the Psalms, in which phrases of the latter class are found, are probably of late composition, those Psalms, in which we find phrases of the former class, are assigned in the Hebrew headings to David, and most probably were written by him; while Ps. xlii. is with the most probability assigned to David's time (see Vol. IV. p. 267). In respect to two of these correspondences, namely the one with Ps. cxlii. 3 ("of David") and the one with Ps. cxx. 1 (“of degrees"), internal criticism furnishes no sufficient ground for determining, with any preponderance of probability, which in each case was derived from the other. The internal evidence therefore supplied by the hymn, taken all together, so far from proving a late era for the book, strongly favours the belief, that at least this portion of the book was written by Jonah himself. EXCURSUS A. OBJECTIONS MADE TO THE HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE BOOK. It appears necessary to consider the reasons which have been alleged in favour of a parabolic construction of the book; especially since they are for the most part the same, as by some are urged to shew, that the narrative, not being parabolic, is legendary and incredible. i. Stress has been laid upon its containing so few of those historical particulars, which commonly serve to authenticate a genuine narrative by their correspondence with acknowledged history. The paucity of such references, however, so far as it exists (for it has sometimes been greatly exaggerated), is adequately explained, both by the brevity of the whole book, and also by the object of its composition, as being not so much historical as moral and religious. The historical notice which it furnishes relative to the magnitude of Nineveh (chap. iii. 3), though it is not given in the interests of objective history, but merely for the subjective purpose of indicating how the work which the prophet had to face appeared at the time to his own mind, is nevertheless fully borne out, not only by ancient testimony, but in a most striking manner by the explorations made on the spot during the last few years. (See note on the passage.) In reference to this objection, attention is further requested to the note on ch. i. 3, "Joppa," and to the Note in p. 592 on ch. i. 6, "chief pilot." ii. Much account has been made of the extraordinary degree, in which, as is alleged, the supernatural element enters into the story throughout, culminating in the incident of the prophet's continuing three days alive in the belly of a fish. With one who rejects miracles altogether, we can of course have here no discussion. We take it therefore for granted, that those who urge this consideration are not biassed by a foregone presumption against miracles in general, and that they heartily believe, for example, the great evangelical miracle of Christ's Resurrection. And to such we would plead: First, that the story of Jonah, viewed as miraculous, is, as has been already pointed out, perfectly homogeneous with other Bible narratives. Secondly, that the principal miracle which it records is made credible, beyond many others, by that typical relation to our Lord's Resurrection, which Christ before His death Himself referred to. Those who believe in this greater miracle, need find no difficulty in admitting the lesser, as in the prophetical economy a typical representation thereof. Thirdly, that a field in nature for the exhibition of this miracle is found in the fact, which natural history puts beyond question, that monsters of the deep, proving themselves capacious enough to take in, and to retain in their bodies, a full-grown man entire, have been known to exist (see note on ch. i. 17);-more than which, professing as we do that the circumstance was still highly miraculous, we are not called upon to make good. And lastly, that there is no room for objecting that the miracle was simply gratuitous, having no justification in the story; for even if it had not for its object the accrediting, or at least emphasizing, to the Ninevites the message which Jonah brought to them, which is a doubtful point, yet at all events it was calculated to be useful to the prophet himself; for in face of the many considerations which might make his mission seem to him, not merely repulsive, but perhaps even unlikely to be really the Divine will, it would serve to satisfy him, that it was indeed the purpose of God that he should preach repentance to these abhorred heathen, and, more than this, that it was a work the performance of which by the prophet lay very near to God's heart. iii. It is urged that the account of the repentance of Nineveh is both improbable in itself, and unaccredited by other evidence. There is however no ground for deeming it improbable. It is described in the story as a popular movement; and popular movements are often hard to account for, and would but for testimony appear highly improbable, even where we know much both of the character of the people and of their particular circumstances at the time; whereas of the character of the Ninevites, and of their condition just then, we know extremely little. The Assyrians in general are shewn to have been prone to superstition and grossly polytheistic (see Rawlinson's History of Herodotus,' Vol. I. pp. 480—517, Essay On the Religion of the Babylonians and Assyrians;' and Ancient Monarchies,' Vol. 1.); they would therefore be quite accessible to religious impulses though emanating from a strange religion; and the apparition of the prophet walking along the streets of Nineveh, and proclaiming aloud his terrible message, was no way unlikely to strike the minds of the populace with terror, and to set going that general passion of self-humiliation which the book describes. "I have known (says Mr Layard) a Christian priest frighten a whole Musselman town to tents and repentance, by publicly proclaiming that he had received a divine mission to announce a coming earthquake or plague" ("Nineveh and Babylon,' p. 367, London, 1867). But the impression, like that made by Elijah on Israel (see K. xviii. 39, xix. 10), was no doubt as superficial and shortlived, as it was for the moment marked by passionate earnest ness. We cannot wonder therefore if it has left no traces in the Ninevite monuments; though we think he should be a bold man who, in the face of the unexpected confirmations of the Bible history which these records are from time to time yielding up to us, would venture to assume that no such traces will ever be found. But we need not be disappointed or staggered if none are found. The staple subjects of these inscriptions, so far as they have hitherto been deciphered, are campaigns, conquests, sieges, building of palaces, and the like; matters of barbaric interest, in which a merely moral or religious element is not to be looked for. See Ménant's 'Annales des Rois d'Assyrie,' passim. To which we must add (see note on ch. iii. 10), that the terms in which the repentance of the Ninevites is described, fall short of suggesting the belief, that it interfered with the practice of the public worship of Assur; and if this was the case, this furnishes a further reason for supposing it unlikely that the public annals would contain any reference to it. That an outward profession of national repentance was treated by Jehovah as a ground for remitting the threatened overthrow, notwithstanding that it was both superficial and shortlived (compare 1 K. xxi. 27—29), was in accordance with the pedagogic character of the Old Dispensation, wherein external shows were very commonly made use of to represent in vivid symbol the actings of God's justice and mercy, and thus to draw men on to that true spiritual repentance which it is the object of all Divine revelation to bring about. iv. Most especial stress has been laid upon the account given of the prophet's own behaviour, which (it is said) is altogether in credible, if viewed as a story of actual occur. rences. His foolish attempt to escape from Jehovah's presence; his throwing himself (he an Israelite!) upon residence among heathens, rather than discharge the commission enjoined upon him; his making in his psalm no confession of the sin which had brought him into that distress; his repining at the success of his preaching, at which he should have rejoiced; his desiring that all those human creatures should perish, rather than that his prophecy should not come true; his selfish fretfulness under personal discomfort. But whatever of ethical improbability seems at first sight to attach to these traits (which are sometimes unnecessarily exaggerated), it will be found to disappear altogether, if only we will be at the pains to scan the details with no unfair prejudice, but with a candid mind, and with that disposedness to reverential belief which Scripture is entitled to claim. The whole delineation, however, beyond question exhibits the prophet's moral and spiritual character in a very unfavourable light. Yet here several things are to be taken into account: (1) We must. remember, when endeavouring to estimate Jonah, that the religious sentiments of an earnest Israelite would naturaliy savour far more of nationalism, of bigotry even, than would be tolerated, or even thought possible, in a character formed by the genius of Christianity. How reluctant were the very apostles of Christ to admit into their bosoms the spirit of expansive benevolence, with which their Master sought to imbue them! Cp. Luke ix. 54, 55; Acts x. 28. (2) It cannot possibly be imagined that the writer of the book, whoever he was, designed to present Jonah's behaviour and spirit as other than highly reprehensible. Now let us only suppose the writer to have been Jonah himself (see above, p. 580), and then the whole composition assumes the character of a frank and self-humiliating confession; by the very act of penning it, Jonah at once emerges out of his former character, and appears to our view not merely as a prophet, but as a remarkably humble and noble-spirited saint. For the self-humiliation of the penitent is made all the more striking, when he simply narrates the story of former folly and unworthiness, while he forbears all such expression of self-disapproval as would tacitly serve as a justification of his present self. By writing as he has done, Jonah (supposing him to be the author) has exposed his character to the reprobation and even contempt of the great majority of his readers; grandly careless of what they would think of him, concerned only for the cause of God and His righteousness. (3) It may be objected that the hymn expresses the posture of mind proper to a Godfearing and holy man, and is therefore out of harmony with the supposition, that the narrative was composed in a spirit of penitential confession. But in fact the hymn explicitly acknowledges that the sufferings in which Jonah was plunged were brought upon him by God Himself ("Thou hast cast me into the deep; ""all thy billows and thy waves passed over me"). And these acknowledgments, taken as they must be in conjunction with the foregoing narrative, plainly imply the sense which he had, when composing the psalm, that he had justly incurred that most extreme rebuke of God; while his thankful acknowledgment of God's having heard his voice in the hour of almost utter despair, magnifies only the mercy of Jehovah and not his own meritoriousness. For the rest, a servant of Jehovah he really was, although both then and subsequently under rebuke for disobedience or wilfulness. EXCURSUS B. OBJECTIONS MADE TO JONAH'S BEING THE AUTHOR. Without troubling ourselves to refute the utterly trivial reason which has been alleged against Jonah's being himself the author of the book, founded on its speaking of him in the third person, we may however refer to two arguments, which have been especially relied upon as shewing that it was written at a much later period. I. It has been observed that Nineveh is described in the past tense; "Nineveh was an exceeding great city" (chap. iii. 3); and this is assumed to imply that Nineveh was no longer great when the book was written. The explanation, however, of the writer's employing the past tense is, that he is concerned to shew, how the city struck the prophet's mind when addressing himself to the discharge of his mission. If one, writing at the present day, wished to extol the greatness of Austria, he might say, "Austria went to war with France, and France was a very powerful kingdom," without giving his readers ground for inferring that France has since ceased to be very powerful. 2. The style is thought to bear traces of a "Chaldaising element," due it is supposed to the influence exercised by Chaldæa upon the Hebrew language later in the Israelite history. : The philological details, on which this objection rests, fail to substantiate it. Some of them are due to the fact, that the writer, describing for the first time in the Old Testament an ocean voyage, uses the proper technical terms which he heard employed on the occasion such are mallach, "salt-sea man,” for "sailor;" sephinah, "covered," i.e. "decked," for "vessel," the more common term oniyyah being also used; rabh bachobbel, "chief of the sailors," for "captain;" vayyachteru, (most probably) "and they ploughed," for "rowed hard." We may recollect the parallel case of St Luke, in his account of St Paul's shipwreck, employing a variety of nautical terms, which he had no doubt heard used when himself on ship-board at the very time. Again, he uses the word taam of the edict which was issued by the king and nobles; not a Hebrew word but Aramaic; probably the very word used in Nineveh to designate such a decree. On the use of Aramaic in the East as "the language of diplomacy," see p. 228 of this Volume. The somewhat Aramaic tinge discovered in the Hebrew of "it displeased Jonah" in ch. iv. 1, as compared with Gen. xxi. 11, and of "deliver him" in iv. 6, may very well be due to Zebulonite provincialism. EXCURSUS C. RELATION OF JONAH'S HYMN TO OTHER SCRIPTURES. We will place side by side the several passages as they are found in Jonah and in the Psalms; following the Authorized Version, except so far as occasionally to alter the translation, when the Hebrew phrase in the two is identical, for the purpose of marking more conspicuously the agreement. me afraid. (1) JONAH II. waters compassed me about, even to the soul. 3 And the stream closed me round: PSALM XVIII. 6 In my distress I called unto the He heard my voice And my cry came in ears. JONAH II. 2 I called from my distress unto the LORD. 4 Yet I will look again towards thy holy temple. 7 And my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple. The concurrence of so many similar expressions and images cannot have been fortuitous: the one poet must have had sounding in his mind the language of the other. In David's 5 The sorrows of hell 5 The depth closed psalm, the situation by which he images forth closed me round about. me round about. his past afflictions, viewed as one whole, is described with a just sequency of features, In the psalm, the context shews that the thought of being in Jehovah's eyesight is, at this time, very present to the writer's mind as his greatest happiness. In the overpowering, almost triumphant pressure of mighty, vindictive and slanderous enemies, he had almost felt himself isolated, and captured by them; "in their net" (v. 4), almost "shut up into the hand of the enemy" (vv. 8, 15). He had felt that he should be delivered from this, if only "Jehovah's face would shine upon him" (v. 16): that he should then be hid away safe from them in the secret of His presence." This happiness he had now at length realised in his own experience; found that he had spoken in haste, when he had said that he was cut off for good and all from before Jehovah's eyes; for that he was not thus isolated, cut off; for that his prayer had reached Jehovah's ears. It is impossible not to feel, that the twenty-second verse of the psalm is of spontaneous growth, springing out of the sentiments which at the time fill the psalmist's mind; and that it is therefore original and not borrowed. And therefore, when we find in this same psalm two expressions almost identical with two in Jonah's hymn, we cannot but conclude, that the language of the psalm, expressing thankfulness for deliverance out of a state of utter despair, was present to Jonah's mind, when penning his own feelings of thanksgiving for (anticipated) deliverance out of a state, again, of utter despair. For the probable era of the psalm see the introductory note to it. Here the phrase found in both is one which in Jonah might have seemed spontaneously evolved out of the situation: certainly, it most naturally and literally expresses it. In the psalm, it appears as an image suggested probably by local experience (see note in loc.). If there did not seem to be reason on other grounds for regarding the psalm as of the Davidic era, from this comparison alone we might have inferred that the psalmist's language was a reminiscence of Jonah's. As it is, the reverse conclusion appears the more probable. At all events, the era of Jonah's hymn is here left unassailed. This correspondence proves little. As there can be no doubt that Jonah ii. 2 was drawn from Ps. xviii. 6, the probability is small that it was a reminiscence of Ps. cxx. 1. This last came either from Ps. xviii. 6, or from Jonah. Ps. cxx. is in the heading simply described as "a song of degrees (ascents)." It is thought to be a later composition: Dr Pusey, however, thinks it earlier than Jonah. CHAP. I. 1. Now the word of the LORD came] Heb. And the word, &c. The copula And heads also the following books: Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Esther, and Ezekiel; where, in our Authorized Version, it is sometimes rendered Now or Then. Nehemiah commences thus: "The words of Nehemiah, the son of Hachaliah. And it came to pass," &c. In a similar way, in Jer. i. 4; Hos. i. 2; and Amos i. 2, after a heading, which syntactically is quite separate from what follows, the narrative begins with the copula. We infer, especially from the last class of cases, that the use of the copula shews a consciousness on the part of the writer in each case, that he was setting himself to write matter, which would connect itself organically with previously existing records. It is an interesting indication of (what may be styled) a continuous literary consciousness subsisting among the Jehovists of the Israelite nation. Jonah the son of Amittai] See 2 K. xiv. 25, and Introduction above, p. 575. "Amittai" is an adjectival form from emeth, "truth;" according to Hitzig = Mar@aios: "for in Syriac, as in Arabic, is often dropped." The Syriac has Mathai, or Matthew, here. 2. Arise, go to Nineveh] Rise up, go, &c. After seeing how fruitless is the work of the prophets in Israel, try what it will effect in the metropolis of heathendom. that great city] Let not its greatness make thee afraid: for that very greatness makes its welfare dear to Me (ch. iv. 10, 11). Great ness in power seems intended, as well as greatness in size. and cry against it] Or, "unto it," as we have in ch. iii, 2. His preaching was to be not merely a denunciation against Nineveh, but to her. No further statement is here given of the nature of the message which he had to deliver; probably because the writer's busi a II, 12. 2 Arise, go to Nineveh, that "great Gen. 10. city, and cry against it; for their chap. 3. 3. wickedness is come up before me. 3 But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish : ness at present is more with the prophet himself than with Nineveh: but we learn from ch. iv. 2 that its import must have been indicated to the prophet. for their wickedness is come up before me] into my presence. Is become so great that I can no longer overlook it. Comp. Gen. vi. 11; Acts x. 4; Rev. xvi. 19. 3. But Jonah rose up to flee] He set himself to go a journey as commanded (cp. “rise up," v. 2), but in the opposite direction. unto Tarshish] Josephus (Antiq.' Ix. x. 2) thinks Tarsus in Cilicia is meant; Theodoret and others, Carthage (as the Septuagint in Isai. xxiii, 14 for "ships of Tarshish" has πλοῖα Καρχηδόνος, though it here retains the render "to the sea," i.e. to some far-off place Hebrew word); the Targum and Jerome on the ocean. But as the seamen with whom Jonah went were heathens, and as Tarshish was a place connected with Tyre (Isai. xxiii. 14), Tarshish is more probably the Phoenician Guadalquivir. settlement of Tartessus in Spain, near the See Note B on 1 K. x. 22. Jonah wished to get away to the furthest point westward that he knew of; so averse veh. was he from the mission eastwards to Nine from the presence of the LORD] "To be," or "stand, in a king's presence" is often used as a set term to denote acting as his official minister. See Gen. xli. 46; Deut. x. 8; 1 K. viii. 25, xvii. 1; 2 K. iii. 14; Luke i. 19. The phrase here employed may therefore mean, and most probably does mean, "to get away from his official ministration as Jehovah's prophet," or, as the Targum gives it, "that he might not prophesy in the name of the Lord." Some have supposed, that it means getting away from the Holy Land, referring to 2 K. xvii. 20 and 23 ("cast them out of his sight"); but although in those passages the expression "the sight," or "the presence of the Lord," points to the peculiar relation of |