Jonah represents the national feelings which he shared.  Why did he refuse to go to Nineveh?  Not because he was afraid of his life, or thought the task hopeless.  He refused because he feared success.  God’s goodness was being stretched rather too far, if it was going to take in Nineveh.  Jonah did not want it to escape.  If he had been sent to destroy it, he would probably have gone gladly.  He grudged that heathen should share Israel’s privileges, and probably thought that gain to Nineveh would be loss to Israel.  It was exactly the spirit of the prodigal’s elder brother.  There was also working in him the concern for his own reputation, which would be damaged if the threats he uttered turned out to be thunder without lightning, by reason of the repentance of Nineveh.

Israel was set among the nations, not as a dark lantern, but as the great lampstand in the Temple court proclaimed, to ray out light to all the world.  Jonah’s mission was but a concrete instance of Israel’s charge.  The nation was as reluctant to fulfil the reason of its existence as the Prophet was.  Both begrudged sharing privileges with heathen dogs, both thought God’s care wasted, and neither had such feelings towards the rest of the world as to be willing to be messengers of forgiveness to them.  All sorts of religious exclusiveness, contemptuous estimates of other nations, and that bastard patriotism which would keep national blessings for our own country alone, are condemned by this story.  In it dawns the first faint light of that sun which shone at its full when Jesus healed the Canaanite’s daughter, or when He said, ‘Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold.’

Note, next, the fatal consequences of refusal to obey the God-given charge.  We need not suppose that Jonah thought that he could actually get away from God’s presence.  Possibly he believed in a special presence of God in the land of Israel, or, more probably, the phrase means to escape from service.  At any rate, he determined to do his flight thoroughly.  Tarshish was, to a Hebrew, at the other end of the world from Nineveh.  The Jews were no sailors, and the choice of the sea as means of escape indicates the obstinacy of determination in Jonah.

The storm is described with a profusion of unusual words, all apparently technical terms, picked up on board, just as Luke, in the only other account of a storm in Scripture, has done.  What a difference between the two voyages!  In the one, the unfaithful prophet is the cause of disaster, and the only sluggard in the ship.  In the other, the Apostle, who has hazarded his life to proclaim his Lord, is the source of hope, courage, vigour, and safety.  Such are the consequences of silence and of brave speech for God.  No wonder that the fugitive Prophet slunk down into some dark corner, and sat bitterly brooding there, self-accused and condemned, till weariness and the relief of the tension of his journey lulled him to sleep.  It was a stupid and heavy sleep.  Alas for those whose only refuge from conscience is oblivion!