Jonah's Mission: Its Place in Historical Development

“Now the word of the Lord caino unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying. Arise, go to Ninoveh.” — Jonah i. 1,

“A lUfht io lU)htt)i I’I’I- «,. (he (jlorxj of His people Israel.”

—Luke ii. 32.

Sl’EAIvING fjenerally, tlic prophet Jonah lived about midway IilLwcl-u the revolt of the ten tribes under Jeroboam and their fatal and final captivity by Assyria. The commencement of his ministry — whether that ministry was more stated or more occasional we do not know — seems to have been contemporaneous with the close of Elisha’s. And, like Elisha, Jonah prophesied in Israel — in the kin’dom of Samaria.

The only predicti(^n of his recorded is that mentioned in the 14th chapter of 2nd Kin«^s, which, indeed, is the only pjissajjc of Scripture in which our prophet is mentioned, except in the book which yues under his own name, and the allusions made to him by our Lord in the days of His flesh. In that chapter, at the 23rd verse, we read that, about 150 years after the disruption of the tribes, and about .S25 years before Christ, Jeroboam IL, “the son of Joash, king of Israel, befjan to reign in Samaria, and reiffned 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, who made Israel to sin. He restored the coast of Israel, from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the plain, according to the word of the Lord Ood of Israel, which He pj)ake yonaJis Mission: its Place

by the hand of His servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, which was of Gath-hepher. For the Lord saw the affliction of Israel, that it was very bitter: for there was not any shut up, nor any left, nor any helper for Israel. And the Lord said not that He would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven; but He saved them by the hand of Jeroboam the son of Joash.”

It thus appears that, while Israel were in a very wretched and oppressed condition, the Lord had employed His servant Jonah to predict an unmerited and most ^racious interposition of His power on their behalf, to restore to them the territory of which their enemies had deprived them. It is very remarkable that living, as the prophet did, in a time of abounding provocations when we might have expected his sole office in Israel would have been to denounce judgment on the apostate tribes and their ungodly rulers, the only one of his predictions on record is that of a most gracious and generous interposition on the part of Jehovah in defence of His afflicted people; when “seeing their affliction that it was very bitter,” He, as it were, forgot all their offensive neglect of His worship, and disobedience to His commands; and, unwilling to see their name blotted out — the name of Israel, the seed of Abraham, his friend, blotted out — from under heaven, He gave military strength and skill even to a wicked king, and “saved them by the hand of Jeroboam, the son of Joash.” Abundant evidence thus, in his ministry among a rebellious people, has Jonah of the Lord’s singular long-suffering; so abundant, indeed, that, unable to vindicate, any more than to search, its greatness, he seems to have been at fault and at a loss concerning it; to have been difficulted in considering the character of God, and cast into great confusion of mind by his very knowledge of God’s extraordinary patience. In fact, it is in this very difficulty that the explanation of Jonah’s most singular conduct, both in first fleeing from the duty assigned him, and in afterwards being displeased with the salvation of Nineveh, must be sought. “But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very 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 fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest Thee of the evil” (Jonah iv. 1, 2). However this

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may account for his ftmnzinpj and almost unparalleled procedure, clt’ur it is that it is this that dues acccnint for it. JdiiuIi lia<I unwontodly larjjo and strong views of the Divine forbearance; antl, from some cause or other, losing his way or his reckcjning in estimating the hearing of the Divine forhearunce on the other attrihutes of the Divine character, and on the discharge of his own tluty, his mind fell into a confusion of thoughts and principles, which issued in the marvellous adventures, experiences, jin<l displays of character which this short Init singular lx)ok of Holy Scripture narrates. It is at least interesting to see thus early, in the one oidy brief allusion made to the history of his ministry in Israel, the rise of what alone can explain the astounding story of his mission and his manners in Nineveh.

Living, then, among the ten revolted tribes, and testifying alike against their iniijuities, and for the riches of Jehovah’s patience and the rectituile of Jehovah’s ways, the prophet doubtless reckoned on spending the remainder of his days in his own land. The very last thought, probably, that would have ever spontaneou:ily entered his mind, would have been the idea of having to go forth from its sacred precincts, and exercise his holy office among the heathen. For ages and for generations Jehovah had conlined all His manifestations of Himself to the children of Jacob. The ceremonial law, which at Sinai He had appointed to them, served, in its burdensome ritual and iiuiumerable observances, as a middle wall of partition, excluding the Gentiles from their religious privileges. Pro.selytes, indeed, were welcome. And in the law of Moses itself, directions ha<l be»n laid down for their a»lmission into the commonwealth of Israel. But this had a bearing merely on individuals. The Gentiles, as a whole, as nations, were obviously’ given over in the meantime to the reign of spiritual death, cast out beyond the jiale of that visible Church, within which alone .salvation is ordinarily revealed. It is from this wretched and forlorn con<lition that Paul calls on the Ephesians to remember that they had l)een delivered: —” Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the Hesh made by hands; that at that time yo were without the Messiah, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenant of promise, having no

JonaJis Mission: its Place

hope, and without God in the world “(Eph. ii. 11, 12). No doubt the peculiar people were separated from the Gentiles only for a time, and only for a purpose. They were separated from them for a time, for the very purpose of being the safe custodiers of that grace of which the Gentiles should in due time be fellow-heirs. They ought never to have forgotten that the covenant with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob embraced the Gentile world very specially in its gracious primeval provisions: — “In thy seed, shall all the nations of the earth be blessed” (Gen. xxvi. 4). And they ought therefore to have known that, when the Messiah should come, He would be “a minister of the Circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers: and that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy; as it is written. For this cause I will confess to Thee among the Gentiles, and sing unto Thy name. And again he saith. Rejoice, ye Gentiles, with His people. And again, praise the Lord, all ye Gentiles; and laud Him, all ye people. And again, Isaiah saith. There shall be a root of Jesse, and he that shall rise to reign over the Gentiles: in Him shall the Gentiles trust” (Rom. xv. 8-12).

In the times of truest spiritual life, this was not forgotten in Israel. The holy men who “obtained a good report by faith” had large and world-wide views, and large and world-wide hopes, as to the grace of God and the reign of their Messiah. They expected Him to rule over a kingdom co-extensive with the whole world. They expected Him to dispense blessings sufficient for every land. The more they appreciated their own sinfulness and the freeness and sovereignty of the grace of God, the more did they clearly comprehend how the Gentiles also might freely partake of the same free mercy with themselves; and the more they felt the vanity of all earthly good and the helplessness of their wdiole earthly estate, and appreciated the promised kingdom and sovereign ‘reign of their Christ as unworldly, spiritual, heavenly, divine, and eternal, so much the more did they clearly see how all nations, as they needed, so they might be embraced by, this new, heavenly kingdom of the Lord and His Anointed. Hence, in the days of David, when true spiritual life flourished, and un-Pharisaic knowledge of the grace of God was comparatively widely diflused, the Gentiles were looked on with no evil eye; their salvation was felt to be clearly within the compass of

Abraham; and their subjugation to the coming Messiah was regarded as one of the glorious events which should mark and grace His advent and manifestation. Hence such passages in the Psalms as these, — the first addressed by the Father to His Anointed, and the second by the Church to her covenant God; — “Ask of me and I will give thee the heathen for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession;” “Have respect unto Thy covenant, for the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty” (Ps. ii. 6; lxxiv. 20). And if any farther proof be needed that the Church, in the days of her true life and fidelity, looked for being enlarged with the believing brotherhood of the converted nations, we have it in that noble hymn of missionary prayer and hope, opening as it does with the well-remembered words, “God be merciful unto us, and bless us: and cause His face to shine upon us; that Thy way may be known upon earth. Thy saving health among all nations,” and closing with the confession of free, unhampered, appropriating faith, “God shall bless us,” and with the enlarged and unbounded expectation, “And all the ends of the earth shall fear him” (Ps. lxvii. 1-7). But in the days of Israel’s degeneracy, when faith gave place to formalism, and contrite gratitude to cold and supercilious ceremony; when self-righteous pride, singularly enough keeping pace with increasing iniquity and worthlessness, arrogantly claimed right to the privileges of the covenant in very proportion as all the spirit of the covenant was violated; when the close and narrow spirit of legalism, resting its claims on carnal distinctions, and saying, “We have Abraham to our Father,” superseded the true spirit of Israel, “I am not worthy of the least of all the goodness and the truth thou hast shown unto Thy servant;” the idea of pure and sovereign grace being lost sight of — that grace whereby Jew and Gentile alike may be freely saved, — and the kingdom of the Messiah being conceived of as earthly and limited — set up, indeed, as a badge of distinction, to magnify the seed of Abraham according to the flesh; then the Gentile nations began to be looked upon as natural and irreconcilable enemies. The Jewish Church, in fact, in such a spirit, enacts exactly the part of the Pharisee of the parable, while the publican may represent the waste of heathendom; and the vain-glorious Church, claiming Heaven’s favour on yonah’s Mission: its Place

the ground of her carnal distinctions and pitiable tithings, thanks God that she is not as this poor publican!

For in every point of view, and on whatever scale, self-righteoiisness is exclusive and malignant, remorselessly consigning over others to a destruction which, on its own proud merit and pre-eminence, it counts itself entitled to escape. Perhaps, more properly indeed, it came to this, that the heathen nations, as to their moral and spiritual interests, were, among Israel, objects of simple contempt and neglect, and were dealt with as if Jehovah, the God of Israel, utterly neglected them also — as if, in short, they were beyond the pale of His government; or, in other words, as if Jehovah’s government were not universal, but limited to their own nation alone. It is evident how, with such a view of their own God, their own adoring regards for Him must have been destroyed. Jehovah is the God of the spirits of all flesh, and ruleth over all the nations. Any other or more limited idea of His government reduces Him, if not to the level, at least to the company, of the local, territorial, geographical gods of heathendom. And thus, by taking a wrong view of the relation of heathendom to the living and true God, the God of Israel, Israel virtually imbibed the very views of heathendom itself.

Indeed, nothing but true faith, contrition, adoring confidence, and loyalty to Jehovah, could prevent this painful perversion of the truth. It was, as Paul acknowledges, a great “mystery” — the introduction of the Gentiles into the Church of God. In writing to the Ephesians, he speaks of it as a mystery made known unto himself by special revelation. “By revelation He made known unto me the mystery; as I wrote afore in few words, whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ, which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto His holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit; that the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ by the gospel” (Eph. iii. 3-6). It is in connection with the blessed disclosure of this “mj’stery” that Paul utters the well-known thanksgiving for that grace of God which had assigned him a ministry, bearing so immediately on the extension of the Church of God beyond the narrow pale of Judaism. For it was not merely as a preacher, but specially as a preacher to

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the Gentiles, that Paul magnitied his office. “Unto me,” the rejoicing and happy-spirited burst of holy glorying runs — “Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ; and to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God” (Eph. iii. 8, 9). In addressing the saints at Colosse, the Apostle uses similar terms. He speaks of “the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to His saints; to whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles” (Col. i. 26, 27). Very singular and striking language! “The riches of the glory of this mystery “!

Israel of old had not this “mystery” revealed, explained, expounded, or opened up to them, as it is to us. They were in continual contact with a glorious, but veiled mystery. In such a case, there could be no intellectual and spiritual safety, except in a humble, contrite, adoring loyalty towards Israel’s wonder-working, all-wise, and mighty King. That will keep a man safe, when fronting unrevealed mysteries. Nothing else will. Penitence — a sense of righteous exposure to the wrath of God, combined with a refuge from that wrath and the dread of it, in free and gratuitous forgiveness, — that would have kept the Israelites safe. A sympathy with the 32nd Psalm, “Blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered, to whom the Lord iraputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile;” a firm hold on justification by faith alone, in a free and gratuitous forgiveness, in a free, and gratuitous, and borrowed, and imputed righteousness, — that would have kept them right as to the relation in which both their God and they themselves stood to the heathen world. Penetrated with that deep despair of their own righteousness, which leads a man to welcome with joy unspeakable a perfect righteousness freely offered, they would have humbly and clearly understood their own position in the sight of God; and, being deeply assured that on the very same terms also might the Gentiles, at God’s mere pleasure, be adopted into their own gracious and firm standing in Heaven’s free and undeserved favour, they might have borne the mystery without perverting the truth. And in this light it is very beautiful to notice here.

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that this is precisely one of Paul’s most interesting inferences or conclusions from the doctrine of free justification by faith alone; for having established the doctrine of justification solely in the righteousness or “redemption that is in Christ,” and having shown that this excludes boasting, he adds that it opens the door of hope also to the Gentiles quite as widely as to the Jews: “We conclude, therefore, that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. Is He the God of the Jews only? Is He not also of the Gentiles? Yes; of the Gentiles also, seeing it is one God which shall justify the Circumcision by faith and the Uncircumcision through faith” (Rom. iii. 28).

But, claimino; the favour of Abraham’s God, not at all on the free, gracious, and blessed terms — most comforting, but most humbling also — humbling, yet sweetly humbling — on which Abraham was content to rest his claim; resting theirs, not like their father Abraham, on the pure and simple grace of God, but on their own formal position, and fancied pre-eminence, they inevitably fell into views of the state and destiny of the Gentile world utterly at variance with the character of God as the Moral Governor of mankind, and fitted exceedingly to nurse into increasing vigour their own proud, cold, stern, and malignant spirit of ecclesiastical self-righteousness and bigotry, and national intolerance and pride.

It is necessary to take these things into consideration, if we would appreciate the position which this most singular book of Jonah holds in the Sacred Scriptures; or, more exactly, if we would appreciate the mission on which Jonah was sent, and its place in historical development. He was sent to a Gentile city. He was sent to the most renowned city of heathendom then on the face of the earth. He alone of all God’s prophets, had such a commission assigned him. His was a most extraordinary call. It was altogether an exceptional, a literally singular, case. It is impossible to understand or enter feelingly into the prophet’s position on receiving this call — impossible to understand the circumstances acting upon him, and producing, though of course they do not justify, yet producing and explaining his most singular and anomalous conduct; and it is impossible to appreciate God’s purpose and wisdom in introducing this very marvellous episode into Scriptural history, and into the original development, indeed, of God’s plans, and of His revelation of Himself which Scripture records: all these things are impossible to us, and the book of Jonah degenerates into a mere perplexing puzzle, unless we give diligent heed at the very outset to the relation at this time subsisting between the seed of Abraham and the Gentile world, and to the bearing of God’s special government over Israel on His keeping in store a glorious “salvation for all the ends of the earth — a light to lighten the Gentiles as well as a glory to His people Israel.” It is when viewed on this high scale, and as bearing on the development of Jehovah’s purpose to establish the throne of His Anointed One over all nations — a purpose yet only comparatively in the mere beginnings of its accomplishment — it i? when viewed in this light that the book of Jonah rises in our estimation from the place due merely to a strange marvel or miracle of adventure which they wonder why the glorious God of providence should have consented to work, or the Holy Ghost consented to afford His inspiration to record — to the lofty level of a splendid and worthy interposition of Divine power, and a glorious record of Divine wisdom, introducing a golden and indispensible link in the onward movement of that great redemption, the preliminary preparations for which were transacted among peculiar people, but the issues of it designed to encompass all lands, and bind in one believing brotherhood of sonship to God, and of royal adoring priesthood, all nations of men, from the rising of the sun to where he hath his going down. It was right, for the most part — so it seemed to Him who knoweth the end from the beginning — it was right that, for the most part, the Spirit of prophecy and the ordinances of worship should be confined to the sacred family and the special territory in which that family dwelt, till Messiah Himself should come. But it was not right that Jehovah’s moral government over all kingdoms should be misunderstood or forgotten. And above all, it was not right that Jehovah’s gracious purpose towards all nations should be buried in oblivion. A very burst of light, therefore, — almost of lightning, — flashes out from Jehovah’s throne on the dark Gentile world, and His connection with it. Suddenly, when it seems as if He neither cared at present, nor would ever again show His care, for the aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, He has a

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sharp, an unmistakable, a terrifying message for the very chiefest of all their cities, the very citadel of heathen glory, monarchy, and worldly pride and power. He has a message for them, and He must find a messenger. A herald must cross the sacred precincts where the Spirit and word of prophecy hitherto had dwelt, and go out into the thick darkness, carrying with him the sound of Jehovah’s voice, the torch of Jehovah’s word. Marvellous beyond all parallel, yet with reasons replete with infinite wisdom, was that unheard-of proposal, that strait and imperative command, when “The word of the Lord came unto Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh.”

These remarks may tend to exalt our conceptions of the mission of Jonah to the capital of the heathen world. That mission was a solitary, unparelleled, an isolated and unique transaction. In all the history of the prophetic Spirit and word in the Church, there had been nothing like unto it before, and there was nothinglike unto it afterwards. The Lord did a new thing by His prophet Jonah, — a startling, marvellous, and new thing upon the earth. He caused the light of prophecy to overflow the channels in which for ages it had been confined. He violated all the current notions and all the settled expectations of the sacred commonwealth, by manifesting His care and claims in regard to the heathen. Suddenly, when the pall of thick darkness and the shadow of death hangs over all nations, save the little central spot of Immanuel’s land; when Jehovah would appear to have resigned all government of the world, save as in that one corner where His worship was established by special covenant, and yet was almost altogether overthrown; when the Most High is well nigh come to be regarded as a local and limited Deity, having no control and taking no oversight of other lands; when Israel, perverting His grace, has come self-righteously to think they can reckon by right on His favour, and may tamper with impunity with His law; when, looking on Him as a local God, Israel has learned to trifle with Him, as a local and limited God may, of course, without much danger, be trifled with; suddenly, without note or warning, without preface, without explanation, assuming sovereign state as God Most High over all the earth, Jehovah, re-manifesting, if not re-assuming His universal supremacy, conducts, on the scale of most amazing miracle, a movement of

His ceaseless government as it extends over all nations; and, that it may not fail to compel the attention of all succeeding ages, He adorns that movement with the most marvellous and romantic incident, with one of the most striking, if not perplexing, developments of human character, especially as occurring in a man of God, and with the symbolic death and resurrection of the agent under whose hand that movement is conducted; a death and resurrection on the very type of Messiah’s: “For Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly, even as the Son of man was three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matt. xii. 40).

By the aid of considerations like these, followed out perhaps somewhat more in detail, we may be able to gain a truer insight into the import and value of this portion of inspired history, than otherwise it would be possible to do. And above all, we will be prepared, by the Divine blessing, for taking a more accurate and a more edifying view of Jonah’s character, as that of a man of God, placed in very singular circumstances and under very peculiar and spiritual temptation.

Meantime, it may be profitable to carry away with us this first lesson, viz., that Jehovah, the God of Israel, is the God of all the earth. A very plain and easy lesson, some may be ready to think, and scarcely worthy to be specified. But it is the most worldly-minded who will think so; those not acquainted with the shallow, empty, narrow, and ever earthly impressions of the carnal mind. The man who walks with God in truth, who labours to realise the Divine presence, and to be continually saying, “Thou God seest me,” being reconciled to God and claiming Him as his God, yet feels the painful difficulty of retaining exalted conceptions of his Maker, and Redeemer, and Father in heaven, and will not think it any other than a blessed aid to his piety and spiritual joy, when called to remember that Ids God is in the heavens; that throughout all nations of the earth He doeth whatsoever pleaseth Him; that the wars and rumours of wars in any land are all parts of the development of Jehovah’s unsearchable but infinitely wise plan; that every event, however untoward it may appear, is but bearing onward the chariot of the King to that goal where His glory shall be seen advanced in every age and in every movement of history; that the rise, and overthrow, and replacing of

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nations are events that transpire under the eyes of Him under whose feet the ages move along in His own appointed order to the day of the consummation of all things; bringing forward the time when — the gospel having been preached for a testimony in all the earth, and the believing meek ones gathered under His hand, the groans of creation being ended and the tabernacle of the Lord with men upon the earth — the song shall rise from all the holy ones; — “Great and marvellous are Thy works. Lord God Almighty; just and true are Thy ways. Thou King of saints. Who shall not fear Thee, O Lord, and glorify Thy name? for Thou only art holy: for all nations shall come and worship before Thee; for Thy judgments are made manifest” (Rev. xv. 3, 4).