Ant. Chris. 1003, &c. or 757. Nay, farther, we may suppose that, when the people of Nineveh heard Jonah preach- A. M. 3001, ing about their streets, and threatening their city with so sudden a destruction, their &c. or 4654. curiosity would naturally lead them to enquire, who that person was, and by whose authority it was that he took so much upon him?" And being informed that he was of a nation (a)" which had God more nigh unto them in all things that they called upon him for, and had statutes and judgments more righteous" than any other people upon earth: a nation (b)" to whom (as the apostle expresses it) appertained the adoption, and the glory, and the covenant, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; a nation (c) " which the Lord had taken from the midst of another nation," had brought out of Egypt and settled in Canaan, by temptations, by signs, and by wonders, and by war, and by a mighty hand, and by a stretched-out arm, and by great terrors;" and that he in particular was a prophet of this great God, who "had made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that in them is," and who, for his disobedience in refusing to come upon this errand, had confined him in the deep for three days and nights, but now, upon his humiliation, had set him free from his ghastly prison, and given him courage to speak with so much boldness :-The people, I say, who were informed of all this, could not well fail of giving God the glory due unto his name, for sending a prophet of his favourite nation, and one of so distinguished a character, to give them notice of their impending doom. (d) "I wrought for my name's sake," (says God, remembering the wondrous things which he hath done for the children of Israel) "I wrought for my name's sake, that it should not be polluted among the heathen, among whom they were, in whose sight I made myself known unto them, in bringing them out of the land of Egypt:" and therefore we may well admit (as another motive to his working this miracle) the desire he had to raise the fame of a nation he had taken so immediately under his care, as well as to have the glory of his own name magnified among the Gentiles. To which we may add, that most weighty reason of all, which our blessed Saviour suggests, (e)" An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas; for as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." So that the great design of God's exhibiting, at this time, this miracle in the person of Jonah, was to confirm, in future ages, the great and fundamental article of our faith, upon which the whole superstructure of the Christian religion depends, "the resurrection of our Saviour Christ," and that, whenever the reality of that fact, as it is related in the New Testament, came to be called in question, we might be furnished with a parallel instance of the mighty power of God recorded in the Old. Nor is it only in the Sacred Records that we meet with this history of Jonah, but in the fables related by several heathen authors, both in verse and prose, we find evident footsteps and memorials of it. Hercules was the great champion of the Grecians, and his fame they were wont to adorn with all the remarkable exploits that they could in any nation hear of. It is not improbable, therefore, (f) that the adventure of his jumping down the throat of the sea-dog, which Neptune had sent to devour him, and there concealing himself for three days, without any manner of hurt, save the loss of a few hairs, which came off by the heat of the creature's stomach, was founded upon some blind tradition which these people might have of what happened to Jonah. Nor can the known story of Arion, thrown over-board by the seamen, but taken up by a dolphin, and carried safe to Corinth, be justly referred to any other original; since, (g) besides some resemblance in their names, and no great disparity in the times wherein of 2 Chron From 1 King they lived, (which are both circumstances that make for this hypothesis) the supposed viii, to the end difference in their respective callings can be no manner of objection to it, (a) because the same word in the Hebrew tongue signifies both a prophet and a musician. And therefore it is remarkable, that, as Arion played the tune, wherewith he charmed and allured the fish to save him, before he jumped over-board; so Jonah, when he found himself safely landed, uttered what is called (b) a prayer indeed, but is, in reality, a lofty hymn, in commemoration of his great deliverance, as appears by this specimen: (c) " The waters compassed me about, even to the soul; the depth closed me round about, and weeds were wrapped about my head. 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 the pit, O Lord my God." APPENDIX TO DISSERTATION III. OF JONAH'S MISSION TO NINEVEH, AND ABODE IN THE [OUR author is perfectly right in his observation, that hardly any thing in the Old or The first objection to this miracle aims at shewing its utter impossibility; for it is said that the gullet of the largest species of Balana, being but four inches in diameter, is too small to let a man pass into the stomach of the monster entire; and we do not read of the gullet of the whale which swallowed Jonah being miraculously enlarged for the purpose. It is true we read nothing of this; and for two very good reasons, of which the first is, that it was not probably the common whale of the arctic circle that swallowed the prophet; and the second, that, though the gullet of a dead whale, which alone these men of science have measured, be no more than four inches in diameter, it does not follow that the live animal has not the power of dilating its gullet to ten times four inches, when it has occasion to swallow any thing of magnitude. Few facts, I believe, in zoology, are better ascertained than that the Boa Constrictor can so dilate its gullet as to swallow an entire man, stag, or tyger; and yet no person who has merely seen the specimens of these monstrous serpents, which are preserved in the dif ferent museums in Europe, and is a stranger to the history of the living animal, would think this possible, even with all the allowance that can be made for the effect of the previous breaking of the bones of the man or beast that is to be swallowed. Yet the fact is unquestionable; and how do we know but that the common whale has a similar power of dilating its gullet? (a) Huetius, ibid. (b) Jonah ii. 2. (c) Ibid. ver. 5, 6. viii. to the end But there is no reason to believe that the common whale was the fish employed to From 1 Kings chastise the rebellious prophet; for the original words denote any large fish of the or- of 2 Chron. der of Cete, and are therefore properly translated by the LXX Teι μeyn, as they are, in our version, a great fish, without reference to any order. Now the shark is a great fish of the order of Cete, in whose stomach have been found not only fishes, but even the bodies of men, entire; and sharks are frequent in the Mediterranean Sea, which was to be the scene of Jonah's flight from the presence of the Lord. To the hypothesis that it might be a shark and not a whale which swallowed the wayward prophet, it is usually objected that the large shark is so very ferocious, and has its jaws so thoroughly armed with large and sharp teeth, that Jonah must have been eaten by that Cetus, and not swallowed alive and entire; but this, though a common, is a very idle objection. No man ever supposed, or could suppose, that Jonah was preserved otherwise than by the miraculous interposition of Providence; for we are expressly told that "God had prepared a great fish (27 71 :1", Kai #gooétažer Kúpios nýtei meɣár, et præparavit Dominus piscem grandem) to swallow up Jonah ;" and therefore we may be sure that the fish prepared, whether shark or whale, was miraculously prevented both from tearing and crushing him to death. Indeed the voracity of that animal, and its eagerness to devour its prey, might naturally have this effect, especially in a stormy sea and near the shore, where we may suppose the shark to have been in the utmost hurry to save itself, and yet unwilling to lose its prey. But supposing Jonah to be swallowed, without being killed, by the sea monster, how was he to be preserved from the action of the stomach? To this the answer is ready and satisfactory. Dr Mosely has ascertained by the most decisive experiments, that digestion in fishes is not produced either by trituration or by the heat of the stomach. Though nature has furnished the shark with a stomach of wonderful force and thickness, far exceeding that of any other creature, it is evident that digestion in them is not performed by trituration; for on any alarm, their young always retreat into the stomach of their dam as into a place of refuge; and that it is not by heat that the food of fishes is digested, is equally indisputable. Being on the banks of Newfoundland in August 1782, the Doctor cut up the stomachs of many cod-fish just as they came alive out of the water; and in them, says he, "I generally found small oysters, muscles, cockles, and crabs, as well as small fishes of their own and other species. The coldness of the stomach of these fishes is far greater than the temperature of the water out of which they are taken, or of any other part of the fish, or of any other substance of animated nature I ever felt. On wrapping one of them round my hand, immediately on being taken out of the fish, it caused so much aching and numbness that I could not endure it long (a)." It must therefore be by some gastric juice or menstruum, that digestion is carried on in fishes, as in most terrestrial animals; but it is a fact well ascer * [Mr Parkhurst, under the word KHTOS, treating of this very subject, says—" It is notorious, that sharks are a species of fish common in the Mediterranean; and we are assured not only that some of this kind are of such a size and make as to be capable, without any miracle at all, of swallowing a man, but that whole men have been actually found in their bellies," (stomachs). In proof of this fact he refers, in a note, to Bochart, vol. iii. p 745, and then says "To this I add a remark or two from other writers. Thus then the learned authors of the Universal His tory, vol. x. p. 554. note B, 8vo edit. The word here used (Mat. xii. 40) signifies no more a whale than any other large fish that has fins, and there is one commonly known in the Mediterranean, by the name of the carcharias, of the bigness of a whale, but with such a large throat and belly (stomach), as is able to (a) See Encyclopædia Britannica, Ed. sd. article. SQUALUS. A. M. 3001, tained, that no animal substance, whilst the principle of life remains in it, can be diges&c. or 4654. ted by the fluid usually existing in the stomachs of other animals. Ant. Chris. 1003, &c. or 757. "Animals, or parts of animals, possessed of the living principle when taken into the stomach, are not, says an eminent physiologist (a), in the least affected by the powers of that viscus, so long as the animal principle remains. Thence it is that we find animals of various kinds living in the stomach, or even hatched and bred there; but the moment that any of these lose the living principle, they become subject to the digestive power of the stomach. If it were possible for a man's hand, for example, to be introduced into the stomach of a living animal, and kept there for some considerable time, it would be found that the dissolvent powers of the stomach could have no effect upon it; but, if the same hand were separated from the body, and introduced into the same stomach, we should then find that the stomach would immediately act upon it. Indeed, if this were not the case, we should find that the stomach itself ought to have been made of indigestible materials; for, if the living principle were not capable of preserving animal substances from undergoing that process, the stomach itself would be digested. But we find, on the contrary, that the stomach, which at one instant, that is, while possessed of the living principle, was capable of resisting the digestive powers which it contained, the next moment, viz. when deprived of the living principle, is itself capable of being digested, either by the digestive power of other stomachs, or by the remains of that power which it had of digesting other things." 66 Consistently with these observations of Mr Hunter's, we find, says Mr King (b), that smaller fishes have been taken alive out of the stomachs of fishes of prey; and (not having been killed by any bite or otherwise) have survived their being devoured, and swam away well recovered, and very little affected by the digesting fluid." Of this kind, as he adds, there are two instances mentioned by Dr Plot, in his history of Staffordshire (c); and many others might be produced. But though Jonah might have escaped from the digestive powers of the stomach of the fish, it has been said to be impossible that he could live three days and three nights, or half that period of time, in the midst of foul air, or without air at all. This, however, is, like the former part of the objection, the offspring of ignorance of the laws of nature, combined with inattention to the nature of the case before us. It is admitted by almost every anatomist of eminence, Mr Cheselden excepted, that the foramen ovale, by which the blood circulates in the fœtus, is sometimes, though rarely, found open in adults; and that no person who has it open, could be either drowned or killed by mere suffocation. In proof of this Dr Derham produces many instances (d), of which the case of Anne Green, who was hanged at Oxford in 1650, cannot be called in question; now, if Jonah was one of those anomalous beings, he might, according to the ordinary laws of nature, live all the time that he is said to have lived in the fish's stomach, and at last be disgorged alive and uninjured. I do not say that this was actually the case, for, as I have already observed, we must admit the miraculous interposition of Providence, or reject the story altogether; but if there be any man, who thinks that the laws of nature must be, as much as possible, observed even in a miraculous operation, we may surely suppose, that God, to whom all things have been for ever present, chose Jonah to be his messenger to Nineveh, for this, among other reasons, that his foramen ovale was open, which would render him of course incapable of perishing by mere suffocation +. (a) Mr John Hunter in the Philosophical Transac- (b) Morsels of Criticism 8vo. Ed. vol. 2. p. 405. (d) Physico Theology, book iv. chap. vii. Note to wards the end. I am no anatomist, and therefore feel it to be my duty to say, that Cheselden affirms, that the mere opening of the foramen ovale would not be sufficient to preserve any animal from suffocation, unless the ductor arteriosus were open likewise But why might they not both be open in Jonah; and at all events, Anne Green of Oxford certainly survived, and bore children, from whatever secondary or physical cause, after every possible effort was made to kill her by strangulation. And this leads me to the second objection usually urged against this part of the Sacred From 1 Kings History, which is, Why was a man chosen to deliver a message from God to the great city of Nineveh,. whose religious principles were so very absurd as to lead him to suppose that he could flee from the presence of the Creator and Governor of the universe, and whose dispositions were so rebellious as to make him unwilling to execute a commission the most honourable that could be entrusted to man? This is, in truth, the most plausible objection that has ever been urged to the story; but it is by no means unanswerable. Isaiah was indeed Jonah's contemporary at least for some part of their lives; and there is no reason to suppose that he would have hesitated to deliver to the king and people of Nineveh any message with which God had entrusted him, far less that he would have thought of fleeing from the presence of the Lord! But notwithstanding this, I am decidedly of opinion that Jonah was a more proper messenger to Nineveh than even Isaiah would have been, for nearly the same reason that the predictions and blessings reluctantly pronounced by Balaam, must have had a greater effect on the king of Moab and the elders of Midian, than the same predictions and blessings would have had if pronounced by Moses, or even by Jethro the father-in law of Moses, though he was a Midianite, as Balaam probably was. In the days of Jonah, the whole kingdom of Israel was deeply infected with idolatry, and idolatry of the worst species. He was himself a native of Gath Hepher, which the best ancient geographers place in the province afterwards called Galilee of the nations -a province of which the inhabitants were a mixed people, all more or less attached to the gods of the countries, from which they had originally come. That he had himself no correct notions of the attributes of the God of Israel, is evident from his thinking it possible, by crossing the sea, to flee from the presence of Jehovah. The grossness of the conceptions of the Israelites was such, at the giving of the law, and for many generations afterwards, that God judged it expedient to exhibit himself to them as a local tutelary deity, so far at least as to say (a),-" If ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure to me above all people;" but, to prevent them from confounding his nature with that of the tutelary deities of the heathen, whose power was not supposed to extend beyond their respective provinces, he immediately adds,—“ for all the earth is mine." In the kingdom of Israel, the law was little read and less regarded; and Jonah, if he ever knew this distinction between the extent of the dominion of the God of Israel, and extent of the supposed dominion of the gods of the surrounding nations, appears to have forgotten it. He probably believed Jehovah to be more powerful than any one of the other gods, and his power to extend, in some degree, over the other nations of the continent; but he seems to have been satisfied, that if he could get across the sea, he would be out of Jehovah's presence, and therefore escape his vengeance for disobeying a command, which probably presented itself to his imagination as something which could not be executed without involving him in the greatest danger. No man in that age, however wicked he might be, appears to have taken refuge from the stings of conscience or the dread of Divine vengeance, in atheism. When such a person thought himself abandoned by the tutelary deity of his own family or nation, or when he had reason to believe that he had provoked the anger of that god, he applied for protection to some other deity of the same description; and this was exactly the case of Jonah. As he considered Jehovah as a mere local god, from whose presence it was possible to flee, there is no reason to doubt, but that he had, for some time at least, been one of those Israelites, then abounding in the nation, who "feared the Lord and served other gods, who feared the Lord, and served their graven images;" and if so, it was natural for him, in the then state of his affairs, to put himself under the protection (a) Exod. xix. 5. viii. to the end of 2 Chron. |