osea, Joel, Amos, and Obadiah,--that he is the oldest among the
prophets whose written monuments have been preserved to us. The passage
in 2 Kings xiv. 25, where it is said, that Jonah, the son of Amittai
the prophet, prophesied to Jeroboam the happy success of his arms, and
the restoration of the ancient boundaries of Israel, and that this
prophecy was confirmed by the event, cannot decide in favour of this
assertion, because it cannot be proved that the victories of Jeroboam
belonged to the _beginning_ of his reign. On the other hand, it is
opposed, _first_, by the position of the book in the collection of
the Minor Prophets, which, throughout, is chronologically arranged,
and which is tantamount to an express testimony that Jonah wrote
_after_ Hosea, Joel, Amos, and Obadiah. _Then_,--the circumstance that
Nineveh is mentioned here, and that too in a way which implies that,
even at that time, the hostile relations of the Assyrians to the
Covenant-people had already begun, while in the first part of Hosea, in
Joel, Amos, and Obadiah, no reference to the Assyrians is as yet found.
Even ancient interpreters, as _Chr. B. Michaelis_, _Crusius_ (in the
_Theol. Proph._ iii. S. 38), inferred from this mention of Nineveh,
that the book had been composed in consequence of the first invasion of
the Assyrians under Menahem, who ascended the throne 13 years after the
death of Jeroboam II. _Finally_,--the book begins with _and_. Wherever
else, in the canonical books of the Old Testament, such a beginning
occurs, it indicates a resumption of, and a junction with, former links
in the chain of sacred literature; compare Judges i. 1; 1 Sam. i. 1;
Ezek. i. 1. That the expression, "And it came to pass," with which the
book opens, is intended to establish the connection with the prophecy
of Obadiah, which occupies the immediately preceding place in the
Canon, is intimated by the internal relation of the two books to each
other. The prophecy of Obadiah bears, throughout, a hostile aspect to
the heathen world; it appears to him as the object only of God's
judging activity. Jonah, on the other hand, received the mission,
distinctly to point out the other aspect of the matter, and [Pg 408]
thereby, not indeed to correct, but certainly to supplement his
predecessor.

The time was approaching when the heathen world was to pour out its
floods upon the people of God. It was obvious that the position
of Israel towards it became one altogether repu