(2.) What is said about the size of Nineveh, also, is in accordance with fact (see Pict. Bible, note, ad loc). It was " an exceeding great city of three days' journey." Built in the form of a parallelogram, it made, according to Diodorus (ii, 7), a circuit of 480 furlongs, or about GO miles. It has been usual, since the publication of Lay- ard's Nineveh, to say that the great ruins of Koyimjik, Nimrud, Keremles, and Khorsabad form such a paral- lelogram, the distances from north to south being about 18 miles, and from east to west about 12; the longer sides thus measuring 36 miles, and the shorter ones 24. But against this view professor Rawlinson has recently urged, with considerable force, that the four great ruins bore distinct local titles: that Nimrud, identified with Calah, is mentioned in Scripture as a place so far sep- arated from Nineveh that "a great city" — Resen — lay between them (Gen. x, 12); that there are no signs of a continuous town; and that the four sites are fortified "on what would be the inside of the city." Still Nine- veh, as represented by the ruins of Koyunjik and Neb- bi-Ymius, or Tomb of Jonah, was of an oblong shape, with a circuit of about eight miles, and was therefore a place of unusual size — " an exceeding great city." The phrase, " three days' journey," may mean that it would take that time to traverse the city and proclaim through all its localities the divine message ; and the emphatic point then is, that at the end of his first day's journey the preaching of Jonah took effect. The clause, " that cannot discern their right liand froiTi their left hand," probably denotes children, and 120,000 of these might represent a population of more than half a million (Raw- linson's Five Great Monan-hiifi, i. 310 ; Sir Henry Raw- linson's Comment, on Cum if. Insciiiitions, p. 17; Captain Jones's Topography of Nuk n h. in the Jour, of As. So- ciety, XV, 298). Jonah entered the city "a day's jour- ney," that is, probably went from west to east uttering his incisive and terrible message. The sublime audac- ity of the stranger— the ringing monotony of his sharp, short cry— had an immediate effect. The story of his wonderful deliverance liad perhaps preceded him (Thom- son, Land and Book, i, 100). The people believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and man and beast fasted alike. The exaggeration ascribed to this pictiu-e adds to its credibilit}', so prone is Oriental nature to extremes. If the luirden of Jonah was to have any effect at all, one might say that it must be profound and immediate. It was a panic — we dare not call it a revival, or, with Dr. Pusey, dignify it into conversion. There was plainly no permanent result. After the sensation had passed away, idolatry and rapacity resumed their former sway, as is testified by the prophets Isaiah, Nahum, and Zeph- aniah ; yet the aj^palled conscience of Nineveh did con- fess its " evil and its violence" as it grovelled in the dust. A^arious causes may have contributed to deepen this consternation — the superstition of the people, and the sudden and unexplaiiied appearance of the foreigner with his voice of doom. " The king," as Layard says^ " might believe him to be a special minister from the supreme deity of the nation," and it was only "when the gods themselves seemed to interpose that any check was placed on the roj-al pride and lust.'' Layard adds, " It was not necessary to the effect of his preaching that Jonah should be of the rehgion of the people of Nine- veh. I have known a Christian priest frighten a whole ^Mussulman town to tents and repentance by publicly proclaiming that he had received a divine mission to announce a coming earthquake or plague" {Nineveh and Babylon, p. 632). The compulsory mourning of the
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brute creation nas at least one analogy in the lamenta- tion made over the Persian general Masistms: '• Ihe horses and beasts of burden were shaved" (Herodotus, ix n) According to Plutarch, also, .Alexander com- mandeil the observance of a similar custom on the death of Hephajstion. Therefore, in the accessories of the narrative there is no violation of probability-aU is m accordance with known customs and facts. See Jsine-
73 ) It has appeared to some, in particular to Bleek (Einkif. p. 571), improbable, and against the historical verity of this book, that on the supposition of all that is here "related having actually occurred, there should be in the relation of them such a paucity of circumstantial details— nothing said, for instance, of the place where Jonah was discharged on dry land, or of the particular king who then reigned at Nineveh— and not only so, but'no apparent reference in the future allusions to Nin- eveh in Scripture, to the singular change (if so be it actually took place) ■\vrought through the preaching of Jonah "on the religious and moral state of the people. These are still always regarded as idolaters, and the judgments of God uttered against them, as if they stood in much the same position with the heathen enemies generally of God's cause and people. It may fairly be admitted that there is a certain degree of strangeness in such things, which, if it were not in accordance with the character both of the man and of the mission, and in these found a kind of explanation, might not unnat- urally give rise to some doubts of the credibility of what is written. But Jonah's relation to Nineveh was altogether of a special and peculiar nature; it stood apart from the regular calling of a prophet and the or- dinary dealings of God; and having for its more speci- fic oljject the instruction and warning of the covenant- people in a very critical period of their affairs, the reserve maintained as to local and historical details may have been designed, as it was certainly fitted, to make them think loss of the parties immediately concerned, and more of what through these God was seeking to impress upon themselves. The whole was a kind of parabolical action ; and I>eyond a certain limit circumstantial mi- nuteness would have tended to mar, rather than to ])ro- mote, the leading aim. Then, as to the change pro- duced upon the Niuevites, we are led from tlie nature of the case to think chiefly of the more flagrant iniqui- ties as the evils more particularly cried against; and Israel itself afforded many examples of general refor- mations ill respect to these, of which little or no trace was to l)e found in the course even of a single genera- tion. Much more might such be expected to have hap- pened in the case of Nineveh.