“But, oh the labour, O prince, the pain!”
Sometimes the neglected duty is at last achieved only at the cost of a man’s breath; and the truth, which might have been the bride of his youth and his comrade through a long life, is recognised by him only in the features of Death.
[1511] iv. 2.
[1512] For the grace of God had been the most formative influence in the early religion of Israel (see Vol. I., p. 19), and Amos, only thirty years after Jonah, emphasised the moral equality of Israel and the Gentiles before the one God of righteousness. Given these two premisses of God’s essential grace and the moral responsibility of the heathen to Him, and the conclusion could never have been far away that in the end His essential grace must reach the heathen too. Indeed in sayings not later than the eighth century it is foretold that Israel shall become a blessing to the whole world. Our author, then, may have been guilty of no anachronism in imputing such a foreboding to Jonah.
[1513] Second Isaiah. See chap. lx.
[1514] See the author’s _Hist. Geog. of the Holy Land_, pp. 131-134.
[1515] Heb. _them_.
[1516] So LXX.: Heb. _a great wind_.
[1517] Heb. _on the sea_.
[1518] Lit. _reckoned_ or _thought_.
[1519] Heb. _ropes_.
[1520] The words _for whose sake is this evil_ come _upon us_ do not occur in LXX. and are unnecessary.
[1521] Wellhausen suspects this form of the Divine title.
[1522] Heb. _dug_.
[1523] _I knew how Thou art a God gracious._