---

There is no mention of Israel in this Book of Jonah. It is concerned solely about the welfare of a foreign nation. There can be no doubt that the spirit of the book is entirely opposed to Jewish feeling. While its form is historical, in substance it is prophetical. It contains great and important truths which Israel was in danger of overlooking, and foreshadows a time when God's mercy towards mankind should no longer be restrained within the limits of the seed of Jacob. All the concern of the writer is to point a moral lesson. The exclusive spirit which regarded all nations as made to subserve the welfare of Israel was always hateful to God. But Jonah is scarcely to be blamed for not seeing what many excellent Christians have failed to see. We must not throw stones at Jonah, for our own houses are sufficiently brittle. Look at the lesson of the gourd. It had cost him nothing, his wisdom had not provided it, nor his care cherished its growth, yet he resented the loss of it as a personal injury. It was a parable designed to convey a needful lesson to abate Jonah's peevish grief at the sparing of Nineveh. God answered Jonah by dealing with the plant as Jonah would have had Him deal with Nineveh. What was there, then, in Nineveh, which answered to the consolation Jonah derived from the plant? Its sentient life and evident happiness, the work of God's hands, unspoiled as yet by human wickedness, was God's gourd, the consolation of His heart when the hot wind of Nineveh's wickedness blew upon Him. He could not bear the thought of sending the pestilence to crush in pain and death all this innocent life and enjoyment, or of giving up these tender little ones to the cruel carnage of savage foes. Judgment is His strange work, and only when absolutely necessary will He sacrifice the innocent and helpless for the sake of punishing the world and purifying its moral atmosphere. This is a very beautiful lesson. It sheds a shaft of tender light into God's dealings with mankind. God will not let the happiness of creation be sacrificed for the sake of punishing human Corruption. The final lesson of this Book of Jonah is full of encouragement, and gives us a conception of God which is scarcely surpassed even in the New Testament. He is represented as more merciful than His servant, and as possessed of far wider sympathies. If God were not more merciful than man there would be little hope for us. Repentance instantly calls forth Divine mercy. The prayer of the contrite no sooner reaches His ear than the justifying word goes forth.

(E. W. Shalders, B. A.)

---

---

KJV: Then said the LORD, 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:

WEB: Yahweh said, "You have been concerned for the vine, for which you have not labored, neither made it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night.