1 G. A. Smith, The Book of the Twelve Propliets, ii. 539.
JONAH iv. 10, ii 347
for shading arbours ; and so rapid is its growth that it will often shoot a foot in a day. In the gardens about Sidon many an arbour of gourds may be seen. But the plant withers as rapidly as it shoots, and after a storm or any injury to the stem, its fruit may be seen hanging from the leafless tendrils which so lately concealed it, a type of melancholy desolation.
Now, we are expressly told in the history that Jonah " made him a booth," and that after it was made God prepared the "kikayon" to cover it. This is exactly the office of the Gourd. Jonah had erected his fragile lodge of boughs, whose leaves would rapidly wither, and a further shade would be required. Then the tendrils of the Gourd would seize the boughs and provide shelter for the prophet. But no one who knows the Ricinus can conceive it affording any shelter over an existing arbour, nor has it the qualities of rapid growth and sudden decay so characteristic of the Gourd.1
Within my garden was a flower
More fair than earth could know.
My heart upon it, hour by hour,
Did tender care bestow;
It opened wide to morning's light;
It closed at evenfall.
And, every day more fair and bright,
My flower was all in all.
The flower within my garden grew,
Than all my flowers more fair,
And, when my love it sweetly drew,
Became my only care;
While garden ways with weeds were wild,
And flowers neglected died,
Above my cherished bloom I smiled
And all the rest denied.
A morning came with bitter blight,
A morn with tears made wild —
My flower had perished in the night,
My heart had lost its child.
But when my eyes were washed by tears
And looked upon the light,
I gazed across the blinded years
And set my garden right.2
1 H. B. Tristram, The Natural History of the Bible, 449.
2 James Strang, Sunlight and Shadow.
348 THE WIDENESS OF GOD'S MERCY
II.
God's Wide Mercy.
1. The question of the text is an argument which is often used in the Bible. It is an argument from man to God, from pity in man to pity in God, from the best in man to an unimagin- ably better in God. " Thou hast had pity : and should not I have pity ? " Will religious men with their narrowness and selfishness keep God from being pitiful as He sees best ? Our Lord makes use of this argument in the Gospels: "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him." Erring men can be trusted to give what is good ; how much more can God be trusted to give us what is best — even His Spirit in our hearts ? The best in man is only a faint image of the best in God. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are His ways higher than our ways, and His thoughts than our thoughts.
T[ " Thou hast pity on the gourd." At first sight the argu- ment does not seem quite in order. For Jonah was not angry for the gourd's sake, but for his own, and indeed his feelings were not those of compassion, but of wrath. The word "pity" is applied by the author to Jonah and the gourd, because it is the true and appropriate word for God and the Ninevites. The parallelism is a little forced, but it is quite possible, as Professor Driver has had the great kindness to suggest to me in a private letter, that a sort of a fortiori argument was intended by the author. Jonah is allowed by God to have felt some pity for the gourd, although that pity was born of selfishness. He regretted its loss for its own sake as well as for himself. Now not only were the Ninevites incomparably more worthy to be spared than the gourd, but God was incomparably more ready to feel pity than Jonah ; for not only was He their Creator and Sustainer, but pity in His case is an ever-present attitude of His nature, neither evoked by selfish considerations of personal advantage, nor assumed as the fair-seeming counterfeit of personal annoyance. God, the shepherd of man, is, as Plato would say, a true shepherd. His end or aim is the well-being of His flock, and only that. Nor does it matter to Him whether the sheep are light or dark, Aryan or Semitic.1
1 C. G. Montefiore, The Bible for Home Beading, ii. 415.
JONAH iv. 10, u 349
2. But the text has a further contrast. It is an argument, not merely from man to God, but from the gourd to men, or rather to the young children and the cattle. " Thou hast had pity on the gourd ; and should not I have pity on Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle ? " Here again the argument is repeated in the Gospels. Our Lord was found fault with by narrow bigots for healing a man on the Sabbath. He reminded them that they would rescue a sheep from a pit on the Sabbath because it was their property. " How much, then," He asked, " is a man of more value than a sheep ? " The text makes the noble claim that God cares for the dumb, driven cattle. But its main argument is, " How much is a child of more value than a gourd ? " Men and women are more to God than the short-lived shrub to the sun- beaten and sulky prophet. As we sometimes sing in Ebenezer Elliott's Hymn of the People —