or
thought the task hopeless. He refused because he feared success. God's
goodness was being stretched rather too far, if it was going to take in
Nineveh. Jonah did not want it to escape. If he had been sent to destroy
it, he would probably have gone gladly. He grudged that heathen should
share Israel's privileges, and probably thought that gain to Nineveh
would be loss to Israel. It was exactly the spirit of the prodigal's
elder brother. There was also working in him the concern for his own
reputation, which would be damaged if the threats he uttered turned out
to be thunder without lightning, by reason of the repentance of Nineveh.

Israel was set among the nations, not as a dark lantern, but as the
great lampstand in the Temple court proclaimed, to ray out light to all
the world. Jonah's mission was but a concrete instance of Israel's
charge. The nation was as reluctant to fulfil the reason of its
existence as the Prophet was. Both begrudged sharing privileges with
heathen dogs, both thought God's care wasted, and neither had such
feelings towards the rest of the world as to be willing to be messengers
of forgiveness to them. All sorts of religious exclusiveness,
contemptuous estimates of other nations, and that bastard patriotism
which would keep national blessings for our own country alone, are
condemned by this story. In it dawns the first faint light of that sun
which shone at its full when Jesus healed the Canaanite's daughter, or
when He said, 'Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold.'

Note, next, the fatal consequences of refusal to obey the God-given
charge. We need not suppose that Jonah thought that he could actually
get away from God's presence. Possibly he believed in a special presence
of God in the land of Israel, or, more probably, the phrase means to
escape from service. At any rate, he determined to do his flight
thoroughly. Tarshish was, to a Hebrew, at the other end of the world
from Nineveh. The Jews were no sailors, and the choice of the sea as
means of escape indicates the obstinacy of determination in Jonah.

The storm is described with a profusion of unusual words, all apparently
technical terms, picked up on board, just as Luke, in the only other
account of a storm in Scripture, has done. What a difference between the
two voyages! In the one, the unfaithful prophet is the cause of
disaster, and the only sluggard in the ship. In the other, the Apostle,
who has hazarded his life to pr