AND JONAH WAS DISPLEASED EXCEEDINGLY - It was an untempered zeal. The
prophet himself records it as such, and how he was reproved for it. He
would, like many of us, govern God’s world better than God Himself.
Short-sighted and presumptuous! Yet not more short-sighted than those
who, in fact, quarrel... [ Continue Reading ]
AND HE PRAYED UNTO THE LORD - Jonah, at least, did not murmur or
complain of God. He complained to God of Himself. He expostulates with
Him. Shortsighted indeed and too wedded to his own will! Yet his will
was the well-being of the people whose prophet God had made him. He
tells God, that this it wa... [ Continue Reading ]
THEREFORE NOW, O LORD, TAKE I BESEECH THEE MY LIFE FROM ME - He had
rather die, than see the evil which was to come upon his country.
Impatient though he was, he still cast himself upon God. By asking of
God to end his life, he, at least, committed himself to the sovereign
disposal of God . “Seeing... [ Continue Reading ]
AND THE LORD SAID, DOEST THOU WELL TO BE ANGRY? - o God, being
appealed to, answers the appeal. So does He often in prayer, by some
secret voice, answer the inquirer. There is right anger against the
sin. Moses’ anger was right, when he broke the tables. Exodus 32:19.
God secretly suggests to Jonah... [ Continue Reading ]
SO JONAH WENT OUT OF THE CITY - o, The form of the words implies (as
in the English Version), that this took place after Jonah was
convinced that God would spare Nineveh; and since there is no
intimation that he knew it by revelation, then it was probably after
the 40 days . “The days being now past... [ Continue Reading ]
AND THE LORD GOD PREPARED A GOURD - , (a palm-christ, English margin,
rightly.) . “God again commanded the gourd, as he did the whale,
willing only that this should be. Forthwith it springs up beautiful
and full of flower, and straightway was a roof to the whole booth, and
anoints him so to speak wi... [ Continue Reading ]
WHEN THE MORNING ROSE - , i. e., in the earliest dawn, before the
actual sunrise. For one day Jonah enjoyed the refreshment of the
palm-christ. In early dawn, it still promised the shadow; just ere it
was most needed, at God’s command, it withered.... [ Continue Reading ]
GOD PREPARED A VEHEMENT - o (The English margin following the Chaldee,
“silent,” i. e., “sultry”).
EAST WIND - The winds in the East, blowing over the sand-deserts,
intensely increase the distress of the heat. A sojourner describes on
two occasions an Assyrian summer . “The change to summer had been... [ Continue Reading ]
DOEST THOU WELL TO BE ANGRY? - o “See again how Almighty God, out of
His boundless lovingkindness, with the yearning tenderness of a
father, almost disporteth with the guileless souls of the saints! The
palm-christ shades him: the prophet rejoices in it exceedingly. Then,
in God’s Providence, the ca... [ Continue Reading ]
THOU HADST PITY ON THE PALM-CHRIST - In the feeling of our common
mortality, the soul cannot but yearn over decay. Even a drooping
flower is sad to look on, so beautiful, so frail. It belongs to this
passing world, where nothing lovely abides, all things beautiful
hasten to cease to be. The natural... [ Continue Reading ]
SHOULD I NOT SPARE? - literally “have pity” and so “spare.”
God waives for the time the fact of the repentance of Nineveh, and
speaks of those on whom man must have pity, those who never had any
share in its guilt, the 120,000 children of Nineveh, “I who, in the
weakness of infancy, knew not which h... [ Continue Reading ]