JONAH, BOOK OF (JONAH, ante), has always been placed by the Jews among their canonical books, and is referred to as historical several times in the apocryphal books. and by Josephus. The Savior also quoted it as historical, comparing his continuing three clays in the grave to Jonah's continuing three days in the belly of the fish; and his preaching to the Jews to Jonah's preaching to the Ninevites. There is nothing incredi ble in its statement that God had prepared a great fish to receive Jonah after lie had been cast into the sea. There are evidences of design in the constitution of all fish that swim in the sea, showing that they have been prepared for different purposes; and this fish could be prepared for this specific purpose as easily and wisely as any other fish for any other work. The book, though written by a prophet, is chiefly historical, and may be divided into three parts: 1. The command to proclaim the threatened destruction of Nineveh; Jonah's attempt to evade the duty by taking a sea voyage; the storm, the fall ing of the lot on Jonah, followed by his confession and his being, at his own suggestion, cast into the sea; his apparent destruction by the sea monster, which, however, after three days threw him up again alive upon the shore. II. His thanksgiving after the
deliverance, in which he recorded the prayers he had offered during his imprisonment and, with gratitude for the mercy shown to him, promised obedience to God's com mands. Ill. The renewal of the command to go to Nineveh; Jonah's obedience and faithful utterance of the message intrusted to him; the humiliation and repentance of the Ninevites, from the king to the lowest subject, expressed by a universal fast, dur ing which men and beasts were covered with sackcloth and did not taste either food or water (that in times of fasting beasts of burden were sometimes subjected to the same forms of humiliation as men, both Herodotus and Plutarch state); the withholding of the threatened destruction on their repentance, in accordance with a general principle of the divine government, announced afterwards to Jeremiah (xviii. 8); Jonah's discon tent with the result, because it compromised his reputation as a prophet, and the emble matic method by which the Lord reproved him.