lsive, that the
susceptibility of the heathen for salvation was denied, and God's mercy
was limited to Israel. Narrow-minded exclusiveness received a powerful
support from the oppression and haughtiness of the heathen. Whilst
other prophets opposed such exclusiveness by their words, by announcing
the extension of salvation to the Gentiles, Jonah received the mission
to illustrate, by a symbolical action, the capacity of the heathen for
salvation, and their future participation in it. The effect of this
must necessarily have been so much the greater, as the whole of the
little book is exclusively devoted to this subject, as it appeared at
the first beginning of the conflict, and as Nineveh is mentioned here,
for the first time, in so peaceable and conciliatory a relation, and in
close harmony and connection with the announcement of the willing
submission of the heathen world to the dominion of Shiloh, spoken of in
Gen. xlix. 10. It is remarkably impressive to see how spirit here
triumphs over nature--a triumph which appears so much the brighter
because the prophet himself pays his tribute to nature; for it was
because he listened to the voice of nature, that, at first, he intended
to flee to Tarshish. The reason why the commission of the Lord was so
disagreeable to him, we learn from chap. iv. 2. He was afraid lest the
preaching of repentance, which was committed to him, might turn away
the judgments of the Lord from Nineveh, the metropolis of that country
which threatened destruction to Israel. He knew the deep corruption of
his own people, and foreboded the issue which the extension of the
means of grace to the Gentiles might very easily bring about in the
end. But yet, he felt almost irresistibly impelled to carry out the
commission of God, and in order to cut himself off from the possibility
of following the voice which called him to the east, he resolved to go
to the far distant west. The voice, however, followed him even there;
but the farther he advanced on his journey, the more difficult it
became for him to follow it. At a later period, when the Lord granted
mercy to Nineveh, he was angry and wished to die, not by any means
because he [Pg 409] felt himself injured in his honour as a prophet (as
was erroneously supposed, even by _Calvin_), but because he grudged to
the Gentiles the mercy which he considered as a prerogative of Israel
only, and because he was anxious for the destruction of Nineveh as the
metropolis