---
title: "Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible"
author: "Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown"
languages: [en]
shelf: "Commentaries"
section: 526 of 927
url: https://scriptura.si/works/jamieson-fausset-brown-commentary-critical-and-explanatory-on-the-whole-bible/526/
cite: "Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, section 526. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/jamieson-fausset-brown-commentary-critical-and-explanatory-on-the-whole-bible/526/"
---

# Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

*Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown*

The Victorian standard commentary, critical and practical, from Genesis to Revelation.

## 526. Jonah · 2 of 3

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/jamieson-fausset-brown-commentary-critical-and-explanatory-on-the-whole-bible/526/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/jamieson-fausset-brown-commentary-critical-and-explanatory-on-the-whole-bible/526/#p-N

### Chapter 2

### Jon 2:1-10. Jonah's Prayer of Faith and Deliverance

[¶2] 1. his God--"his" still, though Jonah had fled from Him. Faith enables Jonah now to feel this; just as the returning prodigal says of the Father, from whom he had wandered, "I will arise and go to my Father" ([Lu 15:18]).

[¶3] out of the fish's belly--Every place may serve as an oratory. No place is amiss for prayer. Others translate, "when (delivered) out of the fish's belly." English Version is better.

[¶4] 2. His prayer is partly descriptive and precatory, partly eucharistical. Jonah incorporates with his own language inspired utterances familiar to the Church long before in [Jon 2:2], [Psa 120:1]; in [Jon 2:3], [Psa 42:7]; in [Jon 2:4], [Psa 31:22]; in [Jon 2:5], [Psa 69:1]; in [Jon 2:7], [Psa 142:3]; ; in [Jon 2:8], [Psa 31:6]; in [Jon 2:9], [Psa 116:17], , and 3:8. Jonah, an inspired man, thus attests both the antiquity and inspiration of the Psalms. It marks the spirit of faith, that Jonah identifies himself with the saints of old, appropriating their experiences as recorded in the Word of God ([Psa 119:50]). Affliction opens up the mine of Scripture, before seen only on the surface.

[¶5] out of the belly of hell--Sheol, the unseen world, which the belly of the fish resembled.

[¶6] 3. thou hadst cast ... thy billows ... thy waves--Jonah recognizes the source whence his sufferings came. It was no mere chance, but the hand of God which sent them. Compare Job's similar recognition of God's hand in calamities, [Job 1:21]; 2:10; and David's, [2Sa 16:5-11].

[¶7] 4. cast out from thy sight--that is, from Thy favorable regard. A just retribution on one who had fled "from the presence of the Lord" ([Jon 1:3]). Now that he has got his desire, he feels it to be his bitterest sorrow to be deprived of God's presence, which once he regarded as a burden, and from which he desired to escape. He had turned his back on God; so God turned His back on him, making his sin his punishment.

[¶8] toward thy holy temple--In the confidence of faith he anticipates yet to see the temple at Jerusalem, the appointed place of worship ([1Ki 8:38]), and there to render thanksgiving [Henderson]. Rather, I think, "Though cast out of Thy sight, I will still with the eye of faith once more look in prayer towards Thy temple at Jerusalem, whither, as Thy earthly throne, Thou hast desired Thy worshippers to direct their prayers."

[¶9] 5. even to the soul--that is, threatening to extinguish the animal life.

[¶10] weeds--He felt as if the seaweeds through which he was dragged were wrapped about his head.

[¶11] 6. bottoms of ... mountains--their extremities where they terminate in the hidden depths of the sea. Compare [Psa 18:7], "the foundations of the hills" ([Psa 18:15]).

[¶12] earth with her bars was about me--Earth, the land of the living, is (not "was") shut against me.

[¶13] for ever--so far as any effort of mine can deliver me.

[¶14] yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption--rather, "Thou bringest ... from the pit" [Maurer]. As in the previous clauses he expresses the hopelessness of his state, so in this, his sure hope of deliverance through Jehovah's infinite resources. "Against hope he believes in hope," and speaks as if the deliverance were actually being accomplished. Hezekiah seems to have incorporated Jonah's very words in his prayer ([Is 38:17]), just as Jonah appropriated the language of the Psalms.

[¶15] 7. soul fainted ... I remembered the Lord--beautifully exemplifying the triumph of spirit over flesh, of faith over sense ([Psa 73:26]; ). For a time troubles shut out hope; but faith revived when Jonah "remembered the Lord," what a gracious God He is, and how now He still preserves his life and consciousness in his dark prison-house.

[¶16] into thine holy temple--the temple at Jerusalem ([Jon 2:4]). As there he looks in believing prayer towards it, so here he regards his prayer as already heard.

[¶17] 8. observe lying vanities--regard or reverence idols, powerless to save ([Psa 31:6]).

[¶18] mercy--Jehovah, the very idea of whom is identified now in Jonah's mind with mercy and loving-kindness. As the Psalmist ([Psa 144:2]) styles Him, "my goodness"; God who is to me all beneficence. Compare [Psa 59:17], "the God of my mercy," literally, "my kindness-God." Jonah had "forsaken His own mercy," God, to flee to heathen lands where "lying vanities" (idols) were worshipped. But now, taught by his own preservation in conscious life in the fish's belly, and by the inability of the mariners' idols to lull the storm ([Jon 1:5]), estrangement from God seems estrangement from his own happiness ([Jr 2:13]; 17:13). Prayer has been restrained in Jonah's case, so that he was "fast asleep" in the midst of danger, heretofore; but now prayer is the sure sign of his return to God.

[¶19] 9. I will sacrifice ... thanksgiving--In the believing anticipation of sure deliverance, he offers thanksgivings already. So Jehoshaphat ([2Ch 20:21]) appointed singers to praise the Lord in front of the army before the battle with Moab and Ammon, as if the victory was already gained. God honors such confidence in Him. There is also herein a mark of sanctified affliction, that he vows amendment and thankful obedience ([Psa 119:67]).

[¶20] 10. upon the dry land--probably on the coast of Palestine.

### Chapter 3

### Jon 3:1-10. Jonah's Second Commission to Nineveh: The Ninevites Repent of Their Evil Way: So God Repents of the Evil Threatened

[¶23] 2. preach ... the preaching--literally, "proclaim the proclamation." On the former occasion the specific object of his commission to Nineveh was declared; here it is indeterminate. This is to show how freely he yields himself, in the spirit of unconditional obedience, to speak whatever God may please.

[¶24] 3. arose and went--like the son who was at first disobedient to the father's command, "Go work in my vineyard," but who afterwards "repented and went" ([Mt 21:28], ). Jonah was thus the fittest instrument for proclaiming judgment, and yet hope of mercy on repentance to Nineveh, being himself a living exemplification of both--judgment in his entombment in the fish, mercy on repentance in his deliverance. Israel professing to obey, but not obeying, and so doomed to exile in the same Nineveh, answers to the son who said, "I go, sir, and went not." In [Lu 11:30] it is said that Jonas was not only a sign to the men in Christ's time, but also "unto the Ninevites." On the latter occasion ([Mt 16:1-4]) when the Pharisees and Sadducees tempted Him, asking a sign from heaven, He answered, "No sign shall be given, but the sign of the prophet Jonas," [Mt 12:39]. Thus the sign had a twofold aspect, a direct bearing on the Ninevites, an indirect bearing on the Jews in Christ's time. To the Ninevites he was not merely a prophet, but himself a wonder in the earth, as one who had tasted of death, and yet had not seen corruption, but had now returned to witness among them for God. If the Ninevites had indulged in a captious spirit, they never would have inquired and so known Jonah's wonderful history; but being humbled by God's awful message, they learned from Jonah himself that it was the previous concealing in his bosom of the same message of their own doom that caused him to be entombed as an outcast from the living. Thus he was a "sign" to them of wrath on the one hand, and, on the other, of mercy. Guilty Jonah saved from the jaws of death gives a ray of hope to guilty Nineveh. Thus God, who brings good from evil, made Jonah in his fall, punishment, and restoration, a sign (an embodied lesson or living symbol) through which the Ninevites were roused to hear and repent, as they would not have been likely to do, had he gone on the first commission before his living entombment and resurrection. To do evil that good may come, is a policy which can only come from Satan; but from evil already done to extract an instrument against the kingdom of darkness, is a triumphant display of the grace and wisdom of God. To the Pharisees in Christ's time, who, not content with the many signs exhibited by Him, still demanded a sign from heaven, He gave a sign in the opposite quarter, namely, Jonah, who came "out of the belly of hell" (the unseen region). They looked for a Messiah gloriously coming in the clouds of heaven; the Messiah, on the contrary, is to pass through a like, though a deeper, humiliation than Jonah; He is to lie "in the heart of the earth." Jonah and his Antitype alike appeared low and friendless among their hearers; both victims to death for God's wrath against sin, both preaching repentance. Repentance derives all its efficacy from the death of Christ, just as Jonah's message derived its weight with the Ninevites from his entombment. The Jews stumbled at Christ's death, the very fact which ought to have led them to Him, as Jonah's entombment attracted the Ninevites to his message. As Jonah's restoration gave hope of God's placability to Nineveh, so Christ's resurrection assures us God is fully reconciled to man by Christ's death. But Jonah's entombment only had the effect of a moral suasive; Christ's death is an efficacious instrument of reconciliation between God and man [Fairbairn].

[¶25] Nineveh was an exceeding great city--literally, "great to God," that is, before God. All greatness was in the Hebrew mind associated with God; hence arose the idiom (compare "great mountains," Margin, "mountains of God," [Psa 36:6]; "goodly cedars," Margin, "cedars of God," [Psa 80:10]; "a mighty hunter before the Lord," [Ge 10:9]).

[¶26] three days' journey--that is, about sixty miles, allowing about twenty miles for a day's journey. Jonah's statement is confirmed by heathen writers, who describe Nineveh as four hundred eighty stadia in circumference [Diodorus Siculus, 2.3]. Herodotus defines a day's journey to be one hundred fifty stadia; so three days' journey will not be much below Diodorus' estimate. The parallelogram in Central Assyria covered with remains of buildings has Khorsabad northeast; Koyunjik and Nebbi Yunus near the Tigris, northwest; Nimroud, between the Tigris and the Zab, southwest; and Karamless, at a distance inward from the Zab, southeast. From Koyunjik to Nimroud is about eighteen miles; from Khorsabad to Karamless, the same; from Koyunjik to Khorsabad, thirteen or fourteen miles; from Nimroud to Karamless, fourteen miles. The length thus was greater than the breadth; compare [Jon 3:4], "a day's journey," which is confirmed by heathen writers and by modern measurements. The walls were a hundred feet high, and broad enough to allow three chariots abreast, and had moreover fifteen hundred lofty towers. The space between, including large parks and arable ground, as well as houses, was Nineveh in its full extent. The oldest palaces are at Nimroud, which was probably the original site. Layard latterly has thought that the name Nineveh belonged originally to Koyunjik, rather than to Nimroud. Jonah ([Jon 4:11]) mentions the children as numbering one hundred twenty thousand, which would give about a million to the whole population. Existing ruins show that Nineveh acquired its greatest extent under the kings of the second dynasty, that is, the kings mentioned in Scripture; it was then that Jonah visited it, and the reports of its magnificence were carried to the west [Layard].

[¶27] 4. a day's journey--not going straight forward without stopping: for the city was but eighteen miles in length; but stopping in his progress from time to time to announce his message to the crowds gathering about him.

[¶28] Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown--The commission, given indefinitely at his setting out, assumes now on his arrival a definite form, and that severer than before. It is no longer a cry against the sins of Nineveh, but an announcement of its ruin in forty days. This number is in Scripture associated often with humiliation. It was forty days that Moses, Elijah, and Christ fasted. Forty years elapsed from the beginning of Christ's ministry (the antitype of Jonah's) to the destruction of Jerusalem. The more definite form of the denunciation implies that Nineveh has now almost filled up the measure of her guilt. The change in the form which the Ninevites would hear from Jonah on anxious inquiry into his history, would alarm them the more, as implying the increasing nearness and certainty of their doom, and would at the same time reprove Jonah for his previous guilt in delaying to warn them. The very solitariness of the one message announced by the stranger thus suddenly appearing among them, would impress them with the more awe. Learning from him, that so far from lightly prophesying evil against them, he had shrunk from announcing a less severe denunciation, and therefore had been cast into the deep and only saved by miracle, they felt how imminent was their peril, threatened as they now were by a prophet whose fortunes were so closely bound up with theirs. In Noah's days one hundred twenty years of warning were given to men, yet they repented not till the flood came, and it was too late. But in the case of Nineveh, God granted a double mercy: first, that its people should repent immediately after threatening; second, that pardon should immediately follow their repentance.

[¶29] 5. believed God--gave credit to Jonah's message from God; thus recognizing Jehovah as the true God.

[¶30] fast ... sackcloth--In the East outward actions are often used as symbolical expressions of inward feelings. So fasting and clothing in sackcloth were customary in humiliation. Compare in Ahab's case, parallel to that of Nineveh, both receiving a respite on penitence ([1Ki 21:27]; , ; [Joe 1:13]).

[¶31] from the greatest ... to the least--The penitence was not partial, but pervading all classes.

[¶32] 6. in ashes--emblem of the deepest humiliation ([Job 2:8]; [Eze 27:30]).

[¶33] 7. neither ... beast ... taste any thing--The brute creatures share in the evil effects of man's sin ([Jon 4:11]; [Ro 8:20], ); so they here according to Eastern custom, are made to share in man's outward indications of humiliation. "When the Persian general Masistias was slain, the horses and mules of the Persians were shorn, as well as themselves" [Newcome from Plutarch; also Herodotus, 9.24].

[¶34] 8. cry ... turn--Prayer without reformation is a mockery of God ([Psa 66:18]; [Is 58:6]). Prayer, on the other hand, must precede true reformation, as we cannot turn to God from our evil way unless God first turns us ([Jr 31:18], ).

[¶35] 9. Who can tell--(Compare [Joe 2:14]). Their acting on a vague possibility of God's mercy, without any special ground of encouragement, is the more remarkable instance of faith, as they had to break through long-rooted prejudices in giving up idols to seek Jehovah at all. The only ground which their ready faith rested on, was the fact of God sending one to warn them, instead of destroying them at once; this suggested the thought of a possibility of pardon. Hence they are cited by Christ as about to condemn in the judgment those who, with much greater light and privileges, yet repent not ([Mt 12:41]).

[¶36] 10. God repented of the evil--When the message was sent to them, they were so ripe for judgment that a purpose of destruction to take effect in forty days was the only word God's righteous abhorrence of sin admitted of as to them. But when they repented, the position in which they stood towards God's righteousness was altered. So God's mode of dealing with them must alter accordingly, if God is not to be inconsistent with His own immutable character of dealing with men according to their works and state of heart, taking vengeance at last on the hardened impenitent, and delighting to show mercy on the penitent. Compare Abraham's reasoning, [Ge 18:25]; [Eze 18:21-25]; [Jr 18:7-10]. What was really a change in them and in God's corresponding dealings is, in condescension to human conceptions, represented as a change in God (compare [Ex 32:14]), who, in His essential righteousness and mercy, changeth not ([Nu 23:19]; [1Sa 15:29]; Mal 3:6; [Jas 1:17]). The reason why the announcement of destruction was made absolute, and not dependent on Nineveh's continued impenitence, was that this form was the only one calculated to rouse them; and at the same time it was a truthful representation of God's purpose towards Nineveh under its existing state, and of Nineveh's due. When that state ceased, a new relation of Nineveh to God, not contemplated in the message, came in, and room was made for the word to take effect, "the curse causeless shall not come" [Fairbairn]. Prophecy is not merely for the sake of proving God's omniscience by the verification of predictions of the future, but is mainly designed to vindicate God's justice and mercy in dealing with the impenitent and penitent respectively ([Ro 11:22]). The Bible ever assigns the first place to the eternal principles of righteousness, rooted in the character of God, subordinating to them all divine arrangements. God's sparing Nineveh, when in the jaws of destruction, on the first dawn of repentance encourages the timid penitent, and shows beforehand that Israel's doom, soon after accomplished, is to be ascribed, not to unwillingness to forgive on God's part, but to their own obstinate impenitence.

### Chapter 4

### Jon 4:1-11. Jonah Frets at God's Mercy to Nineveh: Is Reproved by the Type of a Gourd

[¶39] 1. angry--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 ([Mt 18:23-35]). 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].

[¶40] 2. my saying--my thought, or feeling.

[¶41] fled before--I anticipated by fleeing, the disappointment of my design through Thy long-suffering mercy.

[¶42] gracious ... and merciful, &c.--Jonah here has before his mind [Ex 34:6]; as Joel ([Joe 2:13]) in his turn quotes from Jonah.

[¶43] 3. 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 ([1Ki 19:4]).

[¶44] 4. 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].