Jonah 3

Jon 3:1-10.

JONAH'S

SECOND

COMMISSION TO

NINEVEH:

THE

NINEVITES

REPENT OF

THEIR

EVIL

WAY:

SO

GOD

REPENTS OF THE

EVIL

THREATENED.

2. preach . . . the preaching--literally, "proclaim the proclamation."

On the former occasion the specific object of his commission to Nineveh

was declared; here it is indeterminate. This is to show how freely he

yields himself, in the spirit of unconditional obedience, to speak

whatever God may please.

3. arose and went--like the son who was at first disobedient to the

father's command, "Go work in my vineyard," but who afterwards "repented

and went"

(Mt 21:28, 29).

Jonah was thus the fittest instrument for proclaiming judgment, and yet

hope of mercy on repentance to Nineveh, being himself a living

exemplification of both--judgment in his entombment in the fish, mercy

on repentance in his deliverance. Israel professing to obey, but not

obeying, and so doomed to exile in the same Nineveh, answers to the son

who said, "I go, sir, and went not." In

Lu 11:30

it is said that Jonas was not only a sign to the men in Christ's time,

but also "unto the Ninevites." On the latter occasion

(Mt 16:1-4)

when the Pharisees and Sadducees tempted Him, asking a sign from

heaven, He answered, "No sign shall be given, but the sign of the

prophet Jonas,"

Mt 12:39.

Thus the sign had a twofold aspect, a direct bearing on the

Ninevites, an indirect bearing on the Jews in Christ's time. To the

Ninevites he was not merely a prophet, but himself a wonder in the

earth, as one who had tasted of death, and yet had not seen corruption,

but had now returned to witness among them for God. If the Ninevites

had indulged in a captious spirit, they never would have inquired and

so known Jonah's wonderful history; but being humbled by God's awful

message, they learned from Jonah himself that it was the previous

concealing in his bosom of the same message of their own doom that

caused him to be entombed as an outcast from the living. Thus he was a

"sign" to them of wrath on the one hand, and, on the other, of mercy.

Guilty Jonah saved from the jaws of death gives a ray of hope to guilty

Nineveh. Thus God, who brings good from evil, made Jonah in his fall,

punishment, and restoration, a sign (an embodied lesson or

living symbol) through which the Ninevites were roused to hear

and repent, as they would not have been likely to do, had he gone on

the first commission before his living entombment and resurrection. To

do evil that good may come, is a policy which can only come from Satan;

but from evil already done to extract an instrument against the kingdom

of darkness, is a triumphant display of the grace and wisdom of God. To

the Pharisees in Christ's time, who, not content with the many signs

exhibited by Him, still demanded a sign from heaven, He gave a

sign in the opposite quarter, namely, Jonah, who came "out of the belly

of hell" (the unseen region). They looked for a Messiah

gloriously coming in the clouds of heaven; the Messiah, on the

contrary, is to pass through a like, though a deeper, humiliation than

Jonah; He is to lie "in the heart of the earth." Jonah and his

Antitype alike appeared low and friendless among their hearers; both

victims to death for God's wrath against sin, both preaching

repentance. Repentance derives all its efficacy from the death of

Christ, just as Jonah's message derived its weight with the Ninevites

from his entombment. The Jews stumbled at Christ's death, the very fact

which ought to have led them to Him, as Jonah's entombment attracted

the Ninevites to his message. As Jonah's restoration gave hope of God's

placability to Nineveh, so Christ's resurrection assures us God is

fully reconciled to man by Christ's death. But Jonah's entombment only

had the effect of a moral suasive; Christ's death is an

efficacious instrument of reconciliation between God and man

[FAIRBAIRN].

Nineveh was an exceeding great city--literally, "great to God,"

that is, before God. All greatness was in the Hebrew mind associated

with GOD; hence arose the idiom (compare "great

mountains," Margin, "mountains of God,"

Ps 36:6;

"goodly cedars," Margin, "cedars of God,"

Ps 80:10;

"a mighty hunter before the Lord,"

Ge 10:9).

three days' journey--that is, about sixty miles, allowing about twenty

miles for a day's journey. Jonah's statement is confirmed by heathen

writers, who describe Nineveh as four hundred eighty stadia in

circumference [DIODORUS

SICULUS, 2.3].

HERODOTUS defines a day's journey

to be one hundred fifty stadia; so three days' journey will not be much

below DIODORUS' estimate. The parallelogram in Central Assyria covered

with remains of buildings has Khorsabad northeast; Koyunjik and Nebbi

Yunus near the Tigris, northwest; Nimroud, between the Tigris and the

Zab, southwest; and Karamless, at a distance inward from the Zab,

southeast. From Koyunjik to Nimroud is about eighteen miles; from

Khorsabad to Karamless, the same; from Koyunjik to Khorsabad, thirteen

or fourteen miles; from Nimroud to Karamless, fourteen miles. The length

thus was greater than the breadth; compare

Jon 3:4,

"a day's journey," which is confirmed by heathen writers and by modern

measurements. The walls were a hundred feet high, and broad enough to

allow three chariots abreast, and had moreover fifteen hundred lofty

towers. The space between, including large parks and arable ground, as

well as houses, was Nineveh in its full extent. The oldest palaces are

at Nimroud, which was probably the original site. LAYARD latterly has thought that the name Nineveh

belonged originally to Koyunjik, rather than to Nimroud. Jonah

(Jon 4:11)

mentions the children as numbering one hundred twenty thousand, which

would give about a million to the whole population. Existing ruins show

that Nineveh acquired its greatest extent under the kings of the second

dynasty, that is, the kings mentioned in Scripture; it was then that

Jonah visited it, and the reports of its magnificence were carried to

the west [LAYARD].

4. a day's journey--not going straight forward without stopping: for

the city was but eighteen miles in length; but stopping in his progress

from time to time to announce his message to the crowds gathering about

him.

Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown--The commission, given

indefinitely at his setting out, assumes now on his arrival a definite

form, and that severer than before. It is no longer a cry against the

sins of Nineveh, but an announcement of its ruin in forty days. This

number is in Scripture associated often with humiliation. It was forty

days that Moses, Elijah, and Christ fasted. Forty years elapsed from the

beginning of Christ's ministry (the antitype of Jonah's) to the

destruction of Jerusalem. The more definite form of the denunciation

implies that Nineveh has now almost filled up the measure of her guilt.

The change in the form which the Ninevites would hear from Jonah on

anxious inquiry into his history, would alarm them the more, as implying

the increasing nearness and certainty of their doom, and would at the

same time reprove Jonah for his previous guilt in delaying to warn them.

The very solitariness of the one message announced by the stranger thus

suddenly appearing among them, would impress them with the more awe.

Learning from him, that so far from lightly prophesying evil against

them, he had shrunk from announcing a less severe denunciation, and

therefore had been cast into the deep and only saved by miracle, they

felt how imminent was their peril, threatened as they now were by a

prophet whose fortunes were so closely bound up with theirs. In Noah's

days one hundred twenty years of warning were given to men, yet they

repented not till the flood came, and it was too late. But in the case

of Nineveh, God granted a double mercy: first, that its people should

repent immediately after threatening; second, that pardon should

immediately follow their repentance.

5. believed God--gave credit to Jonah's message from God; thus

recognizing Jehovah as the true God.

fast . . . sackcloth--In the East outward actions are often used as

symbolical expressions of inward feelings. So fasting and clothing in

sackcloth were customary in humiliation. Compare in Ahab's case,

parallel to that of Nineveh, both receiving a respite on penitence

(1Ki 21:27; 20:31, 32;

Joe 1:13).

from the greatest . . . to the least--The penitence was not partial,

but pervading all classes.

6. in ashes--emblem of the deepest humiliation

(Job 2:8;

Eze 27:30).

7. neither . . . beast . . . taste any thing--The brute creatures share

in the evil effects of man's sin

(Jon 4:11;

Ro 8:20, 22);

so they here according to Eastern custom, are made to share in man's

outward indications of humiliation. "When the Persian general Masistias

was slain, the horses and mules of the Persians were shorn, as well as

themselves" [NEWCOME from PLUTARCH; also HERODOTUS, 9.24].

8. cry . . . turn--Prayer without reformation is a mockery of God

(Ps 66:18;

Isa 58:6).

Prayer, on the other hand, must precede true reformation, as we cannot

turn to God from our evil way unless God first turns us

(Jer 31:18, 19).

9. Who can tell--(Compare

Joe 2:14).

Their acting on a vague possibility of God's mercy, without any special

ground of encouragement, is the more remarkable instance of faith, as

they had to break through long-rooted prejudices in giving up idols to

seek Jehovah at all. The only ground which their ready faith rested on,

was the fact of God sending one to warn them, instead of destroying

them at once; this suggested the thought of a possibility of pardon.

Hence they are cited by Christ as about to condemn in the judgment

those who, with much greater light and privileges, yet repent not

(Mt 12:41).

10. God repented of the evil--When the message was sent to them, they

were so ripe for judgment that a purpose of destruction to take effect

in forty days was the only word God's righteous abhorrence of sin

admitted of as to them. But when they repented, the position in which

they stood towards God's righteousness was altered. So God's mode of

dealing with them must alter accordingly, if God is not to be

inconsistent with His own immutable character of dealing with men

according to their works and state of heart, taking vengeance at last on

the hardened impenitent, and delighting to show mercy on the penitent.

Compare Abraham's reasoning,

Ge 18:25;

Eze 18:21-25;

Jer 18:7-10.

What was really a change in them and in God's corresponding

dealings is, in condescension to human conceptions, represented as a

change in God (compare

Ex 32:14),

who, in His essential righteousness and mercy, changeth not

(Nu 23:19;

1Sa 15:29;

Mal 3:6;

Jas 1:17).

The reason why the announcement of destruction was made absolute, and

not dependent on Nineveh's continued impenitence, was that this form

was the only one calculated to rouse them; and at the same time it was

a truthful representation of God's purpose towards Nineveh under

its existing state, and of Nineveh's due. When that state ceased, a new

relation of Nineveh to God, not contemplated in the message, came in,

and room was made for the word to take effect, "the curse causeless

shall not come" [FAIRBAIRN]. Prophecy is not

merely for the sake of proving God's omniscience by the verification of

predictions of the future, but is mainly designed to vindicate God's

justice and mercy in dealing with the impenitent and penitent

respectively

(Ro 11:22).

The Bible ever assigns the first place to the eternal principles of

righteousness, rooted in the character of God, subordinating to them all

divine arrangements. God's sparing Nineveh, when in the jaws of

destruction, on the first dawn of repentance encourages the timid

penitent, and shows beforehand that Israel's doom, soon after

accomplished, is to be ascribed, not to unwillingness to forgive on

God's part, but to their own obstinate impenitence.