III. 2 Yet hast thou brought up my life from the pit (cor- When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the And my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple. They that regard lying vanities Forsake their own mercy. But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that which I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord. And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach (cry) unto it the preaching that I bid thee. So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, accord3 ing to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city (a city great unto God), of three 4 days' journey. And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, 5 and Nineveh shall be overthrown. And the people of Nineveh believed God; and they proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even 6 to the least of them. And the tidings reached the (For word came unto the) king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and laid his robe from him, and covered 7 him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he made proclamation and published (said) through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything; 8 let them not feed, nor drink water; but let them be covered with sackcloth, both man and beast, and let them cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn everyone from his evil way, and from the violence that is in 9 their hands. Who knoweth whether God will not turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that IO we perish not? And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, which he said he would do unto them; and he did IV. it not. But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he 2 was angry. And he prayed unto the Lord, and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I basted to flee (was beforehand in fleeing) unto Tarshish: for I know that thou art a gracious God, and full of compassion, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy, and repentest thee of 3 the evil. Therefore now, O Lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to 4 live. And the Lord said, Doest thou well to be angry? (Art thou greatly angry?) Then Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he 5 might see what would become of the city. And the Lord God prepared a gourd (Palma Christi, kikayon), and made it to cover up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his evil case. So Jonah was exceeding glad because of the gourd. 7 But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the 8 next day, and it smote the gourd, that it withered. And 10 it came to pass, when the sun arose, that God prepared a sultry east wind; and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and requested for himself that he might die, and said, It is better for me to die than to 9 live. And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry even unto death. And the Lord said, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not labored, neither madest it grow; which came up in a II night, and perished in a night: and should not I have pity on Nineveh, that great city; wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?" Was there in reality a man named Jonah, the son of Amittai, and if so, was he a prophet? The passage, 2 Kings xiv. 23-25, a very brief account of the reign of Jeroboam II. (786-746 B. C.), contains the answer. "In the fifteenth year of Amaziah, the son of Joash, king of Judah, Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel, began to reign in Samaria, and reigned forty and one years. And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord: he departed not from all the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, wherewith he made Israel to sin. He restored the border of Israel from the entering in of Hamath unto the sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which he spake by the hand of his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, which was of Gathhepher." This is the only mention of a person called Jonah in all the Old Testament outside the book which bears that name. Here, as in the Book of Jonah, he is called the son of Amittai; here, as there, he is a prophet, and the seldom occurrence of the names Jonah and Amittai indicates very strongly that the Jonah of Jeroboam's time is identical with the hero of our story. The historical character of this passage cannot justly be questioned, and we may then believe that Jonah, the son of Amittai, was a real character, who lived in the eighth century B. C. We may infer from the passage that he was a prophet of considerable influence, patronized by the royal family, and indeed successful in his profession, for the restoration of the ancient border of Israel was a matter of no slight importance to the kingdom; nor can it be supposed that he was a prophet of little consequence because he is mentioned but once in the historical books. Ezekiel does not appear in the Old Testament outside the book which bears his name. We may also be certain that Jonah's home was at Gath-hepher, a small village which, according to Joshua xix. 13, was on the border of Zebulun. Jerome says that it was situated two miles from Sepphoris, or Diocesaria. It stood upon the spot now occupied by the modern ElMeshad, and on a rocky hill near this Arabic village may still be seen a tomb which is venerated by the Moslems, who believe it is the resting-place of the prophet. The tomb is known to have existed as early as the twelfth century. The Jews and early Christians identified Jonah with a boy who lived with his widowed mother in Zarephath, near Sidon. Jerome, in his preface to the book of Jonah, says: "In this boy, so later ages delighted to believe, was recovered the first prophet to the Gentile world, Jonah, the son of Amittai, repaying in his mission of mercy and pity to the Assyrian Nineveh, the mercy and pity which his mother had showed to the Israelite wanderer." The story says that Elijah met a widow gathering sticks by the gate of Zarephath. The tired prophet asked for water to drink, and as the widow was going to draw it for him, he requested her to bring with it a morsel of bread. The poor widow told him of her poverty, for there was a famine in the land; she was gathering fuel to cook the last handful of meal remaining in the barrel, that she |