I. THE REBELLION OF THE PROPHET.

The history of Jonah furnishes at the present time, as we cannot but know, only material for ridicule to the infidel and rationalist. We have nothing to do with it in this way here. There is no need for us to defend a story to which the Lord has Himself given such explicit sanction as He has to that of Jonah. Jonah is by Him styled emphatically "the prophet,"and when Israel sought from Him a sign, He answered them that there should "no sign be given but the sign of Jonas the prophet, for as Jonas was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish " (not at all necessarily or properly a "whale") "so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." Israel, alas, would only find their own condemnation in the application of this:"The men of Nineveh shall rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonas, and behold a greater than Jonas is here." Here we are told in the most absolute way that the Ninevites repented at the preaching of Jonah, and that Jonah himself had been in the belly of the fish three days and three nights; a preparation which alas he needed, strange and solemn as it was, in order to be that messenger to the nations for which God destined him.

The application that the Lord makes to Himself of the story here is not to be taken as if we should find in the book of Jonah the expansion of it. The moment we look at Jonah and realize the whole condition which necessitated for him the severity of the discipline which he had to undergo, we see at once how far separate we are from any such thought as that he could be even a direct type of the Lord. Christ simply makes an application of the story to His case, an application which we shall consider as we take it up. In all cases, perhaps, of the typical histories of the Old Testament there are other applications than that which is in the line of their primary meaning, and so we find it here. Jonah as a type (which no doubt he is) is rather a type of Israel, the nation to which he belonged, and in this way the whole book becomes luminous for us. We see the moral of it, the spiritual meaning, in the plainest manner.

In the order which the books of the minor prophets have in the Septuagint version, Jonah comes third in the second division of them. It has elsewhere been urged that the arrangement given by the Septuagint here is in fact the true one. There is no need to dwell upon it in this place; but the three books thus associated together are all books that speak in some way or another distinctively of the Gentile,-the enemy, as, alas, he was of the people of God; but not simply because of his own sin, but also on account of theirs.

Of these three books, Joel first of all shows us how the Gentile was indeed the rod of God upon Israel, in order that His purpose of blessing might be at last accomplished in them; and then the rod is broken, the enemy cast out, and blessing from the Lord comes in more than adequate recompense for all the suffering. Next, in Obadiah, we see Edom, in obstinate enmity against his brother Jacob, destined to utter destruction. The hardened enemy is cut off. Jonah now, in the third place, has a very important lesson to give us. It is the lesson, in fact, of the prophetic mission of Israel to the world, a mission which as yet she has never rightly fulfilled; in fact, fled away from the face of God that she might not fulfil it. This has necessitated the dealing of God with her, which has so large a place in the book of Jonah, and which at last humbles her to become the instrument in His hands, of blessing to the Gentiles such as He intended her to be. Her message may be one of judgment like that of Jonah, but bowed to by them, in result it becomes blessing, as it always is. For the announcement of judgment is that God may not judge, as He has Himself declared. Let us look at the story briefly, and see how this is all worked out for us in the history of the prophet.

History the book is almost altogether, as we are fully aware. The history, therefore, must be that which is to have meaning for us. The history is, in fact, the prophecy. No doubt Jonah has his own prophetic message. .. Nevertheless, he is himself a prophet in his life as well as in his testimony. If we do not see the spiritual meaning which underlies the book, it must be in the main a mystery to us. It is in the spiritual meaning of this history, evidently, that Jonah finds his place among the three minor prophets whose meaning has been glanced at. In Scripture, in fact everywhere, the spiritual meaning governs all; which does not mean that it is not based upon-perhaps rather incorporated-in the historical fact. The history is no less a history because God has been pleased to mold it so that it should be the vehicle of that spiritual instruction; which must be, with Him who seeks us for Himself in it, of the greatest account. How wonderful a thing it is to realize that God has, in fact, molded the history of the world after this manner!-shown Himself thus the absolute Master of that even most opposed to Him, and made it all the servant of man's need wherever there is an ear to hear, a heart open to receive instruction! Let us look, then, at the story of the prophet.

Jonah's name is a striking one. It is "the dove." How unlike it seems to the history before us; how untrue he is to his name! And yet officially it is evident that he is in deed the instrument of the Spirit, whom the dove pictures; as Israel, the nation, also was intended thus to be the spiritual teacher of mankind. Spite of herself, God has made her this, as we surely know. Almost every book in the Bible has been given us through her means. This has indeed been but little glory to her, for the very men whom God raised up to inspire them with His truth have been the witnesses of the rebelliousness of the stiff-necked nation among whom they were. God has now here found as yet a nation plastic to His hand as He would have them; and the history of the Church no less than the history of Israel, what has it been, while a history of His grace on the one hand, but a history of rebellion on the other? It is time that we give up altogether glorying in men; but all the more appears the glory of the Lord in thus accomplishing His purposes in spite of all that the self-will and folly of man could do to set them aside.

Israel is thus the true Jonah, whose history has been anything but the history of a vessel of the Spirit; and yet it is none the less to us the pledge of a grace, which, spite of all, will have its way with them as with others. It was when the nations had turned their back upon God and gone into idolatry that God first of all brought out Abraham from among them; and if He shut up His revelation, as it might seem, within the limits of a favored nation, it was in order to secure the revelation itself that He had to do so. Even then He planted Israel in the very highway of the nations, as has often been said, in the very midst of the great centers of civilization of the ancient world, and with Tyre and Sidon by sea ready to be His messengers, if they had only heart for it, to proclaim that revelation far and wide.

Thus, Israel was the true Jonah, as is plain. But he refuses this place, flees to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord to mingle thus with those very nations to whom God would have sent him as a messenger from Himself. Tarshish, "traffic in fine linen," is the very place which naturally stamps Israel as what they have become,-mere traders, Canaanites with the balances of deceit in their hands; but Jonah profits nothing by this. He only pays the cost, and gets into a storm upon the sea, which imperils not himself only, but the Gentiles among whom he is; for, in fact, the blessing of the Gentiles is bound up with Israel, and however God may work, peril to Israel means peril to the world. Significantly, he is asleep amid the storm; while on the other hand, they of the nations are awake at least to that. These have to consent with regard to Jonah, as regarding Israel also, to the judgment of God, or else share it. In judging her, they in fact find rest and deliverance. This is a glance surely at the present time of grace, when Israel is at the same time whelmed and lost in the sea of the nations.

Still, God has provided for this emergency; the great fish is prepared by which Jonah is swallowed until he learns the lesson of death and resurrection, and finds indeed that "salvation is of the Lord." It is the same lesson that Israel must learn for her deliverance ; the Gentile empire which has swallowed her up being, in fact, the anomalous sea-monster which Daniel sees (ch. 7:3, 7), and which, contrary to its own nature, has nevertheless been appointed for her preservation.

The story here passes beyond the present time. Brought to repentance which as yet she has not manifested, she is raised up again as from the dead and then delivers the message to which she has been aforetime false, in such a manner that the Gentiles hear; her deliverance being like that of Jonah with the Ninevites, a sign to them. What a sign it will be when Israel is at last brought out of her long captivity and made the witness of God's faithful mercy to her.

The last chapter of the book, as is evident, looks back over their history. Jonah gives God the account of why he fled to Tarshish, and has to learn the grace of God to the Gentiles as he has yet never learned it, and Himself therefore, as never before known.

This, then, is the book in brief. It is evidently complete on all sides, and we need make no apology for any point of the interpretation, which is thoroughly sustained all the way through. This story is of no human manufacture, but divine; and the more deeply we look into it, the more we shall find that the seal of God is upon its every part.

Let us take it up, then, to examine it more thoroughly, and to see the lessons which God would convey to us also in it. The whole of Israel's history, as already said, is plainly on the one hand the history of man's sin and failure; on the other, the history of redemption through God's grace. It has thus a lesson for us all, of which indeed those have deprived themselves who imagine that as a nation God is done with Israel, and that the Church has fallen heir to all the promises that God made to her. God Himself has said of this:'' The Lord who giveth the sun for a light by day and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, who divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar, the Lord of Hosts is His name. If those ordinances depart from before Me, saith the Lord, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before Me forever. Thus saith the Lord, if heaven above can be measured and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the Lord " (Jer. 31:35-37). Thus the lesson of His grace abides for us. Thus we find the unchangeableness of His purposes, whatever man's unfaithfulness may do against them. Thus alone Israel becomes, spite of herself, and in her own history, the true prophet of the Lord, as else she could not be. F. W. G.

(To be continued.)