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Bible Encyclopedias
Jonahs Prophecy
Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
contains the above account of the prophet's commission to denounce Nineveh, and of his refusal to undertake 6he embassy of the method he employed to escape the unwelcome task, and the miraculous means which God used to curb his self-willed spirit, and subdue his petulant and querulous disposition (Reindel, Die Sendung d. Proph. Jonas nach Ninive. Bamb. 1826). His attempt to flee from the presence of the Lord seems like a partial insanity, produced by the excitement of distracting motives in an irascible and melancholy heart (J. C. Lange, Diss. de mirabili fuga Jonoe, Hal. 1751).
I. Historical Character of the Book. — The history of Jonah is certainly striking and extraordinary. Its characteristic prodigy does not resemble the other miraculous phenomena recorded in Scripture, yet we must believe in its literal occurrence, as the Bible affords no indication of its being a mythus, allegory, or parable (Piper, Historie Jonoe a recentior. conatibus vindicata, (Tryph. 1786). On the other hand, our Savior's pointed and peculiar allusion to it is a presumption of its reality (Matthew 12:40). The historical character of the narrative is held by Hess, Lilienthal, Sack, Reindel, Hä vernick, Hengstenberg, Laberenz, Baumgarten, Delitzsch, Welte, Stuart, and Keil, Einleitung, sec. 89. (See Friedrichsen, Krit. Uebersicht der verschied. Ansichten on dem Buch Jonah, 2 d edit. 1841.) The opinion of the earlier Jews (Tobit 14:4; Tobit 14:8; 3 Maccabees 6:8; Josephus, Ant. 9, 10, 2) is also in favor of the. literality of the adventure (see Buddei Hist. V. Test. 2, 589 sq.). It requires less faith to credit this simple excerpt from Jonah's biography than to believe the numerous hypotheses that have been invented to deprive it of its supernatural character, the great majority of them being clumsy and far fetched, doing violence to the language, and despite to the spirit of revelation; distinguished, too, by tedious adjustments, laborious combinations, historical conjecture, and critical jugglery. In vindication of the reality of this striking narrative, it may be argued that the allusions of Christ to Old Testament events on similar occasions are to actual occurrences (John 3:14; John 6:48); that the purpose which God had in view justified his miraculous interposition; that this miracle must have had a salutary effect both on the minds of the Ninevites and on the people of Israel. Neither is the character of Jonah improbable. Many reasons might induce him to avoid the discharge of his prophetic duty — fear of being thought a false prophet, scorn of a foreign and hostile race, desire for their utter destruction, a false dignity which might reckon it beneath his prerogative to officiate among uncircumcised idolaters (Verschuir, Opusc. p. 73, etc.; Alber, Institut. Hermen. Vet. Test. 3, 393, 407; Jahn, Introduction to the Old Testament, transl. by Turner, p. 372, 373, translator's notes; Laberenz, De Vera. lib. Jonoe Interp. Fulda, 1836).
Others regard this book as an allegory, such as Bertholdt and Rosenmü ller, Gesenius and Winer. Especially have many deemed it a parody upon or even the original of the various heathen fables of Arion and the Dolphin (Herodot. 1, 21), and the wild adventure of Hercules which is referred to in Lycophron (Cassandra, 5, 33; see Forbiger, De Lycophr. Cassandra c. epimetro de. ona, Lips. 1827; comp. Iliad, 20, 145, 21, 442; Diod. Sic. 4, 42, Philostr. Icon. 12; Hygin. Fab. 89; Apollod. 2,5, 9) and Perseus (Apollod. 2, 4, 3; Ovid, Metam. 4, 662 sq.; Hygin. 64; Phot. Cod. 186, p. 231), Joppa being even famous as the scene of Andromeda's exposure (Pliny, 5, 14, 34; 9, 4; Strabo, 16, 759). Cyrill Alexand., in his Comment. in Jonah notices this similitude between the incident of Jonah and the fabled enterprise of the son of Alcmena (see Allat. Excerpt. var. p. 274; Eudocia Viol. in Villoison's Anec. Gr. 1, 344; Anton, Comparatio librorum V.T. et scriptor. profan. cet. p. 10, Gorlic. 1831; compare, too, Theophylact, Opp. 4, 169). Bleek justly says (Einleit. p. 576) that there is not the smallest probability of the story of Jonah's temporary sojourn in the belly of the whale having been either mediately or immediately derived from those Greek fables. F. von Baur's hypothesis of the story of the book being a compound of some popular Jewish traditions and the Babylonian myth respecting a sea monster Oannes, and the fast for Adonis, is now universally regarded as exploded. For further discussion of this part of Jonah's history, see Gesenius, in the Hall. Lit.-Zeit. 1813, No. 23; Friedrichsen, Krit. Ueberblick der Ansichten vom Jonas (Leipz. 1841); Delitzsch, in Rudelbach's Zeitschrift, 1840, 2, 112 sq. These legendary parallels may be seen drawn out at length by professor Stowe in the Bibliotheca Sacra for Oct. 1853, p. 744 sq. (See JOPPA).
Some, who cannot altogether reject the reality of the narrative, suppose it to have had a historical basis, though its present form be fanciful or mythical. Such an opinion is the evident result of a mental struggle between receiving it as a real transaction, or regarding it as wholly a fiction (Goldhorn, Excurs. z. B. Jonah p. 28; Friedrichsen, Krit. Ueberblick der Ansichten B. Jonah p. 219). Grimm, in his Uebersetz. p. 61, regards it as a dream produced in that sleep which fell upon Jonah as he lay in the sides of the ship. The fanciful opinion of the famous Herman von der Hardt, in his Jonas in lace, etc., a full abstract of which is given by Rosenmü ller (Prolegom. in Jonam, p. 19), was, that the book is a historical allegory, descriptive of the fate of Manasseh, and Josiah his grandson, kings of Judah. Tarshish, according to him, represents the kingdom of Lydia; the ship, the Jewish republic, whose captain was Zadok the high priest; while the casting of Jonah into .the sea symbolized the temporary captivity of Manasseh in Babylon. Less (Vom historischen Styl der Urwelt) supposed that all difficulty might be removed by imagining that Jonah, when thrown into the sea, was taken up by a ship having a large fish for a figure head a theory somewhat more pleasing than the rancid hypothesis of Anton, who fancied that the prophet took refuge in the interior of a dead whale, floating near the spot where he was cast overboard (Rosenm. Prolegom. in Jonah p. 328). Not unlike the opinion of Less is that of Charles Taylor, in his Fragments affixed to Calmet's Dictionary, No. 145, that דָּג signifies a life preserver, a notion which, as his manner is, he endeavors to support by mythological metamorphoses founded on the form and names of the famous fish god of Philistia. There are others who allow, as De Wette and Knobel, that Jonah was a real person, but hold that the book is made up, for didactic purposes, of legendary stories which had gathered around him. A slender basis of fact has been allowed by some — by Bunsen, for example, who, strangely enough, fixes upon the very portion which to most of his rationalistic countrymen bears the clearest marks of spuriousness, as the one genuine part of the whole — Jonah's thanksgiving from the perils of shipwreck (as Bunsen judges); and thinks that some one had mistaken the matter, and fabricated out of it the present story — by others, such as Krahmer (Das Buch Jonas, introd.), who suppose that Jonah was known to have uttered a prophecy against Nineveh, and to have been impatient at the delay which appeared in the fulfilment, and was hence, for didactic purposes, made the hero of the story.
But the more common opinion in the present day with this school of divines is, that the story is purely moral, and without any historical foundation; nor can any clue be found or imagined in the known history of the times why Jonah in particular, a prophet of Israel in the latter stages of the kingdom, should have been chosen as the ground of the instruction meant to be conveyed. So Ewald, Bleek, etc., who, however, differ in some respects as to the specific aim of the book, while they agree as to its non-historical character. In short, that the book is the grotesque coinage of a Hebrew imagination seems to be the opinion, variously modified, of Semler, Michaelis, Herder, Stä udlin, Eichhorn, Augusti, Meyer, Pareau, Hitzig, and Maurer. The plain, literal import of the narrative being set aside with misapplied ingenuity, the supposed design of it has been very variously interpreted. Michaelis (Uebersetz. d. N.T. part 11, p. 101) and Semler (Apparat. ad Lib. Vet. Test. Interpret. p. 271) supposed the narrative to be intended to show the injustice of the arrogance and hatred cherished by the Jews towards other nations. So in substance Bleek. Similarly Eichhorn (Einleit. § 577) and Jahn (Introduct. § 127) think the design was to teach the Jews that other people with less privileges excelled them in pious obedience. Kegel (Bibel d. A. und N. Test. 7, 129 sq.) argues that this episode was meant to solace and excite the prophets under the discharge of difficult and dangerous duties; while Paulus (Memorabilia, 6, 32 sq.) maintains that the object of the author of Jonah is to impress the fact that God remits punishment on repentance and reformation. Similar is the idea of Kimchi and Pareau (Interpretation of Old Testament, Biblical Cabinet, No. 25, p. 263). Krahmer thinks that the theme of the writer is the Jewish colony in its relation to the Samaritans (Das B. Jon. Krit. untersucht, p. 65). Maurer (Comment. in Proph. Min.) adheres to the opinion which lies upon the surface, that it inculcates the sin of not obeying God, even in pronouncing severe threatenings on a heathen people. Ewald would make the design quite general, namely, to show how the true fear of God and repentance bring salvation — first, in the case of the heathen sailors; then in the case of Jonah: finally, in that of the Ninerites. Hitzig (first in a separate treatise, then in his commentary on the minor prophets) supposes the book to have been written by someone in the 4th century before Christ, "in Egypt, that land of wonders," and chiefly for the purpose of vindicating Jehovah for having failed to verify the prophecy in Obadiah respecting the heathen Edomites. Similarly, Kö ster (Die Prophetens des A. und N. Test., Leipz. 18, 9) favors the malignant insinuation that its chief end was to save the credit of the prophets among the people, though their predictions against foreign nations might not be fulfilled, as Nineveh was preserved after being menaced and doomed.
These hypotheses are all vague and baseless, and do not merit a special refutation. Endeavoring to free us from one difficulty, they plunge us into others vet more intricate and perplexing. We notice the principal external objections that have been brought against the book.
(1.) Much profane wit has been expended on the miraculous means of Jonah's deliverance, very unnecessarily and very absurdly; it is simply said, "The Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah." Now the species of marine animal is not defined, and the Greek κῆτος is often used to specify, not the genus whale, but any large fish or sea monster. All objections to its being a whale which lodged Jonah in its stomach, from its straitness of throat or rareness of haunt in the Mediterranean, are thus removed. Hesychius explains κῆτος as θαλάσσιος ἰχθὑς παμμεγἐθης . Eustathius explains its correspondent adjective κητώεσσαν by μεγάλην (in the Iliad, 2:581). Diodorus Siculus speaks of terrestrial monsters as κητώδη ζῶα, and describes a huge fish as κῆτος ἄπιστον τὸ μέγεθος . The Scripture thus speaks only of an enormous fish, which under God's direction swallowed the prophet, and does not point out the species to which the voracious prowler belonged. There is little ground for the supposition of bishop Jebb, that the asylum of Jonah was not in the stomach of a whale, but in a cavity of its throat, which, according to naturalists, is a very capacious receptacle, sufficiently large, as captain Scoresby asserts, to contain a merchant ship's jolly boat full of men (bishop Jebb, Sacred Literature, p. 178). Since the days of Bochart it has been a common opinion that the fish was of the shark species, Lamia canis carcharias, or "sea dog" (Bochart, Op. 3, 72; Calmet's Dissertation sur Jonah). Entire human bodies have been found in some fishes of this kind. The stomach, too, has no influence on any living substance admitted into it. Granting all these facts as proof of what is termed the economy of miracles, still must we say, in reference to the supernatural preservation of Jonah, Is anything too hard for the Lord? (See WHALE).
(2.) What is said about the size of Nineveh, also, is in accordance with fact (see Pict. Bible, note, ad loc.). It was "an exceeding great city of three days' journey." Built in the form of a parallelogram, it made, according to Diodorus (2:7), a circuit of 480 furlongs, or about 60 miles. It has been usual, since the publication of Layard's Nineveh, to say that the great ruins of Koyunjik, Nimrû d, Keremles, and Khorsabad form such a parallelogram, the distances from north to south being about 18 miles, and from east to west about 12; the longer sides thus measuring 36 miles, and the shorter ones 24. But against this view professor Rawlinson has recently urged, with considerable force, that the four great ruins bore distinct local titles; that Nimrû d, identified with Calah, is mentioned in Scripture as a place so far separated from Nineveh that "a great city" Resen lay between them (Genesis 10:12); that there are no signs of a continuous town; and that the four sites are fortified "on what would be the inside of the city." Still Nineveh, as represented by the ruins of Koyunjik and Nebbi-Yunus, or Tomb of Jonah, was of an oblong shape, with a circuit of about eight miles, and was therefore a place of unusual size" an exceeding great city." The phrase, "three days' journey," may mean that it would take that time to traverse the city and proclaim through all its localities the divine message; and the emphatic point then is, that at the end of his first day's journey the preaching of Jonah took effect. The clause, "that cannot discern their right hand from their left hand," probably denotes children, and 120,000 of these might represent a population of more than half a million (Rawlinson's Five Great Monarchies, 1, 310; Sir Henry Rawlinson's Comment. on Cuneif. Inscriptions, p. 17; Captain Jones's Topography of Nineveh, in the Jour. of As. Society, 15, 298). Jonah entered the city "a day's journey," that is, probably went from west to east uttering his incisive and terrible message. The sublime audacity of the stranger the ringing monotony of his sharp, short cry had an immediate effect. The story of his wonderful deliverance had perhaps preceded him (Thomson, Land and Book, 1, 100). The people believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and man and beast fasted alike. The exaggeration ascribed to, this picture adds to its credibility, so prone is Oriental nature to extremes. If the burden of Jonah was to have any effect at all, one might say that it must be profound and immediate. It was a panic we dare not call it a revival, or, with Dr. Pusey, dignify it into conversion. There was plainly no permanent result. After the sensation had passed away, idolatry and rapacity resumed their former sway, as is testified by the prophets Isaiah, Nahum, and Zephaniah; yet the appalled conscience of Nineveh did confess its "evil and its violence" as it groveled in the dust. Various causes may have contributed to deeper this consternation — the superstition of the people, and the sudden and unexplained appearance of the foreigner with his voice of doom. "The king," as Layard says, "might believe him to be a special minister from the supreme deity of the nation," and it was only "' when the gods themselves seemed to interpose that any check was placed on the royal pride and lust." Layard adds, "It was not necessary to the effect of his preaching that Jonah should be of the religion of the people of Nineveh. I have known a Christian priest frighten a whole Mussulman town to tents and repentance by publicly proclaiming that he had received a divine mission to announce a coming earthquake or plague" (Nineveh and Babylon, p. 632). The compulsory mourning of the brute creation has at least one analogy in the lamentation made over the Persian general Masistius: "The horses and beasts of burden were shaved" (Herodotus, 9:24). According to Plutarch, also, Alexander continued the observance of a similar custom on the death of Hephaestion. Therefore, in the accessories of the narrative there is no violation of probability — all is in accordance with known customs and facts. See Nineveh.
(3.) It has appeared to some, in particular to Bleek (Einleit. p. 571), improbable, and against the historical verity of this book, that on the supposition of all that is here related having actually occurred, there should be in the relation of them such a paucity of circumstantial details — nothing said, for instance, of the place where Jonah was discharged on dry land, or of the particular king who then reigned at Nineveh and not only so, but no apparent reference in the future allusions to Nineveh in Scriptura, to the singular change (if so be it actually took plane) wrought through the preaching of Jonah on the religious and moral state of the people. These are still always regarded as idolaters, and the judgments of God uttered against them, as if they stood in much the same position with the heathen enemies generally of God's cause and people. It may fairly be admitted that there is a certain degree of strangeness in such things, which, if it were not in accordance with the character both of the man and of the mission, and in these found a kind of explanation, might not unnaturally give rise to some doubts of the credibility of what is written. But Jonah's relation to Nineveh was altogether of a special and peculiar nature; it stood apart from the regular calling of a prophet and the ordinary dealings of God; and having for its more specific object the instruction and warning of the covenant people in a very critical period of their affairs, the reserve maintained as to local and historical details may have been designed, as it was certainly fitted, to make them think less of the parties immediately concerned, and more of what through these God was seeking to impress upon themselves. The whole was a kind of parabolical action; and beyond a certain limit circumstantial minuteness would have tended to mar, rather than to promote, the leading aim. Then, as to the change produced upon the Ninevites, we are led from the nature of the case to think chiefly of the more flagrant iniquities as the evils more particularly cried against; and Israel itself afforded many examples of general reformations in respect to these, of which little or no trace was to be found in the course even of a single generation. Much more might such be expected to have happened in the case of Nineveh.
II. Style, Date, etc. — The book of Jonah is a simple narrative, with the exception of the prayer or thanksgiving in chap. 2. Its style and mode of narration are uniform. There are no traces of compilation, as Nachtigall supposed; neither is the prayer, as De Wette (Einleit. § 237) imagines, improperly borrowed from some other sources. That prayer contains, indeed, not only imagery peculiar to itself, but also such imagery as at once was suggested to the mind of a pious Hebrew preserved in circumstances of extreme jeopardy. On this principle we account for the similarity of some portions of its phraseology to Psalm 59:42, etc. The language in both places had been hallowed by frequent usage, and had become the consecrated idiom of a distressed and succored Israelite.. Perhaps the prayer of Jonah might be uttered by him, not during his mysterious imprisonment, but after it (מַמְּעֵי הִדָּגָה, out, i.e. when out of the fish's belly; comp. Job 19:26; Job 11:15). The hymn seems to have been composed after his deliverance. and the reason why his deliverance is noted after the hymn is recorded may be to show the occasion of its composition. 'The Lord had spoken unto the fish, and it had vomited Jonah on the dry land!" (See further Hauber, in his Bibl. Betrachtungen, Lemgo, 1753; also an article on the subject in the Brit. Theol. Mag. 1, 3., p. 18.) There was little reason either for dating the composition of this book later than the age of Jonah, or for supposing it the production of another than the prophet himself. The Chaldaisms which Jahn and others find may be accounted for by the nearness of the canton of Zebulon, to which Jonah belonged, to the northern territory, whence by national intercourse Aramaic peculiarities might be insensibly borrowed. (Thus we have סְפַינָה — a ship with a deck — not the more common Hebrew term; רִב — a foreign title applied to the captain; מַנָּה, to appoint — found, however, in Psalms 61, a psalm which Hupfeld without any valid grounds places after the Babylonian captivity; אָמִר, to command, as in the later books; טִעִם command, referring to the royal decree, and probably taken from the native Assyrian tongue; חָעִם, to row, a nautical term; and the abbreviated form of the relative, which, however, occurs in other books, etc.) Gesenius and Bertholdt place it before the exile; Jahn and Koster after it. Rosenmü ller supposes the author may have been a contemporary of Jeremiah; Hitzig postpones it to the period of the Maccabees. The general opinion is that Jonah was the first of the prophets (Rosenmü ller, Bp. Lloyd, Davison, Browne, Drake): Hengstenberg would place him after Amos and Hosea, and, indeed, adheres to the order of the books in the canon for. the chronology. He, as well as Hitzig, would identify the author with that of Obadiah, chiefly on account of the initial "and." The king of Nineveh at this time is supposed (Usher and others) to have been Pul, who is placed by Layard (Nim. and Bab. p. 624) at B.C. 750; but an earlier king, Adrammelech II, B.C. 840, is regarded as more probable by Drake. The date above assigned to Jonah would seem to indicate the husband of the famous Semiramis. (See ASSYRIA).
III. Commentaries. — The following are the special exegetical helps expressly on the whole book, the most important of which we designate by prefixing an asterisk: Ephraem Syrus, In Jonam (in Opp. 3, 562; transl. from the Syriac by Burgess, Homily, Lond. 1853, 12mo); Basil, In Jonam (in Opp. p. 66); Tertullian, Carmen (in Opp. p. 576); Theophylact, Commentarius (in Opp. 4); Brentius, Commentarius (in Opp. 4); Luther, Auslegung (Wittenb. 1526, 4to and 8vo; Erf. 1526, 1531, 8vo; also in Werke, Wittenb. ed. 5, 310; Jen. 3, 214; Alt. 3, 351; Lpz. 8, 516; Hal. 6, 496; in Latin, by Jonas, in Opp. Vitemb. 4, 404; and separately by Opsoppaeus, Hag. 1526, 8vo; and Loneke, Argent. 1526, 8vo); Artopoeus, Commentarius (Stet. 1545, Basil, 1558, 8vo); Bugenhagen, Expositio (Vitemb. 1550, 1561, 8vo); Hooper, Sermons (London, 1550, 12mo; also in Writings, p. 431); Ferus, Commentarius (Lugd. 1554, Antw. 1557, Ven. 1567, 8vo; also in German, Cö ln, 1567, 8vo); Willich, Commentarius [includ. sev. minor proph.] (Basil. 1566, 8vo); Selnecker, Auslegung [including Nahum, etc.]. (Lpz. 1567, 4to); Tuscan, Commentarius (Ven. 1573, 8vo); Calvin, Lectures (trans. by Baxter, Lond. 1578, 4to); Pomarius, Auslegung (Magdeb. 1579, Lpz. 1599, 4to; Stettin, 1664, 8vo); Baron, Prelectiones (ed. Lake, Lond. 1579, folio); Grynaeus, Enarratio (Basil. 1581, 8vo); Schadaeus, Synopsis (Argent. 1588, 4to); Junius, Lectiones (Heidelb. 1594, 4to; also in Opp. 1, 1327); *King, Lectures (Lond. 1594, 1600, 1611, 1618; Oxf. 1597, 1599, 4to); Feuardent, Commentarius (Colon. 1594, folio; 1595. 8vo); Abbott, Exposition (Lond. 1600, 1613, 4to; 1845, 2 vols. 12mo); Wolderus, Diexodus [includ. Joel] (Vitemb. 1605, 4to) Krackewitz, Commentarius (Hamb. 1610, Giessen, 1611, 8vo); Miley, Erklä rung (Heidelb. 1614, 4to); Tarnovius, Commentarius (Rost. 1616, 1626, 4to); Schnepf, Commentarius (Rost. 1619, 4to); Quarles, Poem (Lond. 1620, 4to); Treminius, Commentarii (Oriolse, 1623, 4to); Mylius, Commentarius (Francof. 1624, Regiom. 1640, 4to; also in his Sylloge, Amst. 1701, fol., p. 976 sq.); Urven, Commentarius (Antw. 1640, fol.); Acosta, Commentarius (Lugd. 1641, fol.); Ursinus, Commentaries (Francof. 1642, 8vo); Paciuchelli, Lezzioni (Ven. 1650,1660., 1664, 1701, folio also in Latin, Monach. 1672, fol.; Antw. 1681-3, 3 vols. fol.); De Salinas, Commentarii (Lugd. 1652 sq., 3 vols. fol.); Crocius, Commentarius (Cassel. 1656, 8vo); Leusden, Paraphrasis [Rabbinical] (Tr. ad Rh. 1656, 8vo); Petraeus, Notes [to a transl. from the AEth.] (L.B. 1660, 4to); *Scheid, Commentarius (Argent. 1659, 1665, 4to); Gerhard, Annotationes [includ. Amos] (Jen. 1663, 1676, 4to); Pfeiffer, Prelectiones (Vitemb. 1671,1706, Lipsiae, 1686, 4to; also in Opp. 1, 1131 sq.); Moebius, Jonas typicus (Lips. 1678, 4to); Christianus, Illustratio (Lips. 1683, 8vo); Bircherod, Expositio (Hafn. 1686, 4to); Von der Hardt, Enigmata, etc. (Helmstadt, in separate treatises, 1719; together, 1723, fol.); Outhof, Verklaaring (Amst. 1723, 4to); Steuersloot, Ontleeding (Leyden, 1730, 4to); Van der Meer, Verklaaring (Gor. 1742, 4to); Reichenbach, De Rabbins errantibus, etc. (Alt. 1761, 4to); Lessing, Observationes (Chemnitz, 1780, 8vo); Lavater, Predigten (Wintenth. 1782, 2 vols. 8vo); Adam, Sendungsgeschichte, etc. (Bonn, 1786, 4to); Piper, Vindicatio (Gryph. 1786, 4to); Lü derwald, Allegorie, etc. (Helmstadt, 1787, 8vo); Hö pfner, Cure in Sept., etc. (Lips. 1787-8, 3 parts 4to); Kordes, Observationes in Sept., etc. (Jena, 1788,4to); Lö we, בַּאוּר (Berl. 1788, 8vo; also in his general commentary, Dessau, 1805); Grimm, Erklä rung (Dü sseld. 1789, 8vo); Fabricius, Commentarius, etc. [from Jewish sources] (Gott. 1792, 8vo); Grangaard, Uebersetzung (Lpzg. 1792, 8vo); Paulus, Zweck, etc. (in his Memorabilien, Leipzig, 1794, 6, 32 sq.); Griesdorf, Interpretandi ratio, etc. (Vitemb. 1794, 2 dissert. 4to); Benjoin, Notes (Cambr. 1796, 4to); Nachtigall, Aufschrift, etc. (in Eichhorn's Bibliothek, Lips. 1799, 9:221 sq.); Elias of Wilna, פֵּרוּשׁ (Wilna, 1800, 4to); Goldhorn, Excurse (Lpz. 1803, 8vo); Jones, Portrait, etc. (London, 1810, and often since, 12mo); *Friedrichsen, Ueberblick, etc. (Alt. 1817, Lpz. 1841, 8vo); Young, Lectures (London, 1819, 8vo); Reindel, Versuch, etc. (Bamberg, 1826, 8vo); *Rosenmü ller, Scholia (part 7, vol. 2; Lpzg. 1827, 8vo); Hitzig, Orakel ub. Moab (Heidelb. 1831, 4to); Cunningham, Lectures (Lond. 1833, 12mo); Sibthorp, Lectures (Lond. 1834, 8vo); Krahmer, Untersuchung (Kassel. 1839, 8vo). Preston, Lectures (London, 1840, 8vo); Jä ger, Endzweck, etc. (Tü b. 1840, 8vo); Peddie, Lectures (Edinb. 1862, 12mo); Fairbairn, Jonah's Life, etc. (Edinburgh, 1849, 12mo); Macpherson, Lectures (Edinb. 1849, 12mo); Tweedie, Lessors (Edinb. 1850, 12mo); Drake, Notes [including Hosea] (Cambr. 1853, 8vo); Harding, Lectures (Lond. 1856,12mo); Muir, Lessons (Edinb. 1854, 1857, 8vo); Wright, Glossaries, etc. (Lond. 1857, 8vo); Desprez, Illustrations (London, 1857, 12mo); Broad, Lectures (Lond. 1860, 8vo); *Kaulen, Expositio (Mogunt. 1862, 8vo); *Martin, Jonah's Mission (Lond. 1866, 8vo). (See PROPHETS, MINOR).
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McClintock, John. Strong, James. Entry for 'Jonahs Prophecy'. Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature. https://www.studylight.org/​encyclopedias/​eng/​tce/​j/jonahs-prophecy.html. Harper & Brothers. New York. 1870.