Jonah 3:4 And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. Orientals are still impressed, more or less readily, by the appearance of "holy men," such as their own dervishes, whose enthusiasm, in some cases, where high sincerity inspires them, is much like that which marks a true prophet in all ages. The name "dervish," Dr. Wolff tells us, means "one who hangs at the gate of God," awaiting His inspiration; and the ecstasy of some of the class may be compared to that of which we read, for example, of Micah, who, we are told, went about " stripped and naked, and howled like the jackals, and roared like the ostrich." I do not suppose that Jonah bore himself thus, but the fact that such appearances as those of Micah were familiar over all Asia must have opened the way for his influence in Nineveh. We may suppose him showing himself in such a garb as that of Elijah, or others of the prophets, — his hair streaming down his shoulders, his outer dress a rude sheepskin mantle. He may have arrived in the disastrous time after the death of Shalmaneser II., when the nations conquered by that great monarch, from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean, were, in most cases, in rebellion, and troubles oppressed the Nineveh palaces. Wandering over the open spaces, with their mansions and huts, and through the lanes and bazaars of each part of the city, he terrified the crowd by a piercing, monotonous wail, in a dialect which, though intelligible in a short sentence on the Tigris, must have sounded barbarous and uncouth, — "Yet forty days, an Nineveh shall be overthrown." His appearance proclaimed him a "holy man," and he might have been sent, in these dark times, by the gods. (Cunningham Geikie, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. |
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