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THE MESSAGE OF JONAH

HE book of Jonah is peculiar among the prophetic writings in that it contains no

message delivered to the people of God by the prophet whose name it bears. The book is a story, and the story is the message. It was not written for Nineveh. It was written for Israel, using that word in its narrower application to the Northern kingdom, yet recognizing that the moral values of the book have their application to the whole nation.

In order, then, to discover the message of the book, we must seek for the outstanding facts in the story. In doing this it is of the utmost importance that we distinguish between the incidental and the essential. The incidental things are the ship, the storm, the whale, the gourd, the wind, and Nineveh. I need only pause here long enough to say that the incidental things are not necessarily things existing only in the imagination. These things are incidental because they were the instruments in the hand of the master

Workman. The essential matters of the book are the transactions between Jehovah and Jonah. It is when the attention is fixed upon these, and all the other things are seen as incidental, that we begin to find the permanent value of the book, and to discover its living message.

Thus to concentrate the attention upon the essential persons is to find that the book is supremely the one of missionary teaching in the Old Testament. Whereas a missionary purpose is to be found in the whole history of the Hebrew people, this one brief book in the prophetic section does more clearly set forth that missionary purpose, both as to its source and its method, than any other book in the whole of the Old Testament library. It reveals the attitudes and activities of God towards the nations, and towards His own for the sake of the nations. It rebukes the failure of those who should represent Him. It recalls to worship those who have neglected that responsibility of representation. We may hold different opinions as to when and by whom the book was written, but we cannot read it in the way indicated without seeing that its first intention was that of rebuking the exclusiveness of the chosen people of God. Whether Jonah

wrote it himself or not, it purports to be the story of events in his life, and there can be no reason able doubt that the Jonah referred to is the one named in the book of Kings as exercising his ministry in the reign of Jeroboam II. If we recall the prevailing conditions during that period we find two things of the most strangely contradictory character. Israel was attempting to form alliances with the nations around her, and at the same time was more exclusive religiously than she had ever been. She had come to hold the idea that the religion of Jehovah was hers only, that God had made her His peculiar people and cared nothing for others, and that the only attitude of God towards the people outside the covenant was that of hostility. The whole of the Hebrew contempt for, and antagonism to, surrounding nations is focussed in the picture of Jonah. The whole of the Divine attitude towards the surrounding nations, the Divine pity, the Divine patience, the Divine power, is revealed as we see Jehovah dealing with Jonah. Thus there are two permanent values. First, the revelation of the attitude of Jehovah; and secondly, the revelation of the responsibilities of such as represent Him.

We do not find the deepest note concerning Jehovah until we arrive at the end of the book. The story begins with a command to Jonah to arise and go to Nineveh, and cry against it. When we follow the story through, and come to the last words, we touch the deepest note: "Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a 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?"

"Should not I have pity on Nineveh?" Here we touch the fundamental truth of the whole book. Everything else is the outcome of it. The command to Jonah to go to Nineveh, the patient persistence with which God compelled him to obedience, are alike the outcome of what is declared in that brief sentence. The relation of this book of Jonah to the books we have already considered is full of interest. It completes a remarkable triptych presenting three pictures of Jehovah. In Amos His sovereignty over the nations is revealed. In Obadiah He is

revealed as the God of judgment. In Jonah the supreme revelation is that He is a God of mercy, a God of pity.

The word pity is significant. The Hebrew word literally means cover. Should not I cover Nineveh? The thought perfectly harmonizes with the revelation of God suggested in the words which Jesus uttered over Jerusalem: "How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not." The idea is that of covering them, and so shielding them from danger. Should not I cover Nineveh, brood over it, protect it, feel its sorrows in My own heart, shield it from destroying forces? In that word we have His attitude towards sinning cities. That is the source of missionary enleavour in all the centuries, "Should not I have pity?"

Out of that attitude all the activities of Jehovah proceed. I think if I took up this book of Jonah, and read it for the first time, I should inevitably misread it, because I should put into the first command to Jonah an emphasis wholly of anger in the presence of the wickedness and abounding iniquity of Nineveh; but I cannot so