Charles Spurgeon Commentary Jonah 4:11

"and should not I have regard for Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?" — Jonah 4:11 (ASV)

And also much cattle?

Does God care for cattle? He does; and how that fact should teach his servants to be kind to all brute creatures! There is some truth in those lines of Coleridge, –

"He prays best, who loves best
All things, both great and small,"

for everything that lives should be the object of our care for the sake of him who gave them life; and if he has given us to have dominion over all sheep and oxen, and the birds of the air, and so forth, let not our dominion be that of a tyrant, but that of a kind and gentle prince who seeks the good of that which is under his power.

Here ends the story of Jonah which he tells himself; and he did not add anything to it because nothing needs to be added. The Lord's question to him was altogether unanswerable, and Jonah felt it to be so. Let us hope that, during the rest of his life, he so lived as to rejoice in the sparing mercy of God.

He had stood outside the door, like the elder brother who was angry, and would not go in, and who said to his father, Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment: and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends: but as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf.

But after his father had said to him, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine., I hope that he went in. I trust that Jonah also went in and lived with the penitent Ninevites, and that all were happy together in the love of the God who had been so gracious to them.

That great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand;

This is always supposed to mean infants, and I judge that the supposition is a correct one. So Nineveh had a population of over one hundred and twenty thousand who were under two years old; so it must have been an immense city.

Who can tell the blessing that even infants bring to us? It may be that God spares London for the sake of the children in it.

How much the Lord Jesus Christ made of children! He allowed the little children to come to Him, and did not forbid them.

Does God care for children? Yes, indeed, He does; and so should His servants!

They are the better part of the human race; there is more in them that is admirable than there is in us who are grown up. They are, in many respects, a blessing to the city, as these one hundred and twenty thousand little ones were to Nineveh.

But how singularly does God add—