mariners of Jonah's ship and their captain never once doubted. Living
as they did, and as we do not, under a miraculous dispensation, they
attributed every unusual, and especially every unpleasant, occurrence
to the agency of a god. The idea of predicting storms, with which the
civilised world is now familiar, they would doubtless have regarded as
blasphemous and absurd. It is, therefore, by no means wonderful that
every man on board (except Jonah, who was fast asleep) "called unto
his god." Ignorant of what god was afflicting them, they appealed
impartially all round, in the hope of hitting the right one. But the
circle of their deities did not include the one which sent the wind; so
the tempest continued to prevail, despite their prayers.
In this extremity a happy thought occurred to the "ship-master." It
struck him that the strange passenger down below might know something
about the tempest, and that his god might have caused it. Forthwith
there dawned within him a recollection of words which Jonah had uttered
on embarking. Had he not told them "that he fled from the presence of
the Lord?" "Dear me," the captain probably said to himself, "what a fool
I was not to think of this before. That chap down below is the occasion
of all these troubles; I'll go and hunt him up, confound him!" Thereupon
he doubtless slapped his thigh, as is the wont of sailors when they
solve a difficulty or hit on a brilliant idea; after which he descended
"into the sides of the ship," whither Jonah had gone. There he found the
prophet slumbering as peacefully as a weanling child, with a smile
of satisfaction playing over his Hebrew features. We can imagine the
captain's profound disgust in presence of this scene. He and his men had
been toiling and praying, and, alas! pitching the cargo overboard,
in order to save their skins; and all the while the occasion of their
trouble had been lying fast asleep! Preserving an outward decorum,
however, he accosted Jonah in very mild terms. "What meanest thou, O
sleeper?" said he, "Arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will
think upon us, that we perish not."
What exquisite simplicity! It reminds us of the childlike and bland
Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, when he opposed Mr. Brad-laugh's entry to the
House of Commons. That honorable champion of Almighty God objected to
Mr. Bradlaugh on the ground that he acknowledged no God, and was thus
vastly different from the other members of the House, all of whom
"believed in some kind of deity or other." You must have a god to be a
legislator, it seems, even if that god is, as the Americans say, only a
little tin Jesus. So the captain of this tempest-tost ship desired Jonah
to call upon his god. He made no inquiry into the character of the god,
any more than did Sir Henry Drummond Wolff on a later occasion. It was
enough to know that Jonah had "some kind of deity or other." Any god
would do.
Now comes the most remarkable episode in this wonderful story. The
captain and the crew were aware that Jonah had "fled from the presence
of the Lord," because he had told them; they had, therefore, every
reason to believe that Jonah's god had caused the tempest. Yet,
curiously enough, instead of at once proceeding on this belief, they
said, everyone to his fellow, "Come, and let us cast lots, that we may
know for whose cause this evil is upon us." This wholly superfluous
procedure may, perhaps, be attributed to their exceptional love of
justice. They wished to make assurance doubly sure before they "went
for" Jonah. And with sweet simplicity they had recourse to the casting
of lots, in which their wills would be inoperative, and the whole
responsibility of deciding be thrown on the gods, who alone possessed
the requisite information.
The lot of course fell upon Jonah. Any other result would have spoiled
the story. "Then," continues our narrative, "said they unto him, Tell
us, we pray thee, for whose cause this evil is upon us? What is thine
occupation? and whence comest thou? what is thy country? and of what
people art thou? And he said unto them, I am an Hebrew, and I fear the
Lord, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land. Then
were the men exceedingly afraid, and said unto him, Why hast thou done
this? For the men knew that he fled from the presence of the Lord,
because he had told them. Then said they unto him, What shall we do
unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us? for the sea wrought and was
tempestuous. And he said unto them, Take me up, and cast me forth into
the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you: for I know that for my sake
this great tempest is upon you."
We are almost dumb with astonishment before this act of self-sacrifice
on the part of Jonah, for which his previous history left us quite
unprepared. Who would have thought him capable of such disinterested
conduct? His self-abnegation was assuredly heroic, and may even be
called sublime. No doubt the captain and crew of the ship were as much
astonished as we are, and their opinion of Jonah went up several hundred
per cent. They resolved to make a last supreme effort before turning him
into a fish-bait. But all their gallant endeavors were discovered to
be futile and a mere waste of time. So the men, more in sorrow than
in anger, finally took Jonah up and threw him overboard. They had done
their best for him, and now, finding that they could do no more except
at too great a risk, they sadly left him to do the rest for himself.
Immediately, we are told, "the sea ceased from her raging." Jonah
was oil upon the troubled waters. What an invaluable recipe does this
furnish us against the dangers of the deep sea! The surest method of
allaying a storm is to throw a prophet overboard. Every ship should
carry a missionary in case of need. It would, indeed, be well if the law
made this compulsory. The cost of maintaining the missionary would
be more than covered by the saving effected in insurance. Here is a
splendid field for Christian self-sacrifice! Hundreds of gentlemen who
are now engaged in very doubtful labor among the heathen, might engage
in this new enterprise with the absolute certainty of a beneficent
result; for poor ungodly mariners would thus be spared a hasty dispatch
from this world without time to repent and obtain forgiveness, and be
allowed ample leisure to secure salvation.
When the men saw that "the sea ceased from her raging" on Jonah's being
cast into her depths, "they feared the Lord exceedingly, and offered a
sacrifice unto the Lord, and made vows." To the sceptical mind it
would seem that they had much more reason to "fear" the Lord during the
continuance of the tempest than after it had subsided. It also seems
strange that they should have the means wherewith to offer a sacrifice.
Perhaps they had a billy-goat on board, and made him do duty, in default
of anything better. Or failing even a billy-goat, as the Lord God of the
Hebrews could only be propitiated by the shedding of blood, they perhaps
caught and immolated a stray rat. The nature of their "vows" is not
recorded, but it is not unreasonable to assume that they swore never
again to take on board a passenger fleeing "from the presence of the
Lord."
Meanwhile, what had become of poor Jonah? Most men would be effectually
settled if thrown overboard in a storm. But there are some people who
were not born to be drowned, and Jonah was one of them. He was destined
to another fate. The Lord, it appears, "had prepared a great fish
to swallow up Jonah," and the feat was of course duly performed. Our
narrative does not describe the character of this "great fish," but
light is cast on the subject by another passage of Scripture. In
the twelfth chapter of St. Matthew, and the fortieth verse, Jesus is
represented as saying, "For as Jonas was three days and three nights
in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three
nights in the heart of the earth." The great fish was then a whale.
Jesus said so, and there can be no higher authority. Sharks and such
ravenous fish have an unpleasant habit of "chawing" their victims pretty
considerably before swallowing them; so, on the whole, we prefer to
believe that it was a whale. Yet the Levant is a curious place for a
whale to be lurking in. The creature must have been miraculously led
there to go through its appointed performance. It must also have been
"prepared," to use the language of the Bible, in a very remarkable way,
for the gullet of a whale is not large enough to allow of the passage
of an object exceeding the size of an ordinary herring. Swallowing
Jonah must have been a tough job after the utmost preparation. With a
frightfully distended throat, however, the whale did its best, and by
dint of hard striving at last got Jonah down.
Having properly taken Jonah in out of the wet, the poor whale doubtless
surmised that its troubles had ended. But alas they had only just begun!
Swallowing a prophet is one thing; digesting him is another. For three
days and three nights the whale struggled desperately to digest
Jonah, and for three days and nights Jonah obstinately refused to _be_
digested. Never in the entire course of its life had it experienced such
a difficulty. During the whole of that period, too, Jonah carried on a
kind of prayer meeting, and the strange rumbling in its belly must have
greatly added to the poor animal's discomfort At last it grew heartily
sick of Jonah, and vomited him up on dry land. We have no doubt that
it swam away into deep waters, a sadder but wiser whale; and that ever
afterwards, instead of bolting its food, it narrowly scrutinised every
morsel before swallowing it, to make sure it wasn't another prophet.
According to its experience, prophets were decidedly the most
unprofitable articles of consumption.
We are of course aware that the narrative states that "the Lord spake
unto the fish, and it vomited Jonah upon the dry land." But this we
conceive to be a mere pleasantry on the part of the unknown author. The
idea of the Lord whispering into a whale's ear is ineffably ludicrous:
besides, the whale had a very natural inclination to rid itself of
Jonah, and needed no divine prompting.
Jonah's prayer "unto the Lord his God out of the fish's belly" is very
amusing. There is not a sentence in it which bears any reference to
the prophet's circumstances. It is a kind of Psalm, after the manner of
those ascribed to David. Our belief is that the author found it floating
about, and thinking it would do for Jonah, inserted it in his narrative,
without even taking the trouble to furbish it into decent keeping with
the situation.
The word of the Lord came unto Jonah a second time, and presuming no
more to disobey, he went to Nineveh. It is to be supposed, however,
that he first well-lined his poor stomach, for both he and the whale had
fasted for three days and nights, and must have been sadly in want of
victuals.
Nineveh, according to our author, was a stupendous city of "three days'
journey." This means its diameter and not its circumference, for we are
told that Jonah "entered into the city a day's journey." If we allow
twenty miles as a moderate days' walk, Nineveh was sixty miles through
from wall to wall, or about twenty times as large as London; and if
densely populated like our metropolis, it must have contained more
than eighty million inhabitants. This is too great a stretch even for a
sailor's yarn. Our author did not take pains to clear his narrative of
discrepancy. In his last verse he informs us that the city contained
"more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their
right hand and their left." If this number is correct Nineveh was a
large place, but its dimensions were very much less than those stated in
the Book of Jonah.
Jonah obeyed the Lord this time and began to preach. "Yet forty days,"
cried he, "and Nineveh shall be overthrown." How the prophet made
himself understood is an open question! Either the Lord taught him their
language, or he miraculously enabled them to understand Hebrew. Further,
they worshipped Baal, and Jonah preached to them in the name of his
foreign God. According to ancient, and to a large extent modern custom,
we should expect them in such a case to kill the presumptuous prophet,
or at least to shut him up as a madman. Yet they did nothing of the
kind. On the contrary, "the people of Nineveh believed God." Even the
king was converted. He covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.
He also decreed that neither man nor beast in the city should eat
or drink anything; but, said he, "let man and beast be covered with
sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from
his evil way." What an enormous consumption of sackcloth there must have
been! The merchants who sold it did a surprising business, and no doubt
quotations went up immensely. We wonder, indeed, how they managed
to supply such a sudden and universal demand. And what a sight was
presented by the whole population of the city! Men, women, and children,
high and low, rich and poor, were all arrayed in the same dingy
garments. Even the horses, cows, pigs and sheep, were similarly attired.
What a queer figure they must have cut! And what an astonishing chorus
of prayer ascended to heaven! According to the text, the beasts had to
"cry mightily" as well as the men. Since the confusion of tongues at
Babel, neither history nor tradition records such a frightful hubbub.
Their supplications prevailed. God "saw their works, that they had
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." Immutable God
changes his mind, infallible God repents!
God spared Nineveh, but only for a brief while, for it was destroyed a
few years later by Arbaces, the Mede. The merciful respite was thus not
of long continuance. Yet it "displeased Jonah exceedingly." He had been
suspicious from the first, and he only fulfilled God's mission under
constraint. And now his worst suspicions were confirmed. After he had
told the Ninevites that their city would be overthrown in forty days,
God had relented, and utterly ruined Jonah's reputation as a prophet.
So he made himself a booth outside the city, and sat in its shadow, to
watch what would happen, with a deep feeling, which he plainly expressed
to the Almighty, that now his reputation was gone he might as well die.
The Lord considerately "prepared a gourd," which grew up over Jonah's
head to protect him from the heat; at which the sulky prophet was
"exceedingly glad," although it would naturally be thought that the
booth would afford ample protection. He, however, soon found himself
sold; for the Lord prepared a worm to destroy the gourd, and when the
sun arose he sent "a vehement east wind" which beat upon poor Jonah's
head, and made him so faint that he once more asked God to despatch him
out of his misery. Whereupon the Lord said coaxingly, "Doest thou well
to be angry?" And Jonah pettishly answered, "Yes, I do." Then the Lord,
with a wonderful access of pathos, altogether foreign to his general
character, twitted Jonah with having pity for the gourd and none for the
inhabitants of "that great city." With this the story concludes. We
are unable to say whether the poor prophet, so wretchedly sold, ever
recovered from his spleen, or whether it shortened his days and brought
him to an untimely grave.
The Book of Jonah is as true as Gospel, for Jesus endorsed it. The
Bible contains the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
So without expressing any sceptical sentiments, we will end by repeating
Byron's words, "Truth is strange--stranger than fiction."
THE WANDERING JEWS.
BIBLE ROMANCES.-VII.
By G. W. FOOTE.
The Middle Ages had a legend of the Wandering Jew. This person was
supposed to have been doomed, for the crime of mocking Jesus at the
crucifixion, to wander over the earth until his second coming. No
one believes this now. The true Wandering Jews were those slaves whom
Jehovah rescued from Egyptian bondage, with a promise that he would lead
them to a land flowing with milk and honey, but whom he compelled to
roam the deserts instead for forty years, until all of them except two
had perished. Of all the multitude who escaped from Egypt, only Joshua
and Caleb entered the promised land. Even Moses had to die in sight of
it.
These poor Wandering Jews demand our pity. They were guilty of many
crimes against humanity, but they scarcely deserved such treatment as
they received. Their God was worse than they. He was quick-tempered,
unreasonable, cruel, revengeful, and dishonest. Few of his promises
to them were performed. They worshipped a bankrupt deity. The land of
promise was a Tantalus cup ever held to their lips, and ever mocking
them when they essayed to drink. God was their greatest enemy instead of
their best friend. Their tortuous path across the wilderness was marked
by a track of bleaching bones. All the evils which imagination can
conceive fell on their devoted heads. Bitten by serpents, visited by
plagues, cursed with famine and drought, swallowed by earthquake, slain
by war, and robbed by priests, they found Jehovah a harder despot than
Pharaoh. Death was to them a happy release, and only the grave a shelter
from the savagery of God.
Commentators explain that the Jews who left Egypt were unfit for the
promised land. If so, they were unfit to be the chosen people of God.
Why were they not allowed to remain in Egypt until they grew better, or
why was not some other nation selected to inherit Canaan?
At the end of our number on "The Ten Plagues" we left the Jews on the
safe side of the Red Sea. We must now ask a few questions which we had
no space for then.
How, in a period of two hundred and fifteen years, did the seventy males
of Jacob's house multiply into a nation of over two millions? Experience
does not warrant belief in such a rapid increase. The Jewish chroniclers
were fond of drawing the long bow. In the book of Judges, for
instance, we are told that the Gileadites, under, Jephthah, slew 42,000
Ephriamites; and that the Benjamites slew 40,000 Israelites, after which
the Israelites killed 43,000 Benjamites, all of these being "men
of valor" that "drew the sword." The book of Samuel says that the
Philistines had 30,000 war chariots, and that they slew 30,000 footmen
of Israel. The second book of Chronicles says that Pekah, king of
Israel, slew of Judah in one day 120,000 "sons of valor," and carried
away 200,000 captives; that Abijah's force consisted of 400,000, and
Jeroboam's of 800,000, 500,000 of whom were killed! At the battle of
Waterloo the total number of men killed on our side was 4,172. The
statistics of slaughter in the Bible were clearly developed from the
inner consciousness of the Jewish scribes; and no doubt the same holds
good with respect to the statistics of the flight from Egypt.
This view is corroborated by a singular statement in the third chapter
of Numbers. We are there informed that when the census was taken "All
the first-born males, from a month old and upwards of those that were
numbered, were twenty and two thousand two hundred and three score and
thirteen." Now as there were about 900,000 males altogether, it follows
that every Jewish mother must have had on an average _forty-two sons_,
to say nothing of daughters! Such extraordinary fecundity is unknown to
the rest of the world, except in the reign of romance. The Jews bragged
a great deal about Jehovah, and they appear to have obtained some
compensation by bragging a great deal about themselves.
How did the Jews manage to quit Egypt in one night? There were 600,000
men on foot, besides women and children, not to mention "the mixed
multitude that went up also with them." The entire population must have
numbered more than two millions, and some commentators estimate it at
nearly three. They had to come in from all parts of Goshen to Rameses,
bringing with them the sick and infirm, the very old and the very young.
Among such a large population there could not have been less than two
hundred births a day. Many of the Jewish women, therefore, must have
been just confined. How could they and their new-born children have
started off in such a summary manner? Many more women must have been at
the point of confinement How could these have been hurried off at all?
Yet we are told that not a single person was left behind.
How were the flocks and herds driven out in such haste? There were about
two million sheep and two hundred thousand oxen. The sheep alone would
have required grazing-land as extensive as the whole county of Bedford,
besides what would have been needed for the oxen. Is it credible that
all these animals were collected together from such a wide area, and
driven out of Egypt in one night? Yet we are told that not a single hoof
was left behind!
How did the huge multitude of people march? If they travelled fifty men
abreast, as is supposed to have been the practice in the Hebrew armies,
the able-bodied warriors alone would have filled up the road for about
_seven miles_, and the whole multitude would have formed a dense column
_twenty-two miles long_. The front rank would have been two days'
journey in advance of the rear.
How did the sheep and cattle march? How was it possible for them to keep
pace with their human fellow-travellers? They would naturally not march
in a compact array, and the vast drove must therefore have spread widely
and lengthened out for miles.
What did the drove live upon during the journey from Barneses to
Succoth, and from Succoth to Etham, and from Etham to the Red Sea? Such
grass as there was, even if the sheep and cattle went before the men,
women, and children, could not have been of much avail; for what was not
eaten by the front ranks must have been trodden under foot at once, and
rendered useless to those that followed. After they "encamped by the Red
Sea," on the third day, there was no vegetation at all. The journey
was over a desert, the surface of which was composed of hard gravel
intermixed with pebbles. After crossing the Red Sea, their road lay over
a desert region, covered with sand, gravel, and stone, for about nine
miles; after which they entered a boundless desert plain, called _El
Ati_ white and painfully glaring to the eye; and beyond this the ground
was broken by sand-hills. How were the two million sheep and two hundred
thousand oxen provisioned during this journey?
What did the Jews themselves live on? The desert afforded them no
sustenance until God miraculously sent manna. They must, therefore, have
taken a month's provisions for every man, woman, and child. How could
they possibly have provided themselves with so much food on so short
a notice? And how could they have carried it, seeing that they were
already burdened with kneading-troughs and other necessaries for
domestic use, besides the treasures they "borrowed" of the Egyptians.
How did they provide themselves with tents? Allowing ten persons for
each tent, they must have required two hundred thousand. Were these
carefully got ready in expectation? In the land of Goshen they lived in
houses with "lintels" and "side-posts." And how were the tents carried?
The Jews themselves were already well loaded. Of course the oxen remain,
but, as Colenso observes, they were not trained to carry t goods on
their backs, and were sure to prove refractory under such a burden.
Whence did the Jews obtain their arms? According to Exodus (xiii, 18)
"the children of Israel went up _harnessed_ out of the land of Egypt."
The Hebrew word which is rendered "harnessed" appears to mean "armed" or
"in battle array" in all the other passages where it occurs, and is so
translated. Some commentators, scenting a difficulty in this rendering,
urge that the true meaning is "by five in a rank." But if 600,000 men
marched out of Egypt "five in a rank," they must have formed a column
sixty-eight miles long, and it would have taken several days to start
them all off, whereas they went out altogether "that self-same day."
Besides, the Jews had arms in the desert, and how could they have
possessed them there unless they obtained them in Egypt? If they went
out of Egypt "armed," why did they cry out "sore afraid" when Pharaoh
pursued them?