s more than wonderful: it is
miraculous. That there exist in the Mediterranean fish capable of
swallowing a man entire is a well-attested fact. The original Hebrew
mentions only, "a great fish." The Alexandrine version, and after that
the New Testament, use the word _whale_ apparently in the sense of any
great sea monster. But whatever the fish may have been, his preservation
alive in its body for the space of three days, and his subsequent
ejection upon the dry land, can be accounted for only by reference to
the immediate power of God, with whom nothing is impossible. The effect
of his preaching upon the Ninevites was remarkable; but much more so was
his grief at its success, whereby God was moved to spare the city. The
common opinion is that he feared for his reputation as a true prophet;
but a deeper ground of his anger may have been that he rightly
understood the design of his mission to the Ninevites to be that through
repentance they might be saved from impending destruction; while he
regarded them as the enemies of God's people, and unworthy of his mercy.
However this may be, Jonah's mission to the Ninevites foreshadowed God's
purposes of mercy towards the heathen world, and that too at a very
suitable time, when the history of the covenant people, and through them
of God's visible earthly kingdom, was about passing into lasting
connection with that of the great monarchies of the earth.

11. The authorship of the book of Jonah is not expressly given; but may
be most naturally referred to the prophet himself. The few alleged
Chaldaisims found in it may be explained as belonging to the provincial
dialect of the prophet; since we have but an imperfect knowledge of the
variations which the living Hebrew language admitted in this respect. In
Matt. 12:39-41; Luke 11:29-32 the Saviour refers in explicit terms to
events recorded in this book as being true history; nor can the historic
character of the narrative as a whole be denied except on the ground
that all records of the supernatural are unhistoric.

VI. MICAH.

12. Micah is called the Morasthite, probably because he was a native of
Moresheth-gath, a small town of Judea, which, according to Eusebius and
Jerome, lay in a southwesterly direction from Jerusalem, not far from
Eleutheropolis on the plain, near the border of the Philistine
territory. With this agrees the connection in which it is named
(1:13-15); for Lachish, Mareshah, and Adullam also lay in that
di