Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me.
Ver. 2. Arise, go to Nineveh] Haec est vocatio prophetae, saith Oecolampadius: this was the prophet's call, which he should have obeyed without bucking or shucking, delays or disputes, conferring, or consulting with flesh and blood, Galatians 1:16. True it is, that in human governments, where reason is shut out, there tyranny is thrust in. As in the papacy (where the whore sitteth upon them, Revelation 17:1, that is, useth them vilely and basely; sitteth upon their consciences, as Rachel did upon her father's images), though their superiors command the friars a voyage to China or Peru, without dispute or delay they must presently set forward; to detract or disobey in this case is held breach of vow, equal to sacrilege: this is intolerable tyranny. But where God calleth or commandeth (as here), to ask a reason is presumption; to oppose reason is rebellion. Paul dared not but be obedient to the heavenly vision, Acts 26:19. Jonah declined his apostleship (την αποστολην παρητησατο, as a father calleth it), but it had like to have cost him a choking; whereof, when in danger, he could confess that "They that observe lying vanities" (as he had done to his cost) "forsake their own mercy," John 2:8, are miserable by their own election. As for the expression here used, "Arise, go," it is hortantis particula, et studium notat; it is an encouraging and exciting particle. Up and be doing. Be "fervent in spirit; serving the Lord," Romans 12:11. Surge, age, summe Pater, said Mantuan to the Pope, exciting him to take up arms against the Turk. There is a curse to him that doeth the work of the Lord negligently, Jeremiah 48:10, and a command to do it with all our might, Ecclesiastes 9:10 .
Nineveh, that great city] Built by Ninus, and by him so named; as Adrianople, Constantinople, Charlestown, &c. A great city it was, indeed, never any so great; as consisting of three cities, and having more people within the walls, than are now in some one kingdom, saith an author. It was sixty miles about, saith Diodorus Siculus (Bunting saith Alcaire at this day is no less: Paulus Venetus saith Quinsay, in Tartary, is a hundred miles in circuit, but we are not bound to believe him. It is enough that Cambalu, the chief city there, is twenty-eight miles in compass). Nineveh was three days' journey in Jonah's days, fortified with a wall of a hundred feet high; and that also beautified, and beset with fifteen hundred towers, each of them erected to the height of two hundred feet. Thus far Diodorus, who also tells us that this great city received one ruin by the river Tigris, which, at an inundation, brake out upon the wall, and threw down two and a half miles of it, see Nahum 1:8. Its last destruction was undertaken and ended by Nebuchadnezzar, as the Jews in their chronology testify. Herodotus saith, by Cyaxares, not by Astyages, as Jerome mistaketh him. If Sardanapalus were King of Nineveh when Jonah cried against it (as Corn. a Lapide contendeth), it was much that such an egregious voluptuary should so soon be wrought upon, as John 3:1,10. But he and his people soon relapsed to their former impiety; and were therefore destroyed, as Nahum had foretold; so that it may now be said of Nineveh, as once it was of another great city, in Strabo, magna civitas, magna solitudo. That great city is become a great desert, see Zephaniah 2:15, it is nothing now but a sepulchre of itself, a little town of small trade, where Nestorius's sect have taken their shelter, at the devotion of the Turk. It is become like that other Nineveh mentioned by Eusebius, quae est parvum quoddam in angulo Arabico oppidum, which is a certain little town in a corner of Arabia (Lib. de loc. Ebraic.).
And cry against it] Cry aloud with open mouth and full throat, sic clames, ut Stentora vincere possis. The voice said, Cry: but what should he cry? Isaiah 41:6,8. Cry that their wickedness is come up before me (so some), but that is not all. Cry, as John 3:5, Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be destroyed, for their wickedness is come, &c., their iniquity will be their ruin; tell them so from me, Isaiah 41:10,11 .
Their wickedness is come up before me] Their pride, cruelty, and other many and bony sins, as Amos hath it, Amos 5:12. Of their idolatry we read not, and yet we doubt not; they declared their sins as Sodom, Isaiah 3:9, they set them upon the cliffs of the rocks, Ezekiel 24:7,8; they did wickedly as they could, and filled not only the earth with their abominations, but the heaven also with the noise and stench thereof, to the annoying of God's senses and the vexing of his soul; more than any filthy drunkard doth those that are sober, with his hooting and spewing. See Genesis 4:10; Genesis 18:20 Revelation 18:5. See Trapp on " Gen 4:10 " See Trapp on " Gen 18:20 " See Trapp on " Rev 18:5 "