1. Onward towards the westering sun glides the Phœnician ship over the darkening waters. God's swift wind follows like a Nemesis invisible-such a Euroclydon as in a later day brought disaster to the ship of St. Paul in the same sea. The mighty waves, the “white horses” of the Mediterranean, lift their heads on high and shake their shaggy manes. Sails are torn to shreds, and the weather-beaten sailors, each tugging at his straining oar, are in their places battling for dear life. Jonah accepts no responsibility. He has gone down into the sides of the ship and lies fast asleep. Courage can rest unmoved on the brink of a precipice; and callous indifference can surely do the like. The recalcitrant prophet, in his pitiless eagerness to let Nineveh be destroyed, has ceased to regard his own little life, and while every bronzed heathen calls in piercing tones of desperation for the intervention of his god, the messenger of Jehovah sleeps.
Over against this picture of the insensible prophet, all unaware of the storm (which may suggest the parallel insensibility of Israel to the impending Divine judgments), is set the behaviour of the heathen sailors, or “salts,” as the story calls them. Their conduct is part of the lesson of the book; for, heathen as they are, they have yet a sense of dependence, and they pray; they are full of courage, battling with the storm, jettisoning the cargo, and doing everything possible to save the ship. While thus employed, they come upon the sleeping figure of the prophet in the hold. It seemed strange that there should be one man in that storm-tossed vessel who should be ignorant or careless of their impending ruin. It seemed like wilfully neglecting one more chance of safety. Among the multiplicity of gods in whom they believed it might perchance be the god of this nameless stranger who would ultimately interfere on their behalf. The shipmaster came and said to him, “What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not.” But notwithstanding their prayers the tempest increased, and they were in imminent danger of being shipwrecked and drowned.
With the superstition of their time, their race, and their occupation, they conclude that some one on board has offended the gods. Recourse is promptly had to divination, and the lot falls on Jonah. Then Jonah is awakened indeed. He knows that he is trying to evade the Divine command laid upon him, and he tells them so. At this the sailors are filled with deadly terror. They ask him what sacrifice will be likely to appease his God. He answers gloomily enough, “Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you.” Then follows a very fine touch. Good sailors that they were, they would struggle against that dreadful necessity which Jonah laid upon them. They would not, if they could help it, hurl their passenger to certain death. They strike for land; they work with prodigious efforts. But it is of no avail. The sea rises higher and higher; and with trembling hands, praying the while to be held guiltless of their deed in thus being involuntarily the instruments of the vengeance of this awful God of Israel, they cast the victim into the sea. Immediately the rage of the storm ceases, and the awestruck ship's company worship Jehovah.
It is the fashion for modern novelists to talk freely of Fate as though Fate “kept the bank” and men were impotent. Mr. Hardy says: “The President of the Immortals had ended his sport with Tess.” Such pagans humiliate manhood before the twin-god of Fortune and Destiny. Huxley said that every man is set down at the chess-board to contend with a player who is invisible. Every move you make is beyond recall. You are matched against an antagonist who is remorselessly just. Play but one pawn badly, and you must abide by the consequences throughout the rest of the game. You have to do with pitiless laws, and, do what you will, you must inevitably be beaten by your invisible opponent. But why does not Huxley rather show that it is not a pitiless foe with whom you contend but a friend, that life lends itself to the gain of a wise and faithful man, that, though our days are limited, we may win the match by conquering adverse circumstances and mastering ourselves, and so may win the real prize to be plucked out of the game?1 [Note: R. E. Welsh, Man to Man, 71.]
2. Jonah's conduct in the storm is no less noble than his former conduct had been base. The burst of the tempest blew away all the fog from his mind, and he saw the stars again. His confession of faith, his calm conviction that he was the cause of the storm, his quiet, unhesitating command to throw him into the wild chaos foaming about the ship, his willing acceptance of death as the wages of his sin, all tell how true a saint he was in the depth of his soul.
That storm is Jonah's deliverance-his deliverance from delusion. It brings him a message-the very message he needs. Its voice is to him the voice of God. Long before his salvation from the outward shipwreck, he is saved from the shipwreck of his inner life. The storm makes a man of him, a missionary of him. His missionary spirit took fire on the spot. Are these heathen sailors to die on his account? Is not he the aggressor, the delinquent? Is it not for him that the storm has been sent? Is it not he that has brought discredit on this foreign ship? Is it not he that should atone? He calls upon the sailors to throw him into the sea-to purchase their peace by his sacrifice. That call is the finest thing in the picture. It is the real miracle. It marks the enlargement of the man. It implies a transformation akin to that of Saul of Tarsus. The greatest marvel is not Jonah's escape from the waves, but Jonah's immersion in the waves-his immersion at his own desire. He could ask to be thrown into that element of death only by reason of the fact that he had already entered into an element of larger life, an environment in which his Jewish nature had recognized the common need of man.
The human heart so naturally yearns to offer itself up that we have only to meet along our pathway some one who, doubting neither himself nor us, demands it without reserve, and we yield it to him at once. Reason may understand a partial gift, a transient devotion; the heart knows only the entire sacrifice, and, like the lover to his beloved, it says to its vanquisher, “Thine alone and forever.” That which has caused the miserable failure of all the efforts of natural religion is that its founders have not had the courage to lay hold upon the hearts of men, consenting to no partition. They have not understood the imperious desire for immolation which lies in the depths of every soul.1 [Note: Paul Sabatier, Life of St. Francis of Assisi, 72.]
3. Through the imposture of sin the prophet had fallen into immeasurable anguish and misery, and if God had not had mercy upon him, he would have perished in eternal despair. And as it was, things came to a terrible pass with him. For before he could be restored to fellowship with his God, he had to be brought into the depths of humiliation. He had proudly sought to flee from the presence of God, and would fain have saved himself from Him; now he must be cast out among the refuse and sweepings of the world.
Now comes the marvel. God has prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah, and at the moment he is flung overboard into the yeast of waves this singular protector engulfs him alive. In the fish Jonah prays to God. The psalm inserted at this stage of the story is really the thanksgiving of a man who has been saved from drowning, and it is not easy to see its suitability to the fearful position in which the prophet is supposed to utter it. Still the idea is that his peril and his deliverance bring him to a better mind. Jonah turns to God and God delivers him. All things fulfil the purposes of God. As the mariners had surrendered the miscreant to justice, so the sea monster surrenders the penitent to mercy, and on the third day Jonah finds himself once more breathing upon the land.
To the writer of the tale, as to every religious Hebrew, these were the very simplest truths. The whole universe was ever in God's hands to be dealt with exactly as He pleased. When it was necessary, He could send forth a great wind into the sea to bar Jonah's passage across the western waves; with equal ease He could “prepare” a great fish to receive the prophet when he disappeared beneath their surface. Both the wind and the fish came from the immediate presence of God. The broad distinction which we draw between the natural and the supernatural was unknown to the Hebrew mind. The hand of God was to be traced alike in the simplest natural events and in the most amazing marvels. The whole story of the fish is indeed merely a part of the framework of the narrative, and does not call for very special attention. It is intended that this should be directed rather upon the religious ideas which form its essence.
Mohammed in the Koran has caught the inner meaning of this passage when he says, “If Jonah had not praised God, verily he would have remained in the belly of the great fish till the day of resurrection.” But in his praising God the education of the prophet was finished. God had made him feel even in the midst of his narrow prejudices and petty bigotries that, were it not for that very mercy in which he did not wish the Ninevites to share, he himself would have but small chance of experiencing the Divine favour. There was need for repentance, for mercy, if not for Nineveh, at least for himself. Learning to sympathize with God in this, he was taught also to sympathize with Him in that. In being himself repentant and pardoned, he learned to feel for those whom God sought to bring to repentance and pardon.1 [Note: G. D. Macnaughtan, Two Hebrew Idylls, 150.]
Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner is strangely parallel to the story of Jonah. The sin of the Ancient Mariner was the same as his, hatred and cruelty to God's creatures, typified in his case by the shooting of the albatross, in Jonah's by his hatred of the heathen. Both voyages were unfortunate, and the day came when the Ancient Mariner was reduced to the depths of despair. Only through repentance, through a reviving love within his heart towards God's creatures, could the weight of the curse upon his soul begin to lighten. The moment came when looking over the ship's side he saw the creatures moving in the deep.
O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware:
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I blessed them unaware.
And mark what followed!
The self-same moment I could pray;
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.2 [Note: Ibid. 147.]
4. Jonah saved, and once more on land, is immediately sent to discharge the original God-given duty from which he had fled. His deliverance and second commission are put as if all but simultaneous, and his obedience was swift and glad. He did not venture to take for granted that the charge which he had shirked was still continued to him. If God commands us to take the trumpet, and we refuse, we dare not assume that we shall still be honoured with the delivery of the message. The punishment of dumb lips is often dumbness. Opportunities of service slothfully or faintheartedly neglected are often withdrawn. We can fancy how Jonah, brought back to the better mind which breathes in his psalm, longed to be honoured with the trust of preaching once more, and how rapturously his spirit would address itself to the task. Duties once unwelcome become sweet when we have passed through the experience of the misery that comes from neglecting them. It is God's mercy that gives us the opportunity of effacing past disobedience by new alacrity.
Gifts are given to trade withal for God. Opportunities are the market-days for that trade. To napkin up the one and to let slip the other will end in trouble and disconsolation. Disquietments and perplexities of heart are worms that will certainly breed in the rust of unexercised gifts. God loseth a revenue of glory and honour by such slothful souls; and He will make them sensible of it. I know some at this day whom omissions of opportunities for service are ready to sink into the grave.1 [Note: John Owen.]
