{"commentary":{"id":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","website":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamieson-Fausset-Brown_Bible_Commentary","licenseUrl":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/","licenseNotes":null,"licenseNotice":null,"englishName":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","language":"eng","textDirection":"rtl","sha256":"db3d4c8b3c1f32ef9d1430a57392e02bda3a17aac1f9bbe398461de021a3cb13","availableFormats":["json"],"listOfBooksApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/books.json","listOfProfilesApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/profiles.json","numberOfBooks":66,"totalNumberOfChapters":1187,"totalNumberOfVerses":17056,"totalNumberOfProfiles":0,"languageName":"English","languageEnglishName":"English"},"book":{"id":"JON","commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"Jonah","commonName":"Jonah","introduction":"JONAH was the son of Amittai, of Gath-hepher in Zebulun (called Gittah-hepher in Jos 19:10-13), so that he belonged to the kingdom of the ten tribes, not to Judah. His date is to be gathered from Kg2 14:25-27, \"He (Jeroboam II) restored the coast of Israel from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the plain, according to the word of the Lord God of Israel, which He spake by the hand of His servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, which was of Gath-hepher. For the Lord saw the affliction of Israel, that it was very bitter: for there was not any shut up, nor any left, nor any helper for Israel. And the Lord said not that He would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven: but He saved them by the hand of Jeroboam the son of Joash.\" Now as this prophecy of Jonah was given at a time when Israel was at the lowest point of depression, when \"there was not any shut up or left,\" that is, confined or left at large, none to act as a helper for Israel, it cannot have been given in Jeroboam's reign, which was marked by prosperity, for in it Syria was worsted in fulfilment of the prophecy, and Israel raised to its former \"greatness.\" It must have been, therefore, in the early part of the reign of Joash, Jeroboam's father, who had found Israel in subjection to Syria, but had raised it by victories which were followed up so successfully by Jeroboam. Thus Jonah was the earliest of the prophets, and close upon Elisha, who died in Joash's reign, having just before his death given a token prophetical of the thrice defeat of Syria (Kg2 13:14-21). Hosea and Amos prophesied also in the reign of Jeroboam II, but towards the closing part of his forty-one years' reign. The transactions in the Book of Jonah probably occurred in the latter part of his life; if so, the book is not much older than part of the writings of Hosea and Amos. The use of the third person is no argument against Jonah himself being the writer: for the sacred writers in mentioning themselves do so in the third person (compare Joh 19:26). Nor is the use of the past tense (Jon 3:3, \"Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city\") a proof that Nineveh's greatness was past when the Book of Jonah was being written; it is simply used to carry on the negative uniformly,--\"the word of the Lord came to Jonah . . . so Jonah arose . . . now Nineveh was,\" &c. (Jon 1:1; Jon 3:3). The mention of its greatness proves rather that the book was written at an early date, before the Israelites had that intimate knowledge of it which they must have had soon afterwards through frequent Assyrian inroads.\n\nAs early as JULIAN and PORPHYRY, pagans ridiculed the credulity of Christians in believing the deliverance of Jonah by a fish. Some infidels have derived it from the heathen fable of the deliverance of Andromeda from a sea monster by Perseus [APOLLODORUS, The Library, 2.4,3]; or from that of Arion the musician thrown into the sea by sailors, and carried safe to shore on a dolphin [HERODOTUS, History, 1.24]; or from that of Hercules, who sprang into the jaws of a sea monster, and was three days in its belly, when he undertook to save Hesione [DIODORUS SICULUS, Historical Library, 4.42; HOMER, The Iliad, 20.145; 21.442]. Probably the heathen fables are, vice versa, corruptions of the sacred narrative, if there be any connection. JEROME states that near Joppa lay rocks, pointed out as those to which Andromeda was bound when exposed to the sea monster. This fable implies the likelihood of the story of Jonah having passed through the PhÅ“nicians in a corrupted form to Greece. That the account of Jonah is history, and not parable (as rationalists represent), appears from our Lord's reference to it, in which the personal existence, miraculous fate, and prophetical office of Jonah are explicitly asserted: \"No sign shall be given but the sign of the prophet Jonas: 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\" (Mat 12:39-40). The Lord recognizes his being in the belly of the fish as a \"sign,\" that is, a real miracle, typical of a similar event in His own history; and assumes the execution of the prophet's commission to Nineveh, \"The men of Nineveh . . . repented at the preaching of Jonas; and behold, a greater than Jonas is here\" (Mat 12:41).\n\nIt seemed strange to KIMCHI, a Jew himself, that the Book of Jonah is among the Scriptures, as the only prophecy in it concerns Nineveh, a heathen city, and makes no mention of Israel, which is referred to by every other prophet. The reason seems to be: a tacit reproof of Israel is intended; a heathen people were ready to repent at the first preaching of the prophet, a stranger to them; but Israel, who boasted of being God's elect, repented not, though warned by their own prophets at all seasons. This was an anticipatory streak of light before the dawn of the full \"light to lighten the Gentiles\" (Luk 2:32). Jonah is himself a strange paradox: a prophet of God, and yet a runaway from God: a man drowned, and yet alive: a preacher of repentance, yet one that repines at repentance. Yet Jonah, saved from the jaws of death himself on repentance, was the fittest to give a hope to Nineveh, doomed though it was, of a merciful respite on its repentance. The patience and pity of God stand in striking contrast with the selfishness and hard-heartedness of man.\n\nNineveh in particular was chosen to teach Israel these lessons, on account of its being capital of the then world kingdom, and because it was now beginning to make its power felt by Israel. Our Lord (Mat 12:41) makes Nineveh's repentance a reproof of the Jews' impenitence in His day, just as Jonah provoked Israel to jealousy (Deu 32:21) by the same example. Jonah's mission to Nineveh implied that a heathen city afforded as legitimate a field for the prophet's labors as Israel, and with a more successful result (compare Amo 9:7).\n\nThe book is prose narrative throughout, except the prayer of thanksgiving in the second chapter (Jon 2:1-9). The ChaldÃ&brvbrisms in the original do not prove spuriousness, or a later age, but were natural in the language of one living in Zebulun on the borders of the north, whence Aramaic peculiarities would readily arise; moreover, his message to Nineveh implies acquaintance with Assyrian. Living as Jonah did in a part of Israel exposed to Assyrian invasions, he probably stood in the same relation to Assyria as Elijah and Elisha had stood to Syria. The purity of the language implies the antiquity of the book, and the likelihood of its being Jonah's own writing. Indeed, none but Jonah could have written or dictated such peculiar details, known only to himself.\n\nThe tradition that places the tomb of Jonah opposite to Mosul, and names it \"Nebbi Junus\" (that is, \"prophet Jonah\"), originated probably in the spot having been occupied by a Christian church or convent dedicated to him [LAYARD]. A more ancient tradition of JEROME'S time placed the tomb in Jonah's native village of Gath-hepher. \n\n\n\nNext: Jonah Chapter 1\n\n","order":32,"numberOfChapters":4,"sha256":"c954f1d5b5acba436e4cf95fd4428bb8f39f8d69ff8c587d05ab96169ef42df5","firstChapterNumber":1,"firstChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/JON/1.json","firstChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"JON","chapter":1},"lastChapterNumber":4,"lastChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/JON/4.json","lastChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"JON","chapter":4},"totalNumberOfVerses":43},"chapter":{"number":4,"content":[{"type":"verse","number":2,"content":["my saying--my thought, or feeling. \n\nfled before--I anticipated by fleeing, the disappointment of my design through Thy long-suffering mercy. \n\ngracious . . . and merciful, &c.--Jonah here has before his mind ; as Joel () in his turn quotes from Jonah.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":3,"content":["Jonah's impatience of life under disappointed hopes of Israel's reformation through the destruction of Nineveh, is like that of Elijah at his plan for reforming Israel (1Ki. 18:1-46) failing through Jezebel ().\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":4,"content":["Doest thou well to be angry?--or grieved; rather as the Margin, \"Art thou much angry,\" or \"grieved?\" [FAIRBAIRN with the Septuagint and Syriac]. But English Version suits the spirit of the passage, and is quite tenable in the Hebrew [GESENIUS].\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":5,"content":["made him a booth--that is, a temporary hut of branches and leaves, so slightly formed as to be open to the wind and sun's heat. \n\nsee what would become of the city--The term of forty days had not yet elapsed, and Jonah did not know that anything more than a suspension, or mitigation, of judgment had been granted to Nineveh. Therefore, not from sullennesss, but in order to watch the event from a neighboring station, he lodged in the booth. As a stranger, he did not know the depth of Nineveh's repentance; besides, from the Old Testament standpoint he knew that chastening judgments often followed, as in David's case (, ), even where sin had been repented of. To show him what he knew not, the largeness and completeness of God's mercy to penitent Nineveh, and the reasonableness of it, God made his booth a school of discipline to give him more enlightened views.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":6,"content":["gourd--Hebrew, kikaion; the Egyptian kiki, the \"ricinus\" or castor-oil plant, commonly called \"palm-christ\" (palma-christi). It grows from eight to ten feet high. Only one leaf grows on a branch, but that leaf being often more than a foot large, the collective leaves give good shelter from the heat. It grows rapidly, and fades as suddenly when injured. \n\nto deliver him from his grief--It was therefore grief, not selfish anger, which Jonah felt (see on ). Some external comforts will often turn the mind away from its sorrowful bent.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":7,"content":["a worm--of a particular kind, deadly to the ricinus. A small worm at the root destroys a large gourd. So it takes but little to make our creature comforts wither. It should silence discontent to remember, that when our gourd is gone, our God is not gone. \n\nthe next day--after Jonah was so \"exceeding glad\" (compare ).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":8,"content":["vehement--rather, \"scorching\"; the Margin, \"silent,\" expressing sultry stillness, not vehemence.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":9,"content":["(See on ). \n\nI do well to be angry, even unto death--\"I am very much grieved, even to death\" [FAIRBAIRN]. So the Antitype ().\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":10,"content":["The main lesson of the book. If Jonah so pities a plant which cost him no toil to rear, and which is so short lived and valueless, much more must Jehovah pity those hundreds of thousands of immortal men and women in great Nineveh whom He has made with such a display of creative power, especially when many of them repent, and seeing that, if all in it were destroyed, \"more than six score thousand\" of unoffending children, besides \"much cattle,\" would be involved in the common destruction: Compare the same argument drawn from God's justice and mercy in . A similar illustration from the insignificance of a plant, which \"to-day is and to-morrow is cast into the oven,\" and which, nevertheless, is clothed by God with surpassing beauty, is given by Christ to prove that God will care for the infinitely more precious bodies and souls of men who are to live for ever (). One soul is of more value than the whole world; surely, then, one soul is of more value than many gourds. The point of comparison spiritually is the need which Jonah, for the time being, had of the foliage of the gourd. However he might dispense with it at other times, now it was necessary for his comfort, and almost for his life. So now that Nineveh, as a city, fears God and turns to Him, God's cause needs it, and would suffer by its overthrow, just as Jonah's material well-being suffered by the withering of the gourd. If there were any hope of Israel's being awakened by Nineveh's destruction to fulfil her high destination of being a light to surrounding heathenism, then there would not have been the same need to God's cause of Nineveh's preservation, (though there would have always been need of saving the penitent). But as Israel, after judgments, now with returning prosperity turns back to apostasy, the means needed to vindicate God's cause, and provoke Israel, if possible, to jealousy, is the example of the great capital of heathendom suddenly repenting at the first warning, and consequently being spared. Thus Israel would see the kingdom of heaven transplanted from its ancient seat to another which would willingly yield its spiritual fruits. The tidings which Jonah brought back to his countrymen of Nineveh's repentance and rescue, would, if believingly understood, be far more fitted than the news of its overthrow to recall Israel to the service of God. Israel failed to learn the lesson, and so was cast out of her land. But even this was not an unmitigated evil. Jonah was a type, as of Christ, so also of Israel. Jonah, though an outcast, was highly honored of God in Nineveh; so Israel's outcast condition would prove no impediment to her serving God's cause still, if only she was faithful to God. Ezekiel and Daniel were so at Babylon; and the Jews, scattered in all lands as witnesses for the one true God, pioneered the way for Christianity, so that it spread with a rapidity which otherwise was not likely to have attended it [FAIRBAIRN].\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":11,"content":["that cannot discern between their right hand and their left--children under three of four years old (). Six score thousand of these, allowing them to be a fifth of the whole, would give a total population of six hundred thousand. \n\nmuch cattle--God cares even for the brute creatures, of which man takes little account. These in wonderful powers and in utility are far above the shrub which Jonah is so concerned about. Yet Jonah is reckless as to their destruction and that of innocent children. The abruptness of the close of the book is more strikingly suggestive than if the thought had been followed out in detail.\n\n\n\n\n\nNext: Micah Introduction\n\n"]}],"introduction":"JONAH FRETS AT GOD'S MERCY TO NINEVEH: IS REPROVED BY THE TYPE OF A GOURD. ()\n\nangry--literally, \"hot,\" probably, with grief or vexation, rather than anger [FAIRBAIRN]. How sad the contrast between God's feeling on the repentance of Nineveh towards Him, and Jonah's feeling on the repentance of God towards Nineveh. Strange in one who was himself a monument of mercy on his repentance! We all, like him, need the lesson taught in the parable of the unforgiving, though forgiven, debtor (). Jonah was grieved because Nineveh's preservation, after his denunciation, made him seem a false prophet [CALVIN]. But it would make Jonah a demon, not a man, to have preferred the destruction of six hundred thousand men rather than that his prophecy should be set aside through God's mercy triumphing over judgment. And God in that case would have severely chastised, whereas he only expostulates mildly with him, and by a mode of dealing, at once gentle and condescending, tries to show him his error. Moreover, Jonah himself, in apologizing for his vexation, does not mention the failure of his prediction as the cause: but solely the thought of God's slowness to anger. This was what led him to flee to Tarshish at his first commission; not the likelihood then of his prediction being falsified; for in fact his commission then was not to foretell Nineveh's downfall, but simply to \"cry against\" Nineveh's \"wickedness\" as having \"come up before God.\" Jonah could hardly have been so vexed for the letter of his prediction failing, when the end of his commission had virtually been gained in leading Nineveh to repentance. This then cannot have been regarded by Jonah as the ultimate end of his commission. If Nineveh had been the prominent object with him, he would have rejoiced at the result of his mission. But Israel was the prominent aim of Jonah, as a prophet of the elect people. Probably then he regarded the destruction of Nineveh as fitted to be an example of God's judgment at last suspending His long forbearance so as to startle Israel from its desperate degeneracy, heightened by its new prosperity under Jeroboam II at that very time, in a way that all other means had failed to do. Jonah, despairing of anything effectual being done for God in Israel, unless there were first given a striking example of severity, thought when he proclaimed the downfall of Nineveh in forty days, that now at last God is about to give such an example; so when this means of awakening Israel was set aside by God's mercy on Nineveh's repentance, he was bitterly disappointed, not from pride or mercilessness, but from hopelessness as to anything being possible for the reformation of Israel, now that his cherished hope is baffled. But GOD'S plan was to teach Israel, by the example of Nineveh, how inexcusable is their own impenitence, and how inevitable their ruin if they persevere. Repenting Nineveh has proved herself more worthy of God's favor than apostate Israel; the children of the covenant have not only fallen down to, but actually below, the level of a heathen people; Israel, therefore, must go down, and the heathen rise above her. Jonah did not know the important lessons of hope to the penitent, and condemnation to those amidst outward privileges impenitent, which Nineveh's preservation on repentance was to have for aftertimes, and to all ages. He could not foresee that Messiah Himself was thus to apply that history. A lesson to us that if we could in any particular alter the plan of Providence, it would not be for the better, but for the worse [FAIRBAIRN].\n\n"},"thisChapterLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/JON/4.json","thisChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"JON","chapter":4},"nextChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/MIC/1.json","nextChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"MIC","chapter":1},"previousChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/JON/3.json","previousChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"JON","chapter":3},"numberOfVerses":10}