Jonah 3 - Bullinger's Companion Bible Notes

Bible Comments
  • Jonah 3:5 open_in_new

    people. men. Hebrew pl of 'enosh. App-14.

    believed. Heb Aman. App-69.

    God. Hebrew. Elohim. App-4.

    proclaimed. fast. Professor Rawlings has shown just at this time Nineveh was in. time of trouble, and Assyrian history was "shrouded in darkness for forty years". Hope was given to all the neighbouring countries which were asserting their independence. This explains the readiness of Nineveh to hearken and obey, as was done on another occasion when the prophet of Nineveh declared it needful. (see Professor Sayce, The Higher Criticism and the Monuments, (pp 489, 490) by the Persians in. national trouble; in Greece,. fast which included cattle (Herodotus, ix. 24) and by Alexander the Great (Plutarch, Pelop && 33, 34). This decline of Nineveh gave hope to Israel: which hope had been encouraged by the prophet Jonah himself (2 Kings 14:25-27). This may have been the reason for Jonah's not wishing to avert the overthrow (Jonah 3:4) of Nineveh, by giving it the opportunity to repent and thus secure Jehovah's favour (Joel 2:14). We thus have veritable history, and not allegory.