Chapter XI
Mong the many stories told of Chief Baron O’Grady, first Lord Guillamore, of the Irish Court of Exchequer, there is one about a judgment of his which is probably unique in judicial annals. The two juzsme Barons who were sitting with him zz dank in the hearing of an important case, had delivered elaborate judgments, taking opposing views of the law; and the Chief Baron’s judgment which followed was given in the single sentence, ‘“‘I agree with my brother Smith for the reasons assigned by my brother McClelland.”
When the mind is wavering in its acceptance of what seems to be true and right, there is nothing so helpful as an able and exhaustive statement of all that can be said upon the other side. In this way I owe much to the Higher Critics for settling my faith in Scripture; and I confess that my full acceptance of the Book of Cu. XI. THE BOOK OF JONAH 143
Jonah dates from my study of their reasons for rejecting it.;
We all know the old woman who was ready to believe that Jonah swallowed the whale, if only the Bible said so; but we are not all equal to faith feats of that kind. From standard books of great authority I learned that it would be as impossible for a whale to swallow a man as for a man to swallow a whale; the shark was said to be the only fish in the sea that could accomplish it; and my faith became somewhat knockkneed in presence of the shark.!
But I was reminded of the words, ‘‘ Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.” Yes, there is no doubt that Almighty God could extemporise a sea monster for the purpose. And such a miracle would not involve a greater display of power than many others; but it would be a miracle of a kind that has no precedent or analogy in Scripture. We have learned to re-define ‘‘ supernatural power”; for “nature” is merely a way of expressing one sphere of God’s working. And as already noticed, Divine miracles are wholly free from any merely dramatic display
* I am not justifying my scepticism. For the word translated “whale” in our New Testament may mean any large fish. But our minds easily become enslaved not only to ideas but to words, of the resources of the Almighty.t. My difficulty therefore was, not that what was narrated was supernatural, but that it seemed zznatural.
And yet the fact was indisputable that nothing in the Old Testament was accredited more definitely by the Lord Jesus Christ than this very miracle. It was used by Him not as an incidental illustration, but as a prophecy and a type in the strictest sense, of His death and resurrection. There is no evading this; and therefore the Christian will find that to jettison the prophet Jonah, so far from calming the waves of scepticism, will only bring the barque of his faith into still greater peril.
We have become accustomed to find that distinguished Professors, and ecclesiastics of high degree, in criticising the Bible, sometimes display ignorance of spiritual things; but in the sphere of the zatural one does expect facts from their lips and pens. A friend of mine put up a new summer-house in his garden. .The entrance to it is so wide that a carriage and pair might drive through it; and that entrance consists of the jaws of a sperm whale!
A whale unable to swallow a man! In his
* See p. 88, ante.
Cu. XI.] JONAH AND THE WHALE 145
Cruzse of the “Cachelot,” Mr. Bullen, an experienced whale fisher himself, describes the creature’s mouth as large enough to hold a picnic party, and he tells of a shark 15 feet long being found in the stomach of one of these monsters. A whale that he himself helped to kill ejected the food it had swallowed; and it was, he says, “in masses of enormous size, some of them being estimated to be of the size of our hatch-house, viz., 8 feet x 6 feet x 6 feet.” And in this connection he mentions a fact of special interest here, that the whale when dying vomuts the contents of rts stomach.
This same writer discusses the question how a monster so unwieldy can get hold of the smaller fish. “It is manifestly absurd,” he says, ‘to suppose the whale capable of catching fish in the ordinary sense, indicating pursuit.” And his explanation of it is that ‘as the cachelot swims about with his lower jaw hanging down zz zts normal position, and his huge gullet gaping like a submarine cavern, the fish unwittingly glide down it.”
When in the light of these facts I again take up the Book of Jonah, I am conscious of a strange revulsion of feeling. The Hebrew Concordance
tells me that when I read that “God prepared a It ae
great fish,” the word used is the same as when the king of Babylon “appointed” a certain provision for Daniel and his companions. In other words, the statement means that in the providence of God, when Jonah was thrown overboard, one of these huge sea monsters was swimming by, “his huge gullet gaping like a submarine cavern,” and Jonah went down just as a midge might go down the throat of a man when running against the wind.
This part of the miracle, therefore, which I was inclined to reject as being unprecedented and unnatural, proves to be no miracle at all. Neither is there any miracle in Jonah’s being vomited out again: that was a process as natural as for a child to get rid of its dinner. Both the swallowing and the vomiting were perfectly natural, and there was nothing about either to excite even our wonder, much less incredulity. Where the miracle began and ended was that God preserved the life of His servant.through it all.
And here — to repeat a favourite phrase — faith and unbelief must measure their distance. To say that God could not do this is to deny God altogether: to say He would not do it is absurd — any one of us would do it in similar circumstances if only we had the power: to say He dd
Cu. XI.] JONAH ACCREDITED BY CHRIST 147
a es
not do it is a flagrant case of begging the question. The New Testament refers to Jonah as a prophecy of the resurrection of Christ. For “He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures”; and where, save in Jonah, shall we find in the Old Testament a plain and clear prophecy of His rising on the third day? And the Lord Jesus Christ, in the most definite and solemn manner, identified Himself with this very miracle. In the beginning of His ministry “signs” abounded; but when, after the Council which decreed His rejection, the Pharisees again demanded a ‘‘sign,” His answer was that the only sign they should have was “the sign of the prophet Jonah.” His words, repeated we know not how often, cannot be explained away : — “As Jonah 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.”2
Some people seem to classify the miracles of Scripture. The little miracles they accept as a matter of course: it is only the big ones which try their faith. I would suggest to such people
* 1 Cor. xv. 4 (see p. 76, ante).
* Matt. xii. 38-40, and xvi. 4. The Lord may have given the same answer a score of times for aught we know. And see Pp. 144, ante, and Appendix, Note III.
to enter the Jonah miracle low down on their list, but at the top to place those most stupendous and seemingly incredible of all miracles, the incarnation and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. And when in some little measure they have realised who and what He-is, His words will silence unbelief; and they will recognise that whatever judgment may be formed upon the Book of Jonah, the wzvacle which it records is inseparably identified with the truth of Christianity.
That it was on account of the miracle that the Germans decreed the rejection of the Book no honest person would dispute. But after their manner, they heaped up incidental reasons for their decision. And these reasons their English followers have, with childlike simplicity, adopted. Their interpretation is of the nightmare kind; everything in the book ought to have happened differently; things are included which ought to have been omitted, and things are omitted which ought to have been included. The only element of doubt is whether it is typical, or mythical, or legendary, or allegorical. Historical it certainly cannot be.
Now this sort of criticism any Old Bailey practitioner could work up far better than the Professors. For let it-be kept in view that the
Cu. XI] DR. DRIVER ON JONAH 149
whole argument from the language of the Book may be ruled out. Professor Driver indeed asserts that “It cannot have been written until long after the time of Jonah.” But this is only Professor Driver’s way. Even such an uncompromising critic as Professor Cheyne dissociates himself from such a conclusion ;! and as any one can see, the grounds set out in support of it are entirely inadequate. And this being so, we may dismiss the Hebraists from the inquiry, and consider the general question on its merits.
Though Professor Driver denies the genuineness of the book, he is careful, as usual, to dissociate himself from the reckless extremes of the more advanced critics. ‘‘ No doubt,” he says, ‘the outlines of the narrative are historical.” And yet ‘there are indications that it is not strictly historical.” 2 These ‘indications”-are —
That the conversion of the Ninevites is ‘“contrary to analogy.”
That such a conversion ‘should have produced so little permanent effect.”
: He somewhat superciliously remarks, “The evidences of date are difficult to seize” (Encyclopedia Britannica, article “Jonah”). And see Speaker’s Commentary, “Jonah,” Excursus B; and also the late Dr. John Kennedy’s valuable monograph On the Book of Fonah (chap. viii.).
2 Introduction, “Jonah.”
That it is not “easy to imagine” the king acting as is represented.
This, remember, represents the superior enlightenment and intelligence of the Higher Criticism. Of the king referred to we know nothing; and possibly if his character were known it would not be ‘easy to imagine” his acting in any other way! And as regards the second point, it is only a student among his books, who knows nothing practically of human nature, who could entertain such an objection. I put it on this ground because it is idle to appeal to the history of the chosen people in the wilderness, for these critics dismiss the divinely given story as a legend. But the repentance of the Ninevites is ‘contrary to analogy.” Yes, and the conduct of masses of men when moved by any powerful passion is generally ‘‘contrary to analogy.”
But there is something else which, if we extend our view beyond our own times, is also contrary to analogy; and that is that any man holding the position of an English clergyman should treat with such entire indifference the words of his Divine Lord. “The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it; because
Cu. XI] A TRAVESTY OF JONAH Ist
they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and, behold, a greater than Jonah is here.”! Let the critics, dealing with the studies which alone are within their competence, give us reasons to doubt the genuineness of the Book of Jonah, and we will consider the question on its merits. But that the men of Nineveh repented at the preaching of Jonah is a fact which rests, not on the Book of Jonah merely, but on the word of ‘‘a greater than Jonah” — the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.2
The view of the Book presented by these writers is but a grotesque travesty. We seem to see a dripping, half-drowned Jew rushing through Nineveh, and shouting his startling message, like an escaped lunatic turned towncrier. And presto! all the inhabitants repent and turn good like clockwork, while the prophet himself turns sulky and bolts. This is their reading of it. This is Higher Criticism!
“Oh, the blindness of conventional critics, groping in Hebrew records not for pearls of facts, but for pebbles of dogma! They have failed to observe that the God of Jonah is the God of the New Testament. Yet it is so, and
t Matt. xii. 41. 2 See note, p. 74, ante.
this great book connects the two Bibles, instead of contrasting them.”!
The Book is essentially a drama, of which the brief and quickly changing scenes present a story that is wonderfully real and intensely human. Can men who scout the idea of a prophet’s refusing a call to service, and fleeing from the Lord, know anything of the deeper experiences of a spiritual life? And in such cases the Divine action is generally “contrary to analogy.” When Paul was bidden to go to Rome, and yet turned to Jerusalem, he was brought to Rome as a prisoner, discredited by a chain: when Jonah was bidden to go to Nineveh, and yet took ship for Tarshish, he ended by entering Nineveh as a prophet accredited by a miracle. For the fame of his miraculous deliverance preceded him?; and when he proclaimed that the God by whom he had been thus delivered had decreed the destruction of their city, all men naturally hung upon his words. What calls to righteousness he uttered upon that wonderful
* The words are from the pen of Charles Reade. He declares that this Book of “1,328 English words” “is the most beautiful story ever written in so small a compass” (Bible Characters).
? The Lord’s words in Luke xi. 30 admit of no other meaning. He Himself as crucified and risen was to be “a sign” to Isracl, just as Jonah rescued from death was a sign to the Ninevites.
Cu. XI.] THE TRUE STORY OF JONAH 153
text during the forty days of his ministry we know not. We can only conjecture what such preaching must have been.
And when the forty days were expired, he left the capital and made a hermit’s lodge in which to wait “till he might see what would become of the city.” But the days went by and nothing whatever happened. There must have been critics and sceptics in plenty in a place like Nineveh, and we can well imagine how they crowed. The men of faith, the ‘‘overcomers,” are “a little flock” in every age; with the many the prophet and the prophet’s God must soon have become a byword and a jest. And we can realise how Jonah would murmur against God, even as Elijah did, and, like him, exclaim, “‘T have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts.”
Every Christian who knows what it is to have a spiritual history has in some little measure had such experiences as these. And then it is that a silent heaven crushes us; then it is that the heart craves some token of the Divine presence. And we can imagine with what gladness Jonah recognised such a token in the gourd raised up to shelter him. We can imagine, too, the bitterness of the recoil when the vulgar facts of a waking day — the east wind and the garish sunshine — destroyed his gourd and threw him back upon himself. And as the curtain falls upon this last scene we almost seem to hear the closing words, “Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it to grow; which came up in a night and perished in a night. And should not spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons that
cannot discern between their right hand and their left?”