The account of Jonah and Nineveh is one that holds its fascination for us all. Particularly so when we remember the application of these events by Jesus. This book is very readable, almost poetic in form and full of good ideas. However, it must be read with discretion because it assumes all the basic orthodox ideas concerning death and the hereafter. These errors are very obvious and need not detract from the wealth of archaeological and geographical detail used with lively imagination to fill in the background to the prophet’s work.
In his prologue he quotes from the Proverbs (15:3)
The eyes of the Lord
Are in every place
Keeping watch on the evil
Keeping watch on the good,
and adds this comment,
“Today we are a gadding race. Sight-seeing is our life. Like vultures eager for their carrion, we feed on every new sensation. But in the seeing of the sights, we are ourselves the sights men see. We would observe, but once observed, soon turn resentful … Yet there is One, Who seen by none, is every man beholding. He is the author of all sight, beneath whose high surveillance we all must live and have our being.
His eyes behold, His eyelids try
His ears are open to our cry. …”
He gives a vivid picture of Nineveh:
“Who has not heard of Nineveh, that dread epitome, yet superlative of all mankind’s achievements? Its name and fear had reached to farthest frontiers; its powers and influence shadowed distant lands. For sixty miles the outer ramparts stretched. The inner wall rose heaven-ward, a hundred feet; and horse-drawn chariots, three abreast, could even ride its battlements. And higher still above this guardian colossus, rose numerous towers, a hundred feet again. Within this vast perimeter stretched endless palaces and grounds, park-lands and pavements, homes and farms boasting a populace of half a million souls.
“Yet like some sensuous harlot, decked with her finery and living in luxury without peer, Nineveh, mistress of witchcrafts and seducer of mankind, sits on her perfumed bed. Into her lavish boudoir come, one upon another, the merchant courtesans (sic) of her attendant nations. By wholesale ‘whoredom’, she has inveigled well-nigh every race into her net. Her international commerce holds in a vice-like grip, the poor economies of her vassal states, till families, nations, children, men are sold at whim.
Her sterile deities spue forth their blasphemies from temple-courts that counterfeit the Israel-sanctuary of God; and through the then-known world, the poison of her obscene culture spreads. Lying and deceit her weapons; violence and drunkenness her fruit; atrocity and outrage are her stock in trade…. This staggering stench of untold wickedness, reeks upward to the nostrils of the God in Heaven. His eyes look down, those eyes that see the evil and the good.”
He imagines the feelings of Jonah as he seeks to escape from his commission:
“At last he found the looked-for craft. There it lay, heaving on the tide, low in the water and soon to sail. He hastily pursued his purpose and found, to his satisfaction, it was bound for Tarshish. The place was a synonym in the Hebrew mind for distance, the final outpost of Phoenician trade, far to the west where the sun went down.”
Speaking of the moment when Jonah is committed to the sea, he says,
“It is the moment. The ship dips low and, with one fling, the man of Zebulun is thrown by supple arms out to the seething sea. They watch in silence. He does not fight. The body sinks; drawn under by the rush of water. Yet, even as they watch, the swell subsides. The foam and fury slacken. The sun breaks through. The wind is gone. Kneeling they worship…. One man’s immersion has brought them salvation.”
Commenting on the fish that swallowed Jonah, he writes,
“The Hebrew term denotes a monster. Whilst this immense creature may well have been a special creation for the occasion, the word prepare—which also occurs in the final chapter in connection with the gourd, the worm and the east wind—carries with it more the thought of appointment.
A great deal has been written upholding the integrity of this remarkable narrative but inasmuch as our Lord himself quotes it as history, it is superfluous to marshall all the harrowing stories in which men have been extracted alive from the abdomen of whales.” He then has a rather muddled paragraph in which the doctrine of the immortality of the soul spoils some otherwise interesting speculations as to the consciousness, or otherwise, of Jonah after his prayer while waiting for deliverance, as Jesus waited in the tomb of Joseph.
There is a good chapter on The Second Time. He narrates the occasions in Scripture where the second time is decisive. The dreams doubled to Pharaoh, the appearance of God to Solomon twice, the second cock crow and the heart of Peter, and many other examples, where the second time can make us or break us. Now Jonah sets forth the second time to preach to Nineveh.
Speaking of the repentance of the Ninevites he says,
“Three things displayed the Ninevites’ repentance; their fasting, their sackcloth and their ashes. Each one pronounced a clear cut No! Fasting said ‘No!’ to appetite; sackcloth said ‘No!’ to appearance; and ashes said ‘No!’ to ambition. All that they gloried in suddenly became their shame.”
Later he says,
“The mundane things of everyday have always blinded men to crisis. It was so when the ark door was closed. All things continued as they were. They ate, they drank. They married wives. Then judgement fell. Had they once stopped the ordinary, they might have heard the extra-ordinary, that is God’s sacred word through Noah.
So will it be at last, when Christ returns in power. Sleeping and eating, working and drinking, marrying and begetting, today’s dark world will come to judgement—the means of living still accepted as the ends of life. He who repents must stop. Stop for reflection, stop for inspection, and stop for correction. We cannot kneel in ashes and take our breakfast too!”
He comments on the attitude of Jonah to God’s mercy on repentant Nineveh,
“The saints themselves are only sinners saved by grace. The earthen vessel treasure filled, is far from flawless. Yet one thing cannot be denied; a man of God in sinning, sins more greatly. If knowing right he does the wrong more blame accrues. The stumbling babe can rise again, his babblings pass, but errors in public man, none will excuse. How like the Spirit to be gracious! He never makes man superhuman. God’s characters are not heroes in the normal sense. In Him alone lies their achievement. All else is flesh and blood. We are not demigods but mostly little fools that godly fear and simple faith make wise. Such moments are too few. They should be longer.
don’t be a worm, Jonah! Don’t gnaw at My purpose!
don’t play the maggot at the root of My plans!
For though I have made you, and sent you, and used you
I too can destroy you, as well as employ you.
Yet still I have pity on you and the city.
rest in My care! — I have chosen to spare.”
Review of “The Early Earth” by John Whitcomb (1972)