Albert Barnes Commentary Jonah 1

Now the word of the Lord - literally, “And,...” This is the way in which the various inspired writers of the Old Testament indicate that what they were given to write was united with those sacred books which God had given to others to write, and it formed with them one continuous whole. The word, “And,” implies this. It would do so in any language, and it does so in Hebrew as much as in any other. Just as neither we, nor any other people, would use the word “And” without any meaning, so neither did the Hebrews. It joins the first four books of Moses together; it carries on the history through Joshua, Judges, the Books of Samuel and of the Kings.

After the captivity, Ezra and Nehemiah begin again where the previous histories left off; the break of the captivity is bridged over. Ezra, going back in mind to the history of God’s people before the captivity, resumes the history as if it had been of yesterday: And in the first year of Cyrus. It connects the story of the Book of Ruth before the captivity, and that of Esther afterward. At times, even prophets employ it when narrating their own experiences, as Ezekiel: and it was in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the month, and I was in the captivity by the river of Chebar, the heavens opened and I saw. If a prophet or historian wishes to detach his prophecy or his history, he does so, as Ezra probably began the Book of Chronicles anew from Adam, or as Daniel makes his prophecy a whole by itself. But then it is the more obvious that a Hebrew prophet or historian, when he does begin with the word “And,” has an object in so doing; he uses a universal word of all languages in its uniform meaning in all languages, to join things together.

And yet more precisely, this form, and the word of the Lord came to - saying, occurs over and over again, stringing together the pearls of great price of God’s revelations, and uniting this new revelation to all those which had preceded it. The word “And,” then, joins histories with histories, revelations with revelations, uniting in one the histories of God’s works and words, and blending the books of Holy Scripture into one divine book.

But this form of words must have suggested to the Jews another thought, which is part of our thankfulness and of our being (Acts 11:18), then to the Gentiles also hath God given repentance unto life. The words are the very same familiar words with which some fresh revelation of God’s will to His people had so often been announced. Now they are prefixed to God’s message to the pagans, and so as to join that message to all the other messages to Israel.

Would God, then, henceforth deal with the pagans as with the Jews? Would they have their prophets? Would they be included in the one family of God? The mission of Jonah in itself was a pledge that they would, for God. Who does nothing fitfully or capriciously, since He had begun, gave a pledge that He would carry on what He had begun. And so thereafter, the great prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, were prophets to the nations also; Daniel was a prophet among them, to them as well as to their captives.

But the mission of Jonah might, up to that point, have been something exceptional. The inclusion of his book as an integral part of the Scriptures, joining that prophecy to the other prophecies to Israel, was a sign that they were to be parts of one system. But then it would also be significant that the records of God’s prophecies to the Jews all embodied the accounts of their impenitence. Here is inserted among them an account of God’s revelation to the pagans, and their repentance. “So many prophets had been sent, so many miracles performed, so often had captivity been foretold to them for the multitude of their sins, and they never repented. Not for the reign of one king did they cease from the worship of the calves; not one of the kings of the ten tribes departed from the sins of Jeroboam?”

Elijah, sent in the Word and Spirit of the Lord, had done many miracles, yet obtained no abandonment of the calves. His miracles effected this only: that the people knew that Baal was no god, and cried out, The Lord, He is the God. Elisha his disciple followed him, who asked for a double portion of the Spirit of Elijah, that he might work more miracles to bring back the people.

He died, and, after his death as before it, the worship of the calves continued in Israel. The Lord marveled and was weary of Israel, knowing that if He sent to the pagans they would listen, as He says to Ezekiel. To test this, Jonah was chosen, of whom it is recorded in the Book of Kings that he prophesied the restoration of the border of Israel.

When he then begins by saying, And the word of the Lord came to Jonah, prefixing the word “And,” he refers us back to those former things, with this meaning: “The children have not listened to what the Lord commanded, sending to them by His servants the prophets, but have hardened their necks and given themselves up to do evil before the Lord and provoke Him to anger; and therefore the word of the Lord came to Jonah, saying, Arise and go to Nineveh that great city, and preach unto her, so that Israel may be shown, in comparison with the pagans, to be the more guilty, when the Ninevites should repent, while the children of Israel persevered in unrepentance.”

Jonah the son of Amittai - Both names occur here only in the Old Testament. Jonah signifies “Dove,” Amittai, “the truth of God.” Some of the names of the Hebrew prophets so suit their times that they must either have been given to them prophetically, or assumed by themselves as a sort of watchword, analogous to the prophetic names given to the sons of Hosea and Isaiah. Such were the names of Elijah and Elisha: “The Lord is my God,” “my God is salvation.” Such too seems to be that of Jonah. The “dove” is everywhere the symbol of “mourning love.” The side of his character which Jonah records is that of his defect: his lack of trust in God, and so his unloving zeal against those who were to be the instruments of God against his people. His name perhaps preserves that character by which he wished to be known among his people: one who moaned or mourned over them.

Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city - The Assyrian history, as far as it has been discovered until now, is very lacking in events regarding this period. Until now, we have the names of only three kings for 150 years. But Assyria, as far as we know its history, was at its peak. Just before the time of Jonah, perhaps ending in it, were the victorious reigns of Shalmanubar and Shamasiva; after him was that of Ivalush or Pul, the first aggressor against Israel. It is clear that this was a time of Assyrian greatness: since God calls it “that great city,” not only in relation to its extent, but its power. A large, weak city would not have been called great city unto God (Jonah 3:3).

And cry against it - The substance of that cry is recorded later, but God told Jonah now what message he was to cry aloud to it. For Jonah relates later how he then expostulated with God, and that his expostulation was founded on this: that God was so merciful that He would not fulfill the judgment He threatened. Faith was strong in Jonah, while, like Apostles "the sons of thunder," before the Day of Pentecost, he did not know "what spirit he was of." Zeal for the people and, as he doubtless thought, for the glory of God, narrowed love in him.

He did not, like Moses, pray (Exodus 32:32), or else blot me also out of Your book, or like Paul, desire even to be an anathema from Christ (Romans 9:3) for his people’s sake, so that there might be more to love his Lord. His zeal was directed, like that of the rebuked Apostles, against others, and so it too was rebuked. But his faith was strong. He shrank back from the office, believing, not doubting, the might of God.

He thought nothing of preaching, amid that multitude of wild warriors, the stern message of God. He was willing, alone, to confront the violence of a city of 600,000, whose characteristic was violence. He was ready, at God’s bidding, to enter what Nahum speaks of as a den of lions (Nahum 2:11–12); The dwelling of the lions and the feeding-place of the young lions, where the lion did tear in pieces enough for his whelps, and strangled for his lionesses. He did not fear the fierceness of their lion-nature, but God’s tenderness, and lest that tenderness should be the destruction of his own people.

Their wickedness has come up before Me - So God said to Cain (Genesis 4:10). The voice of your brother’s blood cries unto Me from the ground: and of Sodom (Genesis 18:20–21), The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, because their sin is very grievous; the cry of it has come up unto Me. The “wickedness” is not the mere mass of human sin, of which it is said (1 John 5:19), the whole world lieth in wickedness, but evil-doing toward others.

This was the cause of the final sentence on Nineveh, with which Nahum closes his prophecy, upon whom has not your wickedness passed continually? It had been assigned as the ground of the judgment on Israel through Nineveh (Hosea 10:14–15). So shall Bethel do unto you, on account of the wickedness of your wickedness. It was the ground of the destruction by the flood (Genesis 6:5). God saw that the wickedness of man was great upon the earth.

God represents Himself, the Great Judge, as sitting on His Throne in heaven, Unseen but All-seeing, to whom the wickedness and oppressiveness of man against man “goes up,” appealing for His sentence against the oppressor. The cause often seems long in pleading. God is long-suffering with the oppressor too, in the hope that he may repent.

So a greater good would come to the oppressed also, if the wolf became a lamb. But meanwhile, “every iniquity has its own voice at the hidden judgment seat of God.” Mercy itself calls for vengeance on the unmerciful.

But (And) Jonah rose up to flee ... from the presence of the Lord - literally “from being before the Lord.” Jonah knew well that man could not escape from the presence of God, whom he knew as the Self-existing One, He who alone is, the Maker of heaven, earth, and sea. He did not “flee” then “from His presence,” knowing well what David said (Psalms 139:7, 9-10), “Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall Thy hand lead me and Thy right hand shall hold me.” Jonah fled, not from God’s presence, but from standing before Him, as His servant and minister. He refused God’s service because, as he himself tells God afterward (Jonah 4:2), he knew what it would end in, and he disliked it.

So he acted, as people often do who dislike God’s commands. He set about removing himself as far as possible from being under the influence of God, and from the place where he “could” fulfill them. God commanded him to go to Nineveh, which lay northeast from his home; and he instantly set himself to flee to the then farthest west. Holy Scripture sets the rebellion before us in its full nakedness. “The word of the Lord came unto Jonah, go to Nineveh, and Jonah rose up;” he did something instantly, as the consequence of God’s command. He “rose up,” not as other prophets, to obey, but to disobey; and that, not slowly nor irresolutely, but “to flee, from” standing “before the Lord.” He renounced his office. So when our Lord came in the flesh, those who found what He said to be “hard sayings,” went away from Him, “and walked no more with Him” (John 6:66). So the rich “young man went away sorrowful” (Matthew 19:22), for he had great possessions.

They were perhaps afraid of trusting themselves in His presence, or they were ashamed of staying there and not doing what He said. So people, when God secretly calls them to prayer, go and immerse themselves in business. When, in solitude, He says to their souls something they do not like, they escape His voice in a crowd.

If He calls them to make sacrifices for His poor, they order themselves a new dress or some fresh luxury or self-indulgence. If He calls them to celibacy, they commit to marry immediately. Or, on the contrary, if He calls them not to do something, they do it at once to end their struggle and their obedience, to put obedience out of their power, and to set themselves on a course of disobedience.

Jonah, then, in this part of his history, is the image of those who, when God calls them, disobey His call, and shows how God deals with them when He does not abandon them. He lets them have their way for a time and surrounds them with difficulties, so that they will “flee back from God displeased to God appeased.”

“The whole wisdom, the whole bliss, the whole of man lies in this, to learn what God wills him to do, in what state of life, calling, duties, profession, employment, He wills him to serve Him.” God sent each one of us into the world to fulfill their own definite duties and, through His grace, to attain our own perfection in and through fulfilling them. He did not create us at random, to pass through the world, doing whatever self-will or our own pleasure leads us to, but to fulfill His will.

This will of His, if we obey His earlier calls and seek Him by prayer, in obedience, self-denial, humility, and thoughtfulness, He makes known to each by His own secret drawings, and, in the absence of these, at times by His Providence or human means. And then, “to follow Him is a token of predestination.” It is to place ourselves in that order of things, that pathway to our eternal mansion, for which God created us and which God created for us.

So Jesus says (John 10:27–28), “My sheep hear My voice and I know them, and they follow Me, and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My Hand.” In these ways, God has foreordained for us all the graces that we need; in these, we shall be free from all temptations that might be too hard for us, in which our own special weakness would be most exposed. Those ways that people choose out of mere natural taste or fancy are mostly those that expose them to the greatest peril of sin and damnation.

For they choose them just because such pursuits most flatter their own inclinations and give scope to their natural strength and their moral weakness. So Jonah, disliking a duty that God gave him to fulfill, separated himself from His service, forfeited his past calling, lost, as far as it was in his power, his place among “the goodly fellowship of the prophets,” and, but for God’s overtaking grace, would have ended his days among the disobedient.

As in Holy Scripture, David stands alone of saints who, after their calling, were bloodstained; as the penitent robber stands alone converted in death; as Peter stands singly, recalled after denying his Lord; so Jonah stands, the one prophet who, having obeyed and then rebelled, was constrained by the overpowering providence and love of God to return and serve Him.

“Being a prophet, Jonah could not be ignorant of the mind of God—that, according to His great Wisdom and His unsearchable judgments and His untraceable and incomprehensible ways, He, through the threat, was providing for the Ninevites that they should not suffer the things threatened. To think that Jonah hoped to hide himself in the sea and elude by flight the great Eye of God would be altogether absurd and ignorant—a belief not to be entertained, I say, not just of a prophet, but of any other sensible person who had any moderate knowledge of God and His supreme power.

Jonah knew all this better than anyone: that, planning his flight, he changed his place but did not flee God. For no one could do this, either by hiding himself in the bosom of the earth or depths of the sea, or ascending (if possible) with wings into the air, or entering the lowest hell, or being surrounded by thick clouds, or taking any other measure to secure his flight.

God alone, above all things, can neither be escaped nor resisted. When He wills to hold and grasp in His hand, He overtakes the swift, baffles the intelligent, overthrows the strong, bows the lofty, tames rashness, and subdues might.

He who threatened others with the mighty hand of God was not himself ignorant of God, nor did he think to flee Him. Let us not believe this. But since he saw the fall of Israel and perceived that prophetic grace would pass to the Gentiles, he withdrew from the office of preaching and deferred the command.”

“The prophet knows, the Holy Spirit teaching him, that the repentance of the Gentiles is the ruin of the Jews. Therefore, as a lover of his country, he does not so much envy Nineveh's deliverance as he wills that his own country should not perish. Seeing, too, that his fellow-prophets are sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel to rouse the people to repentance, and that Balaam the soothsayer also prophesied of Israel’s salvation, he grieves that he alone is chosen to be sent to the Assyrians, the enemies of Israel, and to that greatest city of the enemies, where there was idolatry and ignorance of God.

Yet more he feared lest, on the occasion of his preaching, they being converted to repentance, Israel should be wholly forsaken. For he knew by the same Spirit by which the preaching to the Gentiles was entrusted to him that the house of Israel would then perish; and he feared that what was one day to happen should take place in his own time.”

“The flight of the prophet may also be interpreted as representing humanity in general who, despising God’s commands, departed from Him and gave himself over to the world. There, subsequently, through the storms of misfortune and the ruin of the whole world raging against him, he was compelled to feel God’s presence and to return to Him whom he had fled.

From this we understand that those things also that people think are for their good, when against the will of God, turn to destruction. Help not only fails to benefit those to whom it is given, but those who give it are also crushed, just as we read that Egypt was conquered by the Assyrians because it helped Israel against the will of God. The ship is imperiled that had received the imperiled; a tempest arises in a calm; nothing is secure when God is against us.”

Tarshish - named after one of the sons of Javan (Genesis 10:4), was an ancient merchant city of Spain, once proverbial for its wealth (Psalms 72:10; Strabo iii. 2. 14), supplying Judah with silver (Jeremiah 10:9), and Tyre with “all kinds of riches,” with iron also, tin, and lead (Ezekiel 27:12, 25).

It was known to the Greeks and Romans as (with a harder pronunciation) Tartessus; but in the first century, it had either ceased to exist or was known under some other name. Ships destined for a voyage so long at that time, and built for carrying merchandise, were naturally among the largest then constructed. “Ships of Tarshish” corresponded to the “East-Indiamen” which some of us remember. The breaking of “ships of Tarshish by an east wind” (Psalms 48:7) is, on account of their size and general safety, cited as a special token of the interposition of God.

And went down to Joppa - Joppa, now Jaffa, was the one well-known port of Israel on the Mediterranean. There the cedars were brought from Lebanon for both the first and second temple (2 Chronicles 3:16; Ezra 2:7). Simon the Maccabee “took it again for a haven, and made an entrance to the isles of the sea.”

It was subsequently destroyed by the Romans as a pirate-haven (Josephus, Jewish War 3.9.3; Strabo 16.2.28). At a later time, all describe it as an unsafe haven. Perhaps the shore changed, since the rings to which Andromeda was fabled to have been fastened, and which probably were once used to moor vessels, were high above the sea. Perhaps, like the Channel Islands, the navigation was safe to those who knew the coast but unsafe to others.

To this port Jonah “went down” from his native country, the mountain district of Zebulun. Perhaps it was not at this time in the hands of Israel. At least, the sailors were pagan. He “went down,” as the man who fell among the thieves is said to “have gone down from Jerusalem to Jericho” (Luke 10:30). He “went down” from the place that God honored by His presence and protection.

And he paid the fare thereof - Jonah describes circumstantially how he took every step to achieve his goal. He went down, found a strongly built ship going where he wished, paid his fare, and embarked. He seemed now to have done all. He had cut himself off from the country where his office lay. He had no further step to take. Winds and waves would do the rest. He had but to be still. He went, only to be brought back again.

“Sin brings our soul into much senselessness. For just as those overtaken by dullness of mind and drunkenness are carried along aimlessly and at random, and, whether there is a pit or precipice or whatever else below them, they fall into it unknowingly; so too, those who fall into sin, intoxicated by their desire for the object, do not know what they are doing and see nothing before them, present or future.

Tell me, are you fleeing the Lord? Wait then a little, and you will learn from the event that you cannot escape the hands of His servant, the sea.

For as soon as he embarked, it also roused its waves and raised them up on high. And just as a faithful servant, finding her fellow slave stealing some of his master’s property, does not cease from giving endless trouble to those who take him in until she recovers him, so too the sea, finding and recognizing her fellow servant, harasses the sailors unceasingly.

It rages and roars, not by dragging them to a tribunal, but by threatening to sink the vessel with all it contains unless they restore her fellow servant to her.”

“The sinner “arises” because, willy-nilly, he must toil. If he shrinks from the way of God because it is hard, he still cannot be idle. There is the way of ambition, of covetousness, of pleasure to be trodden, which are certainly far harder.

‘We wearied ourselves,’ say the wicked , ‘in the way of wickedness and destruction; yes, we have gone through deserts where there lay no way; but the way of the Lord we have not known.’

Jonah would not arise to go to Nineveh at God’s command, yet he nevertheless had to arise to flee to Tarshish from before the presence of God. What good can he have who flees the Good? What light, who willingly forsakes the Light?

“He goes down to Joppa.” Wherever you turn, if you depart from the will of God, you go down. Whatever glory, riches, power, or honors you gain, you do not rise in the slightest; the more you advance while turned from God, the deeper and deeper you go down.

Yet all these things are not obtained without paying the price. At a price and with toil, he obtains what he desires; he receives nothing gratis but at great price purchases for himself storms, griefs, and peril.

There arises a great tempest in the sea when various contradictory passions arise in the heart of the sinner, which take from him all tranquility and joy. There is a tempest in the sea when God sends strong and dangerous disease, by which the body is in peril of being broken.

There is a tempest in the sea when, through rivals or competitors for the same pleasures, or the injured, or the civil magistrate, his guilt is discovered; he is laden with infamy and odium, punished, and withheld from his usual pleasures. (Psalms 107:23–27) They who go down to the sea of this world and do business in mighty waters—their soul melts away because of trouble; they reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken man, and all their wisdom is swallowed up.”

But (And) the Lord sent out - (literally ‘cast along’). Jonah had done all he could. Now God’s part began. This He expresses by the word, “And.” Jonah took “his” measures, “and” now God takes “His.”

He had let him have his way, as He often deals with those who rebel against Him. He lets them have their way up to a certain point. He waits, in the tranquility of His Almightiness, until they have completed their preparations. Then, when humanity has finished, He begins, so that humanity may see more clearly that it is His doing.

“He takes those who flee from Him in their flight, the wise in their counsels, sinners in their conceits and sins, and draws them back to Himself and compels them to return. Jonah thought to find rest in the sea, and behold! a tempest.” Probably, God summoned back Jonah as soon as he had completed all on his part, and sent the tempest soon after he left the shore.

At least, such tempests often swept along that shore, and were known by their own special name, like the Euroclydon off Crete. Jonah too alone had gone down below deck to sleep, and, when the storm came, the mariners thought it possible to put back. Josephus says of that shore, “Joppa having by nature no haven, for it ends in a rough shore, mostly abrupt, but for a short space having projections, that is, deep rocks and cliffs advancing into the sea, inclining on either side toward each other (where the traces of the chains of Andromeda still shown accredit the antiquity of the fable), and the north wind beating right on the shore, and dashing the high waves against the rocks which receive them, makes the location there a harborless sea. As those from Joppa were tossing here, a strong wind (called by those who sail here, the black north wind) falls upon them at daybreak, immediately dashing some of the ships against each other, some against the rocks, and some, forcing their way against the waves to the open sea (for they fear the rocky shore...), the breakers towering above them, sank.”

The ship was like - (literally ‘thought’) to be broken. Perhaps Jonah means by this very vivid image to exhibit all the more his own dullness. He ascribes, as it were, to the ship a sense of its own danger, as she heaved and rolled and creaked and quivered under the weight of the storm which lay on her, and her masts groaned, and her yard-arms shivered. To the awakened conscience everything seems to have been alive to God’s displeasure, except itself.

And cried, every man to his God - They did what they could. “Not knowing the truth, they yet know of a Providence, and, amid religious error, know that there is an Object of reverence.” In ignorance they had received one who offended God. And now God, whom they ignorantly worshiped (Acts 17:23), while they cried to the gods, who, they thought, disposed of them, heard them. They escaped with the loss of their wares, but God saved their lives and revealed Himself to them. God hears ignorant prayer, when ignorance is not willful, nor is it sin.

To lighten it of them - literally “to lighten from against them,” to lighten what was so much “against them,” what so oppressed them. “They thought that the ship was weighed down by its usual cargo, and they did not know that the whole weight was that of the fugitive prophet.”

“The sailors cast forth their wares,” but the ship was not lightened. For the whole weight still remained: the body of the prophet, that heavy burden—not from the nature of the body, but from the burden of sin. For nothing is so onerous and heavy as sin and disobedience. Therefore, Zechariah also (Zechariah 5:7) represented it under the image of lead.

And David, describing its nature, said (Psalms 38:4), my wickednesses are gone over my head; as a heavy burden they are too heavy for me. And Christ cried aloud to those who lived in many sins (Matthew 11:28), Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will refresh you.

Jonah was gone down - probably before the beginning of the storm, not simply before the lightening of the ship. He could hardly have fallen asleep then. A pagan ship was a strange place for a prophet of God, not as a prophet, but as a fugitive; and so, probably, ashamed of what he had completed, he had withdrawn from sight and notice.

He did not embolden himself in his sin, but shrank into himself. The conscience most commonly awakes when the sin is done. It stands aghast at itself; but Satan, if he can, cuts off its retreat. Jonah had no retreat now, unless God had made one.

And was fast asleep - The journey to Joppa had been long and hurried; he had “fled.” Sorrow and remorse completed what fatigue began. Perhaps he had given himself up to sleep, to dull his conscience. For it is said, “he lay down and was fast asleep.” Grief produces sleep; hence it is said of the apostles on the night before the Lord’s Passion, when Jesus rose up from prayer and was come to His disciples, He found them sleeping for sorrow (Luke 22:45).

It is said, “Jonah slept heavily. Deep was the sleep, but it was not of pleasure but of grief; not of heartlessness, but of heavy-heartedness. For well-disposed servants soon feel their sins, as he did. For when the sin has been done, then he knows its frightfulness. For such is sin. When born, it awakens pangs in the soul which bore it, contrary to the law of our nature. For as soon as we are born, we end the travail-pangs; but sin, as soon as born, rends with pangs the thoughts which conceived it.”

Jonah was in a deep sleep, a sleep by which he was fast held and bound; a sleep as deep as that from which Sisera never woke. Had God allowed the ship to sink, the memory of Jonah would have been that of the fugitive prophet.

As it is, his deep sleep stands as an image of the lethargy of sin. “This most deep sleep of Jonah signifies a man torpid and slumbering in error, for whom it was not enough to flee from the face of God, but his mind, drowned in a stupor and not knowing the displeasure of God, lies asleep, steeped in security.”