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was a man of the northern kingdom, — an Israelite prophet, who had been foretelling the highest prosperity to which the Ten Tribes ever attained, and the widest extension which, under Jeroboam II., their territory ever received. Nineveh was a Gentile, that is to say, a heathen city; the very city, moreover, from which were to come those judgments and the destruction which prophets like Jonah's contemporary, Amos, were about this time beginning to announce as certain to fall upon Israel at no very distant date. Jonah, the Israelite, then, was sent to a heathen city, and — whether he knew it or not — to that particular enemy of his country from which there was most to fear. To an Israelite patriot, with even the smallest intimation of this, how natural to say, "To Nineveh?" No, let Nineveh go on and sin, and perish; the sooner the safer for my country. To warn Nineveh, and so to turn away its doom — what is that but to keep alive the fire which is to consume our Samaria and our national life? In any case, whether Jonah felt any patriotic difficulty or not, the religious difficulty was great enough. To go to heathen people with God's message, one of mercy as he saw clearly, quite as much as of judgment — that alone was repugnant to all his instincts. "No; rather let me no longer be one of the prophets who stand in the presence of Jehovah, ready for any errand, awaiting His commands. Rather let me lay down my office, and go out from before His face. Let me die first!" That is the heart of a good man, but of a narrow one. It is not the heart of the God even of the Old Testament. It is sometimes made matter of reproach to the New Testament, and to Christianity, as it is there expounded, that it makes little or no account of patriot ism. There is some truth in the criticism; but why? Patriotism has often been a noble thing; but it is really a narrow thing, narrower, at any rate, than the heart and view of God. The patriot sees and loves his fellow-countrymen; God only sees man! He loves Israel, even to idolatrous Israel of the Ten Tribes. But God loves the world. God so loved the world that He would have one of the earliest, if not the earliest, of the prophetic writers to go and offer His mercy to a heathen city, the enemy of His people.

(H. J. Foster.)

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KJV: Now the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying,

WEB: Now the word of Yahweh came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying,