments, (Psalm 147:20.) It was therefore God’s will that the adoption of the race of Abraham should continue unaltered to the coming of Christ, so that the Jews might excel all other nations, and differ from them through a gratuitous privilege, as the holy and elect people of God.
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Those who adopt the contrary opinion say, that the Ninevites were converted to the Lord without circumcision. This is true; but I know not whether that was a true and legitimate conversion, which is hereafter mentioned; and of this, the Lord being willing, I shall again speak more fully: but it seems more probable, that they were induced by the reproofs and threatening of the Prophet, suppliantly to deprecate the impending wrath of God: hence God once forgave them; what took place afterwards does not clearly appear. It is certainly not probable that the whole city was converted to the Lord: for soon after that city became exceedingly hostile both to the Israelites and the Jews; and the Church of God was by the Ninevites continually harassed with slaughters. Since it was so, there is certainly no reason to think, that they had really and from the heart repented. But I put off a full discussion of this subject until we come to another passage. Let us go on now with our text.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 14, 16, 17 After that he had preached a long time in…
After that he had preached a long time in Israel: and so Ezekiel, after that for a time he had prophesied in Judah, he had visions in Babylon, Ezek. 1:1.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–17 Jon 1:1 Now the word of the LORD came…
Jon 1:1 Now the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying,
Ver. 1. Now the word of the Lord came] Heb. And the word For with that particle "And" the Hebrews sometimes begin a discourse, as Eze 1:1 Lev 1:1, an elegance proper to that tongue. Howbeit Hugo Cardinalis maketh this "And," not an inceptive particle, but a copulative to many other things that were in the prophet’s mind. Others conceive it to be continuative of some other history not now extant; or at least connective of this history with the course of his ordinary calling and prophetic employment among the ten tribes, to whom he prophesied together with Hosea, Amos, and others, but with little good success, in the reign of Jeroboam II:, a prince more prosperous than pious, 2Ki 14:25. Jonah prophesied of his prosperity and victories; whereof when no good use was made by the house of Israel, their calamity and captivity was likewise foretold by Hosea, Amos, and Isaiah; and hence some conclude that Jonah was the first of all the prophets whose writings are extant; for he lived, say they, before the battle of Joash, King of Israel, with the Syrians, about the end of the life and prophecy of Elisha, 2Ki 13:14.
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Unto Jonah the son of Amittai] Jonah signifieth a dove, but Jonah had too little of the dove in him: plenus enim fuit effraenatis motibus, saith one; as passionate a man of an honest man as you have lightly heard of, saith another. Whether he was that "mad fellow" (as those much more mad captains called him 2Ki 9:11), that was sent to anoint Jehu, or else the widow of Sarepta’s son raised by Elijah (as the Hebrews will have him to be), I have not to say. But that he was a servant of the Lord we find, 2Ki 14:25, and a type of Christ, Mat 12:40, concerning whom he prophesied, non tam sermone quam sua quadam passione (Augustine), far more plainly than if he had by voice foretold his death and resurrection. And whereas the grandees and potentates of the world get them a great name by the death and danger of many others; Ionas his omnibus superior est, saith an interpreter, Jonah surpasseth them all in this, that by his sermon at Nineveh he preserved that great city, wherein were so many thousand persons, and so much cattle, Jon 4:11. That he was called and sent thither by God it appeareth by this text, and Oecolampadius observeth it. He was not, saith he, of them that run before they are sent; but, being sent, he refused to run, because of the hardness of the task laid upon him, as did likewise Moses and Jeremiah, till better tutored. There is less danger in refusing to run when sent than in running unsent. But when God calleth a man to the ministry, let him not doubt or despond, though at first he find not so much encouragement. Magna semper fecerunt, qui Deo vocante docuerunt, saith Luther. They have always done great things that have followed God’s call, as did Jonah at Nineveh, and doth still in the Church of God; for among others Cyprian, that famous martyr, confesseth that he was converted from idolatry and necromancy by hearing the history of the prophet Jonah read and expounded to him by Cecilius, whom he thenceforth called novae vitro parentem, the father of his Christian life.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1–17 Now, Heb. And.
Now, Heb. And.
The word of the Lord, which is a usual description of prophecy; what God had to speak against Nineveh, be here does reveal to Jonah, with command that he publish it to those concerned in it.
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Came unto, to, or, was with,
Jonah; called Jonas, Luk 11:30, which signifieth a dove; he was of Gath-hepher, a town of Zebulun, 2Ki 14:25, but no more is added, by which I conjecture it was some obscure place, to which Jonah gave more light than it could to him.
Amittai; of what rank he was appears not.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 11 Observe, 1. The honour God put upon Jonah, in…
Observe, 1. The honour God put upon Jonah, in giving him a commission to go and prophesy against Nineveh. Jonah signifies a dove, a proper name for all God's prophets, all his people, who ought to be harmless as doves, and to mourn as doves for the sins and calamities of the land. His father's name was Amittai - My truth; for God's prophets should be sons of truth. To him the word of the Lord came - to him it was (so the word signifies), for God's word is a real thing; men's words are but wind, but God's words are substance. He has been before acquainted with the word of the Lord, and knew his voice from that of a stranger; the orders now given him were, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, Jon 1:2. Nineveh was at this time the metropolis of the Assyrian monarchy, an eminent city (Gen 10:11), a great city, that great city, forty-eight miles in compass (some make it much more), great in the number of the inhabitants, as appears by the multitude of infants in it (Jon 4:11), great in wealth (there was no end of its store, Nah 2:9), great in power and dominion; it was the city that for some time ruled over the kings of the earth. But great cities, as well as great men, are under God's government and judgment. Nineveh was a great city, and yet a heathen city, without the knowledge and worship of the true God. How many great cities and great nations are there that sit in darkness and in the valley of the shadow of death! This great city was a wicked city: Their wickedness has come up before me (their malice, so some read it); their wickedness was presumptuous, and they sinned with a high hand. It is sad to think what a great deal of sin is committed in great cities, where there are many sinners, who are not only all sinners, but making one another sin. Their wickedness has come up, that is, it has come to a high degree, to the highest pitch; the measure of it is full to the brim; their wickedness has come up, as that of Sodom, Gen 18:20, Gen 18:21. It has come up before me - to my face (so the word is); it is a bold and open affront to God; it is sinning against him, in his sight; therefore Jonah must cry against it; he must witness against their great wickedness, and must warn them of the destruction that was coming upon them for it. God is coming forth against it, and he sends Jonah before, to proclaim war, and to sound an alarm. Cry aloud, spare not. He must not whisper his message in a corner, but publish it in the streets of Nineveh; he that hath ears let him hear what God has to say by his prophet against that wicked city. When the cry of sin comes up to God the cry of vengeance comes out against the sinner. He must go to Nineveh, and cry there upon the spot against the wickedness of it. Other prophets were ordered to send messages to the neighbouring nations, and the prophecy of Nahum is particularly the burden of Nineveh; but Jonah must go and carry the message himself: "Arise quickly; apply thyself to the business with speed and courage, and the resolution that becomes a prophet; arise, and go to Nineveh." Those that go on God's errands must rise and go, must stir themselves to the work cut out for them. The prophets were sent first to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, yet not to them only; they had the children's bread, but Nineveh eats of the crumbs. 2. The dishonour Jonah did to God in refusing to obey his orders, and to go on the errand on which he was sent (Jon 1:3): But Jonah, instead of rising to go to Nineveh, rose up to flee to Tarshish, to the sea, not bound for any port, but desirous to get away from the presence of the Lord; and, if he might but do that, he card not whither he went, not as if he thought he could go any where from under the eye of God's inspection, but from his special presence, from the spirit of prophecy, which, when it put him upon this work, he thought himself haunted with, and coveted to get out of the hearing of. Some think Jonah went upon the opinion of some of the Jews that the spirit of prophecy was confined to the land of Israel (which in Ezekiel and Daniel was effectually proved to be a mistake), and therefore he hoped he should get clear of it if he could but get out of the borders of that land. (1.) Jonah would not go to Nineveh to cry against it either because it was a long and dangerous journey thither, and in a road he knew not, or because he was afraid it would be as much as his life was worth to deliver such an ungrateful message to that great and potent city. He consulted with flesh and blood, and declined the embassy because he could not go with safety, or because he was jealous for the prerogatives of his country, and not willing that any other nation should share in the honour of divine revelation; he feared it would be the beginning of the removal of the kingdom of God from the Jews to another nation, that would bring forth more of the fruits of it. He owns himself (Jon 4:2) that the reason of his aversion to this journey was because he foresaw that the Ninevites would repent, and God would forgive them and take them into favour, which would be a slur upon the people of Israel, who had been so long a peculiar people to God. (2.) He therefore went to Tarshish, to Tarsus in Cilicia (so some), probably because he had friends and relations there, with whom he hoped for some time to sojourn. He went to Joppa, a famous seaport in the land of Israel, in quest of a ship bound for Tarshish, and there he found one. Providence seemed to favour his design, and 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. He found the ship just ready to weigh anchor perhaps, and to set sail for Tarshish, and so he lost no time. Or, perhaps, he went to Tarshish because he found the ship going thither; otherwise all places were alike to him. He did not think himself out of his way, the way he would go, provided he was not in his way, the way he should go. So he paid the fare thereof; for he did not regard the charge, so he could but gain his point, and get to a distance from the presence of the Lord. He went with them, with the mariners, with the passengers, with the merchants, whoever they were that were going to Tarshish. Jonah, forgetting his dignity as well as his duty, herded with them, and went down into the ship to go with them to Tarshish. 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 come along with the word, to bring every thought within us into obedience to it. The prophet Isaiah owns that therefore he was not rebellious, neither turned away back, because God not only spoke to him, but opened his ear, Isa 50:5. Let us learn hence to cease from man, and not to be too confident either of ourselves or others in a time of trial; but let him that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–17 Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah…
Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Amittai,.... Or, "and the word of the Lord was" (l); not that this is to be considered as connected with something the prophet had on his mind and in his thoughts when he began to write this book; or as a part detached from a prophecy not now extant; for it is no unusual thing with the Hebrews to begin books after this manner, especially historical ones, of which kind this chiefly is, as the books of Ruth, First and Second Samuel, and Esther; besides, the "vau", is here not copulative, but conversive; doing its office by changing the future tense into the past; which otherwise must have been rendered, "the word of the Lord shall be", or "shall come"; which would not only give another, but a wrong sense. "The word of the Lord" often signifies a prophecy from the Lord; and so the Targum, renders it,
"the word of prophecy from the Lord;''
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and it may be so interpreted, since Jonah, under a spirit of prophecy, foretold that Nineveh should be destroyed within forty days; though the phrase here rather signifies the order and command of the Lord to the prophet to do as is expressed in Jon 1:2; whose name was Jonah "the son of Amittai"; of whom see the introduction to this book. Who his father Amittai was is not known: if the rule of the Jews would hold good, that when a prophet mentions his own name, and the name of his father, he is a prophet, the son of a prophet, then Amittai was one; but this is not to be depended on. The Syriac version calls him the son of Mathai, or Matthew; though the Arabians have a notion that Mathai is his mother's name; and observe that none are called after their mothers but Jonas and Jesus Christ: but the right name is Amittai, and signifies "my truth"; and to be sons of truth is an agreeable character of the prophets and ministers of the word, who should be given to truth, possessed of it, and publish it:
saying; as follows:
(l) "et fuit", Pagninus, Montanus, Drusius; "factum fuit", Piscator.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 13, 14, 16, 17 Jonah disobeys the command of God, ver. 1-3. Is…
Jonah disobeys the command of God, ver. 1-3. Is arrested by a storm, ver. 4-6. Discovered to be the cause of the storm, ver. 7-10. Cast into the sea and swallowed by a fish, ver. 11-17.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17 Chronological Notes relative to this Book, upon the supposition…
THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET JONAH
Chronological Notes relative to this Book, upon the supposition that the repentance of the Ninevites happened in the twenty-third
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year of the reign of Jehu, king of Israel.
-Year from the Creation, according to Archbishop Usher, 3142.
-Year of the Julian Period, 3852.
-Year since the Flood, 1486.
-Year from the foundation of Solomon's temple, 150.
-Year since the division of Solomon's monarchy into the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, 114.
-Year before the first Olympiad, 86.
-Year before the building of Rome, according to the Varronian computation, 109.
-Year before the birth of Jesus Christ, 858.
-Year before the vulgar era of Christ's nativity, 862.
-Twelfth year of Charilaus, king of Lacedaemon, of the family of the Proclidae.
-Fifty-second year of Archelaus, king of Lacedaemon, of the family of the Eurysthenidae.
-Second year of Phereclus, perpetual archon of the Athenians.
-Fourteenth year of Alladius Sylvius, king of the Albans.
-Twenty-third year of Jehu, king of Israel.
-Seventeenth year of Joash, king of Judah.
CHAPTER I
Jonah, sent to Nineveh, flees to Tarshish, 1-3.
He is overtaken by a great tempest, 4-14;
thrown into the sea, 15, 16;
and swallowed by a fish, in the belly of which he is
miraculously preserved alive three days and three nights, 17.
NOTES ON CHAP. I
Verse 1. Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah] All that is certainly known about this prophet has already been laid before the reader. He was of Gath-hepher, in the tribe of Zebulun, in lower Galilee, Jos 19:13; and he prophesied in the reigns of Jeroboam the Second, and Joash, kings of Israel. Jeroboam came to the throne eight hundred and twenty-three years before the Christian era, and reigned in Samaria forty-one years, 2Kg 14:23-25. As a prophet, it is likely that he had but this one mission.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 11, 13, 16, 17 Jon 1:1-2. Now the word of the Lord —…
Jon 1:1-2. Now the word of the Lord — An impulse or revelation from the Lord, significative of his will; came unto Jonah, the son of Amittai — Of whom see 2Ki 14:25. It is probable he had been before acquainted with the word of the Lord, and knew his voice from that of a stranger. Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city — The capital of the Assyrian empire: see notes on Jon 3:3; Jon 4:11; and Nah 1:1; Nah 3:18. And cry — Proclaim as a prophet, against it — Or concerning it. He must witness against their great wickedness, and warn them of the destruction that was coming upon them for it. And this he must do, not privately in corners, but publicly in the streets, and must cry aloud, that all might hear. For their wickedness is come up before me — Is manifest in my sight, and calls aloud for vengeance.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1–17 Now the word of the Lord - , literally,…
Now the word of the Lord - , literally, “And, ...” This is the way in which the several inspired writers of the Old Testament mark that what it was given them to write was united onto those sacred books which God had given to others to write, and it formed with them one continuous whole. The word, “And,” implies this. It would do so in any language, and it does so in Hebrew as much as in any other. As neither we, nor any other people, would, without any meaning, use the word, And, so neither did the Hebrews. It joins the four first books of Moses together; it carries on the history through Joshua, Judges, the Books of Samuel and of the Kings. After the captivity, Ezra and Nehemiah begin again where the histories before left off; the break of the captivity is bridged over; and Ezra, going back in mind to the history of God’s people before the captivity, resumes the history, as if it had been of yesterday, “And in the first year of Cyrus.” It joins in the story of the Book of Ruth before the captivity, and that of Esther afterward. At times, even prophets employ it, in using the narrative form of themselves, as Ezekiel, “and it was in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the month, and I was in the captivity by the river of Chebar, the heavens opened and I saw.” If a prophet or historian wishes to detach his prophecy or his history, he does so; as Ezra probably began the Book of Chronicles anew from Adam, or as Daniel makes his prophecy a whole by itself. But then it is the more obvious that a Hebrew prophet or historian, when he does begin with the word, “And,” has an object in so beginning; he uses an universal word of all languages in its uniform meaning in all language, to join things together.
And yet more precisely; this form, “and the word of the Lord came to - saying,” occurs over and over again, stringing together the pearls of great price of God’s revelations, and uniting this new revelation to all those which had preceded it. The word, “And,” then joins on histories with histories, revelations with revelations, uniting in one the histories of God’s works and words, and blending the books of Holy Scripture into one divine book.
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But the form of words must have suggested to the Jews another thought, which is part of our thankfulness and of our being Act 11:18, “then to the Gentiles also hath God given repentance unto life.” The words are the self-same familiar words with which some fresh revelation of God’s will to His people had so often been announced. Now they are prefixed to God’s message to the pagan, and so as to join on that message to all the other messages to Israel. Would then God deal thenceforth with the pagan as with the Jews? Would they have their prophets? Would they be included in the one family of God? The mission of Jonah in itself was an earnest that they would, for God. Who does nothing fitfully or capriciously, in that He had begun, gave an earnest that He would carry on what He had begun. And so thereafter, the great prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, were prophets to the nations also; Daniel was a prophet among them, to them as well as to their captives.
But the mission of Jonah might, so far, have been something exceptional. The enrolling his book, as an integral part of the Scriptures, joining on that prophecy to the other prophecies to Israel, was an earnest that they were to be parts of one system. But then it would be significant also, that the records of God’s prophecies to the Jews, all embodied the accounts of their impenitence. Here is inserted among them an account of God’s revelation to the pagan, and their repentance. “So many prophets had been sent, so many miracles performed, so often had captivity been foreannounced to them for the multitude of their sins. and they never repented. Not for the reign of one king did they cease from the worship of the calves; not one of the kings of the ten tribes departed from the sins of Jeroboam? Elijah, sent in the Word and Spirit of the Lord, had done many miracles, yet obtained no abandonment of the calves. His miracles effected this only, that the people knew that Baal was no god, and cried out, “the Lord He is the God.” Elisha his disciple followed him, who asked for a double portion of the Spirit of Elijah, that he might work more miracles, to bring back the people.
He died, and, after his death as before it, the worship of the calves continued in Israel. The Lord marveled and was weary of Israel, knowing that if He sent to the pagan they would bear, as he saith to Ezekiel. To make trial of this, Jonah was chosen, of whom it is recorded in the Book of Kings that he prophesied the restoration of the border of Israel. When then he begins by saying, “And the word of the Lord came to Jonah,” prefixing the word “And,” he refers us back to those former things, in this meaning. The children have not hearkened to what the Lord commanded, sending to them by His servants the prophets, but have hardened their necks and given themselves up to do evil before the Lord and provoke Him to anger; “and” therefore “the word of the Lord came to Jonah, saying, Arise and go to Nineveh that great city, and preach unto her,” that so Israel may be shewn, in comparison with the pagan, to be the more guilty, when the Ninevites should repent, the children of Israel persevered in unrepentance.”
Jonah the son of Amittai - Both names occur here only in the Old Testament, Jonah signifies “Dove,” Amittai, “the truth of God.” Some of the names of the Hebrew prophets so suit in with their times, that they must either have been given them propheticly, or assumed by themselves, as a sort of watchword, analogous to the prophetic names, given to the sons of Hosea and Isaiah. Such were the names of Elijah and Elisha, “The Lord is my God,” “my God is salvation.” Such too seems to be that of Jonah. The “dove” is everywhere the symbol of “mourning love.” The side of his character which Jonah records is that of his defect, his want of trust in God, and so his unloving zeal against those, who were to be the instruments of God against his people. His name perhaps preserves that character by which he willed to be known among his people, one who moaned or mourned over them.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 12, 13, 14, 16 Ninive, the capital city of the Assyrian empire. (Challoner)…
Ninive, the capital city of the Assyrian empire. (Challoner) --- It was 150 stadia long and 90 broad, (Diodorus ii.) on the western bank of the Tigris. (Pliny, [Natural History?] vi. 13.) --- Mosul, which some mistake for it, stands on the northern side. See Genesis x. 10. At the time when Jonas preached, Ninive would contain about 600,000, chap. iv. 11. They were people less favoured by God, (Acts xiv. 15.; Calmet) but not abandoned. (Theodoret) --- God took sufficient care of all his creatures, and foretold many things relating to foreign nations. (Calmet) --- Romans iii. 29. (Worthington) --- For the. Septuagint add, "cry of," Genesis iv., and xviii. (Haydock)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v1 [The Prophet’s Commission to preach against Nineveh, and his…
CHAPTER 1
[The Prophet’s Commission to preach against Nineveh, and his Attempt to evade it (Jon_1:1-3). A Voilent Storm arises; Alarm of the Sailors; Means adopted for their Safety; Detection of Jonah; he is thrown into the Sea, and is swallowed by a Fish (Jon_1:4-16).—C. E.]
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1Now [And] the word of the Lord [Jehovah] came unto [was communicated to] Jonah , 1 the son of Amittai.2 2Arise,3 go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry4 [proclaim] 3against it; for5 their wickedness is [has] come up before me. But [And] Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord [Jehovah], and went down to Jappa; and he [omit, he] found a ship6 going to Tarshish: so he paid [and paid] the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish 4from the presence of the Lord [Jehovah]. But [And] the Lord [Jehovah] sent out7 a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty [great] tempest in the sea, 5so that [and] the ship was like to be broken.8 Then [And] the mariners9 were afraid, and cried every man [each] unto his god, and cast forth the wares10 that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it of them.10 But [And] Jonah was gone down [had gone down] into the sides [the interior] of the ship;11 and he lay, and was fast asleep. 6So [And] the shipmaster12 came [came near] to him, and said unto [to] him, What meanest thou, O sleeper? Arise, call upon [to] thy God, if so be that [perhaps] God13 will think upon us, that we perish not [and we shall not perish]. 7And they said every one to his fellow [to each other], Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know [and we shall know] for whose cause14 [on account of whom] this evil is upon us. So [And] they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah. 8Then said they [And they said] unto [to] him, Tell us, we pray thee, for whose cause this evil is upon us;15 What is thine occupation? and whence comest thou? what is thy country? and of what people art thou? 9And he said unto [to] them, I am an Hebrew; and I fear the Lord [Jehovah], the God of heaven, which [who] hath made [omit, hath] the sea and the dry land. 10Then were the men [And the men were] exceedingly afraid, and said unto [to] him, Why hast thou done this?16 [What is this thou hast done?] For the men knew that he fled [was fleeing] from the presence of the Lord [Jehovah], because he had told them. 11Then said they [And they said] unto [to] him, What shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us [may subside from against us]? for the sea wrought and was tempestuous17 [was increasing and rushing tempestuously]. 12And he said unto [to] them, Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea, so shall the sea [And the sea shall] be calm unto you [subside from against you]: for I 13know that for my sake18 this great tempest is upon you. Nevertheless [And] the men rowed19 [broke through, viz., the waves] hard to bring it to the land [to bring to land]; but they could not, for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous [was increasing 14and rushing tempestuously] against them. Wherefore [And] they cried unto [to] the Lord [Jehovah], and said, We beseech thee, O Lord [O now Jehovah], let us not perish for this man’s life,20 and lay not upon us innocent blood: 15for thou, O Lord [Jehovah], hast done as it pleased thee. So [And] they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea: and the sea ceased [stood] from its raging. 16Then [And] the men feared the Lord [Jehovah] exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice unto the Lord [Jehovah], and made vows.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Jon_1:1-3. The Command and the Flight. Compare on Jon_1:1 the Introduction, § 2, p. 13.
“The narrative begins, according to usage, with the copula [conjunction vav. C. E.], because every event in time follows upon an antecedent one; and the record of that event is always only a continuation of something prior, and separately considered forms a fragment.” (Hitzig, Compare Rth_1:1; 1Sa_1:1.)
[“From the circumstance that the book commences with the conjunction ו, commonly rendered and, some have inferred that it is merely the fragment of a larger work, written by the same hand; but though this particle is most commonly used to connect the following sentence with something which precedes it, and is placed at the beginning of historical books to mark their connection with a foregoing narrative, as Exo_1:1; 1Ki_1:1; Ezr_1:1; yet it is also employed inchoatively where there is no connection whatever, as Rth_1:1; Est_1:1; and, as specially parallel, Eze_1:1. It serves no other purpose in such cases than merely to qualify the apocopated future, so as to make it represent the historical past tense.” (Henderson, Com. on Jonah, Jon_1:1.)
“This form, ‘And the word of the Lord came to—, saying,’ occurs over and over again, stringing together the pearls of great price of God’s revelations, and uniting this new revelation to all those which had preceded it. The word And, then joins on histories with histories, revelations with revelations, uniting in one the histories of God’s works and words, and blending the books of Holy Scripture into one Divine book.” (Pusey, Com. on Jonah, Jon_1:1.)
“Sometimes a book commences with the relative past form of the substantive verb, in consequence of the writer’s viewing it as the continuation of a preceding one (Lev_1:1; Num_1:1; Jos_1:1; Jdg_1:1). Books are also found to commence in this manner which have no actual reference to a preceding one; in such cases the writer plunges at once in medias res, regarding what he is about to record as connected to foregoing events, at least in the order of time (Eze_1:1; Jon_1:1; Rth_1:1; Est_1:1). (Nordheimer’s Heb. Gram. Syntax, § 976, 2).—C.E.]
Jon_1:2. Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, on the left bank of the Tigris, is called the great city, κατ̓ ἐξοχήν, here as in Gen_10:12, where the additional clause, “the same is a great city,” includes the four previously, separately named cities, which, in a wider sense, constituted the city of Nineveh. It was, according to Diodor. ii. 3, the greatest city of antiquity. Its circumference was four hundred and eighty furlongs—one hundred and fifteen furlongs greater than that of Babylon. Its diameter was (Herodotus, v. 25)21 [?] one hundred and fifty furlongs; consequently a good day’s journey. Upon its walls, 100 feet high, flanked with fifteen hundred towers, each two hundred feet high, four [some say three, C. E.] chariots could drive abreast. The three days’ journey, which, according to Jon_3:3, one could travel within the city, cannot appear an incredible statement, if we consider that it filled, together with the adjoining cities united to it by the same fortifications, the whole space between the rivers Tigris, Khosr, the Upper or Great Zab, the Gasr Su, and the mountainous boundary of the valley of the Tigris on the east; and that the rubbish and ruin covered mounds, which indicate the locality of the desolated city, and which for twenty-five years have been accessible to the investigations of learned men, occupy an area of about eighteen square miles [German miles=378 Eng. sq. miles—C. E.] Comp. Ewald, Bib. Jour., x. 52 ff.; J. Oppert, Expéd. Scientifique en Mésopotamie, Paris, 1862, ii. 67, 72, 82 f.; M. v. Niebuhr, Hist. of Assyria and Babylon, p. 274 ff.)
[Nineveh, according to Gen_10:11, was built by Nimrod. The verse should probably be read: “Out of that land he [Nimrod] went forth into Asshur [Assyria], and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth and Calah.” According to the Greek and Roman authors, it was founded by Ninus, the mythical founder of the Assyrian empire; and its name appears to be derived from his, or from that of an Assyrian deity, Nin, corresponding, it is conjectured, with the Greek Hercules. In the time of Jonah, it had probably attained to its greatest extent. It formed a trapezium, and consequently could have no one diameter. Its sharp angles lay towards the north and south, and its long sides were formed by the Tigris and the mountains. The average length was about twenty-five English miles; the average breadth, fifteen. This large extent of area includes Nineveh in its broader sense, which was a union of four large primeval cities. Nineveh proper, including the ruins of Kouyunjik, Nebbi Yunas, and Ninua, is situated at the northwestern corner, near the Tigris. Nimrud, supposed to be the later capital, and which, in the opinion of Rawlinson, Jones, and Oppert, was the ancient Calah, is at the southwestern corner, between the Tigris and Zab; a third large city, which is now without a name, and which has been explored least of all, is on the Tigris itself, from three to six English miles to the north of Nimrud; and the citadel and temple-mass, now named Khorsabad, is situated on the Khosr. (Compare Keil and Delitzsch on the Minor Prophets; Kitto’s Biblical Cyclopedia; Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible; Layard’s Nineveh and its Remains; Rawlinson’s Herodotus, Book I., Appendix, Essay vii.)—C. E.]
Preach against it is God’s command to Jonah; that is, go and deliver to its face, a call to repentance [Eine Busspredigt]. He does not say, preach merely concerning it; for Jonah, as other prophets did, could have done that in his own land. Neither does he say merely to it; for that would have been expressed by אֶל or ל. But God will have him preach against Nineveh, because its wickedness had come up before Him as in former times the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah had done (comp. Gen_18:21, with Gen_6:5).
Jon_1:3. Jonah arose, but to flee, and that from the presence of Jehovah, that is, from the people and land of Israel, to which he imagined the presence Of God to be limited, as Jacob, when he was astonished at discovering the presence of God beyond the home of his father [Väterlichen Erde]. (Gen_28:16.)
[“The belief in the omnipresence of God was a part of the faith of Abraham’s house. And that God was even present here he did not first learn on this occasion (as Knobel seems to think), but it is new to him that Jehovah, as the covenant God, revealed Himself not only at the consecrated altars of his fathers, but even here.” (Lange on Gen_28:16.)
“It has been asked, ‘How could a Prophet imagine that he could flee from the presence of God?’ Plainly he could not. Jonah, so conversant with the Psalms, doubtless knew well the Psalm of David, ‘Whither shall I go from thy Spirit, and whither shall I flee from thy presence?’ He could not but know, what every instructed Israelite knew. And so critics should have known that such could not be the meaning. The words are used, as we say, ‘he went out of the king’s presence,’ or the like. It is, literally, he rose to flee from being in the presence of the Lord, i. e., from standing in his presence as his servant and minister.” (Introduction to the Prophet Jonah, by the Rev. E. B. Pusey, D. D., p. 247.)
Dr. Pusey illustrates his interpretation by a large number of references to the use of the expression מִלִּפְנֵי, in the notes to the passage quoted above. The explanation of Keil and Delitzsch (Com. on Jonah, Jon_1:3) is essentially the same: “from the face of Jehovah, i. e., away from the presence of the Lord, out of the land of Israel, where Jehovah dwelt in the temple, and manifested his presence (comp. Gen_4:16); not to hide himself from the omnipresent God, but to withdraw from the service of Jehovah, the God-King of Israel.”
Henderson (Com. on Jonah, Jon_1:3), says: “פְּנֵי יְהוָֹה, which strictly means the face, person, or presence of Jehovah, is sometimes employed to denote the special manifestation of his presence, or certain outward and visible tokens by which He made Himself locally known. Thus God promised that his presence (פָּנַי), i. e., the sensible tokens of his presence, should accompany the Hebrews on their march to Canaan (Exo_33:14. Comp. Psa_9:3; Psa_68:2; Psa_68:8). It is also employed in reference to the place or region where such manifestations were vouchsafed, as Gen_4:14, where it obviously signifies the spot where the primitive worship was celebrated, and sensible proofs of the divine favor were manifested to the worshippers (1Sa_1:22; 1Sa_2:18; Psa_42:3(2)). In like manner, the place where Jacob had intimate communion with God, was called by that patriarch פְּניאֵל, the face, or manifestation of God (Gen_32:30). The interpretation, therefore, of David Kimchi, “He imagined that if he went out of the land of Israel, the spirit of prophecy would not rest upon him,” is perhaps not wide of the mark. Jarchi to the same effect: “The Shekinah does not dwell out of the hind.” Though, as Theodoret observes, he well knew that the Lord of the universe was everywhere present, yet he supposed that it was only at Jerusalem he became apparent to men; ὑπολαμβάνων δὲ ό̓μως ἐν μόνη Ἱερουσαλὴμ αὐτὸν ποιεῖσθαι τὴν ἐπιφάνειαν.”—C. E.]
The psychological motive of the flight is not mentioned. That which Jonah assigns (Jon_4:2), is hardly to be considered with Keil22 as pragmatically exact and sufficient, since in that place it rather makes the impression of being an attempt to palliate a guilty conscience, which is glad to seize upon even the semblance of right. His concern for the time being, was to throw off obedience to God, and for that purpose various motives—ease, indolence, and fear of men—concurred,—a state of mind of which every servant of God can readily conceive from the analogy of his own experience. That he actually intended an entire abandonment of duty, the circumstance that he fled as far as possible proves.
To Tarshish, or Tartessus,23 which was the most remote of the Phœnician trading-places known in the Old Testament, and situated not far from the mouth of the Bætis (Guadalquivir). He takes the direct road thither, first to Joppa, which, in the time of Solomon (2Ch_2:16), was a well-known seaport on the Mediterranean (Jos_19:46), for the purpose of there embarking in a ship, whose appointed fare (שְֹכָרָהּ) he paid.
Jon_1:4-16. God arrests Jonah. Jehovah, from whom Jonah intends to flee, is Lord of the sea, and the winds are his servants (Psa_104:4). One of these servants he sends forth in haste into the sea to draw Jonah from his purpose.
Jon_1:5. The sailors, heathen from different nations, do what behooves honest and prudent men: they pray and resort to the usual precautionary measures, by throwing the wares into the sea, in order to unburden themselves of them. (מעליהם does not refer to the wares, but to the ship’s company (Exo_18:22).) But he, whom the storm particularly concerns, deems himself secure in the aides of the ship, i. e., in the hold (comp. Amo_6:10; Isa_14:15). There he is fast asleep. “Tam quietus est et animi tranquilli, ut ad navis interiora descendens somno placido perfruatur.” (Hieronymus.) The verbs in the last sentence of the verse should be rendered in the pluperfect, as in the last clause of Jon_1:10. [“Jonah had gone down into the hold, and had there fallen fast asleep.”—C. E.]
[This act of Jonah is regarded by most commentators as a sign of an evil conscience. Marck supposes that he had lain down to sleep, hoping the better to escape either the dangers of sea and air, or the hand of God; others that he had thrown himself down in despair, and being utterly exhausted and giving himself up for lost, had fallen asleep; or as Theodoret expresses it, being troubled with the gnawings of conscience and overpowered with mourning, he had sought comfort in sleep and fallen into a deep sleep. Jerome, on the other hand, expresses the idea that the words indicate “security of mind” on the part of the prophet “he is not disturbed by the storm and the surrounding dangers, but has the same composed mind in the calm, or with shipwreck at hand;” and whilst the rest are calling upon their gods, and casting their things overboard, “he is so calm and feels so safe with his tranquil mind, that he goes down to the interior of the ship and enjoys a most placid sleep.” The truth probably lies between these two views. It was not an evil conscience, or despair occasioned by the threatening of danger, which induced hìm to lie down to sleep; nor was it his fearless composure in the midst of the danger of the storm, but the careless self-security with which he had embarked on the ship to flee from God, without considering that the hand of God could reach him even on the sea, and punish him for his disobedience. This security is apparent in his subsequent conduct.” (Keil and Delitzsch, Com. on Jonah, Jon_1:5).
Pusey and Cowles intimate that he may have been fatigued by his journey to Joppa, and that “sorrow and remorse completed what fatigue began.”—C. E.]
Jon_1:6. But God knows where to find each one (comp. Amo_9:2). The captain [חבל collect] came to him and said: What meanest thou, O sleeper? Hieronymus: “Quid tu sopore deprimeris? Vox stupentis et acriter redarguentis, ac si dixisset: quœnam est tibi tanti soporis causa et ratio et excusatio? cum procella somnum omnem satis interdicat et vigiliam exigat periculum?”—Marck.
Arise, pray to thy God. Perhaps God24 will think upon us, think mercifully that we perish not (compare the derivatives of the root עשׁת (Job_12:5; Psa_146:4). The heathen is obliged to admonish the servant of God of his duty, and to remind him of the fact that his God is a merciful God.
[Pusey quotes from Chrysostom the following passage: “The ship-master knew from experience, that it was no common storm, that the surges were an infliction borne down from God, and above human skill, and that there was no good in the master’s skill. For the state of things needed another Master, who ordereth the heavens, and craved the guidance from on high. So then they too left oars, sails, cables, gave their hands rest from rowing, and stretched them to heaven and called upon God.”—C. E.]
Jon_1:7. But God intends to make a complete exposure of Jonah. [Luther fills up, in an ingenious way, the break in the continuity of thought between Jon_1:6-7. On a momentary survey of the evil, which he had caused, Jonah was filled with such a pungent feeling of repentance and confusion, that he is speechless from deep compunction, and does not, because of shame, find courage to make an open confession, because he considers the disgrace intolerable. Therefore God must suffer still something more to come to pass, in order to drive him to confession.]25 The lot falls upon him. “Fugitivus hic sorte deprehenditur, non viribus sortium, sed voluntate ejus, qui sortes regebat incertas” (Hieronymus.) [The fugitive is detected by lot, not from any virtue in lots themselves, but by the will of Him, who governs uncertain lots.]
Jon_1:8. His own confession must convict him, that he intended to flee from a God, of whose wide, unlimited power he could not be ignorant (Mat_12:37).
[“When Jonah had been singled out by lot as the culprit, the sailors called upon him to confess his guilt, asking him at the same time about his country, his occupation, and his parentage. The repetition of the question, on whose account this calamity had befallen them, which is omitted in the LXX. (Vatican), the Soncin. prophets, and Cod. 195 of Kennicott, is found in the margin in Cod. 384, and is regarded by Grimm and Hitzig as a marginal gloss that has crept into the text. It is not superfluous, however, still less does it occasion any confusion; on the contrary, it is quite in order. The sailors wanted thereby to induce Jonah to confess with his own mouth that he was guilty, now that the lot had fallen upon him, and to disclose his crime (Ros. and others). As an indirect appeal to confess his crime, it prepares the way for the further inquiries as to his occupation, etc. They inquired about his occupation, because it might be a disreputable one, and one which excited the wrath of the gods; also about his parentage, and especially about the land and people from which he sprang, that they might pronounce a safe sentence upon his crime” (Keil and Delitzsch, Com. on Jonah, Jon_1:8).
“Questions so thronged have been admired in human poetry,” St. Jerome says. For it is true to nature. They think that some one of them will draw forth the answer which they wish. It may be that they thought that his country, or people, or parents, were under the displeasure of God. But perhaps more naturally, they wished to “know all about him,” as men say. These questions must have gone home to Jonah’s conscience. What is thy business? The office of prophet which he had left. Whence comest thou? From standing before God as his minister. What thy country, of what people art thou? The people of God, whom he had quitted for heathen; not to win them to God, as He commanded; but not knowing what they did, to abet him in his flight.
Jon_1:9. “Jonah answers the central point to which all these questions tended: ‘I am a Hebrew.’ This was the name by which Israel was known to foreigners. It is used in the Old Testament, only when they are spoken of by foreigners, or speak of themselves to foreigners, or when the sacred writers mention them in contrast with foreigners.” (Pusey, Com. on Jonah, Jon_1:8-9.)
“He does not say a Jew, as the Targum wrongly renders it; for that would have been false, since he was of the tribe of Zebulun, which was in the kingdom of Israel, and not of Judah; nor does he say an Israelite, lest he should be thought to be in the idolatry of that people, but a Hebrew, which was common to both” (Dr. Gill, Com. on Jonah, Jon_1:9).
And I fear Jehovah, the God of heaven, which made the sea and dry land.יָרֵא has been rendered correctly by the LXX. σέβομαι, colo, revereor; and does not mean “I am afraid of Jehovah against whom I have sinned” (Abarbanel). By the statement, “I fear,” etc., he had no intention of describing himself as a righteous or innocent man (Hitzig), but simply meant to indicate his relation to God,—namely, that he adored the living God who created the whole earth, and, as Creator, governed the world. For he admits directly after, that he has sinned against this God, by telling them, as we may see from Jon_1:10, of his flight from Jehovah. He had not told them as soon as he embarked in the ship, as Hitzig supposes, but does so now for the first time, when they ask about his people, his country, etc., as we may see most unmistakably from Jon_1:10, b. In Jon_1:9, Jonah’s statement is not given completely; but the principal fact, namely, that he was a Hebrew and worshipped Jehovah, is followed immediately by the account of the impression which this acknowledgment made upon the heathen sailors; and the confession of his sin is mentioned afterwards as a supplement, to assign the reason for the great fear which came upon the sailors in consequence.” (Keil and Delitzsch, Com. on Jonah, Jon_1:9.)—C. E.]
Jon_1:10. The heathen perceive the bearing and extent of this confession. Danger teaches to take heed to the word (Isa_28:19). [See the Hebrew and Luther’s German translation of Isa_28:19.—C. E.] Great fear of the great God, who pursues them closely [is at their heels] seizes upon them. The second half of the verse is an explanatory clause added by the narrator, from which it is evident that the reply of Jonah (Jon_1:9), does not give the exact words that he uttered, but only their substance in condensed form. Indeed, if the question (10, a), is admitted to be intelligible, he must have told them of his flight.
[What hast thou done!מַה־זֹּאת עָשִיתָ, is not a question as to the nature of his sin, but an exclamation of horror at his flight from Jehovah, the God of heaven and earth, as the following explanatory clauses, כִּי יָדְעוּ ,וגו clearly show. The great fear which came upon the heathen seamen at this confession of Jonah, may be fully explained from the dangerous situation in which they found themselves, since the storm preached the omnipotence of God more powerfully than words could possibly do.” (Keil and Delitsch, Com. on Jonah, Jon_1:10.)—C. E.]
Jon_1:11. Still more evident is it from this verse that Jonah must have told them that he was a servant of God consecrated by a special call; for they do not cast him into the sea immediately, but apply to him with a kind of awe for instructions what to do. Moreover, afterward (Jon_1:13-14), they exert themselves most strenuously to bring him to land, to preserve his life for the execution of his divine commission; and only when they do not succeed, do they throw him into the sea.26
The participle הֹלֵךְ, Jon_1:11, frequently stands as an auxiliary verb, with the idea of continuance, increase: the sea continued to rage (2Sa_3:1; 2Sa_15:12).
Jon_1:12. Jonah pronounces his own sentence. “Non tergiversatur, non dissimulat, non negat, sed qui confessus erat de fuga pœnam libenter assumit se cupiens perire ne propter se et ceteri pereant.” (Hieronymus.) [He does not refuse, or prevaricate, or deny; but having made confession concerning his flight, he willingly submits to the punishment, desiring to perish, and not [to] let others perish on his account.] With the same resignation, with which the prophets are accustomed to announce the sad fate of their nation, he utters his own sentence as a divine oracle, and joins with the tone of prophecy the promise of deliverance.
Jon_1:13. The holier he seems to the men, the greater is their dread of putting him to death. Will not God have mercy upon them, if they restore him again to the mission, from which he was intending to escape, if they put him on shore? They row hard [וַיַּחְתְּרוּ, literally, broke through, namely, the surging waves] to bring the ship to dry land; Cyrill: προσκεῖλαι τὴν ναῦν: the object can be omitted as being easily understood, a usage common to the German.27 But they do not succeed. It must be evident to them that the word of the prophet must indeed be accomplished. He is a servant [Mann] of Jehovah, whom they are about to sacrifice; therefore it is natural that they should pray, not to their own gods, but to Jehovah to pardon them because of the victim.
Jon_1:14.—O Jehovah, we beseech thee, let us not perish for the sake of the soul of this man.אָנָּה has not arisen from אַל־נָא (Keil), whereby a useless accumulation of synonymous words would arise, but it is the usual particle of entreaty, contracted from אתּ־נא,28 which is just as readily joined with positive requests (2Ki_20:3). The בְּ pretii [the beth of price, reward, exchange.—C. E.] stands here as in Mic_1:5. The added petition, impute not to us innocent blood, does not mean, suffer us not to destroy in this man an innocent person (Hitzig); but נתן אל has the meaning of imputation and retribution. Against them Jonah had done no wrong; with respect to them he is guiltless; and in his mission as a prophet, he stands or falls to his God alone: this they feel; no worldly power has a right to pass sentence upon the prophet of God (Jer_26:19). [נקיא is irregularly written with א, as in Joel. 4:19.] But God showed them that they must serve Him as his executioners. For thou, O Jehovah, hast done as it pleased thee. Thou hast determined it. This is their justification. The lot and the word of the prophet are to them the finger of God.
Jon_1:15. The prediction of the prophet is fulfilled. The sea stood still [ceased] from its raging.
Jon_1:16. The result of the fulfilled prophecy is that the fear of God on the part of the heathen manifests itself in action: they offer a sacrifice and make vows,—the sacrifice immediately, the vows for the time of landing.
[According to the Rabbins, Grotius, and some others, they did not actually offer a sacrifice, but only purposed to do it before Jehovah, i. e., at Jerusalem; but it is more natural to conclude that they sacrificed some animal that was on board, and vowed that they would present greater proofs of their gratitude when they returned from their voyage. Michaelis thinks they intended to perform their vows when they reached Spain.
“Quin; ubi transmissœ steterint trans æquora classes;
Et positis aris jam vota in litore solves.”—Æneid iii. 403.
Henderson’s Com. on Jonah, Jon_1:16.—C. E.]
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL29
See Introduction 3. p. 16.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
There is no escape from the Almighty God. For (1.) He has so arranged the world, that the work of every individual is counted upon; and his work is not allowed to stand still, but must be accomplished. Jon_1:1-2. (2.) Distance is no protection against Him; for to Him belong heaven and earth, the sea and the dry land. Jon_1:3, f. 9. (3.) To Him the winds and waves are subject; for He has made all things.
Jon_1:4; Jon_1:9. (4.) To Him also are subject everywhere, in involuntary fear, the erring hearts of men (Jon_1:5-6); whoever, then, expects to find in them a refuge against God, is deceived. (5.) Even things seemingly accidental must obey Him, whenever He intends to carry out his purpose.
Jon_1:7. (6.) Everything, however far from, or near to Him it may be, must finally become an instrument in his hand (Jon_1:11-15), and coöperate for the glorifying of his name. Jon_1:16.
Jon_1:1. Whoever would speak the word of God to others, must have received it himself. For the office of the ministry a regular call is requisite.
Jon_1:2. Let no man say, that there is, or can be anywhere, a sphere of life so distant, that God can entirely lose sight of it. The Lord has always an eye and a heart for those also, who are without. And he who would be his servant and has not such a heart, is a servant like Jonah, that is, an undutiful one. The sins of Nineveh are not specified. The savage desire for wars and thirst for conquest, which characterized the Assyrians, were certainly sins enough before God; yet there may have been others. God’s call to repentance is always a call of grace; his call of grace always a call to repentance. Jonah and Paul, Rom_1:5.
Jon_1:3. What God appoints to thee to do, do it without gainsaying. He who gives the burden gives also the shoulders to bear it. He who flees increases the burden. He who flees from God is foolish and commits folly. Jonah must have known in his heart that it is impossible to escape from God (Jon_1:9). It so happens that if, regardless of Divine direction, we take our own course, we will afterward be obliged to acknowledge ourselves blind and foolish.
Jon_1:4. Had the Book of Jonah originated from heathen fables, as some assert, the Lord would not have sent the wind upon the sea; but the god of heaven [Jupiter] would have made an alliance with the god of the winds [Æolus] and with the god of the sea [Neptune] against Jonah. How simple and sublime is the religion of the Old Testament! Distress teaches to pray. If thou dost not know and teach this, thou wilt always be a poor comforter. If the Lord seizes thy heart with violent alarms from anguish of conscience, throw thy wares into the sea. What is thine must perish, and if thou dost not surrender it, thou must thyself suffer shipwreck.
Jon_1:6. It is a sad thing and a bad sign, if the unbelieving, and those in the congregation weak in faith, must tell the minister what becomes him to do. Happy he whose conscience is awakened and quickened by an admonition so shameful to him. Of whom the Lord thinks, him He also helps (Psa_40:17 (17)). It often occurs that the Lord must say: Verily, I have not found such faith in Israel.
Jon_1:7. Human means to learn the will of God, in doubtful cases, are in themselves of no avail; but God can make use of them, if there is true earnestness in those who employ them, and if they know no better means (comp. Joshua 7). But when men, by means of prayer, can receive the Holy Spirit, then they should seek the will of God, not by lots, but by prayer (Mat_7:11).
Jon_1:8. Jonah might purposely have left his birth and vocation in darkness. Whoever engages in his calling with half a soul, likes to avoid confession; he suffers himself to be considered as a heathen, and puts himself on a level with this world. Where the fear of God is not, there is the fear of man. And moreover, the fear of man is most unprofitable. Whoever frankly and honestly, humbly and heartily, acknowledges the Lord among men, will soon discover that it is the phantom offspring of fear to imagine that one will reap from the acknowledgment only disgrace and not a blessing. Such was not even the case among the heathen; for when Jonah made his confession, they honored him (Jon_1:10-14). Reflect how many souls may be guided by the Lord to thee, to whom, by confession at proper time, thou mayest have it in thy power to render a service for eternity. The commission [of the minister] is not confined to Jerusalem and Bethel, not to the baptismal font and altar, not to the confessional and pulpit, not to canonicals; but it is in thy heart and mouth, and it shall, therefore, never depart from thee (Deu_30:14).
Jon_1:13. So has the heathen world also struggled to come to land; but it could not until Christ was buried in death (Romans 1-3).
Jon_1:15. There are deeds of violence by which God’s will is carried into effect. But it does not, therefore, follow that he who performs them is guiltless; but he stands in need of repentance and forgiveness.
Jon_1:15-16. This is also a shadow of things to come. O, that it were only come to this,—that all the heathen world would thank God, that death, which swallowed up Christ, has no more power over us.
Luther: Thus God is wont, when his great wrath is at hand, to send his word before and save some. We have now the same grace and great light of the Divine word; therefore it is certain that a great destruction is near; since God intends to rescue some before it comes.
Jon_1:2. We regard the history with indifference, because we view it from without, and it does not concern us. But should the like occur in our time, we would think that we never yet heard of a more foolish and more impossible thing, than that a single man should enter such an empire, with a proclamation to repent. Now God’s works are wont to appear, at first, so foolish and impossible, that reason must despair of their accomplishment and scoff; but it is well for us to believe, for God accomplishes them.
Jon_1:3. The ancient holy fathers were especially inclined to exculpate the prophets, apostles, and great saints. But we adhere strictly and inflexibly to the Word of God, and admit that Jonah, in this instance, committed a great sin, on account of which he would have been eternally condemned, had he not, in the number of the elect, been written in the book of life. This is a signal token of grace that God seeks Jonah and punishes him so soon after his sin, and does not suffer him to profit by it, or to continue long therein.
Jon_1:5. The natural light of reason extends thus far, that it considers God kind, gracious, merciful, and mild. This is a great light; but it fails in two particulars. In the first place, it believes indeed that God has power and knowledge to do, to help, and to give; but that He is willing also to do such things for it, it knows not; therefore it does not continue steadfast in its opinion. In the second place, reason cannot correctly bestow the predicate of Deity upon that being to whom it belongs. It knows that God is; but who and what He is, who has a right to be called God, it knows not. Each one called upon his god, that is, upon the object of his fancy, or that which he considered God; therefore, they were all in error in regard to the only true God.
Jon_1:7. Where men devoid of understanding are, they set about things in a wrong, perverted way, allow the sin to remain in the mean time, and consider only how they may get rid of their anguish. This does not help: they must consequently despair. But where men of understanding are, they turn away their minds from their anguish and think mostly of their sins; they confess them and get rid of them, though they should remain eternally in anguish, and they resign themselves to it, as Jonah does here.
Jon_1:10 ff. The faith of Jonah against trials (for that he maintained his faith his deliverance proves): (1.) He takes the sin upon himself from others, and acknowledges that he alone deserved death. (2.) He consents also to be brought to shame before God. (3.) He chooses death, bitter and uncertain. If God so deal with us as to permit us to see life in death, or if He show us the place and abode of our souls, whither they must go and where they must remain, then death would not be bitter, but it would be like a leap over a shallow stream, on both sides of which one feels and sees a firm ground and shore. But now He does not show us here anything of the kind, but we must spring from the firm shore of this life into the abyss. (4.) He bears in death the wrath of God. (5.) More than this, he must die alone; he has none to comfort him; the people in the ship sail away and leave him in the midst of the sea as certainly drowned and lost. (6.) To die simply is not enough: he must yet enter the jaws of the fish.
Starke: Jon_1:1. Jonah came out of Galilee: that was, therefore, a false declaration of the Pharisees (Joh_7:52). From this, one sees how pernicious are all deep-rooted prejudices. Whoever will rightly exercise the office of the ministry must indeed be a Jonah, which, translated into English, signifies a dove. He must cherish the simplicity of the dove (Mat_10:16).
Jon_1:2. He must also not love ease, but cheerfully and willingly take upon himself toil and hardship. The greater cities are, the greater are their sins. God bears for a long time, and finds with him no unconditional decree for the destruction of the great majority and the election of a small minority.
Jon_1:3. To rest on the divine will places man in the highest tranquillity. Him who forsakes God and duty, God, on the other hand, forsakes with his grace and assistance.
Jon_1:4. If we follow our carnal nature [Fleisch und Blut], it will bring us into much company improper for us. It is no small act of kindness, if He punish the sinner severely soon after the commission of his sin. On account of the sin of one man many others often fall into great distress.
Jon_1:5. It is very proper, in danger, to make use of natural means for preservation.
Jon_1:6. Even the heathen acknowledged the power of prayer: it is a shame, if many among Christians should doubt it.
Jon_1:7. So also they acknowledged that there is a God, who rules over the human race, exercises the office of Judge among men, and, in consequence of this, brings the guilty to just punishment.—God has many ways of bringing our sins to light before his face (Psa_90:8).
Jon_1:8. None should be condemned without trial. Even the law of nature grants to each one the right of defense. Just as it is a duty and necessity readily and willingly to hear those who bring us to account for our life and conduct, so also ought each Christian, as often as he is accused by his conscience and brought, as it were, before court, to consider the charges of conscience, confess his wrong, and reform.
Jon_1:9. There is nothing so secret [so fein gesponnen, so finely spun], that it shall not finally come to light (Luk_8:17). Confession of our sins should also be made, that God may be honored and glorified, and that the ignorant and unbelieving may be better instructed.
Jon_1:10. The fact that the heathen had heard from Jonah, how God held the Ninevites in abhorrence, and would destroy the whole city, with its inhabitants, if they did not repent, may have contributed (for each one could easily make the application to himself) not a little to their fear, which was merely slavish. God never does evil to the sinner, but always good. He also intends all his dealings with him for good. That which delights the sinner is not a true good, but an imaginary shadow: it is not genuine pleasure, but pure disgust [Unlust]. Why then does he sin? God knows how to propagate the true religion miraculously.
Jon_1:11. In important matters one should undertake nothing without the advice of honest teachers.
Jon_1:12. It is the nature of love not to seek its own, but rather to suffer harm than to bring others into it; rather to lose its life than to suffer the lives of the innocent to be endangered (Joh_3:16).—No one should take away his own life, though he may have forfeited it.
Jon_1:13. Against the divine will no human toil nor labor can prevail.
Jon_1:14. Though in divine chastisements it is one’s duty to subordinate one’s will to the divine, yet one ought not, on that account, to cease to call upon God for the removal and mitigation of the chastisement.
Jon_1:15. He who has God for his enemy has all nature for his enemy; but to him who has God for his friend, all creatures bear good will. When God has executed his just sentence, then everything is again at peace.
Jon_1:16. God permits nothing so evil to come to pass, but that He knows to bring some good out of it; for his counsels are wonderful and He carries them out gloriously. Men should apply divine judgments upon others for the purpose of bringing themselves to a saving knowledge of God.
Pfaff: Jon_1:2. Great cities, great sins, great judgments; but so much the greater necessity that they be warned by the prophets of the Lord and rebuked by them.
Jon_1:3. Teacher and preacher must not shun the cross, otherwise they forsake the Lord. Thou also, my soul, must follow the call of God, though He lead thee in the paths of extreme suffering [Kreuzeswege]; and thou must not seek to escape from this call.
Jon_1:5. Tribulation drives to God, and that is the greatest blessing, which lies hidden in the cross.
Jon_1:10 ff. A single person can often bring a great calamity and the punishment of God upon a community. Therefore, it is necessary that the authorities watch and punish and remove offenses. We have good reason to entreat God that He will not punish the whole land on account of the ungodly.
Quandt: The book of Jonah is the missionary book of the Old Testament.
Jon_1:3. There is in the conduct of Jonah a twofold sin,—disobedience to God and flight from God. Even Christians defy their God from dread of disgrace. Errors of the heart draw after them errors of the understanding: from religious perversity spring erroneous opinions. Flight from God is also in our time a widespread folly.
Jon_1:5. Even the sleep of Jonah belongs to his flight Judas fled still farther, when he hanged himself.
Jon_1:6. The children of the world have always a feeling that the God of the pious [Christians] is more powerful than what they, in their delusion, reverence and worship.
Jon_1:8. It is not to be overlooked that Jonah first mentions the sea. The words of Jonah are not so much a confession of faith as a confession of repentance.
Jon_1:10 ff. When the orator, Cyprian, read the history of the prophet overwhelmed by the waves, his soul was violently agitated: it became a means of his conversion; and the result was that he became an eminent teacher of the church.
F. Lambert: Jon_1:1. It gives to us miserable sinners great confidence in God that He received, among his servants, David, Jonah, Peter, Paul, and others, notwithstanding they sinned notoriously.
Rieger: Jon_1:2. Of such as, in their declension, have wandered still farther from God, it is said, “their sins have come up before me; I have heard the cry of them,” etc. But of them who have intimate communion with God, or in the midst of whom the Lord Jesus still walks, it is said, “I know thy works.”
Jon_1:3. He who has become sensible of his deficiencies, will consider the foolishness of God wiser than all human wisdom, from the fact that, in his word, instead of many notable works, which He might have mentioned as having been achieved by many of his servants, He rather exposes their weaknesses and failings; because not merely brilliant and great examples are necessary for our imitation; but also examples for our encouragement, that we may rouse ourselves from the thoughtlessness of sin, seek forgiveness, and seize the hand of God extended for our recovery. From the circumstance that Jonah immediately found a ship, according to his wish, he obstinately persists in his purpose. But even to a flight undertaken in disobedience, everything in external circumstances may accommodate itself. If a man is in the right way, it must be determined by other indications [than favoring external circumstances.—C. E.]
Hieronymus: Jon_1:4. Great is he who flees in this instance; but still greater is He who pursues him.
Schmieder: Jon_1:5. Jonah is in a quiet, concealed corner of the ship. He shunned the light.
Augustine: Jon_1:9. Si homo velat, Deus revelat. Si homo tegit, Deus detegit. Si homo agnoscit, Deus ignoscit.
Rieger: Jon_1:10 ff. The entire connection of events revealed God’s just displeasure at the flight of Jonah; but at the same time it must have prepared him for the future courageous execution of his mission. For the fact that Jonah found such abundant evidence that a deep impression of the fear of God had been produced in the consciences of these strange people, and that great earnestness in calling upon God had been awakened in them, must have been adapted to prepare him to undertake, with less reluctance, the commission to preach against a strange city. The godly sorrow and repentance, which Jonah experienced, produced in him also the legitimate revenge (2Co_7:11), for he said: take me and cast me into the sea. Yet he does not throw himself into the sea. Such a difference is found between an awakened and a despairing conscience.
Schlier: Jon_1:15. He chose the sea for himself instead of going to Nineveh: the sea detained him by the hand of the Lord: the sea was the place into which the hand of the Lord plunged him for punishment.
Schmieder: Jon_1:16. This was not a genuine conversion to God; had it been, they would have abandoned forever the worship of all other gods beside Jehovah, and not merely honored Him, together with their gods, with offerings.
[Calvin: Jon_1:2. Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it. God designed in this way to try Jonah, whether he would prefer his command to all the hindrances of the world. And it is a genuine proof of obedience, when we simply obey God, however numerous the obstacles which may meet us and may be suggested to our minds, and though no escape may appear to us; yea, when we follow God, as it were, with closed eyes, wherever He may lead us, and doubt not but that He will add strength to us, and stretch forth also His hand, whenever need may require, to remove all our difficulties.
Jon_1:3. All flee away from the presence of God, who do not willingly obey his commandments.
Jon_1:4. Though the Lord may involve many men in the same punishment, when He especially intends to pursue only one man, yet there is never wanting a reason why He might not call before his tribunal any one of us, even such as appear the most innocent.
Jon_1:5. Hardly any religion appears in the world, when God leaves us in an undisturbed condition.
This passage teaches, that men are constrained by necessity to seek God; so also, on the other hand, it shows that men go astray in seeking God, except they are directed by celestial truth, and also by the Spirit of God.
Marckius:30 Jon_1:3 God not only suffers the wicked to advance prosperously in their sins, but does not immediately, restore the godly in their declensions; nay, He gives them every facility for a time in their downward course, in order that they may know themselves more, and that the glory of God may become thereby more manifest. Foolish then is the sinner, who, having begun life prosperously, concludes that the end will be equally happy.
Jon_1:6. We see in this instance the great danger in which unconscious sinners are often involved, that the solace sought by them departs from them, that a dead sleep remains, and even increases under God’s judgment, and that in the performance of duty the godly are sometimes more slothful than the ungodly.
The servants of God are sometimes surpassed, reproved, and stimulated, by those far below them, yea, even by brute animals: a salutary admonition, from whatever quarter it may come, ought never to be despised.
Matthew Henry: Jon_1:3. Providence seemed, to favor his design, and gave him an opportunity to escape: we may be out of the way of duty, and yet may meet with a favorable gale. The ready way is not always the right way.
Ver 6. If the professors of religion do an ill thing, they may expect to hear of it from those who make no such profession.
Pusey: Jon_1:5. God, whom they ignorantly, worshipped, while they cried to the gods, who, they thought, disposed of them, heard them. They escaped with the loss of their wares, but God saved their lives and revealed Himself to them. God hears ignorant prayer, when ignorance is not willful and sin.
A heathen ship was a strange place for a prophet of God, not as a prophet, but as a fugitive; and so, probably, ashamed of what he had completed, he had withdrawn from sight and notice. He did not embolden himself in his sin, but shrank into himself. The conscience most commonly awakes when the sin is done. It stands aghast at itself; but Satan, if he can, cuts off its retreat. Jonah had no retreat now, unless God had made one.—C. E.]
Footnotes:
[1][Jon_1:1.—יוֹנָה, Jonah, signifies a dove.
[2][Jon_1:1.—אֲמִתַּי, Amittai, means veracious, or truthful.
[3][Jon_1:2.—קוּם, arise, used before another verb as a term of excitement.
[4][Jon_1:2.—קָרָא, cry, proclaim in the manner of a herald, or prophet.
[5][Jon_1:2.—כּי, for, may be used here as the relative conjunction that; but it probably assigns a reason for the command, and hence it is rendered because.
[6][Jon_1:3.—אְָנִיָּה, ship, generally any large merchant-ship.
[7][Jon_1:4.—הֵטִיל, Hiphil of טוּל, to throw down at full length, to prostrate.
[8][Jon_1:4.—תִשְּׁבָה להִשָּׁבֵר, used metaphorically of inanimate things; to be about to do, or suffer: the ship was about to be broken, was on the point of foundering. Gesenius’ Heb. Lex. sub תָשַׁב.
[9][Jon_1:5.—הַמַּלָּחִים, the mariners, from מֶלַח, salt, the quality of the water which they navigate.
[10][Jon_1:5.—כֵלִ ם, vessels, a general term comprehending wares. The suffix חֶם refers to the persons, not to the wares.
[11][Jon_1:5.—יַרְכְּתֵי הַסְּפִינָה, the sides, or two sides of the vessel. Sephinah is derived from Saphan, to cover: it signifies a decked vessel.
[12][Jon_1:6.—רַב הַחֹבֵל, the master of the rope-men.
[13][Jon_1:6.—הָֽאֱלֹהים, the god, with the article.
[14][Jon_1:7.—בְּשֶׁלְּמִי, for that which is to whom: compounded of the preposition ב, the relative pronoun שׁ, contracted from אֲשֶׁר, the preposition ל, and the interrogative מִי.
[15][Jon_1:8.—The words בַּאֲשֶר לְמִי הָרָעָה הַזּאֹת לָנוּ, are omitted in two of Kennicott’s MSS. in the Soncin. edition of the prophets, and in the Vatican copy of the LXX.: and Kennicott’s MS. 154, omits לְמִי. Henderson.
[16][Jon_1:10.—מַה־זּאֹת עִשִׂיתָ, What is this thou hast done! not, why hast thou done this?
[17][Jon_1:11.—הוֹלֵךְ, going, סֹעֵר, tossing: they are both participles.
[18][Jon_1:12.—בְשֶׁלִּי, on my account, compounded of the preposition ב, the relative שׁ, contracted as in v. 7, the preposition ל, and the pronominal suffix י.
[19][Jon_1:13.—וַיַּתְתְּרוּ, broke through. תָתַר signifies to break through a wall, and metaphorically to break through the waves.
[20][Jon_1:14.—בְּנֶפֶשׁ, for the sake of the soul, or life, as in 2Sa_14:7. See also Deu_19:21.—C. E.]
[21][Herodotus mentions Nineveh, Book I. 103, 106, 185, 193; Book II. 150.—C. E.]
[22][“The motive of his flight was not fear of the difficulty of carrying out the command of God, but, as Jonah himself says in Jon_4:2, anxiety lest the compassion of God should spare the sinful city in the event of its repenting. He had no wish to coöperate in this; and that not merely because ‘he knew by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that the repentance of the Gentiles would be the ruin of the Jews, and as a lover of his country, was actuated not so much by envy of the salvation of Nineveh, as by unwillingness that his own people should perish,’ as Jerome supposes, but also because he really grudged salvation to the Gentiles and feared lest their conversion to the living God should infringe upon the privileges of Israel above the Gentile world, and put an end to its election as the nation of God.” (Keil and Delitzsch, Com. on Jonah, Jon_1:3, and note at the bottom of the page.)—C. E.]
[23][Calvin is of the opinion that Tarshish means Cilicia, the principal city of which was Tarsus, the native place of the Apostle Paul. But it is now generally agreed that it was Tarshish in Spain. The name occurs in Gen_10:4, among the sons of Javan, who are supposed to have peopled the southern parts of Europe (comp. Psa_72:10; Isa_66:19). In Eze_27:12, and Jer_10:9, it is mentioned as sending to Tyre silver, iron, tin, and lead. It is mentioned in Isaiah, chap. 23. in connection with Tyre. In several passages of the Bible, “ships of Tarshish” are spoken of, especially in connection with Tyre. The name is probably of Phœnician origin.—C. E.]
[24][The Hebrew is הָאֱלֹהִם, the God. The German retains the article, Der Gott. Pusey: “He does not call Jonah’s God, thy God, as Darius says to Daniel, thy God, but also the God, acknowledging the God whom Jonah worshipped to be the God.”—C. E.]
[25][Though it does not appear that Jonah confessed his sin to the captain of the ship, yet there is no reason to doubt that he obeyed the awakening call (Jon_1:6).—C. E.]
[26][Perhaps it is too much to assume that the strenuous efforts of the sailors were put forth principally to effect the landing of the fugitive prophet; they had regard to their own safety, as the casting of Jonah into the sea proves.—C. E.]
[27][The literal translation of the Hebrew is, “They rowed hard to bring to the dry land.” The object of the verb rendered to bring, namely, ship, is omitted.—C. E.]
[28][See Henderson’s Com. on Jonah, 1:14, and Gesenius’ Hebrew Lexicon, s. v.—C. E.]
[29][For the heading of this part of the Commentary, Kleinert has chosen the compound word Reichsgedanken, which means thoughts connected with the history and development of the kingdom of God. His reasons for choosing this term in preference to dogmatisch-ethische Grundge danken are given in the Preface, pp. vi., vii.—C. E.]
[30][These extracts from Marckius are taken from the notes appended to Calvin’s Commentary on Jonah.—C. E.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv2–17 to Nineveh--east of the Tigris, opposite the modern Mosul.…
to Nineveh--east of the Tigris, opposite the modern Mosul. The only case of a prophet being sent to the heathen. Jonah, however, is sent to Nineveh, not solely for Nineveh's good, but also to shame Israel, by the fact of a heathen city repenting at the first preaching of a single stranger, Jonah, whereas God's people will not repent, though preached to by their many national prophets, late and early. Nineveh means "the residence of Ninus," that is, Nimrod. , where the translation ought to be, "He (Nimrod) went forth into Assyria and builded Nineveh." Modern research into the cuneiform inscriptions confirms the Scripture account that Babylon was founded earlier than Nineveh, and that both cities were built by descendants of Ham, encroaching on the territory assigned to Shem (, , , ).
great city--four hundred eighty stadia in circumference, one hundred fifty in length, and ninety in breadth [DIODORUS SICULUS, 2.3]. Taken by Arbaces the Mede, in the reign of Sardanapalus, about the seventh year of Uzziah; and a second time by Nabopolassar of Babylon and Cyaxares the Mede in 625 B.C. See on .
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cry-- (; ).
come up before me-- (; ; ; ; ); that is, their wickedness is so great as to require My open interposition for punishment.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13, 15, 17 JONAH’S COMMISSION; HIS DISOBEDIENCE AND PUNISHMENT, Jon_1:1-16.
JONAH’S COMMISSION; HIS DISOBEDIENCE AND PUNISHMENT, Jon_1:1-16.
Jonah, the son of Amittai, is commissioned by Jehovah to preach to the Ninevites (Jon_1:1-2); he disobeys and embarks on a vessel sailing in the opposite direction (Jon_1:3). A severe tempest arises which threatens to destroy the vessel; to save it the sailors cast the cargo overboard (Jon_1:4-5).
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The captain appeals to Jonah to pray to his God for help (Jon_1:6). When the tempest continues the sailors decide to find out by lot on whose account the calamity has befallen them. The lot falls on Jonah (Jon_1:7). On inquiry he tells that he is a servant of Jehovah (Jon_1:8-9). The information fills them with fear, but when no relief comes they finally cast him overboard (Jon_1:10-15). The sea becomes calm, and the sailors worship Jehovah (Jon_1:16).
Jonah’s commission and disobedience, Jon_1:1-3.
Unlike the majority of the other Minor Prophets, the Book of Jonah has no formal title, Jon_1:1 being an integral part of the narrative (compare Hag_1:1; Zec_1:1).
Now — Literally, And. The prophecy of Ezekiel and several of the historical books begin in the same manner. The occurrence of this “and” is one reason why the Book of Jonah has been considered an extract from a larger book (see p. 331), the beginning of which is omitted. The exact force of “and” is not clear, but the above conclusion is warranted no more in this case than it would be in the case of Ezekiel.
Word of Jehovah — See on Hos_1:1; Joe_1:1.
Came — How, is not stated.
Jonah the son of Amittai — See p. 311. 2. The commission.
Nineveh — One of the chief cities of the Assyrian empire. It is mentioned as early as 2700 B.C. in the inscriptions of Gudea of Lagas. So far as we know, it became a royal residence about 1100 B.C., and it continued to be such until the reign of Ashur-nasir-pal (about 880 B.C.), when Calah was rebuilt. It resumed its chief place under Sennacherib (705-681), and for nearly a century its glory and magnificence continued, until it was destroyed in 607-606 (compare the prophecy of Nahum). Its ruins consist chiefly of two great mounds, Kouyunjik and Nebi Yunus, on the eastern shore of the Tigris, north of the greater Zab, opposite the modern town of Mosul.
Great — In size and power (see on Jon_3:3; compare Jon_3:2; Jon_4:11).
Cry against — Implies that his message is to be one of judgment (chapters 3, 4).
Their wickedness is come up before me — Their iniquity is so great that tidings of it have reached even to heaven, the dwelling place of Jehovah (Gen_18:21; 1Sa_5:12). He can endure it no longer.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–17 Ch. Jon_1:1-3. Jonah’s Disobedience
Ch. Jon_1:1-3. 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, 2 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 Eze_1:1, 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 own mind to the national records that had gone before, and he consciously takes up the thread of past history. See Maurer on Eze_1:1.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–17 (1) Now . . .—More strictly, And; but the…
JONAH’S DISOBEDIENCE AND PUNISHMENT.
(1) Now . . .—More strictly, And; but the English quite adequately represents the Hebrew style of beginning a narrative, whether it formed a book by itself, or merely continued an historical account. (See the opening of Exodus, Leviticus, and other historical books; Eze_1:1; and comp. 1Ki_17:1, &c.)
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Jonah the son of Amittai.—See Introduction.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1–17 Vers. 1-17. Part I THE MISSION OF JONAH. HIS…
Vers. 1-17. Part I THE MISSION OF JONAH. HIS DISOBEDIENCE AND PUNISHMENT.
Vers. 1-3. Jonah is sent to Nineveh to cry against it; but he tries to avoid the mission, and to this end takes ship to Tarshish.
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Now; or, and. Some have argued from this commencement that the Book of Jonah is a fragment, the continuation of a larger work; but it is a common formulary, linking together revelations and histories, and is continually used in the Old Testament at the beginning of independent works; e.g. Jos_1:1 Jud_1:1 1Sa_1:1 Eze_1:1. Jonah the son of Amittai. (2Ki_14:25) (See Introduction,
HOMILIES BY J.E. HENRY Vers. 1-3. A despicable deserter.
"God looketh on the heart." And none but God can. It is an obscure and tortuous place above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" Its chaos and darkness, transparent to the Divine Spirit, are impenetrable to any creature"s eye. Even the new heart is not all new. Persistent among the grace germs are bacteria of sin, inseparable and morbific. In Jonah this baneful combination is obvious. He neither loved God supremely nor his neighbour as himself. If he had, the action here recorded could never have been done, nor the feelings which prompted it have found a home in his heart. To fly from God"s service because it involved the helping of men is a course consistent it may be with grace, but only with grace alloyed, inchoate, and overlaid with the mind of flesh.
I IN GOD"S ARMY IT IS EITHER DESERTION OR DUTY. "Jonah rose up, to flee from the presence of the Lord." There was a Divine presence from which Jonah was not so ignorant as to attempt escape. He shows familiarity with the Book of Psalms, (Jon_2:2-9) and doubtless knew with the psalmist (Psa_139:7-10) that there was no place outside God"s omnipresence. But there was a special presence of God in the land of Israel. He was present in gracious hearts, and in the ordinances and offices of the Church. This special and gracious presence Jonah, like, (Gen_28:16) seems to have considered peculiar to the Holy Land. He had a notion probably that the institutions arising out of it were purely local also, and that flight to heathen Spain would break the spiritual connection and void his prophetic office. His flight was "not from God"s presence, but from standing before him as his minister... he renounced his office" (Pusey). And the act was logical in one aspect, however criminal. Enlistment in God"s service means something. It is not playing at campaigning. It is not a kind el spiritual antumn manoeuvres, which merely give spice to a periodical outing. It incurs responsibility and involves obedience. "I slept, and dreamed that life was beauty. I woke, and found that life was duty.
That all must find who are spiritually awake. There is work for all, and his task for each. And it has got to be done. In the Divine code stand the regulations of the service, and they are not to be trifled with. Idleness is out of the question; insubordination is not to be named. Jonah felt this. "He rose up to flee." He could not point blank refuse, and stand his ground. Do something he must, when the word went forth. He will not preach, and so he has got to fly. It is so always. A man cannot remain at his post and strike work. The eye of the Master would look him through, and his presence compel obedience. The mutineer is in the same hour a deserter. He can maintain the one character only by adopting the other. Our spiritual duties arise out of our spiritual relations, and are at the same time their necessary expression. The alternative with us is "both or neither." Refuse God"s work, and you put yourself out of his service.
II BIGOTRY IS AN INEVITABLE WEAKENER OF THE MORAL SENSE. Some think Jonah refused to summon the Ninevites to repentance for fear they might take him at his word. Their reformation just now would not have suited his views. As heathen he disliked them, and as wicked he could use them as a foil for wicked Israel. Nineveh penitent, on the other hand, after one Divine warning, would have contrasted strongly with Israel impenitent after centuries of prophetic appeal, and he dreaded the repentance which would have been the occasion of such a damaging comparison. But this is clearly an exaggeration of Jonah"s reeling in the matter. No prophet of God, no servant of God, could connive at sin against God in order to the destruction of men. To do so would be incompatible altogether with the religious character. Still, Jonah would have been more or less than a Jew if he had not been a bigot. He would not wantonly have compassed Nineveh"s ruin. But being a bigot, and an egoist as well, he was so indifferent to the fate of the heathen city as to be ready to sacrifice it rather than risk the lowering of his own prophetic reputation, in all this we see the tokens of a weakened moral sense. Bigotry is an unequalled hardener of the heart. It is narrow, cold, sour, and carping. It denies or belittles all good outside its own ecclesiastical circle. Whilst blind to extern religious excellence, it is indifferent to extern religious attainment. It takes covert pleasure in the sins and weaknesses of rival Churches; it would regard their failure and collapse with mean complacency; and it would almost as lief see men remaining in sin as reformed by effort not its own. The tendency to look every man and Church on our own things is a natural one, and grows. And it necessarily involves the other tendency, its universe, to look away from the things of others. This is the very antipodes of the "mind of Christ." That believes in the dignity of man as man. It sets a unique value on human life. It regards the question of a human destiny as one of stupendous interest. It makes the securing of it a personal concern.
It never asks, "Am I my brother"s keeper?" for the fact is with it an axiomatic truth. Loving its neighbour as itself, its moral attitude inspires its active one good to all." It regards life as wasted if not lived for men, and the time as lost in which it does not "save some.
III IN GLORIOUS DUTY IS MOST IN DANGER OF BEING LEFT UNDONE. Jonah had an idea how his mission would end. As a prophet, he knew that Nineveh would repent, and on repentance be spared, his prophecy to the contrary notwithstanding. (Jon_4:2) And the prospect was humbling to his self-love. The affair could bring him little credit. He was simply to deliver an empty threat, a threat the utterance of which would serve God"s purpose, and so prevent the necessity of carrying it out. How was he to get up a prophetic reputation by performing such a task? Warnings heeded and predictions fulfilled are the chief credentials of a prophet. The first is both in itself and in its practical results, by far the more important. But the second is more of a personal interest to the prophet as involving his credibility more directly. Hence in proportion as he is "yet carnal" and self-seeking it will bulk more largely in his regard. A Paul could say, "We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord," and mean it thoroughly. But the perfect self-sinking of the apostolic rule was an unscaled height to the egotistic prophet. He wanted a name and official distinction more than the exhibition of God"s mercy and the reformation of wicked men. Accordingly, he refused to assume an equivocal position, although he knew, and because he knew, it would lead to these prime results. And servants his counterparts are still found in God"s work. The men who "do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame" no doubt exist. But the blushes traceable to this source are a small proportion of the blushes current. He has reached a high spiritual level who no lives to God that personal considerations are as nothing in his work. Position and visibility, to say nothing of considerations more sordid still, are elements in the situation, hard to keep subordinate, harder still to ignore, when the Christian worker is making choice of fields. A place in the most distant mission field may single out a worker from the crowd, and the missionary pioneer finds temptations to pose before the Church as strong as beset the brightest metropolitan star. The large giver, moreover, or the great organizer, has as many temptations to self-seeking as either. It is so through all departments of activity and in all the walks of life. The work that brings fortune and fame will have thousands competing for a chance to do it. The only duty in practical danger of being shirked is the duty to be followed into obscure places, and done with only the eye of God to note our faithfulness.
IV RETREAT FROM GOD IS RESOLUTE, AND AIMS AT ENTIRE ISOLATION. Josiah started at a run. He evidently meant to get away, and threw all his energy into the effort. He went, too, in a direction exactly the opposite of the one in which he had been sent. God had said, "Go northeast," and he went southwest. He set out. moreover, for the remotest place he knew of, Spain being the "far West" of those early times. He went about it also in the most business-like way, going to Joppa, the great seaport, and booking a berth on one of the. great ships of Tarshish, to break which was the magnum opus of the east wind. (Psa_48:7) All which things are no doubt an allegory. The sinner"s drawing near to God is done at a snail"s pace. Loving this sinful world, he hangs back long before he starts. Answering feebly as yet to the drawing of grace, and breaking cord after cord in the tearing of himself away, the motion toward God at first is show and painful, like that of a weak oarsman against a rapid stream. But like a stone down hill, and drawn by mighty gravitation, the motion away from God is by leaps and bounds. (Rom_7:19, Rom_7:22, Rom_7:23) You have seen at the docks the seamen straining at the windlass, as, after minutes of strenuous effort, they have pulleyed a bale of merchandise high in air. And you have seen, when they let go the winch, how swiftly the handle flies and, as the rope unrolls, the bale comes rushing down. And such is retrogression in contrast to progress in the religious sphere. So much more quickly do men fall than rise, that a few days" backsliding is enough to neutralize the growth of years. Then so opposite to God is the sinful heart that its departure from him is absolute turning back. Swerving would be bad, aberration would be worse, but regression is worst of all; and such is religious backsliding. It is spiritual tergiversation. The renegade turns his back on right, and takes a way the very opposite. He obeys Satan and follows sin, the antipodes respectively of God and good. If God"s way be light, his is darkness; if upwards, his is downwards infallibly Then there is no spiritual half-way house. God in his mercy may arrest him on the way, but the renegade starts for Tarshish, the spiritual remotest point. A stone detached from the house top has no stopping place short of the ground. Turn your back on God and heaven, and Satan and hell are, humanly speaking, your destination. Moreover, defection from God is not an aimless drifting, but intelligent and of purpose. It is a course wittingly taken and studiously kept. The deteriorated moral nature presses head and hand into its service, to survey and construct the road by which it would reach the shrine of its chosen idol. At the Joppa of occasion, advisedly sought, is chartered the ship of ways and means, to bring us to the Tarshish of accomplished sin, the goal of our godless hearts.
V A MAN WILL ALWAYS FIND CIRCUMSTANCES FAVOURABLE TO THE COURSE HE HAS RESOLVED TO TAKE. Jonah found a ship about to sail to his destination, got accommodation on board, and had the means to provide a berth. Things seem as if arranged on purpose to facilitate his flight. Had it been otherwise, we sometimes think the prophet"s "Hegirah" might have been stopped earlier, and a good deal of suffering saved. But that would be a shallow philosophy of human action. Physical surroundings cannot thus shape our moral course. Intelligence makes its own use of them all. Purpose is formed; action is decided on; and then the circumstances are examined to see what mode of action they can most easily be made to help. The ship, the berth, and the passage money to Tarshish were available to many besides Jonah, yet he only prostituted them to the purpose of shirking duty. They lent themselves to his project, because the project had, in the first place, been adjusted to them. So if a thief finds an open window, and no policeman in sight, the circumstances are said to favour a burglary. If a would be murderer finds the same state of things, then we say the circumstances favour assassination. But if a man who would neither kill nor steal finds them so, they favour no project of his, and so are either put right or passed unheeded. Circumstances favour neither good nor evil particularly, but each man makes use of those that fit his own purpose, and passes the others by. We hear often of wicked men who are the victims of circumstance. And there are some such, no doubt. But the cases are fewer and logically weaker than you might think. Here are two country youths apprenticed in town among a godless set. One turns out a profligate, and friends pity him and say, "He got into bad hands: what bettor could we expect in such a place?" But the other, with the Same surroundings exactly, turns out, as often happens, an honest tradesman and a godly man. And if you examine you will find that he has honest men for his friends, and Christian people for his associates, and enjoys beneficial influences in every relation of life. In other words, ha is in a new set of circumstances altogether, favourable to the religious life, and which his own conduct has drawn around him. The circumstances have not made the men, but the men have practically made the circumstances. And so we reason out the truth which God reveals, "To the pure all things are pure," etc. (Tit_1:15) We are greater than our environment. "Each man creates his own world The soul spreads its own hue over everything; the shroud or wedding garment of nature is woven in the loom of our own feelings. This universe is the image and counterpart of the souls that dwell in it. Be noble minded, and all nature replies I am divine, the child of God; be thou too his child and noble. Be mean, and all nature dwindles into a contemptible smallness" (Robertson). "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." To you and me the world will be a new world when we are new creatures in Christ. It is not what it was, but a transfigured thing, when we view it "the eyes of our understandings being enlightened," and make all its elements tributary to a new life in Christ. J.E.H.
HOMILIES BY W.G. BLAIKIE Vers. 1-3. Jonah"s call and flight.
"Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying," etc.
I THE MAN. Jonah is introduced without a word of explanation, except (implicitly) that he was a prophet of the Lord. So also Elijah. (1Ki_17:1) Their previous history is assumed. God"s servants are treated as all waiting on him to receive his orders, so that "he says to this one, Go, and he goeth, and to another, Come, and he cometh?" This is the true idea of servants; they "look unto his hand"; (Psa_123:2) "stand in his house"; (Psa_134:1) "stand before him". (Jer_15:1) We have a little more information about Jonah. (see 2Ki_14:25) In the New Testament we have a twofold view of Jonah a sign to the Ninevites, (Luk_11:30, Luk_11:32) and a type of Christ. (Mat_12:40) This book is short, but of remarkable interest. "It is long and it is short; short if we respect the smallness of the volume, but long if we respect the copious variety of excellent observations that are therein to be found: as the horribleness of sin, which was able within forty days to pluck down an utter desolation on so famous a city as Nineveh was; God"s love in forewarning them that dwelt in that place that they might be spared; the prophet"s foul fall, and his strange punishment for it; his offwardness from God, and God"s favourable inclination evermore to him; the regard which the King of Nineveh and his people did bear to God"s judgments when they were denounced; the free pardon of the Lord and his remitting of their sin upon their repentance" (Archbishop Abbot).
II THE CALL.
1. Its source. Directly and clearly from God the only source of spiritual authority an authority not to be gainsaid or trifled with. Unlike any other authority, to it implicit obedience is due. "Theirs not to make reply; Theirs not to reason why.
2. Its rousing note. Arise! Implies summons to unusual exertion the commission that follows needs great energy it is not to be executed in a listless frame gird up the loins of your mind." Some duties are of such a kind that unusual self-excitation is needed for them. (see Heb_12:1) "The very first word he hears is "Arise." It is a word used before another verb as a term of excitement. Arise! I know you have difficulties, in yourself, in your people, in the mission to Nineveh; arise, therefore, gird up your loins, stir up thy strength, and go!" (Rev. A. Raleigh, D.D.) How differently has the command to arise been dealt with by different men! Moses hesitates, pleads off, at last agrees (Ex 4) Jeremiah urges his youth. (Jer_1:6) Paul confers not with flesh and blood. (Gal_1:16) Our Lord sets his face steadfastly to go up to Jerusalem. (Luk_9:51)
3. Its sphere. "Go to Nineveh, that great city." The prophet is sent outside the boundaries of Israel; he is a foreign missionary the first foreign missionary after Elijah, who was sent among the Phoenicians. The field is Nineveh, probably the greatest and richest city of the world at that time. As missionary to Nineveh, Jonah occupies a remarkable position through him God is to assert his claim as the God, not only of the Jews, but of the whole earth. He is to declare himself Lord of Nineveh and of all countries, and summon its inhabitants to their allegiance to him. "Suddenly, without note or warning, without preface, without explanation, assuming sovereign state as God Most High over all the earth; Jehovah, remanifesting, if not reassuming his universal supremacy, conducts, on the scale of most amazing miracle, a movement of his ceaseless government, as it extends over all nations; and that it may not fail to compel the attention of all succeeding ages, he adorns that movement with the most marvellous and romantic incident, with one of the most striking if not perplexing developments of human character, especially as occurring in a man of God, and with the symbolic death and resurrection of the agent under whose hand that movement is conducted a death and resurrection on the very type of Mesaiah"s; for Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale"s belly, even as the Son of man was three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (H. Martin, D.D.).
2. Its purport. Cry against it; for its wickedness is come before me. "He must cry against Nineveh, not whisper in the ear as if it were to one, not speak softly as to a few, but cry as unto all: this is a general proclamation. This word "cry" is used in Scripture when men are fast asleep and lulled in their sins, and awake not with a little; so that as Elijah said to the Baalites, they were to "Cry aloud, because Baal might be sleeping, and must be awaked;" so the minister must cry aloud, that men may be raised from their drowsiness in sin" (Abbot). "The wickedness of Nineveh" consisted in pride, ambition, oppression, cruelty, sensuality. The Ninevites were very merciless, and practised most horrible cruelties on captives, even of the highest rank. This wickedness had come before God, denoting that it had become full, (Gen_15:16) therefore intolerable. Yet to this merciless people Divine mercy was to be shown. Great cities apt to become great in sin the power of sin becomes concentrated one sinner encourages another sin can be more easily hid or, it may become very shameless it is the duty of God"s servants to cry against the wickedness of such cities, their drunkenness, licentiousness, greed, sabbath breaking, etc., and proclaim God"s wrath against their sins.
III THE CALL REFUSED. Jonah fulfilled the command to arise but not to go against Nineveh. He shrinks from duty should have risen to cry, but he rose to fly" (Abbot). His reasons were probably various one is afterwards referred to by him. (Jon_4:2) Shirking duty because it is irksome and disagreeable, is too common. In ordinary life, irksome employments, when not patiently accepted, breed negligence, idleness, drunkenness, love of illicit pleasure, etc. Here is a lesson for the young at school, or when beginning business or trade. In religious life, disagreeableness of duty is often a stumbling block often makes us unfaithful; we neglect to warn others because the task is disagreeable. As the remedy for this, learn to regard duty ever as the command of God, who will strengthen and carry through all who trust him. "Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord." He could hardly have believed that Tarshish was out of God"s presence, but he acted as if he thought so. It was away from his immediate and manifested presence. There is a tendency in many to act as if God were in some places, not in others as if God were in the church or religious meeting, but not in the marketplace, and as if they might act there as his enemies act. Edmund Burke said the humanity of England was "a thing of points and parallels." Some break the sabbath abroad as they would not do at home. Many fly from the company of godly people, because not willing to think of God. Lurking unbelief in this. Omnipresence of God a lesson for both old and young. God is sometimes represented by conscience. Fatal is the wish to escape from God it would be to leave all that is bright, holy, gladdening, for ways of darkness, filth, misery. If we say to God, "Depart from us", (Job_21:14) he will say to us, "Depart from me". (Mat_25:41) Jonah"s effort to escape from God"s presence seemed successful found a ship going to Tarshish." Providence seemed to favour him; but this was a narrow view providence must be interpreted widely. "We cannot expect smiles of approbation from Heaven any longer than we can say with Abraham"s servant, "I being in the way (Jones of Creaton). "So he paid the fare thereof." He had the money ready another apparently favourable providence, and he paid it at once, for men do not grudge expense to carry out their own will, however reluctant often to spend it to carry out God"s. See the costliness of sin yet the devil"s taxes are usually paid cheerfully. Picture Jonah afloat in the Mediterranean his conflicting feelings relief, yet no relief like a modern criminal escaping to America, with an evil conscience and dread of the telegraph his expedition insane. "Whither can I go from thy presence?" (Ps 139) No hiding from God. (Jer_23:24 Rev_6:16) Only hiding place in God. (Psa_32:7) The great lesson is this indefeasible obligation of God"s will, and man"s alienation from it and disposition to resist it. (Ro 7) Hence the need of watching and prayer: "Teach me to do thy will! W.G.B.
HOMILIES BY G.T. COSTER Ver. 1-ch. 2Ki_14:23-27) His name signifies "a Dove," and it well expressed his mournful and brooding temperament. Amittai means "the Truth of God," and it has been wisely said by a great Puritan divine, "I would that truth were every preacher"s father." The narrative is exceedingly simple, and the Hebrew remarkably pure; while the lessons taught by the book are of profound significance, and far in advance of those we might have expected in that age of the world"s history. The revelation of God"s infinite goodness shines radiantly throughout.
1. He was merciful to the Ninevites, who were regarded as being outside the covenant; but were warned, converted, and saved.
2. He was merciful to Jonah, not cursing him for his wilful disobedience, but preserving him from peril into which his own foolish precipitancy had plunged him; graciously giving him a new commission in spite of his failure; teaching him gently, after a sinful outburst of temper; and closing the narrative of his life by a question of infinite tenderness.
3. He was merciful to the sailors, who had been heathen all their lives, but who, on turning towards him, found his deliverance near and complete.
I THE PROPHET"S CALL. "The word of the Lord came unto Jonah.
1. It was a Divine call. Without it no service should ever be attempted; with it no service should be avoided. To go and preach to Nineveh would never have arisen as a conception of duty in the heart of a patriotic Israelite in those days. The generosity of the thought was Divine, not human. We, too, should listen for the words of our God, and wait for his commission. If we are true Israelites, we shall not precede the cloud, but follow it. The attitude of those who would be true prophets should be that of Samuel, when he said, "Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth.
2. It was a secret call. Jonah was not commissioned by courtiers, or by ecclesiastics, or by a popular assembly. Probably his proposed expedition was unknown to all of these. It is a frequent experience with a Christian to get instruction as to what he should do, when he enters into the closet, shuts to the door, and prays to the Father who seeth in secret.
II THE PROPHET"S SPHERE. Nineveh was at this time in the zenith of its glory. Rich, corrupt, and godless, it was the centre and focus of evil
1. The sphere was dangerous. Even in these gentler times, and amidst more phlegmatic people, moral courage is required by those who rebuke popular sins. But an Eastern mob would be likely to handle very roughly any foreigner who dared to threaten their city for its sins. Jonah had no fear of this, however, and so far sets a noble example of heroism.
2. The sphere was uncongenial. These Ninevites were dreaded and hated by the people of Israel. Even under the Christian dispensation we see frequent evidences of national jealousy and antipathy, which prevent willingness to benefit other nations; and many a man would be rebuked as unpatriotic who earnestly sought the well being of foreigners. How much more intense was such a feeling under the former dispensation! But God had room in his Fatherly heart for other peoples besides the race he had chosen for a peculiar purpose. Whenever the elect nation came into contact with others, God gave to those others some revelation of himself. He revealed himself to the Egyptians through Joseph and Moses; to the Philistines, through the sacred ark; to the Assyrians, through Elisha; and to Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar, through Daniel. Those who are inspired by God"s Spirit overlook the barriers of race. The apostles did so, and were glad that God had given even to the Gentiles repentance unto life. Personal prejudices and dislikes may also sometimes hinder us in carrying on our divinely appointed work. Let us pray for willing minds and obedient hearts, that uncongenial spheres may be bravely filled.
III THE PROPHET"S DUTY.
1. He was to denounce the wickedness of the people. Both Nahum and Zephaniah refer to the sins of Nineveh. Its inhabitants were luxurious, riotous, addicted to witchcraft, cruel, and idolatrous. Sins vary in form, but not in nature. The vices of our own time we should specially denounce with unsparing courage.
2. He was to proclaim the nearness of God. They knew not the truth revealed to Jonah: "Their wickedness is come up before me." Similar was the statement made about the murder of Cain and the sin of Sodom. God sets all our sins in the light of his countenance.
3. He was to announce a coming judgment. "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown". (Jon_3:4)
4. He was to be ready to receive and convey every message God gave him. "Preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee." This should be the constant attitude of all religious teachers. A.R.
HOMILIES BY D. THOMAS Vers. 1-3. God speaking to man in mercy, and man fleeing from God in disobedience.
"Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me." This is a strange book. It is not the record of a dream, nor the sketch of an allegory, but the history of a man written by himself. True, he speaks in the third person; but so did many of the old prophets, go did the Apostle Paul, and so have many great men. Intellectual children are prone to use the personal pronoun I; great intellectual men prefer writing of themselves in the third person. Speeches and books bristling with I are generally the effusions of little souls. We have here his name and that of his father, the one signifying "Dove," and the other "the Truth of God." Names of old were sometimes commemorative, sometimes predictive. Names now signify little. Men by great and noble deeds can, and often do, throw into the commonest names a meaning that will radiate through centuries. In these words we have two things worthy of attention God speaking to man in mercy, and man fleeing from God in disobedience.
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. In times past he spake "unto the fathers by the prophets.
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 he great in sin, for sin is a great thing to God; it is a black cloud in his universe; it is the "abominable thing" which he hates. 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, go down to this city, and "cry against it." Be earnest. The danger is great, near at hand, and approaching every minute. Observe here two things:
(1) Man"s distinguishing faculty. What is that? The power to receive, to appreciate, 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 Tar-shish, 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. He merely commanded him to go, and Jonah resisted the Divine command. Man has the 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. He dares to attempt extricating himself, not only from his obligations to God, but from his very "presence." 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. See the 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. But here is a resolution. 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 our day. Though a descent, it was rather a long journey, and would take him two or three days. 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. He continued his journey from his home to Joppa, then he searched on the quays for a vessel; and when he found, as he thought, a suitable vessel, he "paid the fare thereof," Ah! what fares men pay in the career of sin! And when he had paid the fare thereof, he "went down into it," and there he thought himself safe. How inexpressibly foolish was all this, not only in the nature of the case, but according to results! All the efforts, as the sequence shows, not only proved futile, but brought him to the utmost distress.
CONCLUSION. The two things that you have in these verses are always going on God in mercy speaking to man, and man in terror fleeing from God. Oh, how wrong, how foolish, the attempt to flee from the Infinite! "Whither shall I flee from thy presence? D.T.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 17 Now the Word of the Lord came unto Jonah.
Jon_1:1-3
Now the Word of the Lord came unto Jonah.
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Jonah, the runaway prophet
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 Gods 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
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 Jonahs, 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
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 Jonahs 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 Gods 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
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. Jonahs sin was not apostasy from God. He simply shrunk from the mission. The struggle in Jonahs 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 Jonahs 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. Jonahs 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
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 Messiahs 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.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v1 Jonah 1
THE GREAT REFUSAL
Jonah 1
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WE have now laid clear the lines upon which the Book of Jonah was composed. Its purpose is to illustrate Gods grace to the heathen in face of His peoples 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 Israels 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 Israels 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 Heavens justice. These it was which had filled Israels 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, Gods pity upon the dumb heathen multitudes.
The parable or drama divides itself into three parts: The Prophets 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 Israels 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 Ninevehs sin to her face, which turned him, but the instinct that God intended by him something else than Ninevehs 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?" {Jon_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 Gods 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 Gods 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. Jonahs 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 Gods long delay of doom upon the tyrants whom He had promised to overthrow.
But to the natural man in Israel the possibility of the heathens 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 prophets flight from the face of Israels 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 passengers 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 prophets 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 prophets 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 Gods 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 Gods revelation. When we were children this was shown to us in pictures of angels bending from heaven to guide Isaiahs pen, or to cry Jonahs 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 Gods 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 mans 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.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11 CRITICAL NOTES.] And (now)] a continuation of the Hebrew…
CRITICAL NOTES.] And (now)] a continuation of the Hebrew writings, not an independent part.
Jon_1:2. That] Heb. the city, the great, the art, a demonstrative force. Nineveh] Cf. Gen_10:11, Smith’s Bib. Dict. Arise] A term of excitement.
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HOMILETICS
THE GREAT COMMISSION.—Jon_1:1-2
“The word” came suddenly, unexpectedly, and authoritatively to Jonah. He thought of quietly remaining in his own land. For ages God had confined his revelations to Israel. But he is the Ruler of all nations. His kingdom is not local and geographical like the gods of the heathens. Among the Gentiles the gospel must be preached (Rom_3:28); and Jonah is sent to the most renowned city of the Gentile world.
I. The commission of Jonah. “Go to Nineveh, that great city.”
1. It was sovereign. The word came to Jonah, apparently the most unlikely for the work. God elects his own agents, appoints their duty and their place, and gives no account of his matters to us. Some have more work to do and more honour than others. Let all be content in their sphere, instead of longing for greater distinction and condemning the less privileged. Greater service would bring greater responsibility, and greater failure greater condemnation. God gives to every one according to his ability, and in sovereign authority demands implicit obedience. “Arise, go.”
2. It was arduous. There was great danger. Jonah might be ridiculed. It was a new and unheard-of enterprise. Nineveh was great in pride and splendour, wealth and population. For centuries it had been growing in power and population. The monarchs of Assyria had filled it with the spoils of empires. It had no equal, and sat as a queen in splendour. Nahum predicted the destruction of the city from a distance, but Jonah must go into it. It requires self-denial to go as a missionary to heathens now, with higher civilization and greater advantages. Jonah’s mission was more difficult and trying. Social relations and selfish pursuits must give way to every command of God.
3. It was clear. Though brief and without explanation, the call was definite. With military precision the word is uttered—“Go;” the field is revealed—“Nineveh;” and obedience is expected—“Arise.” The word often comes to us with positive demands upon our time and purse. There has been no doubt or uncertainty. Let us feel its convincing and confirming power.
4. It was urgent. Arise. Delay strengthens doubt and increases difficulty. Carnal reasoning and natural reluctance have few better counsellors than procrastination. If we loiter, we may desert the duty, and the enemy be encouraged to tempt again. Go—the city is exposed to judgment, and men may perish. The King’s business requires haste. “Run, speak to that young man.”
II. The reason for Jonah’s commission. “For the wickedness,” &c.
1. Great cities are often filled with wickedness. Power gives license and custom begets authority. Examples are pernicious, and evil communications corrupt good manners. Nineveh was filled with pride and alienated from God. She oppressed the poor and helpless (Jon_3:8; Nah_3:1-3). Blood and robbery, idolatry and witchcraft, stained her glory. “She drew not near to God.” Are our great cities and towns free from luxury and pomp, irreligion and injustice?
2. God sees the wickedness of great cities. They are not too great for the omniscient eye of the Great Judge. All sins go up before him, and are registered for judgment in his book of remembrance. Enormous guilt cries like the blood of Abel for interference. God specially takes cognizance of places above human restraint, and manifests holy indignation at their wickedness. Sodom and Gomorrah, Babylon and unburied Nineveh, are warnings to this generation.
3. The wickedness of great cities must be exposed. “Cry against it.” Individuals cannot hide themselves in communities, nor cities throw their responsibility upon nations. Every sin is searched out, found, and reproved. Jonah was not to go and teach philosophy, palliate, or compromise with sin, but to cry against it. Denounce the idolatry and predict the ruin of Nineveh. With intense feeling and earnestness he must give the alarm; proclaim with the voice of the herald the danger. “Many people cannot cry; they have not force of soul; they are not endowed for extreme effort,” says one. We must wink at no sin; expose drunkenness and profligacy; with lip and life, amid insult and indifference, cry aloud and spare not. God may conceal the danger of our duty, and touch our most sensitive feelings to test our faith and discipline our hearts, but never flee away, lest he punish you. “Fear not; certainly I will be with thee.”
HOMILETIC HINTS AND OUTLINES
The word. This phrase seems to represent the “word of the Lord,” as an atmosphere of kindling holy thought, a sphere of spiritual truth encompassing the Prophet, illuminating and moving his whole soul, and finally taking shape in language of exhortation, or prediction, or teaching, or resolve, as the case might be [Liddon].
Wickedness. God is brought before us in these words as he sits above this waterflood of crime, as he remaineth in the moral world, a King for ever. He is the Great Judge, unseen by man, but witnessing all human acts, and words, and motives; seated now upon his throne of judgment: and each crime of each member of that vast community mounts upwards, and is registered in his heavenly court [Wordsworth].
Let us call on our souls, when plain duty is before us, to arise and go about it: speedily, if we do not wish Satan to stop us from it (1Sa_21:8; Psa_119:60); heartily, if we desire God to accept our service (Ecc_9:10); and cheerfully, if we would have comfort in doing it (Rom_12:8). Jonah was called to immediate and hearty service. Such should be our obedience to every command of our Divine Master [Sibthorp].
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 1
Jon_1:1. The name Jonah signifies “a dove.” But there is not much of “mourning love,” of which the dove has always been taken as the symbol in the record. The name might express his father’s feeling; as applied to himself it seems a misnomer. The hawk, the raven, or the vulture would seem to be more truly symbolical. But let us not forget that he tells his own tale, after the things recorded are past: that he tells it very expressly to the glory of God’s mercy, with which designedly he sets his own hardness and thoughtless cruelty in contrast [Raleigh]. There is but one reason for the mission stated here; but several others in reserve—some gently hinted, some unrevealed until after ages [Raleigh].
Jon_1:2. “Jonah and his ‘arise’ giveth a warning to us all, for we have all a Nineveh to go into. Magistrates, arise and go to the gate to execute God’s judgments. Ministers, arise and go to the gospel to do the works of evangelists. People, arise and go to your trades,” &c. [King].
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 Jonah 1-4
Jonah 1-4
Jonah buried and risen a type of Christ.
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I. More than once in the course of our Lord’s ministry, among different persons and for different objects, He makes use of the similitude of the prophet’s burial and resurrection. When the Jews asked for a sign He refused it, (i) because it was presumptuous to ask it; (ii) because they were blind to actual signs already given and constantly existing before their eyes; (iii) because the very demand was a proof of deep ungodliness, and the concession of it would have been a premium on religious disloyalty and impiety. No sign should be given them except the sign of the prophet Jonah, the very opposite to what they sought. They asked it from above. It should be from below. They asked that it might be glorious. It should be, according to the carnal judgment, ignominious. It should be from a dark sea of trouble, not from a firmament of brightness. It should be tempest, sorrow, death, burial; not sunshine, victory, enthronement.
II. Such we understand to be the meaning of our Lord’s language in the comparison between Himself and Jonah. It is a comparison resting chiefly on the resemblance in humiliation—that of Jonah and that of Jesus. The general resemblance is apparent to anyone. Jonah was in the heart of the sea; Jesus was in the heart of the earth. Jonah was in the "belly of hell," or the grave, or Hades; Jesus was actually traversing, living, in the invisible world, and acquiring thus His right to hold the keys. Jonah was there in punishment of his sin; Jesus (Himself sinless) was slain and consigned to the darksome grave by the sins of the world, which He bore and expiated on the Cross. Jonah was three days and three nights in his living grave; Jesus was the same time dead and buried. Jonah was restored to light and life; Jesus was "declared to be the Son of God, with power, by the resurrection from the dead."
A. Raleigh, The Story of Jonah, p. 169.
Jon 1:1-2
The main features of the case are: (1) A Divine commission and command distinctly and authoritatively given, with some of the reasons for it annexed, although with others certainly not fully revealed. (2) A state of reluctance and suspense ever verging towards actual disobedience—expressing itself, now in remonstrance, now in request for exemptions, now in moody and distrustful silence. The situation is none so rare. The principles involved, and the lessons arising, are for all time.
I. We take occasion to force the supreme and unchallengeable obligation of the Divine will when clearly expressed. There can be no higher obligation to man or angel than that. 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, peace.
II. The corresponding lesson is the exceeding danger of a mood of hesitation or remonstrance. All the sorrows of the sea sprang, like harvest, from Jonah’s wrong mood at the time of his call on land. We should watch with great self-jealousy the moral hesitations of the will, and the silent petitionings for delay or exemption, and the attempts to have the case reasoned out more fully after the command has been heard, and the conviction of duty clearly produced. All such heart-movements are fraught with peril. Divine light is given for "walking" and "working." The Divine voice speaks, whether in the written law, or the living conscience apprehending it, only to be obeyed. 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.
III. A practical difficulty with many will be to find a sufficient analogy between a call like this, a high call of God to an inspired prophet, requiring a service that would be memorable in the history of the world, and the simple calls of duty to Christian service—daily work. "There seems to be little resemblance. Little fitness, therefore, in a summons expressly supernaturally given, when applied to the ever-recurring duties and humble scenes of common life." On the contrary, there is all the fitness that need be desired. The Christian convictions, although produced insensibly and slowly, wrought out of knowledge, prayer, and effort, yet, in authority, take rank with the highest. They are the last results of a very long process. They are the fruit of the action of the Spirit of God, making use of all that has been done in the world for man’s redemption.
A. Raleigh, The Story of Jonah, p. 30.
References: Jon 1:1-3.—J. Menzies, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xi., p. 49; W. G. Blaikie, Homiletic Magazine, vol. vi., p. 165.
Jon 1:3
I. We cannot understand the conduct of Jonah fully. We cannot judge it fairly without considering some things which seemed to him to be reasons against compliance with the Divine call. (1) It was a long way, many hundreds of miles, and a great part of it through a desert. (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. (5) It is quite clear that 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.
II. "He rose up to flee from the presence of the Lord." The meaning of that expression we take to be that he retired, or wished to retire, from the prophetic office, at least for a time, and from that peculiar and sacred nearness to God which a true prophet, in service, always had. He knew that if he continued in that presence it would move soon, as did the pillar of old, and that he must go eastwards to escape, if possible, from that necessity. He went out of the presence westwards as fast and as far as he could. It is certainly worthy of notice that the way he fled was almost the direct opposite of the way he would have gone if he had done God’s bidding.
III. He went down to Joppa. Always, to leave the presence of God is to go down. Down from communion, from a conscious faith, from quietness and assurance, from steady, firm obedience. Down into strife without victory, into toil without fruit. Down into mere bargain-making, mere money-making, mere pleasure-seeking, mere time-wasting. The success and glory of true life can be found only by keeping the upward road, in hearing and following the voice which says perpetually, "Come up hither."
IV. Jonah tells us with a minuteness and particularity evidently intentional, "he found a ship going to Tarshish," and "paid the fare thereof, and went down into it," etc. What is the prophet’s object in such careful minuteness? (1) It may have been to keep himself in remembrance, and tell all the world how many steps there were, so to speak, in his downgoing. (2) He may have meant to teach us that the outward aspects of providence to us at any one time constitute a very insufficient and unsafe guide in matters of moral duty.
A. Raleigh, The Story of Jonah, p. 52.
Jon 1:3
I. While Jonah works God waits. When Jonah falls asleep, God begins to work. The scene is thus arrestive and striking. The man hasting away for days from "the presence," out among second causes and exterior things, into a blank world of indifference. Then God, with a touch of His hand, raising up those second causes, which hitherto had seemed to favour the flight, into an irresistible combination for the arrest and recovery of the fugitive. Men dig pits and fall into them. They weave webs and by a touch of His hand they are snared and taken.
II. "The mariners were afraid and cried every man unto his god." Not all to one heathen deity, but each man to his own god. When God is forsaken, men forsake each other. They lose the power of mutual sympathy and help in the highest things. Only the true worshippers have that great power—the power of social sympathy—working in full strength among them. And yet we have no ground for uttering one word of reproach or blame against these men. They did all that could be expected of them. They prayed and wrought. They cried to their gods, and cast the wares out of the ship; a clear and good example to all men who are in straits.
III. Let us take our last lesson from the heathen captain. (1) He teaches us by his example. He is master of the ship, and he feels that, in an hour of peril especially, it lies within his province to incite and constrain all who sail in the ship, and who, therefore, as passengers or sailors, are under his care, to the discharge of their very highest duties. Remember that you have religious duties to the full breadth and length of your mastery. (2) He teaches us by his words. These words of his have aroused many a sleeper besides Jonah. They have been heard through the ages since, as watchman’s cry, as trumpet’s sound, to awaken and save souls from death.
A. Raleigh, The Story of Jonah, p. 76.
References: Jon 1:3.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xi., No. 622; Ibid., Evening by Evening, p. 56; E. Monro, Practical Sermons, vol. ii., p. 283; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ii., p. 270.
Jon 1:4
I. Apparently with great unanimity, the sailors fall upon a scheme to discover the cause and reason of the storm, or at any rate, the person on whose account it has come. They all pray, and then cast lots. They did not mean it as a desperate chance stroke. In their intention it was a religious act. As such it was accepted, for the lot fell upon Jonah. God uses the honest, although blind, endeavours of His creatures to discover truth and duty, to reveal to them in a measure what they are seeking, and at the same time to go on with the development of His own perfect providence. He takes what there is in the form of worship and service of Him, if it is the best that men can achieve in the circumstances.
II. The lot fell upon Jonah. The words spoken by the shipmaster at his berth, the falling of the lot upon him, the hurried questions of the crew, and the howling of the elements around, "awoke" him in the highest sense. He rose up as from a hideous dream, and stood once more before God and man, in openness, sincerity, and truth. "And he said unto them, I am an Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land." Few scenes in history have a darker grandeur than this confession of Jonah to these heathen sailors, when he knew that in a very short time he was to be cast into the sea. There is about his conduct a self-abnegation and a moral sublimity which are rarely found, among even good men.
III. Note the several expressions used in Jonah’s confession. (i) "I am an Hebrew." The name by which the Jewish people were known to foreigners. The name came to them when as emigrants they passed the great river, the river Euphrates. Passers-by in life, not settlers anywhere on earth. Men of pilgrim spirit, seeking rest and home beyond death. (ii) "I am an Hebrew, and I fear"—i.e. serve, not I am afraid of, but, I serve in reverence, and trust, and love,—"the Lord"—Jehovah, the one living and true God—self-existent, self-sufficient, supreme, eternal. (iii) "The God of heaven"—a lofty title, often used in the Scriptures, and nearly always by God’s servants, in speaking to heathens, signifying the creation, possession, and rule of the whole visible universe.
A. Raleigh, The Story of Jonah, p. 99.
References: Jon 1:4-6.—W. G. Blaikie, Homiletic Magazine, vol. vi., p. 165. Jon 1:4-7.—J. Menzies, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xi., p. 75. Jon 1:5, Jon 1:6.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. viii., No. 469; S. Martin, Westminster Chapel Pulpit, 5th series, No. 2. Jon 1:6.—Christian World Pulpit, vol. i., p. 173; J. N. Norton, Golden Truths, p. 138. Jon 1:7-10.—W. G. Blaikie, Homiletic Magazine, vol. vi., p. 167. Jon 1:11-17.—Ibid., p. 245; G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 166. Jon 1:12, Jon 1:13.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. x., No. 567.
Jon 1:15
I. Among the many marvels of this Book not the least is that Jonah, the discovered culprit, should be constituted judge in his own case. (i) The sailors’ appeal to Jonah was in fact an appeal to God. It carries with it a reverential recognition of His hand. (ii) Also, we must see in this question a recognition of the honesty and recovered manhood of Jonah. (iii) No doubt they had some regard also to his prophetic office, and to the fact that he did not seem to be released from it. He might, therefore, for all they knew, still be carrying about with him some supernatural powers, which, although held for a while in suspense, might perhaps yet avail for their deliverance.
II. There seems to have been no delay in the giving of the answer. "And he said unto them, Take me up and cast me forth into the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you," etc. Is this simply a human answer, dictated by the workings of natural conscience, and expressive of the desire of a despairing heart, to have done with life altogether? Or is it the answer of God Himself, to whom really, as we have supposed, appeal was made? Surely there can hardly be a doubt that the latter is the true supposition. His words show that he had a proper regard for the inviolable sacredness of his own life—that he recognized the principle, that only its Fountain and Giver could have the right to say when and where and how it was to be again given up to Him. The answer of Jonah is a virtual condemnation of suicide in any, in all, circumstances.
III. Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring it to the land. These men knew the value of life—and not of their life alone, but also of that life that had brought all their trouble. And thus we alight upon the beautiful principle of our moral life, that every good thing in our spirit and action has a tendency to reproduce itself in others who are in any way related to it, especially, of course, if it is called forth for their advantage.
IV. Wearied and panting, the sailors cease at length from the bootless strife, and gather about the man whom they cannot save. Prayer precedes the last sad act that shall part them and their passenger for ever. (i) The prayer is to Jehovah, the true God. (ii) They prayed earnestly. (iii) They prayed submissively. (iv) It is a prayer for exemption from the guilt of innocent blood. (v) The defect of the prayer, if it has one, is this—they do not pray for Jonah.
And now at length, all being done that could be done to avert the sad necessity, and done quite in vain, they proceed to the solemn execution of the sentence. "So they took up Jonah—"lifted him, the meaning is, with respect and tenderness, bearing him as if with some sad honour to his grave, he himself making no resistance—"and cast him into the sea." The elements are appeased and satisfied.
A. Raleigh, The Story of Jonah, p. 122.
I. Notice the storm raised. In the storm we have a striking image of life. For life is a voyage. We start from many ports, we touch at many others, we encounter many perils from wind and wave, we meet many storms; but they come from Him who "gathereth the winds in His fists." None of us must reckon on a continued calm if the sun shine on us for a little while, and think it will never rain again. If things go smooth and prosperously, we conclude that our mountain stands so strong it will never be moved. But you cannot have lived long in the world without learning that there are clouds in the brightest sky, a moth in the loveliest robe, a worm in the tallest cedar, and dross in the purest gold. Yet, if we do not lose our hold of Christ, we know that the sun is always in the sky, though we cannot always see it; and that He has said of every storm which He sends: "When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee."
II. We have here the storm hushed, and hushed by God. He remembered Jonah. He might have left Jonah to perish there, but He delivered him and brought him back from the gates of death. He can hush any storm. His clear, Divine, voice may be heard ringing above every tempest of life: "It is I; be not afraid."
J. Fleming, Penny Pulpit, No. 782.
Jon 1:17
We have no external history of the days spent by the prophet in his living grave. Neither he nor anyone else can tell how far he travelled, how long he rested, what were the aspects of the scenery, how many "small and great beasts" were met on the journey—that strange but fruitful journey "through the paths of the seas." But we have a very intense and clear history of his inward life.
I. There was evidently a great and sudden quickening of consciousness. The man who speaks in this holy psalm hardly seems the same person whom we have seen in flight—dark, moody, silent, despairing. Now, and all at once, he seems to leap again into life—clear, fervent, passionate life. The burial of his body is the resurrection of his soul.
II. Rapidly this new consciousness became distressful. His soul fills itself fuller than the sea, with affliction. The reserved sorrow of long sinning comes all at once. He feels "cast out of God’s sight," and shivers in the utter loneliness.
III. Then he began to "look"—upwards to earth, eastwards to the Temple where he knew that the lost Presence was richly manifested. "Ah, if I could but go there! If I might see but once again the priest, the altar, and the mercy-seat! I could then be content to die. But at any rate I will look. If I die looking, still I shall look till I die."
IV. The look soon became a cry: "I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord."
V. He began to be grateful. There was daybreak in the land of the shadow of death. The sweet bloom of the morning smote down into the rayless depths, and revealed there the strangest sight those depths have ever disclosed—a living oratory and a thankful worshipper.
VI. Then, apparently, his soul passed into the more active state of renewed personal consecration to God.
VII. The final state of his mind is a state of entire dependence, involving a quiet and trustful surrender of the whole case to God. "Salvation is of the Lord."
A. Raleigh, The Story of Jonah, p. 145.
References: 1:17-2:10.—J. Menzies, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xi., p. 94. Jonah 1—Parker, City Temple, vol. iii., p. 457. Jonah 1-4—J. Foster, Lectures, 2nd series, p. 1. Jon 2:1-7.—W. G. Blaikie, Homiletic Magazine, vol. vi., p. 247. Jon 2:2-10.—Ibid., p. 248.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v1 Jon 1:1 - Jon 1:17.
Jonah
GUILTY SILENCE AND ITS REWARD
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Jon 1:1 - Jon 1:17.
Jonah was apparently an older contemporary of Hosea and Amos. The Assyrian power was looming threateningly on the northern horizon, and a flash or two had already broken from that cloud. No doubt terror had wrought hate and intenser narrowness. To correct these by teaching, by an instance drawn from Assyria itself, God’s care for the Gentiles and their susceptibility to His voice, was the purpose of Jonah’s mission. He is a prophet of Israel, because the lesson of his history was for them, though his message was for Nineveh. He first taught by example the truth which Jesus proclaimed in the synagogue of Nazareth, and Peter learned on the housetop at Joppa, and Paul took as his guiding star. A truth so unwelcome and remote from popular belief needed emphasis when first proclaimed; and this singular story, as it were, underlines it for the generation which heard it first. Its place would rather have been among the narratives than the prophets, except for this aspect of it. So regarded, Jonah becomes a kind of representative of Israel; and his history sets forth large lessons as to its function among the nations, its unwillingness to discharge it, the consequences of disobedience, and the means of return to a better mind.
Note then, first, the Prophet’s unwelcome charge. There seems no sufficient reason for doubting the historical reality of Jonah’s mission to Nineveh; for we know that intercourse was not infrequent, and the silence of other records is, in their fragmentary condition, nothing wonderful. But the fact that a prophet of Israel was sent to a heathen city, and that not to denounce destruction except as a means of winning to repentance, declared emphatically God’s care for the world, and rebuked the exclusiveness which claimed Him for Israel alone. The same spirit haunts the Christian Church, and we have all need to ponder the opposite truth, till our sympathies are widened to the width of God’s universal love, and we discern that we are bound to care for all men, since He does so.
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. So we have each to do in regard to God’s message intrusted to us. We must bow our wills, and sink our prejudices, and sacrifice our tastes, and say, ‘Here am I; send me.’
Jonah represents the national feelings which he shared. Why did he refuse to go to Nineveh? Not because he was afraid of his life, or thought the task hopeless. He refused because he feared success. God’s goodness was being stretched rather too far, if it was going to take in Nineveh. Jonah did not want it to escape. If he had been sent to destroy it, he would probably have gone gladly. He grudged that heathen should share Israel’s privileges, and probably thought that gain to Nineveh would be loss to Israel. It was exactly the spirit of the prodigal’s elder brother. There was also working in him the concern for his own reputation, which would be damaged if the threats he uttered turned out to be thunder without lightning, by reason of the repentance of Nineveh.
Israel was set among the nations, not as a dark lantern, but as the great lampstand 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. The nation was as reluctant to fulfil the reason of its existence as the Prophet was. Both begrudged sharing privileges with heathen dogs, both thought God’s care wasted, and neither had such feelings towards the rest of the world as to be willing to be messengers of forgiveness to them. 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. In it dawns the first faint light of that sun which shone at its full when Jesus healed the Canaanite’s daughter, or when He said, ‘Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold.’
Note, next, the fatal consequences of refusal to obey the God-given charge. We need not suppose that Jonah thought that he could actually get away from God’s presence. Possibly he believed in a special presence of God in the land of Israel, or, more probably, the phrase means to escape from service. At any rate, he determined to do his flight thoroughly. Tarshish was, to a Hebrew, at the other end of the world from Nineveh. The Jews were no sailors, and the choice of the sea as means of escape indicates the obstinacy of determination in Jonah.
The storm is described with a profusion of unusual words, all apparently technical terms, picked up on board, just as Luke, in the only other account of a storm in Scripture, has done. What a difference between the two voyages! In the one, the unfaithful prophet is the cause of disaster, and the only sluggard in the ship. In the other, the Apostle, who has hazarded his life to proclaim his Lord, is the source of hope, courage, vigour, and safety. Such are the consequences of silence and of brave speech for God. 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. Alas for those whose only refuge from conscience is oblivion!
Over against this picture of the insensible Prophet, all unaware of the storm {which may suggest the parallel insensibility of Israel to the impending divine judgments}, 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; for, heathen as they are, they have yet a sense of dependence, and they pray; they are full of courage, battling with the storm, jettisoning the cargo, and doing everything possible to save the ship. Their treatment of Jonah is generous and chivalrous. Even when they hear his crime, and know that the storm is howling like a wild beast for him, they are unwilling to throw him overboard without one more effort; and when at last they do it, their prayer is for forgiveness, inasmuch as they are but carrying out the will of Jehovah. 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 the mirror up 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. This crew of heathen of various nationalities and religions were yet men who could be kind to a renegade Prophet, peril their lives to save his, and worship Jehovah. ‘I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel,’ is the same lesson in another form. We may find abundant opportunities for learning it; for the characters of godless men, and of some among the heathen, may well shame many a Christian.
Jonah’s conduct in the storm is no less noble than his former conduct had been base. The burst of the tempest blew away 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 depth of his soul. Sorrow and chastisement turn up the subsoil. If a man has any good in him, it generally comes to the top when he is afflicted and looks death in the face. If there is nothing but gravel beneath, it too will be brought up by the plough. There may be much selfish unfaithfulness overlying a real devoted heart.
Jonah represented Israel here too, both in that the consequence of the national unfaithfulness and greedy, exclusive grasp of their privileges would lead to their being cast into the roaring waves of the sea of nations, amid the tumult of the peoples, and in that, for them as for him, the calamity would bring about a better mind, the confession of their faith, and acknowledgment of their sin. The history of Israel was typified in this history, and the lessons it teaches are lessons for all churches, and for all God’s children for all time. If we shirk our duty of witnessing for Him, or any other of His plain commands, unfaithfulness will be our ruin. The storm is sure to break where His Jonahs try to hide, and their only hope lies in bowing to the chastisement and consenting to be punished, and avowing whose they are and whom they serve. If we own Him while the storm whistles round us, the worst of it is past, and though we have to struggle amid its waves, He will take care of us, and anything is possible rather than that we should be lost in them.
The miracle of rescue is the last point. Jonah’s repentance saved his life. Tossed overboard impenitent he would have been drowned. So Israel was taught that the break-up of their national life would not be their destruction if they turned to the Lord in their calamity. 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. He who sends the storm watches its effect on us, and will not let His repentant servants be utterly overwhelmed. That is a better use to make of the story than to discuss whether any kind of known Mediterranean fish could swallow a man. If we believe in miracles, the question need not trouble us. And miracle there must be, not only in the coincidence of the fish and the Prophet being in the same bit of sea at the same moment, but in his living for so long in his strange ‘ark of safety.’
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. Flippant sarcasms are cheap. A devout insight yields a worthy meaning. Jesus Christ employed this incident as a symbol of His Death and Resurrection. That use of it seems hard to reconcile with any view but that the story is true. But it does not seem necessary to suppose that our Lord regarded it as an intended type, or to seek to find in Jonah’s history further typical prophecy of Him. The salient point of comparison is simply the three days’ entombment; and it is rather an illustrative analogy than an intentional prophecy. The subsequent action of the Prophet in Nineveh, and the effect of it, were true types of the preaching of the Gospel by the risen Lord, through His servants, to the Gentiles, and of their hearing the Word. But it requires considerable violence in manipulation to force the bestowing of Jonah, for safety and escape from death, in the fish’s maw, into a proper prophecy of the transcendent fact of the Resurrection.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 The Disobedience of Jonah
The Disobedience of Jonah
2. Nineveh] the world-famous capital of Assyria, on the Tigris. For its wickedness cp. Nahum 3.
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3. Jonah seeks to escape from the unwelcome task, both because he hates the Ninevites, and because he fears that, after all, God may spare them. Tarshish] Tartessus, in SW. Spain, probably an old Phoenician colony. It would be in the opposite direction to Nineveh. Joppa] Jaffa, the only port of any size on the Palestinian coast.
5. The ship's crew is composed of a blend of nationalities. Each man appeals to his own god. Jonah, however, declares his God to be the Creator of all things (Jon_1:9). For the story of the sleeper in the storm cp. Mark 4. 'Jonah was peaceful because he thought he was far from God's hand, Jesus was confident because He knew He was hidden in God's hand' (Marti).
6. The captain thinks that the deity of their passenger might deliver them.
11. Wrought, and was tempestuous] RV 'grew more and more tempestuous.'
14-16. The natural piety of the heathen sailors is strikingly shown. Compelled to believe, by the rising of the storm, the impossibility of reaching land, and the falling of the lot, that Jonah is guilty, they make a last appeal to be held innocent if a mistake has been made. Then, convinced of the power of Jehovah, they at once offer sacrifices on the deck, and vow further offerings if they arrive safely from their voyage. For the vow cp. Gen_28:20; 1Sa_1:11, etc.
17. A great fish] Nothing is said of the species of the fish; either a giant shark or a cachalot whale could swallow a man. But the Intro, shows that it is needless to argue whether the miracle of Jonah's remaining alive has ever been paralleled. We have given reasons for our view that the author never meant or expected his story to be regarded as anything but a parable. If that is so, it is useless for us to bring in a difficulty which never even occurred to him.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv2, 9, 16, 17 (See Scofield "Nah 1:1")
Nineveh
(See Scofield "Nah 1:1")
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 Analysis and Annotations
Analysis and Annotations
CHAPTER 1
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The Commission of the Prophet ,His Disobedience, and the Consequences
1. The commission (Jon 1:1-2)
2. The disobedience (Jon 1:3)
3. The consequences (Jon 1:4-17)
Jon 1:1-2. The record begins with the same word with which all historical books in the Bible begin, like Joshua, judges, Ruth, Samuel, etc. The commission given to Jonah was to go to Nineveh, that great city, and to cry against it on account of its wickedness.
Nineveh was the great capital of the Assyrian nation; it is mentioned for the first time in Gen 10:11. Its great size is mentioned in Jon 3:3, where we read it was “three day’s journey.” Ancient Greek and Roman writers state that it was the largest city in the world in that day. All these statements of its enormous size have been verified by modern excavations. The word of the Lord came to Jonah to visit this city and deliver the message. Seven times the phrase “the word of the LORD came to Jonah” is used in this book.
Jon 1:3. Jonah rose up at once, but instead of going to the east towards Nineveh he fled in the other direction. Tarshish in Spain was his goal. It is also stated that he fled from the presence of the Lord. This cannot possibly mean that he fled from the presence of Him whom he knew as the omnipresent One. The Psalm of David which speaks of this expressly was then in the possession of Israel, and Jonah must have known it: “Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there: if I make my bed in sheol, behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me” Psa 139:7-24. He did not flee from the presence of the Lord in the sense of escaping His knowledge and authority. It means that he left the land of Israel where Jehovah dwelt; he fled from the service-commission he had received.
If we look for a motive of this disobedient prophet we find it given in the book itself. In Jon 4:2 we read, “Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish, for I knew that Thou art a gracious God, and merciful, and slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest Thee of evil.” But why should he fear that God might be merciful to Nineveh and save the city? It was undoubtedly a national spirit which possessed the prophet. It has been suggested that the prophet knew that the Assyrian would be used by the Lord as the instrument to punish Israel and that he thought if Nineveh would perish the people Israel might be saved. Inasmuch as God might show mercy to Assyria, Assyria would then be used as the rod upon Israel, and for this reason he was disobedient to the commission. But the direct prophecy that the Assyrian would be the staff in the hand of the Lord to bring judgment upon Israel was made through Isaiah (chapter 10), and that revelation had not yet been given, for Jonah lived before the prophet Isaiah. It was rather the fear Jonah had as a Jew that the conversion of the Gentiles might rob his nation of the distinction of being the nation of election, to whom Jehovah had revealed Himself exclusively. He therefore went to Joppa where he engaged passage on a ship which was to bring him to Tarshish, which he never reached. It was at Joppa where centuries later another Jew, who was also jealous for his nation, had a vision which made it clear that the gospel should be preached to the Gentiles. That Jew was Peter Act 10:1-48.
Jon 1:4-17. No sooner had the ship set sail but a terrible tempest arose, sent by the Lord. The danger of shipwreck was imminent. The heathen mariners became terrified and besides crying each one to their gods, they threw the wares overboard to lighten the ship, so that it might weather the storm. But we do not read anything about Jonah calling on his God. Was it an evil conscience which led him to seek sleep in the sides of the ship? Or did he seek sleep because he was in despair? Or was his action produced by the calmness of faith, that he knew himself in the hands of the Lord? Perhaps his action shows more than anything indifference and an astonishing self security.
The shipmaster aroused him from his sleep, asking him why he slept and demanded that he call upon his God. The lot is cast and it fell upon Jonah. He might have confessed before but he waited as long as he could. The questions they asked him he answers readily. He confesses that he is a Hebrew, that he fears the Lord, the God of heaven, the creator of sea and land. His confession filled them with fear; they also knew that he had been disobedient for he told them about it. It was a noble confession and shows that though he had fled from the presence of the Lord his heart still clung to Him. He answered the question, what shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us? by pronouncing his own sentence. “Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you; for I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you.” Again we must say these are noble words. He is ready to sacrifice himself and trusts the Lord and His mercy. After the mariners made an unsuccessful attempt to row the ship to land, and calling upon the Lord not to lay upon them innocent blood, they cast Jonah into the raging sea, and the sea became calm. As a result the heathen sailors feared Jehovah exceedingly, offering a sacrifice unto Him and making vows, while the Lord prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah, in whose belly Jonah remained three days and three nights. Some have stated that the Lord created a special sea-monster for this purpose, but the Hebrew word does not mean “create”, it means “appoint.” It certainly was not a whale, for whales rarely ever are seen in the Mediterranean sea, nor can a whale swallow a human being on account of the narrowness of its throat. It was probably a species of sea-monster frequently found in that sea and known by the scientific name squalus carcharias, which can easily swallow a human being whole. But the miracle was not that such a fish came up from the depths of the sea and swallowed the prophet, but that Jonah was miraculously preserved in the fish.
The Typical Application
1. Jonah is a type of the Lord Jesus Christ. As already pointed out in the introduction the words of our Lord sanction this application. But as He said when He spoke of Solomon “a greater than Solomon is here,” so He also said “a greater than Jonah is here.”
We point out a few of the applications and contrasts. Jonah was sent with a message of judgment; the Son of God came with the message of love and salvation. “For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved” Joh 3:17.
Jonah was disobedient, acting in self-will, fleeing from the presence of the Lord. The Son of God was obedient; He never did His own will but the will of Him that sent Him. The words He spoke were not His own. “The word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father’s who sent me.” He always had the Father set before Himself and was uninterruptedly in His presence.
Jonah, indifferent and self-secure, was fast asleep in the ship while the storm raged and the ship was in danger of going down. The Lord Jesus was asleep in the ship on Galilee, and though the ship was filling with water He was undisturbed, knowing that He was safe. He did what Jonah did not and could not do. He rebuked his fearful disciples and rebuked the wind and the waves; the storm was suddenly hushed.
Jonah bore a faithful witness; but how much greater is His witness. He is called “the faithful Witness” Rev 1:1-20.
Jonah sacrificed himself in order to save those who were about to perish. But how much greater His sacrifice! Jonah’s fate came upon him on account of his sin and disobedience. The Lord Jesus Christ did not suffer for His sins, for He had none, being the Holy, the Sinless One. He died exclusively for others and died for the ungodly. But did Jonah actually die? Did death fasten upon him? Was his body miraculously preserved so that it did not see corruption? Was it a literal resurrection when the fish vomited him out? Jonah did not die physically. But his experience typifies the death and the burial of Christ, and also His physical resurrection. How could Jonah have prayed and cried to the Lord out of the belly of the fish if his physical life had ceased? It was a miracle, however, that Jonah was kept alive.
The three days and three nights have troubled a good many expositors. Not a few teach that in order to bring together the three days and three nights during which our Lord was in the grave, He must have died either on Wednesday or Thursday. The three days and three nights must be interpreted according to Hebrew usage. In Luk 24:21 we read that the two who met the risen Lord said, “And beside all this, today is the third day since these things were done.” That was on the first day of the week. Reckoning back, Saturday would be the second day and Friday the first day, the day on which Christ died.
2. Jonah is a type of the Jewish Nation. In the Jewish synagogical ritual the book of Jonah is read on the Day of Atonement. The writer is indebted to an old orthodox Jew for the information why this story is read on their great day of fasting and prayer. He said, “We are the Jonah.” Like Jonah the nation was called to bear witness to the Gentiles. And as Jonah did not want the knowledge of Jehovah to go to the Gentiles, so the Jews filled with national pride of being the elect nation opposed God’s purposes. (See Act 13:6-12; Act 13:44-52; Act 14:19-28; Act 17:5-34; Act 18:12, etc.)
Disobedient as Jonah, the nation left the presence of the Lord. Jonah engaged passage on a merchant-ship, and the Jew became a trafficker. Like as it was with Jonah, storm and disaster came upon the nation after their great act of disobedience, when they rejected Christ, and opposed His purposes. Like Jonah, in the midst of all their troubles they did not deny, nor deny now, their nationality, their faith in God; they also confess in some of their prayers, at least the orthodox Jews, why it is that they are in trouble, that they have sinned and turned away from the Lord.
Jonah was cast overboard into the sea. The sea represents the nations; that is where the Jews were cast. As a result of the casting away of Jonah the heathen sailors turned to the Lord and sacrificed unto Him. In Rom 11:11 we read, “through their fall (the Jews) salvation came to the Gentiles to provoke them to jealousy.” The belly of the fish represents the grave of the Jews among the nations. They became nationally and spiritually dead. But as the fish did not digest Jonah, so the nations have not digested the Jew. They remain unassimilated, just as Balaam predicted, “This nation shall dwell alone and not be reckoned among the nations.” The national preservation of Israel is one of the great miracles in history, just as the preservation of Jonah in the belly of the fish was a miracle.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv1, 11 Jonah’s Commission And Flight
Jonah’s Commission And Flight
v. 1. Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah, the son of Amittai, in a vision or by a direct revelation, saying,
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v. 2. Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it, by preaching a call to repentance; for their wickedness is come up before Me, as had that of Sodom and Gomorrah hundreds of years before. Cf Gen 18:20. The name Nineveh was applied to a complex of four ancient cities, including Nineveh proper, which lay between the Tigris River and a low range of hills, about 500 miles northeast of Jerusalem. The entire length of the compound city was about twenty-five miles, while its breadth was fifteen. At that time it had more than half a million inhabitants and was the capital and metropolis of the entire heathen world.
v. 3. But Jonah, instead of showing the proper obedience to the Lord, rose up to flee unto Tarshish, Tartessus in Spain, one of the westernmost cities of the ancient world and always considered as lying on the very boundary of the earth’s inhabited area, from the presence of the Lord, from before the face of the Lord, who was thought of as having His habitation in the Temple at Jerusalem, and went down to Joppa, the harbor of Jerusalem on the Mediterranean Sea. And he found a ship going to Tarshish, for there was a lively commercial intercourse with the western metropolis even at that time on account of its trade in metals and fine products of the soil; so he paid the fare thereof, he engaged passage, and went down into it to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, thus deliberately denying his services to Jehovah, the King of Israel, chiefly because the idea of preaching repentance to a heathen nation was repugnant to him, since he feared that the Lord might show the Gentiles mercy.
v. 4. But the Lord, whose presence was by no means confined to the Land of Promise, sent out a great wind into the sea, a very severe storm, which caused the billows to rise in dangerous mountains; and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken, it was on the point of foundering.
v. 5. Then the mariners, the sailors on the boat, were afraid and cried every man unto his god, for the seamen were from various countries and worshiped various gods, and cast forth the wares that were in the ship, the freight which she was carrying, into the sea to lighten it of them, so that she would ride higher in the water and no longer be in danger of foundering. But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship, into its cabin, or hold; and he lay and was fast asleep, thinking himself secure from all danger.
v. 6. So the shipmaster came to him and said unto him, What meanest thou, O sleeper? Why should he withdraw at the time of this great peril?. Arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us that we perish not, by lending them His assistance and rescuing them from the impending destruction.
v. 7. And. they said every one to his fellow, after Jonah had obeyed the call of the captain, Come and let us cast lots, a common method of determining the guilt of men at that time, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us, who was to blame for the present condition of affairs. So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah, the Lord Himself directing this method of determining the guilty one.
v. 8. Then said they unto him, Tell us, we pray thee, for whose cause this evil is upon us, who and what was responsible for this condition of affairs. What is thine occupation? his business, which might have been of a nature to arouse the wrath of God. And whence comest thou, from what nation and people?. What is thy country? And of what people art thou? The questions are shouted in a confused mass, as always under the stress of a great emotion.
v. 9. And he said unto them, in an open confession of his guilt, I am an Hebrew, the usual name applied to the people of Israel by the surrounding nations; and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, worshiping Him alone, which hath made the sea and the dry land, the one Creator of the world and all it contained.
v. 10. Then were the men exceedingly afraid, filled with terror at the scope of this confession, which showed them that they were, although unwittingly, assisting Jonah in his effort to escape the Lord, and said unto him, Why hast thou done this? a cry of horror and fear more than a question, for the God of the Hebrews was known as a powerful Deity. For the men knew that he fled from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them, this statement having been included in the confession which he made before them. Even unbelievers quake at any evidence of the wrath of God, much as they otherwise scoff at those who worship Him.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 4, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17 the word of Yahweh came
the word of Yahweh came
This is an idiom that means Yahweh spoke. "Yahweh spoke his message" (See: Idiom)
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the word of Yahweh
"the message of Yahweh"
Yahweh
This is the name of God that he revealed to his people in the Old Testament. See the translationWord page about Yahweh concerning how to translate this.
Amittai
This is the name of Jonah's father. (See: How to Translate Names)
Get up and go to Nineveh, that great city
"Go to the important city of Nineveh"
Get up and go
This is a common expression for traveling to distant places. (See: Idiom)
speak out against it
God is referring to the people of the city. AT: "warn the people" (See: Metonymy)
their wickedness has risen up before me
"I know they have been continually sinning"
got up to run away from the presence of Yahweh
"ran away from Yahweh." "got up" is referring to Jonah leaving where he was. (See: Idiom)
the presence of Yahweh
Here Yahweh is represented by his presence. (See: Metonymy)
go to Tarshish
"and went to Tarshish." Tarshish was in the opposite direction to Nineveh. This can be made explicit. AT: "went in the opposite direction, toward Tarshish" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
He went down to Joppa
"Jonah went to Joppa"
ship
A "ship" is a very large type of boat that can travel on the sea and carry many passengers or heavy cargo.
So he paid the fare
"There Jonah paid for the trip"
boarded the ship
"got on the ship"
with them
The word "them" refers to the others who were going on the ship.
away from the presence of Yahweh
Here Yahweh is represented by his presence. AT: "away from Yahweh" (See: Metonymy)
translationWords
word of God
Yahweh
Jonah
Nineveh
evil
Tarshish
Joppa
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 12, 13, 16, 17 1:1–2:10 Jonah initially rejected the Lord’s commission to warn…
1:1–2:10 Jonah initially rejected the Lord’s commission to warn Nineveh of the judgment it had incurred because of its wickedness.
1:1 Jonah son of Amittai was from Gath-hepher, a town located on the border of the tribal areas of Naphtali and Zebulun. He ministered to the northern kingdom of Israel during the reign of Jeroboam II (793–753 BC; see 2 Kgs 14:25).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.