But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
Ver. 13. But go ye, and learn what, &c.] In the history of Jonah, Christ found the mystery of his death, burial, and resurrection. Rest not in the shell of the Scriptures, but break it, and get out the kernel, a as the sense is called, Judges 7:15; stick not in the bark, but pierce into the heart of God's word. Lawyers say, that Apices iaris non sunt ius. The letter of the law is not the law, but the meaning of it. John never rested till the sealed book was opened. Pray for the spirit of revelation, plough with God's heifer, and we shall understand his riddles, provided that we wait in the use of all good means, till God irradiate both organ and object.
I will have mercy] Both that which God shows to us and that which we show to others, spiritual and corporal. Steep thy thoughts, saith one, in the mercies of God, and they will dye thine, as the dye fat doth the cloth, Colossians 3:12 .
I came not to call the righteous] Those that are good in their own eyes, and claim heaven as the portion that belongs unto them. Scribonius writes of the cedar, Quod viventes res putrefacit et perdit; putridas autem restituit et couservat. So Christ came to kill the living and to make alive the dead.
But sinners to repentance] Not to liberty, but duty. Tertullian speaketh of himself, that he was born to nothing but repentance. This is not the work of one, but of all our days, as they said, Ezra 10:13. Some report of Mary Magdalene, that after our Saviour's resurrection she spent thirty years in Gallia Narbonensi, in weeping for her sins; and of St Peter that he always had his eyes full of tears, adeo ut etiam lachrymae cutem genarum exederint, insomuch as his face was furrowed with continual weeping. Let not him that resolves upon Christianity dream of a delicacy.
a Veshibro, the breaking of the nut.