The Pulpit Commentary — Jonah — Section 88

HOMILIES BY VARIOUS AUTHOilS. Vere. 1-4.-A miaanthrope's case against Divine benevolence. It takes a good deal to make a man of God perfect. After a whole life's discipline the old man of sin will sometimes show his baleful features at the window of the soul. Jonah has just been figuring to our mind as a changed character, returned to his allegiance, going God'~ errand promptly, and doing his work with faithful zeal. But here he forfeits our good opinion, almost before it has hacl time to form. The patient's cure has been only -seeming, or else be has suffered a bad relapse. At any rate, the narrative leaves him on a spiritual level as low or lower than it found him. He began by quarrelling with. a particular command of God, and he ends by quarrelling with his moral government as a. whole. If there be a point of religious progres~ scored at all in connection with the matter, it is the exceedingly minute one that at first he tried to defeat the Divine purpose, and at last, and with an ill grace, be submits to its execution as inevitable. And it may be noted, as a qua!Hying consideration, that sanctification is the work of a lifetime; and therefore we can look for no very material change in the few days which the narrative of the book covers. I. A HAN WHO HAS FOUND MERCY HIMSELF HAY YET PRACTICALLY GRUDGE IT TO OTHERS. Misanthropy is Satanic. The devil hates men utterly and intensely. And the man, if there be such, who hates men instinctively, and would destroy them unprovoked, is less human than diabolical Jonah was not such a man. There were oonsiderations, and paltry ones, for which he would have sacrificed all the souls in Nineveh, but, apart from these, be wished them no ill. 1. One of thess wnsiderations was supplied by egoism. As the prophet and mouthpiece of God, he had predicted the destruction of the city, even to the naming of the day, and his credit required that the ,event should now occur. If it did not, his prophecy failed, and his reputation as a. prophet suffered, both with the Ninevites and with his own people. The prospect of this be could not stand. In his miserable and guilty self-seeking he preferred the destruction, soul and body, of a million people, to the possible discrediting of his pro- •phetic claims. Such heartlessness in a believing man seems well-nigh incredible. But. it is far from unparalleled. Every Christian worker approaches it who works for his own credit or advantage, and not for the salvation of men. He may not be conscious of the fact, or he may fa.ii to realize the significance of it, but he virtually and practically prefers that men should perish rather than that he should be deemed a. failure. His reputation as a Christian worker, and his success in that character, is more to him than the salvation from sin of a.II to whom his words may come. 2. .Anuther consideration. sectarianism provides. To Israel in its wickedness a whole line of prophets had preached, with no result whatever, save their own extermination (Acts vii. 52), and the announce- ment of inevitable doom on the obdurate race (Amos v. 27; vii. 17). The Ninevites' deliverance, establishing as it would the genuineness of their turniug from sin, would bring into unfavourable contrast the obstinate impenitence of Israel, would emphasiza the needs-be of her approaching ruiu, and would amount to the preservation and 86 TilE BOOK OF JONAII. [ott. IV, 1-11.