go to Tarshishf. Commentators have invented I know not how many apologies for Jonah : for instance, that he was actuated by a jealousy for the honour of his own nation: for Nineveh, being a city of Gentiles, he thought that the going to prophesy to them would be to transfer to them an honour due to Israel alone. Others suppose that he was impelled rather by fear ; since, to deliver so awful a prophecy, could not but involve him in great danger. But the real ground of his disobedience was, that which he himself acknowledges : " He knew God to be a merciful God :" and he was afraid that the people would repent; and that God, on account of their repentance, would forbear to execute his threatened judgment upon them : and that thus he himself would, eventually, he made to appear a false prophet5.
Whilst he was going to Tarshish, he was overtaken with a storm, which reduced the ship to such extreme danger, that all the mariners betook themselves to prayer, as their only refuge. The thought occurring to their minds, that possibly the storm might have been sent as a punishment of some great offence, they drew lots, in order that they might find out the offender: and the lot falling upon Jonah, he confessed his sin, and counselled them to cast him overboard, as the only means of pacifying the offended Deity, and of saving their own lives. Thus did judgment overtake Jonah, precisely as it had over- taken Achan in the camp of Joshua: and, like Achan, he might well have been summoned into the presence of his God. But, lo ! God had prepared a great fish to swallow him up, not for his destruction, but preservation : for he preserved him alive three days and three nights in the fish's belly; and caused the fish to carry him to the shore nearest to Nineveh, and to cast him on shore without any injury to his body ; yea, and with unspeakable benefit accruing to his soul: nay, more; his offended God not only spared him thus, but made him in this way one of the most eminent types of Christ that ever existed in the world.
Now, if Jonah knew before that God was merciful, how fully must he have known it now! Here was a mercy so extraor- dinary in its kind, so blessed in its results, and so marvellous, as being vouchsafed to him in the midst of his most impious rebellion, that it may well be adduced as one of the most astonishing displays of mercy that have ever been vouchsafed to man from the foundation of the world.]
2. In the sparing of the whole city of Nineveh —
[The inhabitants of that immense city, the capital of the Assyrian empire, had filled up the measure of their iniquities11.
f Jonah i. 3. s vcr. 2. h Jonah i. 2.