CHAPTER V.

IN WHAT RESPECTS THE THINGS WHICH BEFELL JONAH RENDERED HIM A SIGN.

THE singular chapter of Jonah's history relating to his descent into the fish's belly, and his restoration alive, after a sojourn there of a part of three days, to the habitable earth, was not intended to form a mere excrescence or stray incident in his life, nor even a special providence, without any other end in view than the prophet's personal good. It was to be inwrought as an essential element into his public character, and was both intended and fitted to exert an important bearing on his future calling and destiny. This we learn beyond all doubt from the testimony of our Lord himself, who on two separate occasions referred to this remarkable period of Jonah's history, and spake of the instruction with which it was fraught for past and coming generations. The first occasion is the one of which we have the fullest report in the twelfth chapter of the gospel by Matthew. It formed part of the transactions which arose out of the cure of a poor demoniac-a cure that so impressed the

people with the supernatural power and glory of Jesus, that they instinctively said one to another, "Is not this the Son of David?" To nullify, if possible, this fatal conclusion, the Pharisees who were present resorted to the equally impious and unreasonable device of ascribing the power by which Jesus thus cast out devils, to Beelzebub the prince of the devils; which called forth from our Lord first an unanswerable exposure of the palpable absurdity of the supposition, then an awful warning in regard to the unpardonable sin of uttering blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, followed by a denunciation of the intense and hopeless malignity of those from whom such thoughts of wickedness proceeded. But some, it would appear, were not disposed to go altogether along with those, who imputed to Jesus such a revolting alliance with the powers of darkness, and yet were not satisfied with the supernatural proofs he had hitherto given of his Messiahship. These persons, therefore, who are called "certain of the Scribes and of the Pharisees," struck in at the close of our Lord's solemn discourse with the request, "Master, we would see a sign from thee;" which, in the corresponding passage of Luke's gospel (ch. xi. 16), is more explicitly called a sign from heaven: "And others, tempting him, sought of him a sign from heaven.” "But he answered and said unto them,” it is again written in Matthew, “An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of the prophet Jonas. For as Jonas was three days and three

nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation and shall condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonas, and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here." Turning again, however, to the corresponding passage in the other evangelist, we find an important element added from the discourse of Christ on the occasion; for it is there stated, with respect no doubt to Jonah's sojourn for a time in the deep, that he was a sign to the Ninevites, as well as to the generation among whom our Lord lived: "As Jonas was a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of man be to this generation.'

The other occasion on which our Lord pointed to the instruction contained in Jonah's temporary entombment in the fish's belly, occurred somewhat later in his history, and is noticed nowhere but at the commencement of the sixteenth chapter of St Matthew's gospel. We are there told, that "the Pharisees with the Sadducees came, and tempting, desired him that he would show them a sign from heaven." To which he first replied by rebuking them for their inability to discern the signs of the times, while they could

* The words in the original are somewhat more express than in our version, and-denote, not merely that our Lord and Jonah were equally signs to the people among whom respectively they delivered the message of God, but that they were signs of the same kind (xus iyśvero 'Iwvãs), according as, or in the same manner as Jonas was a sign to the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of man be to this generation."

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so skilfully discern the face of the sky; and then referred them again to the prophet Jonah, but without any note apparently of explanation: "A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign: and there shall no sign be given unto it but the sign of the prophet Jonas. And he left them and departed."

It is obvious, that the words used on this latter occasion by Christ, add nothing to the information previously given concerning Jonah as a sign, and are simply to be regarded as a new intimation and warning to the Jews of the important bearing of that sign on their present circumstances, and the danger likely to arise from their not giving heed to it. But it is equally obvious, that the information given on the former occasion, when we combine together the accounts of the two evangelists, presents the sign in a twofold character to our view, and declares it to have had an immediate and direct bearing on the Ninevites, as well as an indirect and remote bearing on the Jews of our Lord's time. Jonah was first precisely such a sign to the Ninevites as Christ was to the Jews; and, secondly, Jonah was also a sign to the Jews, that they might, by properly attending to it, be prepared for understanding and receiving the things concerning Christ. The matter must be contemplated in both of its aspects to be fully understood.

1. In what respect, then, was Jonah a sign to the Ninevites? It could not be as a prophet that he was so designated; for though the word sign is used with considerable latitude in Scripture, yet it always de

notes, when applied as here to the manifestations of Godhead, something of the nature of a prodigy, an extraordinary and undoubted operation of the hand of God; and it must, therefore, have been meant to be understood of Jonah, not simply as the Lord's prophet to the Ninevites, but as himself a wonder in the earth; being one who had, in a manner, tasted of death, and yet had not seen corruption-who had been sent into Sheol because of sin, and now again returned to witness for righteousness among the living, and show them the way of salvation. What could more fitly deserve the name of a sign? Let us mark the singular properties that belonged to it. It was, first of all, wrought in secret, in the lower parts of the earth-a work of God in a mystery; and, if the Ninevites had chosen to treat the appearance of Jonah among them with indifference and contempt, no suspicion probably would ever have entered their minds, at least no certain information would have reached them, of the wonderful experience through which he had passed. Then, it was a sign which for Jonah himself was of a most humiliating nature; it had marked him out as peculiarly the object of divine resentment on account of sin, even to his being driven forth as an outcast from God and man into the lowest depths of abasement and distress; so that he had himself occasion to be ashamed, rather than to boast of what had happened; and the Ninevites-if, on hearing the marvellous story, they had been disposed to find an excuse for neglecting the message brought