liverance, and there shall be holiness; and the house of Jacob shall possess their possessions. 18 And the house of Jacob shall be a fire, and the house of Joseph a flame, and the house of Esau for stubble, and they shall kindle in them, and devour them; and there shall not be any remaining of the house of Esau; for the LORD hath spoken it. 19 And they of the south shall possess the mount of Esau; and they of the plain the Philistines: and they shall possess the fields of Ephraim, and the fields of Samaria: and Benjamin shall possess Gilead. 20 And the captivity of this host of the children of Israel shall possess that of the Canaanites, even unto Zarephath; and the captivity of Jerusalem, which is in Sepharad, shall possess the cities of the south. 21 And saviours shall come up on mount Zion to judge the mount of Esau; and the "kingdom shall be the LORD'S. 21 Luke 1. 33. 18 Or, it shall be holy. 19 Or, shall possess that which is in Sepharad. 201 Tim. 4. 16. James 5, 20, OBADIAH.-The Scriptures afford us no information whatever concerning this prophet; and the time in which he lived can only be conjectured from the bearing of his prophecy. The uncertainty concerning the person and history of this prophet has given occasion to a multitude of conjectures, which it is not worth while to repeat, since none of them come to us with the least authority. The opinion most generally entertained by the Jews themselves, that this was the same Obadiah who is so honourably distinguished in the history of Elijah, seems the least probable of any; and some of the more judicious of the Hebrew commentators, as Aben-Ezra and Kimchi, candidly confess that the time and history of the prophet are unknown. However, from the matter of the prophecy, which recites the triumph of the Edomites over the desolation of Israel, and their most unbrotherly conduct on that occasion, and proceeds to pronounce their doom, it is generally concluded by modern writers that Obadiah was the contemporary of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and delivered this prophecy within the interval of the few years which took place between the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, and the desolation of Edom by the same prince. The object of the prophecy is substantially the same as that in Jer. xlix. 7—22, and it is observable that the early part of the present book abounds in expressions identical with or similar to those found in that prophecy of Jeremiah; on which account, as well as because Edom has already engaged a considerable share of our attention, no further observations will now be offered. Verse 14. "To cut off those of his that did escape.”—On the destruction of Jerusalem many Jews endeavoured to escape into Egypt; and, seeing by what strong enmity the Edomites were actuated, it is exceedingly probable that they did not fail to avail themselves of the facilities which their intermediate position offered for cutting off and destroying numbers of these fugitives. JONA H. CHAPTER I. 1 Jonah, sent to Nineveh, fleeth to Tarshish. 4 He is beurayed by a tempest, 11 thrown into the sea, 17 and swallowed by a fish. wickedness is come up before me. OW the word of and cry a- 3 But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD. 4 But the LORD 'sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken. 5 Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his god, and cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it of them. But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship; and he lay, and was fast asleep. 6 So the shipmaster came to him, and said unto him, What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not. Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah. 8 Then said they unto him, Tell us, we pray thee, for whose cause this evil is upon us; What is thine occupation? and whence comest thou? what is thy country? and of what people art thou? 9 And he said unto them, I am an Hebrew; and I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land. 10 Then were the men 'exceedingly afraid, and said unto him, Why hast thou done this? For the men knew that he fled from the presence of the LORD, because he had told them. 11 Then said they unto him, What shall we do unto thee, that the sea 'may be calm unto us? for the sea "wrought, and was tempestuous. 12 And he said unto them, Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you: for I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you. 13 Nevertheless the men 'rowed hard to bring it to the land; but they could not: for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous against them. 14 Wherefore they cried unto the LORD, and said, We bescech thee, O LORD, we beseech thee, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not upon us innocent blood: for thou, O LORD, hast done as it pleased thee. 15 So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea: and the sea "ceased from her raging. 16 Then the men feared the LORD exceedingly, and "offered a sacrifice unto the LORD, and made vows. 17 Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And "Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. 7 And they said every one to his fellow, 1 Called, Matth. 12. 39, Jonas. Gen. 10. 11, 12. Chap, 3. 3. 3 Heb. cast forth. 4 Heb. thought to be broken. Heb. may be silent from us. 7 Or, grew more and more tempestuous. 8 Heb. went. Heb. digged. 11 Heb. sacrificed a sacrifice unto the LORD, and vowed vows. 18 Matt. 19. 40, and 16. 4. Luke 11.30. 5 Heb. with great fear. 10 Heh, stood. 13 Heb. bowels. JONAH.-In 2 Kings xiv. 25, there is a notice of this prophet, which supplies some information concerning him not to be found in his book of prophecy. It states that he was a native of Gath-hepher, a town of Zebulun, in the kingdom of Israel, and in after times a part of Galilee. The remaining information is open to two interpretations. We are told that certain things were done by Jeroboam II. king of Israel," according to the word of the Lord God of Israel, which he spake by the hand of his servant Jonah." If this means that this word of the Lord was delivered personally to Jeroboam by Jonah, we then learn that he lived in the reign of that monarch, and was contemporary with the earliest of the prophets (Amos and Hosea) whose writings are exhibited in a collected form. But it may be understood that the word of the Lord by Jonah was a prediction delivered by Jonah in a preceding reign, and fulfilled in that of Jeroin which case, he of course becomes more ancient than the earliest of the other prophets whose time can be ascertained. Both explanations have their respective advocates; and we are ourselves disposed to consider that he was earlier, but not considerably earlier, than Amos and Hosea. boam; We have no authentic information concerning Jonah later than the transaction which the present book records. The probability is that he returned to his own country, and died and was buried there. Such, however, is not the opinion of the people of Mesopotamia; for on one of the mounds which mark the site of ancient Nineveh, a tomb is shown which is alleged to cover the remains of the prophet. But, on the other hand, another tomb of the same prophet, for which similar claims were made, existed even in the time of Jerome, at a place within the tribe of Zebulun, two miles from Sepphoris on the road to Tiberias, which still retained the name of Gath. Benjamin of Tudela, correspondingly describes the tomb of Jonah, as on a hill near Sepphoris. It is also noticed by Thevenot, who says that the Turks had built a mosque over the sepulchral cave, and held the spot in such high veneration that they would allow no Christian to draw near. The Moslems, indeed, who have a garbled version in the Koran. of the narrative before us, hold the prophet Jonas in very high consideration. This is perhaps because Mohammed took every occasion to check any disposition which he perceived to speak disparagingly of Jonah, as compared with other prophets, on account of those infirmities of character which his history displays. Thus, in the Book of Traditions, Mohammed is reported to have said, "I do not say that there are any of the prophets better than Yunas-bin-Matta." And in one tradition it is thus:"Do not give to some prophets greater excellence than to others." Again,-"It is unworthy of a servant to say, 'I am better than Jonas the prophet."" And another tradition has, "Whosoever shall say I am better than Jonas the prophet, is a liar." Most of these were good lessons to self-relying pride, notwithstanding the source from which they 20 281 came. VOL. III. : Verse 3. "To flee unto Tarshish."-Concerning the place to which Jonah designed to go, opinions have been greatly divided, according to all the varieties of explanation which have been applied to Tarshish in general, and to which we have had former occasions to allude. According to some, it denotes the sea generally and accordingly, the Targum suggests that he intended simply to go to sea; and, the Mediterranean being intended, this must of course have led him in an opposite direction to that which he ought to have taken-westward instead of eastward. It is more generally understood, however, that a particular place is intended. Josephus says it was Tarsus, in Cilicia, the birth-place of St. Paul; and Tunis or Carthage in Africa, and Tartessus in Spain, have been offered as other alternatives. To us the last alternative seems as probable as any. The object of Jonah would have led him to desire to take a very distant voyage, in the contrary direction to Nineveh, and these conditions are well answered by Tartessus; besides which we may observe that the people of the ship were manifestly Phoenicians-for they were foreigners and idolaters, and these were the only such men that Jonah was likely to find at Joppa: and that they understood his language also implies that they were not a nation more remotely foreign than the Phoenicians. And it was more likely that Jonah should find at Joppa a Phoenician ship bound to Tartessus than to any of the other places; for Tartessus belonged to them, being an important colonial emporium with which they maintained a constant and extensive intercourse; which is not the case with respect to any of the other places which we have named. 5. "Down into the sides of the ship."—It is easiest to understand this to mean the sleeping-berths, which in the ships of the Phoenicians seem to have been, as they are now, constructed in or against the sides of the ships. We are aware of no evidence that the ancients had in their ships such things as swinging beds, or hammocks. 7. “For whose cause this evil is upon us."—It was a common notion among the ancient mariners, that an extraordinary storm must be attributed to the indignation of the gods against some guilty person on board the ship. This was par ticularly so when there was anything so unusual or unseasonable in the storm as to suggest the idea of its being supernatural, as was probably the case in the present instance. Under similar circumstances, when the vessel which carried Diagoras was assailed by a storm, the sailors had no difficulty in concluding that it arose principally on account of that philosopher, who was an open professor of atheism. 15. "Cast him forth into the sea."-This was an obvious resource of sailors who became convinced that the storm by which they were endangered was owing to the presence of a particular person. There are other examples of guilty or suspected persons being thrown overboard on such occasions. The hesitation which the present mariners felt as to what they should do to Jonah to make the sea calm, is well illustrated by Archbishop Newcome by the following extract from the Argonautics of Orpheus: "And much they doubted in their prudent minds, In this case they attributed to the presence of Medea the storm by which the Argo was visited. 17. "A great fish."—A great deal of profane witticism has been directed against this statement. On such occasions it has been generally assumed that a whale is to be understood; and then we are told that the circumstance was impossible, since the whale has not a swallow large enough for a man to pass. But the text does not say that the fish was a whale, but only, "a great fish ;" and although "a whale" is mentioned in the reference to this passage which our Saviour makes (Matt. xii. 40.), the name, particularly as collated with the original, is to be understood not as the name of any one fish, but as a common name for the larger inhabitants of the deep. Until therefore it shall be proved that there is no "great fish" capable of swallowing a man entire, the objection is equally ignorant and puerile. But it has heen proved that there are great fishes, particularly some of the shark kind, which are not only capable of swallowing the human body entire, but in whose stomachs entire human bodies have been found. As the animal stomach has no power over substances endued with vitality, a person swallowed alive, and who received no injury from the fish before being swallowed, would necessarily remain alive for a considerable time, unless suffocated in so uncongenial a situation and element. There is however one explanation which might allow a whale to be intended. if that fish were known in the Mediterranean-that is, to suppose that the fish did not actually swallow Jonah (and the text does not oblige us to affirm that it did), but detained him in its mouth. If a whale had done this, the prophet would have been less unpleasantly circumstanced than in the stomach of any fish. For the mouth of a common whale, when open, presents a cavity as large as a room, and capable of containing a merchant ship's jolly-boat, full of men, being six or eight feet wide, ten or twelve feet high (in front), and fifteen or sixteen feet long (Scoresby, i. 455). It is perfectly true that difficulties will remain under any explanation: but it is enough to show the circumstance not to be physically impossible; for the remaining difficulties are more than sufficiently met by the miraculous character of the transaction. It was the Lord who "prepared" the great fish: and the Lord of all creatures might exert influences beyond the ordinary course of nature (though it does not appear that they were against nature) to ensure the accomplishment of his Divine purposes. They who undertake to explain every thing in a transaction of this nature, perform a work of very great supererogation. As a whole, the narrative presents fewer difficulties than many of the other miracles recorded in Scripture. The greatest difficulty in it, may be to find by what provision Jonah was preserved from suffocation. And for this it is not necessary to account. Is any thing too hard for the Lord ?" And to the Lord it was not harder to preserve Jonah in the belly of the fish, than the three youths at Babylon in the midst of the "burning fiery furnace." They who believe that the Almighty has, at sundry times and in divers manners, exercised powers beyond the ordinary course of the laws which He has appointed to govern nature, will find no difficulties; and those who do not believe this have read the Bible, if they do read it, to little purpose. Our limits do not allow us to investigate the subject more fully; but we may refer the reader to Calmet's Dissertation sur Jonas;' the Dissertations' in Gleig's edition of Stackhouse; and Bishop Jebb's 'Sacred Literature.' 66 "Three days and three nights.”—This by no means necessarily implies three entire days and nights; but would be true if understood of one complete day, and any part, however small, of two others. Thus our Saviour, who lay in the tomb from Friday evening to Sunday morning, is said to have lain three days and nights in the grave. And that the present text should be similarly understood, is the more probable from the remarkable text in which the Son of Man makes this situation of Jonah a type of his own sojourn for "three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." (Matt. xii. 40.) CHAPTER II. 1 The prayer of Jonah. about, the weeds were wrapped about my 10 He is delivered from head. the fish. THEN Jonah prayed unto the LORD his God out of the fish's belly, 2 And said, I 'cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and he heard me; out of the belly of 'hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice. 3 For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves passed over me. 4 Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight; yet I will look again toward thy holy temple. 5 The 'waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the depth closed me round 1 Psal. 120. 1. 6 I went down to the "bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from 'corruption, O LORD my God. 7 When my soul fainted within me I remembered the LORD; and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple. 8 They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy. 9 But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of "thanksgiving: I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the LORD. 10 And the LORD spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land. 8 Or, the grace. Or, out of nine affliction. 6 For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 7 And he caused it to be proclaimed and 'published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: 8 But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. 9 'Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not? 10 And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not. 3 Heb. said. Heb. great men. 5 Joel 2. 14. 1 Heb. of God. * Matt. 12. 41. Luke 11. 32. Verse 3. "Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days' journey.”—Opinions are divided whether we are to understand that Nineveh was three days' journey in length, or in circuit. We have never ourselves felt any doubt that the circuit must be intended, as this not only is more probable, but agrees remarkably with the dimensions given by ancient writers. Three days' journey may be taken as giving from fifty to sixty miles, accordingly as we understand a journey on foot, or a caravan journey. This is absolutely incredible as the length of a city; but the different computations of the circuit of Nineveh do actually range between 48 and 60 miles-a very strong and decisive coincidence. The only objection to this conclusion arises from the statement, in the next verse, that Jonah went a day's journey into the city; which has been commonly enough understood to mean that he went a day's journey into the city, till he arrived at a particular public place, where he delivered his message. And be it so; but may not this particular place have been near the opposite extremity of the town to that at which the prophet entered? Or, rather, may we not understand the passage actually to intimate that the city was a day's journey in length,-stating that Jonah went through the city, being a day's journey, proclaiming its destruction? Of this it is another remarkable corroboration, that although, according to Diodorus, the city was equal to three days' journey in circuit, its length was not less, but rather more, than a third of the circuit-that is, one day's journey. Had Nineveh been four-square, like Babylon, this could not have been the case; but it was of an oblong figure, 150 stadia in length, by 90 in breadth. We therefore, from this correspondence, conclude that the "three days' journey" of Jonah describes the circuit, and the "one day's journey" the length of Nineveh. It appears that the city extended its length along the eastern bank of the Tigris, while its breadth reached from the |