'And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying,
2. Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the
preaching that I bid thee. 3. So Jonah arose, and went unto
Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an
exceeding great city of three days' journey. 4. And Jonah began to
enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried, and said, Yet
forty days, and Nineveh shall he overthrown. 5. So the people of
Ninoveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth,
from the greatest of them even to the least of them. 6. For word
came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he
laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in
ashes. 7. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through
Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let
neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything; let them not
feed, nor drink water: 8. But let man and beast be covered with
sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God; yea, let them turn every one
from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. 9.
Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from His
fierce anger, that we perish not? 10. And God saw their works, that
they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that
He had said that He would do unto them; and He did it not.'--JONAH
iii. 1-10.
This passage falls into three parts: Jonah's renewed commission and new
obedience (vs. 1-4), the repentance of Nineveh (vs. 5-9), and the
acceptance thereof by God (ver. 10). We might almost call these three
the repentance of Jonah, of Nineveh, and of God. The evident intention
of the narrative is to parallel the Ninevites turning from their sins,
and God's turning from His anger and purpose of destruction; and if the
word 'repentance' is not applied to Jonah, his conduct sufficiently
shows the thing.
I. Note the renewed charge to the penitent Prophet, and his new
eagerness to fulfil it. His deliverance and second commission are put as
if all but simultaneous, and his obedience was swift and glad. Jonah did
not venture to take for granted that the charge which he had shirked was
still continued to him. If God commands to take the trumpet, and we
refuse, we dare not assume that we shall still be honoured with the
delivery of the message. The punishment of dumb lips is often dumbness.
Opportunities of service, slothfully or faintheartedly neglected, are
often withdrawn. We can fancy how Jonah, brought back to the better mind
which breathes in his psalm, longed to be honoured by the trust of
preaching once more, and how rapturously his spirit would address itself
to the task. Duties once unwelcome become sweet when we have passed
through the experience of the misery that comes from neglecting them. It
is God's mercy that gives us the opportunity of effacing past
disobedience by new alacrity.
The second charge is possibly distinguishable from the first as being
less precise. It may be that the exact nature of 'the preaching that I
bid thee' was not told Jonah till he had to open his mouth in Nineveh;
but, more probably, the second charge was identical with the first.
The word rendered 'preach' is instructive. It means 'to cry' and
suggests the manner befitting those who bear God's message. They should
sound it out loudly, plainly, urgently, with earnestness and marks of
emotion in their voice. Languid whispers will not wake sleepers. Unless
the messenger is manifestly in earnest, the message will fall flat. Not
with bated breath, as if ashamed of it; nor with hesitation, as if not
quite sure of it; nor with coldness, as if it were of little
urgency,--is God's Word to be pealed in men's ears. The preacher is a
crier. The substance of his message, too, is set forth. 'The preaching
which I bid thee'--not his own imaginations, nor any fine things of his
own spinning. Suppose Jonah had entertained the Ninevites with
dissertations on the evidences of his prophetic authority, or submitted
for their consideration a few thoughts tending to show the agreement of
his message with their current opinions in religion, or an argument for
the existence of a retributive Governor of the world, he would not have
shaken the city. The less the Prophet shows himself, the stronger his
influence. The more simply he repeats the stern, plain, short message,
the more likely it is to impress. God's Word, faithfully set forth, will
prove itself. The preacher or teacher of this day has substantially the
same charge as Jonah had; and the more he suppresses himself, and
becomes but a voice through which God speaks, the better for himself,
his hearers, and his work.
Nineveh, that great aggregate of cities, was full, as Eastern cities
are, of open spaces, and might well be a three days' journey in
circumference. What a task for that solitary stranger to thunder out his
loud cry among all these crowds! But he had learned to do what he was
bid; and without wasting a moment, he 'began to enter into the city a
day's journey,' and, no doubt, did not wait till the end of the day to
proclaim his message. Let us learn that there is an element of
threatening in God's most merciful message, and that the appeal to
terror and to the desire for self-preservation is part of the way to
preach the Gospel. Plain warnings of coming evil may be spoken tenderly,
and reveal love as truly as the most soothing words. The warning comes
in time. 'Forty days' of grace are granted. The gospel warns us in time
enough for escape. It warns us because God loves; and they are as
untrue messengers of His love as of His justice who slur over the
declaration of His wrath.
II. Note the repentance of Nineveh (vs. 5-9). The impression made by
Jonah's terrible cry is perfectly credible and natural in the excitable
population of an Eastern city, in which even now any appeal to terror,
especially if associated with religious and prophetic claims, easily
sets the whole in a frenzy. Think of the grim figure of this foreign
man, with his piercing voice and half-intelligible speech, dropped from
the clouds as it were, and stalking through Nineveh, pealing out his
confident message, like that gaunt fanatic who walked Jerusalem in its
last agony, crying, 'Woe! woe unto the bloody city!' or that other, who,
with flaming fire on his head and madness in his eyes, affrighted London
in the plague. No wonder that alarm was kindled, and, being kindled,
spread like wildfire. Apparently the movement was first among the
people, who began to fast before the news penetrated to the seclusion of
the palace. But the contagion reached the king, and the popular
excitement was endorsed and fanned by a royal decree. The specified
tokens of repentance are those of ordinary mourning, such as were common
all over the East, with only the strange addition, which smacks of
heathen ideas, that the animals were made sharers in them.
There is great significance in that 'believed God' (ver. 5). The
foundation of all true repentance is crediting God's word of
threatening, and therefore realising the danger, as well as the
disobedience, of our sin. We shall be wise if we pass by the human
instrument, and hear God speaking through the Prophet. Never mind about
Jonah, believe God.
We learn from the Ninevites what is true repentance They brought no
sacrifices or offerings, but sorrow, self-abasement, and amendment. The
characteristic sin of a great military power would be 'violence,' and
that is the specific evil from which they vow to turn. The loftiest
lesson which prophets found Israel so slow to learn, 'A broken and a
contrite heart Thou wilt not despise,' was learned by these heathens. We
need it no less. Nineveh repented on a peradventure that their
repentance might avail. How pathetic that 'Who can tell?' (ver. 9) is!
We _know_ what they _hoped_. Their doubt might give fervour to their
cries, but our certainty should give deeper earnestness and confidence
to ours.
The deepest meaning of the whole narrative is set forth in our Lord's
use of it, when He holds up the men of Nineveh as a condemnatory
instance to the hardened consciences of His hearers. Probably the very
purpose of the book was to show Israel that the despised and yet dreaded
heathen were more susceptible to the voice of God than they were: 'I
will provoke you to jealousy by them which are no people.' The story was
a smiting blow to the proud exclusiveness and self-complacent contempt
of prophetic warnings, which marked the entire history of God's people.
As Ezekiel was told: 'Thou are not sent ... to many peoples of a strange
speech and of an hard language.... Surely, if I sent thee to them, they
would hearken unto thee. But the house of Israel will not hearken unto
thee.' It is ever true that long familiarity with the solemn thoughts of
God's judgment and punishment of sin abates their impression on us. Our
Puritan forefathers used to talk about 'gospel-hardened sinners,' and
there are many such among us. The man who lives by Niagara does not
hear its roar as a stranger does. The men of Nineveh will rise in the
judgment with other generations than that which was 'this generation' in
Christ's time; and that which is 'this generation' to-day will, in many
of its members, be condemned by them.
But the wave of feeling soon retired, and there is no reason to believe
that more than a transient impression was made. It does not seem certain
that the Ninevites knew what 'God' they hoped to appease. Probably their
pantheon was undisturbed, and their repentance lasted no longer than
their fear. Transient repentance leaves the heart harder than before, as
half-melted ice freezes again more dense. Let us beware of frost on the
back of a thaw. 'Repentance which is repented of' is worse than none.
III. We note the repentance of God (ver. 10). Mark the recurrence of the
word 'turn,' employed in verses 8, 9, and 10 in reference to men and to
God. Mark the bold use of the word 'repent,' applied to God, which,
though it be not applied to the Ninevites in the previous verses, is
implied in every line of them. The same expression is found in Exodus
xxxii. 14, which may be taken as the classical passage warranting its
use. The great truth involved is one that is too often lost sight of in
dealing with prophecy; namely, that all God's promises and threatenings
are conditional. Jeremiah learned that lesson in the house of the
potter, and we need to keep it well in mind. God threatens, precisely in
order that He may not have to perform His threatenings. Jonah was sent
to Nineveh to cry, 'Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown,' in
order that it might not be overthrown. What would have been the use of
proclaiming the decree, if it had been irreversible? There is an
implied 'if' in all God's words. 'Except ye repent' underlies the most
absolute threatenings of evil. 'If we hold fast the beginning of our
confidence firm unto the end,' is presupposed in the brightest and
broadest promises of good.
The word 'repent' is denied and affirmed to have application to God. He
is not 'a son of man, that He should repent,' inasmuch as His
immutability and steadfast purpose know no variableness. But just
because they cannot change, and He must ever be against them that do
evil, and ever bless them that turn to Him with trust, therefore He
changes His dealings with us according to our relation to Him, and
because He cannot repent, or be other than He was and is, 'repents of
the evil that He had said that He would do' unto sinners when they
repent of the evil that they have done against Him, inasmuch as He
leaves His threatening unfulfilled, and 'does it not.'
So we might almost say that the purpose of this book of Jonah is to
teach the possibility and efficacy of repentance, and to show how the
penitent man, heathen or Jew, ever finds in God changed dealings
corresponding to his changed heart. The widest charity, the humbling
lesson for people brought up in the blaze of revelation, that dwellers
in the twilight or in the darkness are dear to God and may be more
susceptible of divine impressions than ourselves, the rebuke of all
pluming ourselves on our privileges, the boundlessness of God's mercy,
are among the other lessons of this strange book; but none of them is
more precious than its truly evangelic teaching of the blessedness of
true penitence, whether exemplified in the renegade Prophet returning
to his high mission, or the fierce Ninevites humbled and repentant, and
finding mercy from the God of the whole earth.
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