Holy Bible

And the Word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying. Jonah 3:1, 2 The restored commission T. T. Carter. Here we learn what God is to those who truly repent. God may even restore all that has been forfeited. For those who have done grievous wrong, it is encouraging to think that there is honour, and glory, and a blessed restoration to the full love of God, if only they return out of the darkness into the presence from which they have departed. God sent Jonah on the very same mission in which he had failed before, — and yet with a marked difference distinguishing the second from the first call. The changed command, though full of restored confidence, implies a warning to be exact in fulfilling the will of God — to be careful as to giving the message exactly as he received it. It seems to say, Risk not any further disobedience even in the least particular of the mission on which you are sent. 1. The exceeding mercy of God shown in this, that He offers renewed opportunities to those who fail to profit by the first opportunity; and it may be even opportunities of the same kind. They may have to be followed after a different manner, but yet the same object, the same end may be set before us till finally accomplished. 2. There is this further wonder in the forgiving and forbearing of God, that He causes the trials of the returning penitent to be the means of good. Those who have passed through the experience of such penitential struggles and fears may become afterwards a blessing to others, because they can tell of the dangers that beset them, and of the mercy through which they have been saved. The grace of God not only restores a man generally, as it were, but renews him in the very point in which he had sinned and failed. Take courage then, you who are beset with some special sin. Let us learn from the long catalogue of those who have fallen and have been recovered to take hope for ourselves. God desires a perfect, not an imperfect work. Grace crowns acts of penitence and faith. ( T. T. Carter. ) The preacher of judgment J. O. Keen, D. D. — Jonah , the runaway prophet, is now before us as Jonah the successful preacher. 1. Sin in God s servants is a great hinderer. 2. Faithlessness in the servant does not necessitate failure to the Master. Chastisement may lead to consecration, and that to successful service. 3. Moral delinquency repented of is no impassable barrier to former favour, privilege, and honour. God does not take advantage of our weakness to cut us off for ever. He is patient, pitiful, forgiving, and will restore His penitent servants to forfeited blessings and dignities. 4. The preacher's true function is to declare what God commands him. The message as well as the commission must bear the impress of Divinity. Divine thoughts, purposes, desires, truths, and not human notions, creeds, sentiments, opinions, fancies, must ever fill the mind, inspire the tongue, constrain the utterance, and fire the eloquence and enthusiasm of every ambassador of the Cross. Note that Jonah was obedient at last to the holy orders. He did what he should have done at first. Obedience is true or false according to the temper in which we act. Notice the method and matter of his preaching. His method was earnest, courageous, impressive. He "cried." His matter was adapted to rich and poor. It was solemn, humiliating, definite, merciful. We have the practical fruits of the preaching, — repentance and reformation. Nineveh's repentance was well timed, well grounded, well evidenced, by self-denial, self-abasement, earnest prayer, personal reform. Learn that genuine repentance averts the punitive purposes of God. God watches for genuine indications of moral reform. Behold them, He refrains from executing His threatenings. Repentance is a wonderful power in the domain of moral government. ( J. O. Keen, D. D. ) The history of Jonah set before the young Baptist W. Noel, M. A. The prophet Jonah opposed the will of God, and would not do what God commanded him, as did Balaam; but there was this difference between them, — that Jonah did fear and love God. God destroyed Balaam. He only punished Jonah, and brought him to repentance. It is then a very good thing to love and serve God; because those who do so cannot quite turn away from God, and Cod will never quite turn away from them. If they sin, they will be punished, like Jonah was; but those who love and serve God are still under His care, and like Jonah are brought back to repentance. If there are among you any that are wishing to serve God, but are yet sometimes tempted to disobey Him, you may learn much by thinking of what happened to Jonah. 1. God gave him a command to go and tell the people of Nineveh that He was about to destroy them. It was a very hard command for him to fulfil. Jonah could not tell what might happen to him, if he ventured into that great foreign and heathen city. But God could take care of him. He knew that God was a loving Father to him. Whenever we are disposed to do wrong, then we are afraid of the Bible; we are afraid of every thing that tells us of our sin; we are afraid of pious persons; we cannot bear to pray. Whenever you are disposed to do what is wrong, you feel equally disposed to flee from the presence of the Lord. You act like Jonah. Therefore our best way is to love and serve God with all our hearts, and ask Him for grace to do all our duty, as Jonah ought to have done. When the lot fell upon Jonah, they asked him what he had done; and he was obliged to tell them how he had been shrinking from doing his duty, and was trying to escape from God, who followed him, and who knew where he was, and what he was doing. It must have made him more miserable to have seen how much better the heathen were than he. For he had brought them into danger, and they were trying to save his life. At last, at his own wish, they took him up, and threw him into the sea. Ungodly persons, when they are brought into trouble, cannot pray. Now there is not a place on earth, and there is not a degree of guilt in which we may be living, in which our believing prayer cannot reach the ear and heart of God: for when Jonah cried unto the Lord, in the midst of his troubles, God heard him, and caused the fish to vomit him out upon the shore of his own land. How humble and grateful he must have felt that day! He was not left, however, to be indolent and inactive. Jonah was brought through all his troubles, to just this point, that he must obey the commands of God. God's commands never alter. Our sins will not alter them; our troubles will not alter them; our deliverance will not alter them. God commands you to love and serve Him with all your hearts; God commands you to confess Jesus Christ in the world, to make the Bible your rule of life, and to live by faith and in prayer. Jonah was brought to God's command a second time; and if he had refused, he would have been brought to it a third time. He must do God's will. When he accomplished the will of God, and found it so easy, doubtless he thought, "Why did I not do it at first?" ( Baptist W. Noel, M. A. ) Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee Jonah's first and second commission A. Raleigh, D. D. What are the points of difference between them? One respects Jonah himself. Formerly he knew the message that he was to deliver. Now he is simply told that a message will be given him, but he is not to know it until he arrives at the place. It may be the same. It may be milder; it may be sterner. Undoubtedly this change has reference to his former disobedience. The message was different in its substance also, to meet the change in Nineveh. When the message was given, it proved to be the never varying cry, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be destroyed." Some think he preached on this as a text; but as the cup of Nineveh's iniquity was now full, what was proper to the case was just a cry of coming judgment, brief and plain, startling, stern, unalterable, except by quick and unfeigned repentance. Probably Jonah did not add to this message by the faintest hint or suggestion. The simplest interpretation is the truest. This message makes us think. 1. Of the exceeding sinfulness of sin. 2. How inflexible is the justice of God. 3. What a stupendous power a city has for good or evil. ( A. Raleigh, D. D. ) A missionary message John H. Mason. Jonah was foolish, Jonah was wise; foolish to expect to balk God, wise to learn so quickly his folly. Misery, calamity, peril, and the sense of an ever present God who had brought them, did their work; and the prophet, back again at the starting-point, heeds the Divine voice, and turns with an obedient heart to fulfil the mission which he had thought to escape. I. GOD'S AUTHORITY. The Being who speaks is conscious of His right. He does not mince words. God's demand on Jonah now is precisely what it was in the first place. There is no effort to compromise because of Jonah's former flight. Now comes the command again, plain, stern, uncompromising — "Arise, go, preach." The slight change of form in the expression seems full of meaning. "Arise, go, and preach the preaching that I bid thee." See that thou preach no other message than Mine. God owns men. All that we are, all that we have, all the service of our lives belongs to God. We delude ourselves with any sense of self-ownership. We get the idea that we own what God only loans to us. II. GOD'S WAY WITH THE DISOBEDIENT. See how God goes to work to bring this man's will into subjection to His own. What a complex of world-wide, universe-wide machinery the Sovereign of all can set in motion for the subduing of a human spirit! Jonah is not more obdurate than Pharaoh. The storms, the seas, the worse tumults in his own bosom, the upbraidings of the crew, his thoughts of his past, his fear, — all are God's instruments, and under His direction each does its unconscious part toward the subjection of Jonah, and the salvation of the Assyrian capital. Jonah is a changed man. From a coward he has become a dauntless hero and prophet. Jonah thought himself free when he fled, but in fact his first real enjoyment of freedom came when he started to fulfil God's command. III. GOD'S MISSIONARY MESSAGE AND ITS EFFECT. Jonah was the first foreign missionary. The men of far-off Nineveh were to learn of God, His love and holiness. The very heart of our conception of God as a moral being is His holiness. The holiness of God compels Him to insist upon holiness in all men. In Nineveh sin had taken on its most frightful developments. Nineveh had much, but it lacked just one element of fortune — righteousness. Nineveh's cup of iniquity was well-nigh full. Jonah's preaching was plain, earnest, effective, impressive. God went into the city with Jonah, but God had also gone before. The men of Nineveh were ready for the missionary. "The people believed God." To believe God is a great thing. The best possible evidence of the Ninevites' belief in the missionary's sermon was their conduct. They acted. They bestirred themselves as if they believed that the sin of their hearts and lives was endangering them. The ringing cry of Jonah reaches even the royal palace, and the king, humbled, joins his subjects in their plea for God's mercy. The people turned from their sin, and cried for mercy. IV. GOD'S MERCY. God's heart was moved; doom was averted; Nineveh was saved. God was merciful to Jonah in following him through all his flight, in bringing him back to the starting-point, in using him though he had shown himself unworthy. God was merciful to Nineveh in sending the messenger to warn the city, and in preparing the hearts of the people for the message. And God is merciful in listening to their cry for forgiveness. God repented. His attitude toward Nineveh was changed. What changed it? Nineveh's attitude toward sin. What is meant by God's repentance? Speaking to man, God must use language with which man is familiar. Repentance means a changed attitude. The whole attitude of the Ninevites toward sin, and so, toward God, being changed, in that same hour God's attitude toward them was changed. ( John H. Mason. ) Conditions of ministerial success J. W. Pratt, D. D. I. THE CHARACTER OF THE SERMON; or the objective elements of success. 1. It should be argumentative. To expect men to believe without proof is to expect them to become irrational. 2. It must be positive; mainly concerned in the teaching of truth, rather than in the refutation of error. 3. It is doctrinal. The larger part of those who compose our congregations depend upon the preacher for all the knowledge they will ever have of these great theological truths. That preaching is the most practical which indoctrinates the hearers with the fundamental elements of the Christian faith. 4. It should be systematic. As there is a logical coherence between all the parts of the religion we teach, why should we exclude system from our mode of exhibiting it? 5. A bold, unflinching testimony to the great doctrines of God's sovereignty, man's inability, election, and other unpopular doctrines of the Gospel. II. THE CHARACTER OF THE MAN; or the subjective elements of success. 1. Individuality. 2. Earnestness is self-evidencing. 3. Consciousness on the part of the speaker that he is speaking to his audience. Some preach for the sake of the sermon. Others preach for the sake of the people. 4. The good preacher speaks with authority. Which may be derived from — (1) Consciousness of official dignity. (2) Unwavering conviction of the truth. (3) Consciousness of personal acceptance with God. 5. The manner of delivery should be in accordance with the rules of good speaking. Delivery is an art, and is based upon scientific principles. 6. The preacher must have weight of personal character; not only piety, but weight of character. "Who of us is sufficient for these things?" ( J. W. Pratt, D. D. ) Preaching to great cities J. R. Day, D. D. The Lord seems to say to Jonah, "Begin where you were when you started out to have your own way. Come back to. the very point at which we were, and start again." But the Lord distrusted him a little still, notwithstanding the discipline to which he had been subjected. Now God is more definite. "The preaching that I bid thee." There must be no mistake, no dodging, no evasion. Man may disobey God in two ways. He may not go, may plead excuses, and refuse to try to do the work. Or he may not do what God tells him to do, may do something somewhat like it, but not it. It is against this second kind of disobedience that God guards His servant. It is not difficult to obtain men, in this age, who are quite ready to go to great cities. But there are many who, when they go, do not do what God tells them to do. There is preaching enough, but when you come to take out of it the theological dialectics, and the wranglings, and the discussions of the secular phases of life, and the material interests of the Church, and the meddling with current events, you find that the bulk of God's preaching is comparatively small, and often of weak portent. The great question which lays itself down at the door of our hearts is, Are we doing our whole duty to the city? — not to one's self simply, but to the city? We are here upon God's errand. Is the city being saved? Is it being saved as we might save it? As God expects us to save it? I. WHAT ARE THE METHODS WITH WHICH WE ARE TO GO INTO THIS GREAT CITY AS APPOINTED BY THE ALMIGHTY? God sends us with a definite commission, and there is to be decisiveness of action on our part. There is to be activity, earnestness. We are to impress upon these sinners round that we can die for them, but we can never leave them unsaved. This indefiniteness, this far-off century, this millennium dawning out of small faith is not of the Gospel. That is for the prophets of evolution, of aesthetics and social culture, for the false prophets. Within the Church are the leverages and forces to bring the millennium to this sinking world. II. WHAT ABOUT THE PLACE; WHAT ABOUT THE EXACT METHODS; WHAT ABOUT THE APPLIANCES OF THE GOSPEL? If we are to preach to people the preaching God bids us to preach them, how are we to reach them? Jonah was to preach street preaching. Jesus Christ preached in the streets. The preaching of the Gospel should be just as accessible to men as when it is preached in the streets and in the fields. Christ expects men and women to be able to come to the preaching of the Gospel with as much freedom as they go along the highways. There should be nothing in the Churches or in the preaching of the Gospel that shall embarrass in the slightest degree any poor man, or plainly clad man, who may want to find Jesus Christ. We have built our churches away from the people. We imitate a useless, liturgical style of architecture. We let pews to the well-to-do. When men come to the altar of God, and it is their home, how they then throng about their minister; they don't hide away from him. III. WHAT SHALL WE PREACH? The Gospel. Just simply the plain old Gospel of the old time. You and I are to preach that very same Jesus who went into Rome, and into Athens, and into Asia-Minor, and whom our fathers preached, and whom our fathers revered. Human nature needs it as much as ever it did. Preach to it the Crucified One; not a petty little philosophy of salvation, or a poetic story of a perfect Man Christ. But preach a God Christ, a Divine Christ, who was torn, lacerated by a devil-world; a risen Christ, risen by His own power, which He will exert in due time for all who die in Him. Preach a Gospel of conviction of sin, of repentance, of regeneration, of the witness of the Spirit, by which human hearts are made new, human character is transformed, human faces are transfigured, and dying mortals are translated into that glory where all are always like Him. ( J. R. Day, D. D. ) Effect of Jonah's preaching Arthur Mitchell, D. D. There was never a mission undertaken apparently more unpromising than this of Jonah to Nineveh. Here was. — I. A MOST UNSUITABLE MISSIONARY. 1. To begin with, he was thoroughly unwilling to go. His reason he gives in Jonah 4:2 . He was fearful that the heathen would repent at his preaching, and in that case God would have compassion, and forgive and spare them. What a fear to be entertained by a missionary! 2. Unsuitable because of the self-deception which he could practise on himself, and his moral confusion and compromise. Let us not think worse of Jonah than the case demands. He has his good traits. At least he is honest, and he is as severe on himself as he is on others. 3. It would have seemed unfavourable also that Jonah should be sent on such a mission entirely alone. II. NINEVEH WAS A VERY DIFFICULT FIELD. Perhaps the most discouraging thing about it was that its people already knew Jonah's country, his race, and his religion, and thoroughly despised them all. It was to the proud metropolis of a resistless empire, overflowing with wealth and numbers, filled with insolence and luxury, that the lonely man from the village of Gath-hepher was sent. And did it not make matters worse that God had bidden Jonah to carry to Nineveh such a disheartening, exasperating message? III. YET THE MISSION OF JONAH WAS A SUCCESS. A success scarcely paralleled in ancient or in modern times. Nineveh "believed God." It is not possible to tell the extent or the permanence of this national repentance. Learn — 1. All races of men have been in God's loving care. 2. We see the method of God's mercy to the heathen. 3. We may cherish great expectations concerning the hardest fields of the heathen world. 4. The religious use of fear. 5. The moral power of leaders, whether social or political. 6. Learn Christ's own lessons from this history. ( Arthur Mitchell, D. D. ) Jonah's commission Canon Hussey. The eye of God is always on man. We seem to act as if God retired into the distance of heaven, and took no cognisance of the actions of man. But if God's eye does look upon man, the disposition of God is to show mercy to man. For do we not see here the messenger sent to Nineveh? If God has a disposition to show mercy, God is one whose patience has limits. We are not to suppose that we can trifle with God; that we can go on with our iniquity, and that God will never vindicate His honour. Learn also that we may hope in preaching to the very worst and most abandoned. Wicked Nineveh listened to the voice of warning. The text further teaches us the duty of the Church, the duty of all God's people. They are to arise and go and preach the preaching which God bids. 1. We are to arise and go. Here at once activity is demanded at our hand. There must be no lethargy and no lukewarmness. 2. Besides showing activity, the Church is to be aggressive. Jonah was to go away into the haunts of wickedness, and there to scatter in the midst of those people the warnings of Almighty God. So we are to go unto the dark places, and carry that light which God has communicated to man. 3. The Church is to be as the "salt of the earth." What does that involve? That it is to influence everything that it touches. And how many are the stimulants to urge us to this active, aggressive work! And observe that we are to preach the preaching that God bids. The preaching must be only what God wants. There must be no addition on our part, no fancies or imaginations of our own. Three parts in preaching. (1) A warning to the people. (2) We are affectionately to expostulate. (3) We must speak the .language of comfort and encouragement. ( Canon Hussey. ) Christian enterprise S. H. Doyle. This is an age of enterprise. The world is more active and energetic than ever before. Gigantic schemes, of which the world scarcely dreamed in days gone by, are being hourly put into practical effect. This spirit also pervades the Church of Christ. I. CHRISTIAN ENTERPRISE IS DIVINELY COMMANDED. "Arise and go" is the Divine command to every church, to every society, to every Christian to-day. II. THE OBJECT OF CHRISTIAN ENTERPRISE. It is included in God's command to Jonah, " Arise, go...and preach... that I bid thee." The work of the Church is to preach, to proclaim what God commands it — all the word of God. Nothing can be accomplished without time, trouble, expense, and labour. III. THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIAN ENTERPRISE. 1. It had its proper effect upon the people toward whom it was directed. They believed God, they repented in sackcloth and in ashes. 2. It received the approval of God. God was pleased with Jonah and with the people. He heard their cry of repentance. ( S. H. Doyle. ) So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the Word of the Lord. Jonah 3:3 Obedient at last Robert Tuck, B. A. (for children): — Introduce by description of Jonah's conduct and history. Dwell on his call, flight, peril, humiliation, prayer, restoration, and second call. Also on — (1) The city. (2) The preacher. (3) The message. (4) The fast. (5) The proclamation. (6) The Divine mercy.Impress that the long-suffering and forgiving grace of God are shown — 1. In giving Jonah another commission. 2. In hearing the penitent prayer of the Ninevites.Show that penitence must, of necessity, precede forgiveness. Make this question the point of the address, — In what spirit should God's servants go forth to do His work? 1. They should be strictly obedient. 2. They should be simply trustful; quite sure that God would will the right, and give them grace as they needed. 3. They should be prompt and ready, going at once and cheerfully. 4. They should leave with God the results of their mission. Illustrate, from one Bible character, each of these divisions. (1) By Abraham. (2) By David. (3) By the missionaries who could say, "Immediately we conferred not with flesh and blood," etc. (4) By the apostle Paul. ( Robert Tuck, B. A. ) Obedience Sunday School Teacher. Erastus Corning, when a little boy, applied at a shop for employment. The foreman looked down at the frail, lame boy, and asked, "Why, my little fellow, what can you do?" "I can do what I am bid, sir," was the answer. His willingness to obey secured a place, and was the beginning of his successful career as a merchant. ( Sunday School Teacher. ) Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. Jonah 3:4 The knell of Nineveh T. De Witt Talmage, D. D. Sardanapalus puts off his jewelled array, and puts on mourning, and the whole city goes down on its knees, and street cries to street, and temple to temple. A black covering is thrown over the horses, and the sheep, and the cattle. Forage and water are kept from the dumb brutes so that their distressed bellowings may make a dolorous accompaniment to the lamentation of six hundred thousands souls. God heard that cry. He turned aside from the affairs of eternal state, and listened. He said, "Stop! I must go down and save that city. It is repenting, and cries for help)." I. THE PRECISION AND PUNCTUALITY OF THE DIVINE ARRANGEMENT. God knew exactly the day when Nineveh's lease of mercy should end. He has determined the length of endurance of our sin. II. RELIGIOUS WARNING MAY SEEM PREPOSTEROUS. To many still it is more a joke than anything else. Men boast of their health, but I have noticed that it is the invalids who live long. "In such an hour as ye think not, the Son of Man cometh." III. GOD GIVES EVERY MAN A FAIR CHANCE FOR HIS LIFE. The iniquity of Nineveh was accumulating. Why did not God unsheath some sword of lightning from the scabbard of a storm-cloud and slay it? It was because He wanted to give the city a fair chance. And God is giving us a fair chance for safety, a better chance than He gave to Nineveh. IV. WHEN THE PEOPLE REPENT, GOD LETS THEM OFF. While Nineveh was on its knees, God reversed the judgment. When a sinner repents (in one sense) God repents (in another). Then repent, give up your sin and turn to God, and you will be saved. ( T. De Witt Talmage, D. D. ) God has many preachers God has many preachers that are not in human flesh. For instance, fever is a terrible Elijah. When the cholera came to London it was a Jonah in our streets. Many then began to think who would have gone blindfold down to perdition. When poverty visits some men's houses, and they can no longer indulge in drunkenness and gluttony, then they bethink themselves of their Father's house, and the hired servants who have bread enough and to spare. Omnipotence has servants everywhere; God can make use of even the ills of life to work eternal good. A warning cry in the city Archdeacon Harrison. It was a great and wonderful thing that was wrought that day when Jonah "began to enter into the city." The great capital was suddenly startled by a voice of warning in her streets. A strange, wild man, clothed in a rough garment of skin, moved from place to place, and announced to the inhabitants their coming doom. Had the cry fallen on them in their prosperous time, it would probably have been heard with apathy and ridicule. But coming as it did when their glory had declined; when their enemies, having been allowed a breathing space, had taken courage, and were acting on the offensive in many quarters, it struck them with fear and consternation. It was a single day, apparently, that was marked by such wonders in the city of Nineveh. The prophet's "one day's journey" is supposed to have carried him about nineteen miles. The repentance of the men of Nineveh prolonged, in God's mercy and providence, the continuance of their city for more than a hundred years. ( Archdeacon Harrison. ) Divine threatenings S. C. Burn. I. DIVINE THREATS ARE CONDITIONAL It is with them in this respect as it is with the promises recorded in the Scriptures. The appropriate condition is implied, whether it is mentioned or not, in all the promises, and in all the threats which are recorded in the Scriptures as coming from God. II. DIVINE THREATS ARE MERCIFUL. The threat fulminated against Nineveh was the means of bringing the Ninevites to repentance, and saving their city from destruction, as it was intended to be. It is the preacher's consolation that the Divine threats are always merciful. Observe also the suitableness of Jonah's preaching. It might be said, was not Jonah's preaching quite as likely to amuse or annoy the Ninevites as to effect a reformation on their part? They were certainly more likely to be annoyed than amused. If not mobbed and molested in the streets, the magistrate might be expected to deal with him as a disturber of the peace. But nothing of this kind occurred. 1. Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites of Jehovah's power. 2. Of Jehovah's justice. 3. Of Jehovah's mercy.Observe, too, how the preaching of Jonah was supplemented in Nineveh. The manner in which this royal proclamation was produced deserves consideration. It was not produced by the king alone, but by the king and his nobles. The drift of the proclamation may be regarded as either imperative or hortatory. It counselled the people to fast, to cover them selves with sackcloth, to pray, to reform their manner of life, to associate the very brutes with their appeal to God. Observe, the reason which the proclamation gives for acting as it counsels is couched in very plaintive terms. "Who can tell? " etc. This was language equally removed from despair and presumption. ( S. C. Burn. ) The repentance of Nineveh Robert Tuck, B. A. "The great city rises before us, most magnificent of all the capitals of the ancient world — 'great even unto God It included parks, and gardens, and fields, and people, and cattle within its vast circumference. Twenty miles the prophet penetrates into the city. He has still finished only one-third of his journey through it. His utterance, like that of the wild preacher in the last days of the siege of Jerusalem by Titus, is one piercing cry, from street to street, from square to square. It reaches at last the king on his throne of state. The remorse for the wrong and robbery and violence of many generations is awakened. The dumb animals are included, after the fashion of the East, in the universal mourning, and the Divine decree is revoked." I. THE PENITENT PROPHET. Recall the indications of his penitence given in his prayer (chap. Jonah 2.). And note the signs in his obedient attitude, and his readiness at once to do God's commands. Truly penitent people give up their own wilfulness, and cheerfully submit and obey. If we have not this spirit we may be quite sure that our penitence has neither been sincere nor thorough. Picture the prophet setting to his work. II. THE PENITENT CITY. Note the signs of earnestness and sincerity. All classes joined in the penitent acts. They united in prayer. They put away their sins. The king showed the good example. What a picture! A whole people prostrate before the God of judgment! III. GOD'S RELATION TO BOTH. Long-suffering to both. Forgiving to both. A prayer-hearer to both. Describe — How very strange it was that Jonah, though himself a forgiven man, was offended with God for making Nineveh a forgiven city. Our own sense of God's mercy in forgiving us , ought to make us very hopeful about others, and very thankful when we find that God's grace reaches also to them. There is joy among the angels over one penitent, and we should share their joy. ( Robert Tuck, B. A. ) The excitement produced by Eastern prophets Cunningham Geikie, D. D. Orientals are still impressed, more or less readily, by the appearance of "holy men," such as their own dervishes, whose enthusiasm, in some cases, where high sincerity inspires them, is much like that which marks a true prophet in all ages. The name "dervish," Dr. Wolff tells us, means "one who hangs at the gate of God," awaiting His inspiration; and the ecstasy of some of the class may be compared to that of which we read, for example, of Micah, who, we are told, went about " stripped and naked, and howled like the jackals, and roared like the ostrich." I do not suppose that Jonah bore himself thus, but the fact that such appearances as those of Micah were familiar over all Asia must have opened the way for his influence in Nineveh. We may suppose him showing himself in such a garb as that of Elijah, or others of the prophets, — his hair streaming down his shoulders, his outer dress a rude sheepskin mantle. He may have arrived in the disastrous time after the death of Shalmaneser II., when the nations conquered by that great monarch, from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean, were, in most cases, in rebellion, and troubles oppressed the Nineveh palaces. Wandering over the open spaces, with their mansions and huts, and through the lanes and bazaars of each part of the city, he terrified the cr

Benson Commentary Jonah 3:1 And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Jonah 3:1-3 . And the word of the Lord, &c. — After Jonah had been well chastised for his disobedience, and was set at liberty, as recorded in the preceding chapter, the divine call to him to prophesy was repeated. He had rebelled against God’s command the first time, but now, being humbled and better prepared, he is tried again. So — Hebrew, And, Jonah arose and went into Nineveh — He now obeys without reluctance. Such was the blessed fruit of the correction which he had received. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city — The Hebrew reads, A great city to God: so the mountains of God are the same with great mountains, Psalm 36:6 , and the cedars of God are translated goodly cedars, Psalm 80:10 . Nineveh was the greatest city in the known world at that time; greater than Babylon, whose compass was then three hundred and eighty-five furlongs; but Nineveh was in compass four hundred and eighty furlongs, which makes something more than sixty of our miles. It is said that its walls were one hundred feet in height, and broad enough for three coaches to meet and pass safely by each other: that it had one thousand five hundred towers on its walls, each two hundred feet high. Diodorus Siculus represents it as an oblong figure, the two longer sides of which measured one hundred and fifty stadia, and the two shorter ninety. “Ninus,” says he, “hastened to build a city of such magnitude, that it should not only be the greatest which then existed in the whole world, but that none in succeeding ages, who undertook such a work, should easily surpass it; and his expectation has not been deceived. For no one has since built so great a city; both as to the extent of its circuit, and the magnificence of its wall.” According to a report recorded by Eustathius, fourteen myriads of men were employed for eight years in building this city. It is here said, that it was of three days’ journey; and Diodorus asserts the same; that is, of three days’ journey in circuit, allowing twenty miles to each day. Jonah 3:2 Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. Jonah 3:3 So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days' journey. Jonah 3:4 And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. Jonah 3:4 . And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey — That is, he proceeded into the city as far as he could go in a day. And he cried, Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown — The threat is express; but there was a reserve with God on condition of repentance. And it must be observed, that in most of the threatenings of God there is a condition expressed or understood. This is the general rule for interpreting all such denunciations, as has been observed in the note on Jeremiah 18:8 , unless where God makes an express declaration that the iniquity of the people against whom he denounces his judgments is full, and that he will not spare them; or, as it is expressed by our Saviour, with regard to Jerusalem, that the things which belong unto their peace are then hid from their eyes. Jonah 3:5 So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them. Jonah 3:5-6 . So the people of Nineveh believed God, &c. — “The fame,” says Lowth, “of the wonderful works God had wrought for the Jews, was spread over the eastern parts of the world. This might make the Ninevites hearken to a man of that nation, that came to them as sent by God. And it is likely that he gave them an account of the miraculous circumstances which attended his own mission. But, without question, a sense of their own guilt, and their deserving whatever punishment Heaven could inflict, was a principal reason that moved them to have a regard to this message. And by the men of Nineveh’s repenting at the preaching of Jonah, God designed to upbraid the stubbornness of his own people, and shame them, as it were, into repentance; lest the men of Nineveh should rise up in judgment against them, as our Saviour speaks of the Jews in his own time, Matthew 12:41 .” And proclaimed a fast — The king and his nobles, or those in authority, ordered that every one should fast for three days, and put on habits of sorrow and humiliation. For word came unto the king of Nineveh — Archbishop Usher, in his Annals ad A.M. 3233, supposes this prince to have been Pul, the king of Assyria, (Nineveh being then the capital city of that empire,) who afterward invaded the kingdom of Israel, in the days of Menahem, 2 Kings 15:19 : it being very agreeable to the methods of Providence to make use of a heathen king, that was penitent, to punish the impenitence of God’s own people Israel. And he arose from his throne, &c. — He laid aside all his state, and put on the habit of a penitent. Jonah 3:6 For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. Jonah 3:7 And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: Jonah 3:7-9 . Let neither man nor beast taste any thing — This was ordered to add the greater solemnity to the humiliation, and that men might be affected by the mournful cries of the cattle under such restraints, and thereby be moved to greater sorrow and contrition. It was, however, carrying their abstinence to a greater severity than we find practised among the Jews; for though, in times of public calamity, and on the day of solemn expiation, they made their children fast, as we may gather from Joel 2:16 , yet we nowhere read of their extending that rigour to cattle. But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth — Their horses and camels, both which they had been accustomed to adorn with rich and costly clothing, they must now clothe with sackcloth, in testimony of a hearty repentance; the clothing of the beasts must witness for the men. Thus, in funerals, the covering horses and mules with sackcloth adds to the solemnity of the occasion, and tends to increase the sorrow. And cry mightily — That is, let the men cry; for though the men and beasts are spoken of promiscuously in this proclamation, yet there are some expressions which are to be applied peculiarly to the men. Yea, let every one turn from his evil way — Let every one forsake his vicious practices. And from the violence that is in their hands — Let him cease to defraud or oppress his fellow-creatures, and desist from all acts of violence; yea, and let him restore what he has gotten by such practices. Natural religion instructed them, that their earnest prayers, without true amendment, would not avail them before God; nor would their repentance be thought sincere, unless they restored to the true owners what they had gained by violence and injustice. Who can tell if God will turn and repent? — That is, whether he will change his way toward us, and revoke the sentence gone forth against us. It was a great thing for these heathen to give such proofs of repentance, under an uncertain hope of pardon. Jonah 3:8 But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. Jonah 3:9 Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not? Jonah 3:10 And God saw their works, that they 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. Jonah 3:10 . And God saw their works — He not only heard their good words, by which they professed repentance, but saw their good works, by which they brought forth fruits meet for repentance. He saw that they turned from their evil way — And that was what he looked for and required. If he had not seen that, their fasting and sackcloth would have been as nothing in his account. Observe, reader, God takes notice of every instance of the reformation of sinners, even of those instances which fall not under the observation of the world. He sees who turn from their evil ways and who do not; and meets those with favour that meet him in a sincere conversion. When men repent of the evil of sin committed by them, he repents of the evil of judgment pronounced against them. Thus he spared Nineveh, and did not the evil which he said he would do against it. Here were no sacrifices offered to God, that we read of, to make atonement for sin; but the sacrifice of God is a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, such as the Ninevites now had, is what he will not despise: on the contrary, it is what he will give encouragement to, and put honour upon. Benson Commentary on the Old and New Testaments Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com . Used by Permission.

Expositor's Bible Commentary Jonah 3:1 And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time, saying, THE REPENTANCE OF THE CITY Jonah 3:1-10 HAVING learned, through suffering, his moral kinship with the ‘heathen, and having offered his life for some of them, Jonah receives a second command to go to Nineveh. He obeys, but with his prejudice as strong as though it had never been humbled, nor met by Gentile nobleness. The first part of his story appears to have no consequences in the second. But this is consistent with the writer’s purpose to treat Jonah as if he were Israel. For, upon their return from Exile, and in spite of all their new knowledge of themselves and the world, Israel continued to cherish their old grudge against the Gentiles. "And the word of Jehovah came to Jonah the second time, saying, Up, go to Nineveh, the great city, and call unto her with the call which I shall tell thee. And Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, as Jehovah said. Now Nineveh was a city great before God, three days’ journey" through and through. "And Jonah began by going through the city one day’s journey, and he cried and said, Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overturned." Opposite to Mosul, the well-known emporium of trade on the right bank of the Upper Tigris, two high artificial mounds now lift themselves from the otherwise level plain. The more northerly takes the name of Kujundschik, or "little lamb," after the Turkish village which couches pleasantly upon its northeastern slope. The other is called in the popular dialect Nebi Yu-nus, "Prophet Jonah," after a mosque dedicated to him, which used to be a Christian church; but the official name is Nineveh. These two mounds are bound to each other on the west by a broad brick wall, which extends beyond them both, and is connected north and south by other walls, with a circumference in all of about nine English miles. The interval, including the mounds, was covered with buildings, whose ruins still enable us to form some idea of what was for centuries the wonder of the world. Upon terraces and substructions of enormous breadth rose storied palaces, arsenals, barracks, libraries, and temples. A lavish water system spread in all directions from canals with massive embankments and sluices. Gardens were lifted into midair, filled with rich plants and rare and beautiful animals. Alabaster, silver, gold, and precious stones relieved the dull masses of brick and flashed sunlight from every frieze and battlement. The surrounding walls were so broad that chariots could roll abreast on them. The gates, and especially the river gates, were very massive. All this was Nineveh proper, whose glory the Hebrews envied and over whose fall more than one of their prophets exult. But this was not the Nineveh to which our author saw Jonah come. Beyond the walls were great suburbs, { Genesis 10:11 } and beyond the suburbs other towns, league upon league of dwellings, so closely set upon the plain as to form one vast complex of population, which is known to Scripture as "The Great City." To judge from the ruins which still cover the ground, the circumference must have been about sixty miles, or three days’ journey. It is these nameless leagues of common dwellings which roll before us in the story. None of those glories of Nineveh are mentioned of which other prophets speak, but the only proofs offered to us of the city’s greatness are its extent and its population. { Jonah 3:2 } Jonah is sent to three days, not of mighty buildings, but of homes and families, to the Nineveh, not of kings and their glories, but of men, women, and children, "besides much cattle." The palaces and temples, he may pass in an hour or two, but from sunrise to sunset he treads the dim drab mazes where the people dwell. When we open our hearts for heroic witness to the truth there rush upon them glowing memories of Moses before Pharaoh, of Elijah before Ahab, of Stephen before the Sanhedrim, of Paul upon Areopagus, of Galileo before the Inquisition, of Luther at the Diet. But it takes a greater heroism to face the people than a king, to convert a nation than to persuade a senate. Princes and assemblies of the wise stimulate the imagination; they drive to bay all the nobler passions of a solitary man. But there is nothing to help the heart, and therefore its courage is all the greater, which bears witness before those endless masses, in monotone of life and color, that now paralyze the imagination like long stretches of sand when the sea is out, and again terrify it like the resistless rush of the flood beneath a hopeless evening sky. It is, then, with an art most fitted to his high purpose that our author-unlike all other prophets, whose aim was different-presents to us, not the description of a great military power: king, nobles, and armed battalions: but the vision of those monotonous millions. He strips his country’s foes of everything foreign, everything provocative of envy and hatred, and unfolds them to Israel only in their teeming humanity. His next step is still more grand. For this teeming humanity he claims the universal human possibility of repentance-that and nothing more. Under every form and character of human life, beneath all needs and all habits, deeper than despair and more native to man than sin itself, lies the power of the heart to turn. It was this and not hope that remained at the bottom of Pandora’s Box when every other gift had fled. For this is the indispensable secret of hope. It lies in every heart, needing indeed some dream of Divine mercy, however far and vague, to rouse it; but when roused, neither ignorance of God, nor pride, nor long obduracy of evil may withstand it. It takes command of the whole nature of a man, and speeds from heart to heart with a violence, that like pain and death spares neither age nor rank nor degree of culture. This primal human right is all our author claims for the men of Nineveh. He has been blamed for telling us an impossible thing, that a whole city should be converted at the call of a single stranger; and others have started up in his defense and quoted cases in which large Oriental populations have actually been stirred by the preaching of an alien in race and religion; and then it has been replied, "Granted the possibility, granted the fact in other cases, yet where in history have we any trace of this alleged conversion of all Nineveh?" and some scoff, "How could a Hebrew have made himself articulate in one day to those Assyrian multitudes?" How long, O Lord, must Thy poetry suffer from those who can only treat it as prose? On whatever side they stand, skeptical or orthodox, they are equally pedants, quenchers of the spiritual, creators of unbelief. Our author, let us once for all understand, makes no attempt to record a historical conversion of this vast heathen city. For its men he claims only the primary human possibility of repentance; expressing himself not in this general abstract way, but as Orientals, to whom an illustration is ever a proof, love to have it done-by story or parable. With magnificent reserve he has not gone further; but only told into the prejudiced faces of his people, that out there, beyond the Covenant, in the great world lying in darkness, there live, not beings created for ignorance and hostility to God, elect for destruction, but men with consciences and hearts, able to turn at His Word and to hope in His Mercy-that to the farthest ends of the world, and even on the high places of unrighteousness, Word and Mercy work just as they do within the Covenant. The fashion in which the repentance of Nineveh is described is natural to the time of the writer. It is a national repentance, of course, and though swelling upwards from the people, it is confirmed and organized by the authorities: for we are still in the Old Dispensation, when the picture of a complete and thorough repentance could hardly be otherwise conceived. And the beasts are made to share its observance, as in the Orient they always shared and still share in funeral pomp and trappings. It may have been, in addition, a personal pleasure to our writer to record the part of the animals in the movement. See how, later on, he tells us that for their sake also God had pity upon Nineveh. "And the men of Nineveh believed upon God, and cried a fast, and from the greatest of them to the least of them they put on sackcloth. And word came to the king of Nineveh, and he rose off his throne, and cast his mantle from upon him, and dressed in sackcloth and sat in the dust. And he sent criers to say in Nineveh":- "By Order of the King and his Nobles, thus:-Man and Beast, Oxen and Sheep, shall not taste anything, neither eat nor drink water. But let them clothe themselves in sackcloth, both man and beast, and call upon God with power, and turn every man from his evil way and from every wrong which they have in hand. Who knoweth but that God may relent and turn from the fierceness of His wrath, that we perish not"? "And God saw their doings, how they turned from their evil way; and God relented of the evil which He said He would do to them, and did it not." The Expositor's Bible Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com . Used by Permission.