10.  The story of the book of Jonah is too simple to need any analysis.  His act in fleeing from God’s presence, when commissioned to go to Nineveh with a threatening message, is very extraordinary; but such is the inconsistency and folly of human passion.  The conduct of the mariners when overtaken by a tempest is not wonderful:  it is in harmony with all that we know of ancient habits of thinking and acting.  But what befell Jonah, when cast into the sea, is more than wonderful:  it is miraculous.  That there exist in the Mediterranean fish capable of swallowing a man entire is a well-attested fact.  The original Hebrew mentions only, “a great fish.”  The Alexandrine version, and after that the New Testament, use the word whale apparently in the sense of any great sea monster.  But whatever the fish may have been, his preservation alive in its body for the space of three days, and his subsequent ejection upon the dry land, can be accounted for only by reference to the immediate power of God, with whom nothing is impossible.  The effect of his preaching upon the Ninevites was remarkable; but much more so was his grief at its success, whereby God was moved to spare the city.  The common opinion is that he feared for his reputation as a true prophet; but a deeper ground of his anger may have been that he rightly understood the design of his mission to the Ninevites to be that through repentance they might be saved from impending destruction; while he regarded them as the enemies of God’s people, and unworthy of his mercy.  However this may be, Jonah’s mission to the Ninevites foreshadowed God’s purposes of mercy towards the heathen world, and that too at a very suitable time, when the history of the covenant people, and through them of God’s visible earthly kingdom, was about passing into lasting connection with that of the great monarchies of the earth.

11.  The authorship of the book of Jonah is not expressly given; but may be most naturally referred to the prophet himself.  The few alleged Chaldaisims found in it may be explained as belonging to the provincial dialect of the prophet; since we have but an imperfect knowledge of the variations which the living Hebrew language admitted in this respect.  In Matt. 12:39-41; Luke 11:29-32 the Saviour refers in explicit terms to events recorded in this book as being true history; nor can the historic character of the narrative as a whole be denied except on the ground that all records of the supernatural are unhistoric.

VI.  MICAH.

12.  Micah is called the Morasthite, probably because he was a native of Moresheth-gath, a small town of Judea, which, according to Eusebius and Jerome, lay in a southwesterly direction from Jerusalem, not far from Eleutheropolis on the plain, near the border of the Philistine territory.  With this agrees the connection in which it is named (1:13-15); for Lachish, Mareshah, and Adullam also lay in that direction.