John Kitto Evening Bible Devotions: June 24

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John Kitto Evening Bible Devotions: June 24


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Jonah in Nineveh

Jonah 3

It is now with the firm step and steady aspect of one who knows that the burden of the Lord is upon him, that Jonah enters the gates of Nineveh the Great. He may still have doubts and fears as to the result; but he now fears God more, and wavers not in his purpose to discharge faithfully the mission committed to him. He believed that the Lord who sent him could give strength and power to His own words; and he had cause to know that His arm was strong to deliver him from all evil that might befall. “Still he must have been the subject of strange and conflicting emotions, when he entered the gates of that proud capital. The stern soldiers upon the battlements, armed with swords and shields, helmets and spears—the colossal images of winged compound animals that guarded the gates—the gorgeous chariots and horsemen that rattled and bounded through the streets—the pomp and state of the royal palaces—the signs of trade and commerce, of wealth and luxury, of pleasure and wickedness on every hand—must have amazed and perplexed the prophet, conscious of his utter loneliness amidst a mighty population, of his despicable poverty amidst abounding riches, of his rough and foreign aspect amidst a proud and polished community—there was enough to shake his faith, and to cowardize his bold, haughty, and scornful spirit. Yet he dared not a second time abandon his mission. He, therefore, passed along the broad ways and great places of concourse, crying in solemn tones, ‘Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.’” Note: Rev. J. Blackburn: Nineveh, its Rise and Fall. London, 1850.

Who and what is he? the people ask. Is it a madman who thus speaks, or a mocker, who delights to “scatter firebrands, arrows, and death?” His intelligent and sober aspect forbids the supposition: he bears himself as a man deeply in earnest, and alive to the awful importance of the work he has in hand and the very oneness of the message he delivers—that he has just this solitary message to proclaim—seems to betoken all the more an assured conviction of the truth and certainty of it. The busy crowd is by-and-by arrested: a solemn awe steals over the minds of the people: they press around the preacher to know who and whence he is, and why he utters such an ominous cry in their streets; and hearing, as they now do, that, so far from lightly denouncing this doom against them, he had already, at the hazard of his life, shrunk from executing the charge committed to him—that he had been cast out for his willful reluctance, into the mighty deep, and miraculously restored, only that he might be sent forth anew to utter the cry they now heard of approaching destruction—learning all this concerning Jonah and his- burden, how solemn and perilous must their situation have appeared in their eyes! Though personally a stranger to them, this man’s fortunes, it seems, had yet been most intimately bound up with theirs: he has undergone wonderful and unheard-of things on their account. Note: Rev. P. Fairbairn’s Jonah. Edinburgh, 1849.

What other concurrent circumstances there may have been to impress their minds with the conviction that they stood on the verge of ruin, or whether the word of God simply, in its own Divine energy, as delivered by the prophet, wrought upon their souls, certain it is that they evinced no disposition to treat the message with scorn, or the messenger with insult, but were deeply moved to alarm and grief.

This commotion in the city soon reached the ears of the king; and it cannot be doubted that he forthwith sent to have the strange prophet brought before him.

It is plain, from the sculptures, that the king of Assyria was approached, like all Oriental princes, with such tokens of profound reverence as, in fact, amounted to something like religious adoration. “Seated on his throne of state, his eunuchs, ministers, and other great officers stood around him, while those who were brought before him, forgetting the erect dignity of human nature, prostrated themselves in the most abject manner, at his feet. Imagine Jonah introduced into the royal palace, and you will see that the scene and circumstances must have sorely tried his faith and steadfastness. As he passed along the lengthened corridors towards the hall of audience, he must have been struck with the air of uncommon splendor that surrounded him. On the walls he beheld the sculptured figures of priests and eunuchs, of kings, heroes, and ministers of state, of genii and idol gods, of battles and hunting scenes, all elaborately and gorgeously colored; while there stood at the angles of the passages colossal statues of strange winged, compound creatures, like the guardian spirits of the place.” Note: Blackburn’s Nineveh.

A sight so strange to him—such abounding evidence of the wealth, the power, and the idolatry of the monarch into whose presence he was about to enter—might well have moved even the stern spirit of the prophet. But he now stood there invested with a greatness not his own, and far exceeding all the grandeur around him; and he flinched not to declare unto the greatest king then upon earth, the whole counsel of God against this proud Nineveh. As he heard the word of doom, God smote his heart with alarm and repentance. The common feeling became his; and he sanctioned and ordained its solemn public expression, by acts of general mourning and humiliation. He came down from the throne before which a score of kings bent their knees; he laid all his glorious imperial robes aside, and, investing his person with sackcloth, sat down among the ashes. Nor he alone; for a decree went forth, ordaining fasting and sackcloth for man and beast, and urging every one to turn from his evil way and from the violence of his hands. The prophet had not called them to repentance, but had warned them of impending doom; but this they still trusted might not be irrevocable, and they ventured to seize hold of a hope which the prophet had not extended to them: “Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?” Blessed was that thought of theirs. The Lord, abundant in mercy, had inspired them, at that time, with a conception of Him which his prophet had not taught. It was not yet too late. All was not yet lost. God beheld their acts; he saw that they turned from their evil ways; and then “God repented of the evil that He said He would do unto them, and He did it not.”

It seems a remarkable circumstance, that the Ninevites should have extended the acts of fasting and humiliation to their cattle. We find nothing of this among the Hebrews; but it was a custom among the ancient heathen nations to withhold food from their cattle, as well as from themselves, in times of mourning and humiliation, and that, in some instances, they cut off the hair of their beasts as well as their own. The animals which were, in this instance, covered with sackcloth, were doubtless, horses, mules, assess, and camels, which were divested of their usual caparisons and ornaments, and invested with sackcloth for the occasion—a custom having some analogy to that of our clothing with black the horses employed in funereal solemnities.