ON ST. JONAH THE PROPHET,
IN PALESTINE.
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.
Jonah the Prophet, in Palestine (S.)
BY J. C.
§ I. The memory of St. Jonah, who was a type of Christ, in the ecclesiastical calendars; his cult.
[The deeds of the holy Prophet are apocryphal apart from those which are in the sacred Scriptures] Of St. Jonah the prophet, whose memory occurs today in the Roman Martyrology, and whose wondrous deeds are accordingly to be set forth in keeping with the plan of our Work — whatever Acts are sought from any source other than the sacred Scriptures are apocryphal and besprinkled with many fabrications. Of this kind are the absurdities of pseudo-Epiphanius and pseudo-Dorotheus, which even in the days when they were thought genuine the commentators exploded, and which we too shall refute where it seems worth the trouble. Of the same flour are certain dreams of the Rabbis, and, unless I am mistaken, the Life of the prophet Jonah written by an anonymous author and assigned by the most learned Assemani in the Bibliotheca Orientalium, tom. 3, pag. 286. I therefore shall retrace the wondrous deeds of the holy Prophet from the sacred Scriptures, and shall comment upon them after our custom, leaving to the commentators the sifting of conjectures nearly useless to our purpose, which nevertheless I shall note here and there. The name of Jonah, in Hebrew, is in Latin Columba, a dove. Hence St. Jerome in his letter to Paulinus: Jonah, the most beautiful dove, prefiguring by his shipwreck the Passion of the Lord, calls the world back to penitence, and under the name of Nineveh proclaims salvation to the nations.
[2] Jonah was a type of Christ chiefly on two counts: His name is recorded in the Roman Martyrology for he alone of all the prophets of the Old Testament was sent to the nations, prefiguring in this the Savior, who scarcely yet born appeared to the nations, and who was to lead them also as sheep into his own fold. Next, in that he lay hidden three days in the belly of the whale, concerning which the Savior says in Matthew 12 ℣ 40: For as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, so shall the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth. Among the Prætermissi at the XXVII day of January, our standard-bearer Bollandus noted that St. Jonah is announced in the Usuardine Auctaria, in the Codex of the Charterhouse of Cologne, and that he is commemorated by Canisius, by Peter de Natalibus, by Maurolycus and by others. His name is not inscribed in the more ancient classic Martyrologies, but the holy Prophet has that in common with a good many other Saints of the Old Testament. Today in the Roman Martyrology he is celebrated in these words: In the land of Saar, of St. Jonah the prophet, who was buried in Geth; to which the Tables of the church of Nocera, in the most illustrious de Aste, add: Whose bones were translated to Nocera among the Picentini; and among the Prætermissi at the XIX of April our Elders observed that on that day St. Jonah is venerated in the same place, on account of the body translated thither from the Holy Land by the Knights of St. John.
[3] In the Coptic Calendar of Job Ludolf and in the Menæa mention is made of the holy Prophet on the same day, in the Greek calendars he is celebrated a mention which in the Basilian Menology is deferred to the following day, and he is also found in the figured Calendar of the Muscovites. In the Metrical Calendar it is thus sung:
Εἰκάδι δὲ πρώτῃ τὸν ΙΩΝΑΝ γαῖα κάλυψεν.
On the one and twentieth Jonah is hidden in the tomb.
What is asserted in the Roman Martyrology concerning the land of Saar and St. Jonah's burial in Geth we shall discuss below. In the Council of Constantinople under St. Menna the patriarch, in a memorial once presented to St. Agapetus the Roman Pontiff, there is read as a subscriber Phocas, presbyter and prior of the monastery which is called Jonah's, next to Secundum. From this Baillet, tom. 4, col. 309, §2, on the cult of St. Jonah, gathers that there was at Constantinople under the Catholic Byzantine emperors a church of St. Jonah with a monastery joined to it. But it is uncertain whether that convent, which is called "at Secundum," was at Constantinople; and further, whether it took its name from our holy Prophet.
[4] Various churches glory in his relics Much more recent, and hardly more certain, are the things which illustrate the cult of St. Jonah. Various churches indeed glory in his sacred remains, but whence they obtained them they do not know; or those who think they know do not confirm it with the due testimonies that would produce sure belief. Ughelli, tom. 5 of the Italia sacra, ancient edition, col. [ ], ascribes the body of St. Jonah the prophet to the Venetian basilica of St. Apollinaris. Papebroch in his manuscript Roman Itinerary, among the things which he noted at Ravenna, says: In the church of the Conventual Franciscan Fathers we venerated the body of St. Liberius the archbishop. In the chapel which lies to the right of the choir, behind the tomb which serves as an altar, there is a great cabinet containing the heads of the aforesaid Saint and of Jonah the prophet, together with various less notable relics. A rib of the same Saint the monks of Monte Cassino claim for themselves, as may be seen in the Instrument printed in our Work, tom. VII of May, in the Appendix to day X, pag. 669, num. 14. Among the Prætermissi at the XIX of April Henschen noted thus: St. Jonah the prophet is venerated on this day at Nocera, on account of the body translated thither from the Holy Land by the Knights of St. John. I forbear to review other less notable relics with which other churches think themselves enriched.
[5] but what is brought forward to assert their possession is uncertain enough Concerning the body of St. Jonah, which the Venetians claim for themselves, that most learned man Flaminio Corner, a Venetian senator, writes thus in his Ecclesiæ Venetæ antiqua monumenta, Decade 4, pag. 154: By an ancient tradition of this church the body of St. Jonah the prophet is said to rest in it (the basilica of St. Apollinaris), but whence and when its conveyance was accomplished is unknown. His venerable head is enclosed at a side altar in a marble casket, but the remaining relics lie hidden in an unknown place, the memory of which has utterly perished either through the injury of the times or through the sloth of men. From this it is plain that, without any injury to the Venetians, some portions of the holy body may be granted to other churches, since they do not contend, or at least do not prove, that they possess it entire to this day. The assertion of an original possession is also somewhat feeble. Indeed, how many and how great are the errors born of such popular traditions, while relics are readily confounded because the names of Saints are near akin, we have often noted, and it is admitted among the learned.
[6] As to the head: if the Venetians have it entire, enclosed in a marble casket, are brought forward. The traditions the people of Ravenna must needs confess that they have hitherto been in error, unless they wish to make Jonah two-headed for us. The suit, unless I am mistaken, might be amicably settled between them, by leaving to each a part of the head — a part which, as is commonly usual in like cases, has been called "the head." Certainly whence the men of Ravenna got even their portion, and whence the Cassinese their rib, I do not find stated. From the papers of my Elders I learn that Beatillo, together with the Life of St. Priscus (concerning which see at day IX of May, pag. 360), sent in a report on the translation of St. Jonah, concerning which see among the Prætermissi at the XIX of April: but I have sought in vain for the instrument, which had been torn away from the Life of St. Priscus. The aforesaid de Aste assigns the papers of Antonio Caracciolo; on what foundation these rest I likewise do not know. The Turks too glory in Jonah's tomb and his venerable remains, and indeed in two places. Cornelis de Bruyn in his Oriental Itinerary, chap. 61, after relating how he had come from Nazareth to Rama, speaks thus in Flemish: When we had gone forward a little from there (Rama), there were shown me certain marks of the footprints of Jonah the prophet impressed in the rock.
[7] After these things, on the left there is in view the village of Misdesh, of the Orientals concerning Jonah's where there is a cavern in which, as the natives report, that Prophet was buried. Over the cavern the Turks have built a shrine, because the Prophet rests there, whom they venerate with a particular reverence. And that reverence is so great that they do not suffer any Christian to approach the place. Francis Quaresmius, tom. 2 of the Elucidatio Terræ Sanctæ, lib. 7, chap. 1, pag. 855, calls that place Michieth, and says that it is four miles distant from Nazareth to the north. Further he relates thus: Michieth is believed to be Jonah's native place, where his sepulchre is said to be. For there is shown a not inelegant Mosque of the Turks, within which is an enclosed chapel, in which the body of St. Jonah is said to be buried. From above the Turks let down a lamp through an opening in honor of the Prophet, and it is looked upon from the side through another. They allow Christians to enter the Mosque, provided their shoes are taken from their feet, and to see the things we have described — so trustworthy men who were there and saw it have told me.
[8] On this alone, as you see, reader, do these two writers agree, sepulchre in Geth-Opher namely that the Turks hold and venerate that place as St. Jonah's tomb. I think that in the rest more credit is to be given to the later writer, who, having lived many years in Palestine, was able to inquire into everything more carefully. St. Jerome, writing to Chromatius in the Preface to his Commentary on Jonah, has these words, which bear upon the matter: Now Geth, at the second milestone from Saphorim, which is today called Diocæsarea, on the road to Tiberias, is a hamlet of no great size, where his (Jonah's) sepulchre also is shown. Although others would have him both born and buried near Diospolis, that is, Lydda, not understanding that what is added, "Opher," serves to distinguish it from the other cities named Geth, which are shown to this day also near Eleutheropolis or Diospolis. It is therefore the same place which Jerome and others assign, and it is called by Adrichomius Gethefer, and Getacopher, otherwise Geth which is in Opher, or Ofer.
[9] Geth-Opher lies nearly 2 miles distant both from the village of Rama ancient and probable. and from Diocæsarea or Saphuria, whose ruins are not far from Mount Tabor, as the geographical map inserted in the Monumenta Missionum Orientalium teaches us. The aforesaid Quaresmius observes, moreover, that Geth is a land or district in which Michieth lies, as it were the Village of Geth, the name being somewhat corrupted. Calmet, with Baillet and others, in his Preface to Jonah, thinks that Geth-Opher is Jotapata, most famous in History. But that appears to me altogether improbable, and utterly contrary to the testimony of St. Jerome; for Sephoris, or Diocæsarea, according to the geographical maps both ancient and more recent, is distant from Jotapata eight miles and more, which city moreover does not lie on the road
for those going from Sephoris to Tiberias, but lies at the fourth milestone to the north of Tiberias, and at nearly an equal distance from Sephoris. And let these things be said according to that opinion in which the aforesaid writers appear to stand, and which seems to me highly probable, namely that the Prophet was born in the place where he is believed to have been buried.
[10] Baronius' error. From these and other things which follow, the Roman Martyrology must be corrected, which after the Paschal Chronicle announces Jonah in the land of Saar: for where this may be, nay whether it ever existed, is not easy to say. Certainly I find it nowhere in maps or geographical lexicons. Names akin to it are Saara, Saron, Sarim and the like: but Geth-Opher is not situated in their territory. Therefore either Baronius assigns a place different from St. Jonah's burial-place, or he wrongly locates that place in the land of Saar. That other village of Geth, of which St. Jerome spoke above, was on the borders of Lydda and Eleutheropolis. Likewise Saara, a town on the boundaries of Eleutheropolis toward the north for those going to Nicopolis, says Jerome. Those two towns may have been near neighbors, and one perhaps contained within the district of the other: but even so Baronius certainly runs counter to Jerome's plain indications; for the cities of Eleutheropolis, Diospolis and Nicopolis, between which Saara lies, are exceedingly remote from the tribe of Zabulon, where St. Jonah's birth and burial are to be located. For Saara (others prefer to read Zarea) fell first to the tribe of Judah, Joshua chap. 15 ℣ 33, and afterward to the Danites, ibid. chap. 19 ℣ 41.
[11] Another burial-place of St. Jonah is shown by the Turks Quaresmius, already often cited, assigns yet another place which is held to be the burial-place of St. Jonah the prophet. The Nestorians or Chaldees (he says, in the place cited above) teach that the body of Jonah is in Chaldæa, in the new city of Nineveh, which in Arabic is called Medineth el Musol, which is distant about ten miles from old Nineveh, now destroyed. The place where the Prophet's body is said to be, is beyond the river of the city, about half a mile. In Chaldee it is called Nebi Jonam, in Arabic Nebi Junes, that is, the Prophet Jonah. The Turks hold and venerate this place, and they permit Christians to visit it. New Nineveh is commonly called Musol and Mussal, and lies beside the river Tigris. Cornelius a Lapide on chap. 3 of Jonah ℣ 3 says that he received almost the same account of Jonah's sepulchre there from the Rev. Fr. John Anthony Marietti, and that it is visited by a very great concourse of Christians flocking thither; but that the tomb, or casket, is so long and so broad that Jonah must have been well-nigh a giant, if — as the native Turks relate — his remains fill all that space.
[12] in Musol, where it seems to be nothing but Tavernier, who inspected the place, relates these things somewhat differently: for he says that no Christian may lawfully approach it, save secretly by a special favor and after a price has first been paid. He says that he visited the place with two Capuchin fathers, but by night, and after first taking off his shoes according to the custom. In the middle of the mosque, he says, which is set upon a hill and is elegant enough, there is seen a sepulchre covered with a costly Persian carpet, which at the four corners is flanked by four huge bronze candlesticks with tapers, and round about very many lamps and ostrich eggs, which hang from the ceiling. For the rest, both he himself and others attest that the reverence of the inhabitants toward the tomb is very great: but whence and how the relics of the holy Prophet came thither they do not declare. It is more credible that Jonah died in Palestine. But those Orientals deny this, and since they maintain that their city of Musol is the same as Nineveh, or rose out of its ruins, they can easily fable also that the Prophet's tomb stood unharmed amid the most wretched destruction of the city, and has endured to this day.
[13] For my part I should prefer, rather than give credence to so many dreams and trifles, a mausoleum erected to him. The Saint's apparition, to suspect with Cornelius a Lapide that the name of Jonah, once most celebrated among the Ninevites, passed from them to their posterity, and that under that title a mausoleum was erected to the Prophet by someone, which was afterward believed to be his sepulchre, or was else contrived for the sake of scraping together money. A certain apparition of St. Jonah is thus related by St. Gregory, lib. 4 of the Dialogues, chap. 34: A certain religious of ours, a man of highly praiseworthy life, when he was dying four years ago … at the hour of his departure began to gaze upon Jonah the prophet, and Ezechiel also and Daniel, and to call upon them by name as his lords; and while he said that they had come to him, and with lowered eyes rendered them the homage of reverence, he was led forth out of the flesh. Some, in the often-to-be-praised Cornelius a Lapide on chap. 2 of Jonah ℣ XI, conjecture that the Prophet, who in a particular manner was a type of Christ buried and rising again, also rose again with Christ as a witness of his glorious resurrection, and thereafter was taken up with him into the heavens in soul and body.
[14] But in what place such conjectures are to be held, the critics know. his eulogy among the Greeks. Assuredly if this be true, the churches praised above glory wrongly in the holy remains of Jonah. Further, before we come more closely to the Saint's deeds, it will be useful to have appended here the eulogy in which the holy Prophet is celebrated in the Basilian Menology at the XXII day of September. Jonah, the great and glorious prophet, was of the region of the Jews; and being commanded by God to go to the city of Nineveh and to preach that after three days Nineveh should be overthrown, since he well knew that God, such is his clemency toward men, would grant pardon to the Ninevites if they did penance, he refused the divine command and went aboard a ship, meditating flight. But the sea by the divine will was so maddened that it sought to devour him. Wherefore the sailors, discovering by lots that on his account they stood in so great a peril of their lives, seized him and cast him headlong into the sea. And the waves of the sea straightway subsided; but a whale devoured Jonah, and on the third day thereafter set him ashore unharmed.
[15] Then therefore, setting out for Nineveh, he fulfilled the command of God. Some of his prophecies have perished, Soon returning to his own region, he took his mother away and sought a foreign land, since he was ashamed to dwell in his own country because his prophecy had proved false; for God had pity on the repentant Ninevites. And when he had prophesied many other things, he died. Nearly all these things are drawn from Pseudo-Dorotheus, Pseudo-Epiphanius and the fables of the Hebrews. That not all of Jonah's prophecies were written down, or, if they were written, that some have perished, becomes plain from the fourth book of Kings, where at chapter 14 ℣ 25 it is said: He (Jeroboam) restored the borders of Israel from the entrance of Emath not far from Damascus, as far as the sea of the Wilderness, according to the word of the Lord God of Israel, which he spoke by his servant Jonah, son of Amathi, the prophet, who was of Geth, which is in Hopher. Among those "many other things" which in the Basilian eulogy he is said to have prophesied, some reckon what is read in the Paschal Chronicle, after the spurious offspring of Epiphanius and Dorotheus, as follows.
[16] others are falsely ascribed to him. And he (Jonah) gave a portent over Jerusalem and the whole land: when they shall see a stone crying out lamentably, the end is at hand; and when they shall see all the nations in Jerusalem, then the city shall be destroyed. These things are indeed rightly expounded of Christ, who is the corner-stone, weeping over Jerusalem; but, having been fabricated after the destruction of Jerusalem, or at any rate having issued from a muddy spring, they obtain no credit among the learned. Further, from the passage which I have adduced from the 4th book of Kings, it is established that Jonah was born in Geth-Opher, concerning which see above, num. 9; for it cannot be doubted that he is the very same who was also sent to the Ninevites. This is persuaded by the name of his father Amathi, which is everywhere the same, and by the most ancient tradition among the Hebrews in Josephus, lib. 9 of the Jewish Antiquities, chap. XI, which is supported by the unanimous consent of almost all the holy Fathers. Certain Rabbis, in St. Isidore on Jonah, clamor against this, who hold that our Jonah is the son of the widow whom Elias raised from the dead.
[17] Opinions of the Hebrews and of some others concerning the parents Others add that he was the son of the prophet Abdias, whom they suppose to have been the husband of the widow of Sarepta. Pseudo-Epiphanius also opposes it, and pseudo-Dorotheus, the Paschal Chronicle, Rupert, and others who follow them, asserting that Jonah was born in Cariathmaus near Azotus. But their authority has already been abundantly weakened out of the sacred Scriptures and St. Jerome. The assertion of the Hebrews too, although it falls sufficiently on this ground, that it rests on no testimonies, is further overthrown by this, that in that case nearly a hundred years of age must be assigned to Jonah when he prophesied prosperity to Jeroboam, and to these a good many more must besides be added before he converted the Ninevites to penitence by his preaching. For in almost the first years of Achab, say the sixth or seventh, as the order of sacred History teaches, Elias raised the son of the woman of Sarepta; and from that point down to the beginnings of Jeroboam there run 91 years, to which if you then add 20, you will make Jonah more than a hundred years old when he was sent to Nineveh — which upon the dreams of the Rabbis alone no one will readily admit.
[18] Conjectures about the Saint improbable. A little less on this side do the other conjectures of the Hebrews break down, who in the Seder Olam assert that Jonah was the youth sent by Eliseus to anoint Jehu king, 4 Kings 9 ℣ 1, and who praised Jehu for cutting off the house of Achab, ibid. 10 ℣ 30; but neither do these rest on solid foundations. To the same result comes the opinion of certain ancient Fathers, who suspect that Jonah is the son of the Sunamite woman, whom Eliseus first obtained by his prayers for the barren mother as a reward of her hospitality, 4 Kings 4 ℣ 16, and whom afterward, when dead, he recalled to life, ibid. ℣ 34 and following. This opinion, I say, resting on mere conjectures, comes to the same result — except that this further difficulty befalls it, that he must be reckoned to have preached to the Ninevites at a very advanced age, and thus his father the Gethite would not have been Amathi, but Abdias born in the city of Sunam, as those same men conjecture.
§ II. Certain opinions concerning the time of Jonah's preaching are refuted. Part of his history.
[ ] Baillet without foundation As the year of St. Jonah's birth cannot be determined with certainty, so neither can the time at which he first began to prophesy. Baillet in his History of the life of St. Jonah, num. 1, affirms that Jonah uttered his prophecies before Osee and all the other prophets, both Major and Minor, and proves this from the fact that he foretold to Jeroboam II, king of Israel, the victories to be won over the Syrians. But Jeroboam, he says, reigned before Ozias king of Juda, under whom the beginnings of the other prophets are placed. But this reasoning does not stand against the judgment of almost all the holy Fathers and commentators, established as it is by no light arguments, unless Baillet can prove that Jonah foretold to Jeroboam the happy issue of his wars before either he was king, or at any rate before
Ozias or Azarias reigned in Juda. In the fifteenth year of Amasias son of Joas king of Juda, Jeroboam son of Joas king of Israel reigned in Samaria forty and one years, 4 Kings 14 ℣ 23. And in the same place, ℣ 17, And Amasias son of Joas king of Juda lived, after the death of Joas son of Joachaz king of Israel, fifteen years.
[20] From these things it follows that Jeroboam reigned together with Azarias the son and successor of Amasias for the remaining 26 years; first of all the Prophets for what is said in 4 Kings 15 ℣ 1, in the twenty-seventh year of Jeroboam king of Israel, Azarias son of Amasias king of Juda reigned, must be explained of the twelve further years during which Jeroboam administered the kingdom together with his father Joas. And this becomes evident from the reckoning of the years of Amasias. For of him it is said in 4 Kings 14 ℣ 1 and 2: In the second year of Joas son of Joachaz king of Israel, Amasias son of Joas king of Juda reigned … and he reigned twenty and nine years in Jerusalem. If in the 15th year of Amasias, after his father's death, Jeroboam obtained the kingdom, there remain only 15 incomplete years — as many as Amasias survived after the beginning of Jeroboam's reign; and accordingly his son Ozias succeeded him in the 15th year of Jeroboam, and not in the 27th, unless you reckon in the twelve years which he passed in partnership of the kingdom with his father. The remaining 26 years he reigned in Israel, while Azarias, or Ozias, son of Amasias, bore the sceptre of Juda.
[21] Now since it is uncertain in what year of his reign Jeroboam extended the borders of Israel as far as Damascus, places him in order of time. and how many years before Jonah foretold that this would come to pass, it is likewise uncertain whether Jonah prophesied before the times of Ozias. Some more recent writers, indeed, with Baillet, fix the beginning of Jonah's prophecies in the first years of Jeroboam, but they establish their opinion by no arguments, and accordingly no support accrues thereby to Baillet's collapsing reasoning. I should assuredly prefer to stand by the judgment of the holy Fathers and of the other ancients, than upon feeble conjectures, and with no reason even apparent, to invert the order of the Prophets and set Jonah before Osee. I should rather believe that the Prophet did not foretell to Jeroboam king of Israel his victories over the Syrians before the times of Ozias. I know that those who think otherwise may reply that Jonah holds his place among the Prophets only according to that prophecy which concerns his mission to Nineveh. But as that opinion is again destitute of foundation, so this evasion avails nothing in its favor, and Baillet's reasoning remains unstable.
[22] More extraordinary is what the same writer builds up at the end of num. 1 and at the beginning of the next. He also wrongly maintains that the Saint prophesied for a whole century, Here he asserts that more than 50 years elapsed between Jonah's first prophecies and his mission to Nineveh; there he promises to show that Jonah prophesied for a whole century. Of the latter assertion I find nowhere in him any proof, nor even a shadow of proof; but on the contrary, forgetting himself, in his Chronological Table he circumscribes Jonah's prophecies within the limits of 54 years. But not even so many need necessarily be assigned to him, as I show. How various are the opinions — or rather the conjectures, as is usual in obscure matters — concerning the succession and the dates of the Assyrian kings, the learned know. There are three not ignoble ones, none of which compels us to extend the period of Jonah's prophecies beyond thirty years. The first is that of Tirinus and of very many commentators, who tie the division of the kingdom of the Assyrians by Arbaces and Phul-Bel-Ochus, prefects of the Medes and of Babylonia, to the 9th year of Ozias, and accordingly the 24th of Jeroboam king of Israel.
[23] for nothing forbids They hold that the penitence of the Ninevites occurred under Sardanapalus, the softest and most effeminate of all men, king of the Assyrians. They assign him nineteen years of reign, and accordingly in their chronological ordering he obtained the sceptre of Assyria only in the fifth year after the beginning of Jeroboam's reign. Therefore fix Jonah's preaching in whatever year of Sardanapalus you please, and you will scarcely exceed a period of thirty, nay of twenty years: namely from the beginning of Jeroboam's reign to the penitence of Sardanapalus, since he was besieged in Nineveh for nearly three years, at which time certainly Jonah did not enter it. Others, with the most learned Plumyoen, dean of the cathedral church of Ypres, in his Dissertation on the kings of Babylon, pag. 200, judge that Ctesias, Clitarchus and nearly all the other historians who treat of the Assyrians have wrongly confounded two Sardanapaluses, whom Callisthenes in Suidas duly distinguishes. They therefore believe that Sardanapalus I was also called Phul, and they make him the founder — or rather the restorer — of the cities Anchiale and Tarsus in Cilicia, out of Diodorus lib. 2, Athenæus lib. 12, Strabo lib. 14 and other writers.
[24] his prophecies This one, finally, they believe to have been mulcted by Arbaces and Belesis of a part indeed of his kingdom, but to have been roused by Jonah's preaching out of his pleasures and to have shaken off his sloth; and soon, having granted certain immunities to the rebellious Babylonians and Medes, to have brought Mesopotamia, Armenia and the other regions on this side of the Euphrates back beneath the yoke which they had shaken off. The second Sardanapalus they make to be the grandson of Assaradon through Anacyndaraxis, later than the first by nearly 150 years, and they call him Tonosconcolerus; and to him at last they attribute whatever the historians have handed down about the luxury and unheard-of softness of Sardanapalus, whatever about the destruction of Nineveh and the inglorious death of the king among his concubines. This opinion rests upon the words of Callisthenes alone: perhaps we should more safely confess candidly with Harduin that the Assyrian kings, apart from Phul, of whom 4 Kings 15 and 1 Paralipomenon chap. 3, are through a long series of years unknown, or at any rate very doubtful.
[25] within a period But that this Phul, or Sardanapalus, is the same who reigned at Nineveh when Jonah preached there, I shall readily concede as a conjecture (for my plan does not require a more laborious sifting of these matters): for he may have reigned many years at Nineveh before he came with an army into Samaria, and Manahem paid him tribute — Manahem who died in the forty-ninth year of king Azarias. If to these you add the 15 in which Jeroboam reigned alone before Azarias, you will find a sum of 64 years. But Manahem did not seek help from the Assyrian king in the last years of his reign, but rather in the first, nay most probably in the second, that is, when in the preceding year, Sallum having been slain, he had striven with every effort, and in vain, to make firm for himself the sceptre he had usurped. And already then Phul may have reigned among the Assyrians for many years before. To him Tirinus certainly assigns 48 years, and nothing forbids Jonah's coming to Nineveh in one of the earlier of these; and thus again nothing compels us to separate his first prophecy from his preaching at Nineveh by an interval of more than thirty years. The patrons of this first Sardanapalus, or Phul, fix the beginning of Jeroboam's reign in the year 825 before the common era, and believe that Jonah prophesied prosperity to him in the 20th year of his reign; but the Ninevite mission they place about the year 778 before the common era. Therefore according to these men Jonah's prophecies are enclosed within a period of 27 years.
[26] But nothing persuades me, I confess, to defer Jonah's first prophecy to the 20th year of Jeroboam; of thirty years nor yet does anything persuade us to draw back the preaching at Nineveh as far as the year 778 before the common era, which by others again is not ill fixed at the year 810, and thus 32 years earlier. James Ussher finally, whom Baillet and Calmet seem here to have followed, so orders the chronology in his Annals that he believes with his predecessors that Jonah first prophesied in the year of the world 3197, which was the 20th of Jeroboam, 808 before the common era. Further, Ussher suspects that Phul king of the Assyrians was the father of Sardanapalus, whom Julius Africanus names Acracarnes, Eusebius Ocrasapes, Stephanus Cyndaraxes, Strabo, Arrian and Suidas Anacyndaraxes, and Athenæus lib. 12 of the Deipnosophists Anabaxares. His invasion of the land of Israel he fixes in the year of the world 3233, before Christ 771; but the beginning of Jeroboam's reign in 3179, which is 825 before Christ. Therefore the interval is 54 years. Then the same chronographer ties the death of Jeroboam to the year of the world 3220, before the common era 784, and believes that Phul was already reigning in Assyria at that time, and that Jonah preached there before Jeroboam's death. The year he does not more precisely define.
[27] to fit them. This chronology standing, Jonah's prophecies can again be confined within the space of thirty years, if, namely, you hold that about the middle of Jeroboam's reign Phul gained the sceptre of Assyria, and that a little afterward, while he slumbered amid domestic delights and pleasures, he was roused by Jonah. Calmet indeed, on chap. 3 ℣ 4, judges with Ussher that Jonah foretold Jeroboam's victory over the Syrians while his father Joas was still living: but even so, provided you hold that the Prophet preached to the Ninevites about the 25th year of Jeroboam, you will not exceed a period of thirty years. Then there is no reason why the predictions made to Jeroboam should be placed even one year before their fulfillment; accordingly in Ussher's chronology they ought not to be fixed long before the capture of Damascus, an expedition which is indeed referred by him to the year of the world 3179, but vaguely included in the space which ran down to the year 3194, that is, to the death of Amasias. And this very thing is highly uncertain: for nothing persuades us that Jeroboam waged his most grievous war against the Syrians in the first fifteen years of his reign rather than in some of the later ones, and thus that Jonah prophesied before the times of Azarias or Ozias.
[28] Baillet's reasoning therefore falls, and his extraordinary assertion Jonah, warned to preach the destruction of Nineveh, flees. that the Prophet preached through an entire century. Now let us cull St. Jonah's historical deeds from the sacred Scriptures. And the word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amathi, saying: Arise and go to Nineveh, the great city, and preach in it, for its wickedness has come up before me; so the sacred text says, ℣ 1 and 2. Under a king, that is, most soft and sunk in the foulest pleasures, seldom does a people not give the fullest rein to lust. It is hard to say why this command of God so struck Jonah that, as though out of his mind and struggling against the divine will, he wished as it were to flee from His eyes. For Jonah arose to flee into Tharsis from the face of the Lord, and went down to Joppe. The cause of his flight the Prophet himself darkly hints at in chap. 4 ℣ 2: For this cause I went before, that I might flee into Tharsis. For I know that thou art a God clement and merciful, patient and of much compassion, and forgiving of wickedness.
[29] Most commentators expound these words as if Jonah had foreseen that the Ninevites would be converted by his preaching, and had thereupon feared the name and disgrace of a false prophet. The cause of his flight And in some fashion the words bear this sense; yet I can scarcely believe that the Prophet was so far a lover of his own reputation that for so slight a loss to himself he was unwilling to obey God's commands — especially since the prodigious outcome of his threatening prophecy, the sudden repentance of that most abandoned city, which was the one thing he could have feared as a cause of the suspending of the divine vengeance, ought abundantly to have proved to the nations that his mission was sent from heaven. Others believe that Jonah, deterred by the strangeness and difficulty of the thing, wished to decline the divine commands. St. Jerome
here, and Nazianzen in his Apology, judge that the cause of the Prophet's flight was an excessive affection for his own nation, lest it should perish. Because (says St. Jerome) the penitence of the nations is the ruin of the Jews, therefore, as a lover of his own country, he does not so much begrudge Nineveh its salvation as he is unwilling that his own people should perish.
[30] is weighed. Sailing Or had he perhaps also foreknown the evils threatening his nation from the Assyrians, and in a perverse love of his country did he prefer the destruction now imminent and already divinely aimed at his nation's enemies — a destruction which by that preaching of his he was to avert? Certainly Jonah's words alleged from chap. 4 ℣ 2 do not resist this exposition. However that may be, it cannot be denied that the Prophet here suffered something as a man, and in this above all, that like one raving he wished at least to flee the commands of God, whom he could not be ignorant to be everywhere present. Joppe was already from the time of Solomon (2 Paralipomenon 2) a most celebrated port of the Jews, on the shore of the Mediterranean sea; to this day it is called Jaffa and Japha, and those put in there who make pilgrimage to Jerusalem, distant thence about twenty miles. Tarsis, however, or Tharsus, was the metropolis of Cilicia, whose people once held wide dominion over the sea; and Cornelius a Lapide shows that from this dominion of the Cilicians the Mediterranean sea itself was called Tharsis.
[31] to Tharsus of Cilicia, he brings on the passengers In the same place he also notes that St. Jerome so expounds Tharsis here, as though Jonah, timid and a fugitive, had thought not of Cilicia or of any other definite place to which he might betake himself, but, trembling, had looked only to the sea and to flight. Yet to Cornelius, and to the commentators generally, the natural signification of the word Tharsis is more pleasing, and the words that follow require it not obscurely: And he found a ship going to Tharsis. And he paid the fare of it, and went down into it, that he might go with them to Tharsis from the face of the Lord. Where you may see that Tharsus of Cilicia is designated as the term of the voyage, and not merely the sea. Scarcely had they set sail thence, when the Lord sent a great wind into the sea, and there was a great tempest in the sea, and the ship was in danger of being broken … and a man said to his fellow: Come, and let us cast lots, and let us know why this evil is upon us.
[32] the peril of shipwreck; Although even today — a thing which St. Francis Xavier lamented with the utmost sorrow of soul concerning the unbelievers, lib. 3, epist. 5 — we know that sailors even Christian and Catholic are perversely given to divinations and vain observances, yet the whole sacred context abundantly hints that something prodigious intervened in the tempest that arose here: for it does not appear credible that men otherwise religious enough, as what follows teaches, should have cast upon their passengers the causes of any and every tempest arising at sea by a natural way and manner, and should have investigated them by lots. Whatever the case may be — about which the Jews fable at length — God directed the casting of lots to the display of his providence and power; for: And they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah. And they said to him: Tell us for whose cause this evil is upon us. And Jonah related to them the whole course of the matter and his own purpose of flight. And the men feared with a great fear — namely the divine vengeance, which they saw hanging over Jonah and, on his account, over themselves.
[33] Nor did they dare, however, to thrust from them the worshiper and Prophet of the true God, into the sea fearing lest even so they should pay the penalties of an unjust cruelty. Him, then, whom they now knew to be a Prophet, they ask: What shall we do to thee, that both we may be freed from this most present peril of shipwreck, and it may not go ill with thee? It is for thee (says St. Jerome in their mouth) to command, whereby the sea may grow calm which now attests its anger by its raging. Beyond doubt the counsels of the divine providence concerning himself had by now been revealed to the repentant Prophet; And he said to them: Take me up and cast me into the sea — which certainly he could not lawfully urge without a divine prompting; and since the sailors did not know of this, they preferred at the utmost risk to themselves to struggle by every means against the sea's fury rather than to plunge into the waves a Prophet of the God of sea and dry land, and that when he was willing and taking upon himself the cause of the divine anger. Wherefore the men rowed hard to return to dry land, meaning to set Jonah ashore unhurt. And they were not able, because the sea went and swelled against them.
[34] At last, when every aid had been employed in vain to keep the Prophet safe and to deliver themselves from peril, he is cast out. The conjectures of the Hebrews about these things and when they had attested this their will before God, they took Jonah and cast him into the sea. Rabbi Eleazar, who, on the testimony of Tirinus and Arias, expounded the divine books about the time of Christ, adds from tradition another to the prodigies with which Jonah's history is filled — unless perhaps he himself fabricated it out of probability. He says that the sailors, having bound Jonah with ropes, plunged him repeatedly into the sea up to his neck and drew him back into the ship, to try whether it was on his account that they were incurring so great a peril of shipwreck; and that as often as Jonah was let down the sea subsided, and again as often as he was drawn up into the ship it roared more violently; and that, made more certain of the divine will by this sign, they at last loosed him entirely from the ropes and gave him to the sea. The often-praised Cornelius a Lapide shows himself not averse to admitting that narrative: but to others, who are likewise acquainted with the Rabbis' license in fabling, it appears probable indeed from the sailors' solicitude toward the Prophet attested in the sacred Scriptures, but with only such probability as begets a mere conjecture.
[35] To conjectures of this bran may be reckoned the tradition of the Orientals, uncertain. Jonah is swallowed by a fish, who in Eugène Roger assert that the Prophet was cast into the waves two miles south of Antipatris; for although the context suggests that the sailors were not far from shore when the prodigious tempest fell upon them, yet prudent men will not readily let themselves be persuaded by the Orientals of this precisely determined spot. Jonah being cast forth, the sea ceased from its raging, and the Lord prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. For "great fish" the LXX render "Whale," and so also St. Matthew chap. 12 ℣ 40: For as Jonah was in the whale's belly, etc. The commentators dispute at length here of what species that fish was, for the name cetus is with them generic. It cannot be denied that the name cetus is attributed to whales as it were by antonomasia, although it sometimes suits other fishes of greater bulk and size as well: whoever therefore judges prudently will rather believe it to have been a whale, to which that name belongs more properly and on two counts, than any other fish.
[36] But the hypercritics protest, who call themselves physicists and naturalists, and contend that whales have too narrow a gullet which was more probably a whale, to admit a whole man unharmed. Who would not laugh at this? Whence did those men learn that here, amid so many and so great miracles, no prodigy intervened, and that thus the whale's throat was not divinely widened to receive the Prophet? Then there are so many testimonies on the other side to the immense breadth both of the throat and of the stomach of whales, that one who gives credit to them cannot easily be held credulous. Those testimonies — for it does not please me to waste time in recounting them — may be seen in Tirinus on chap. 40 of Job ℣ 20 and following, and in Calmet in the particular Dissertation on this fish which he prefixed to his Commentaries on the Minor Prophets, pag. 36 and following. Further, there were not lacking, even from the first centuries of the Church, men who gnawed with impious tooth at the whole history of Jonah swallowed and lingering three days in the whale's belly, and relegated it to old wives' tales fabricated to lull infants to sleep.
[37] and in its belly is prodigiously preserved unharmed. St. Augustine attests this, epist. 102, in Question 6 on Jonah. These have been followed by not a few unbelievers of our own time, who reject whatever, for the lofty opinion they have of themselves, they cannot grasp with the intellect, and thus do not shudder to draw a sacrilegious pen against the holy Fathers and against God himself, the primary author of the sacred Scriptures. With much effort those men strive to prove that Jonah could neither be swallowed unharmed by a whale nor kept three days in its stomach. This indeed we shall gladly concede — however many contend that it could have happened without a miracle, or at least without a great one — that it was not done in a natural way; but we answer with St. Augustine against Porphyry, in the place cited: Either all divine miracles are not to be believed, or there is no reason why this should not be believed. For this fact does not involve a contradiction, as the schools speak, and accordingly it does not exceed the limits of the divine omnipotence, which preserved three boys unharmed amid the flames of the Babylonian furnace; and it has the same maintainer as the other prodigies, God, the surety and rewarder of our faith. But it is irksome to linger longer on these matters.
§ III. Jonah, cast by the fish upon the shore, preaches to the Ninevites. Their penitence. The Prophet's harsh grief rebuked by God.
[ ] The Prophet is cast by the whale upon the shore Concerning the time during which Jonah remained in the whale's belly, another question arises among the commentators, of hardly greater usefulness, and of equal difficulty and uncertainty. Namely, whether he lay hidden in the fish's belly for three entire days and nights, or rather, like Christ dead and buried, of whom he was here the type, only about thirty-four hours. To the latter opinion St. Jerome seems to incline, and indeed the exactness of the likeness would require it. But others deny that Christ posits so complete an equality in every respect between himself, who was to be buried and to rise again, and Jonah. I should prefer, since the matter is uncertain, to adhere to Jerome. For the rest, the Prophet seems to have lain some time sunk in the waves before he was swallowed by the fish, the peril of death being already at hand. This certainly is hinted by verses 4 and 6 of the canticle which Jonah recited to the Lord from the fish's belly: And thou hast cast me forth into the deep, in the heart of the sea, and a flood hath compassed me: all thy whirlpools and thy waves have passed over me … The waters compassed me about even to the soul: the deep hath closed me round about, the sea hath covered my head.
[39] These things can be expounded of Jonah as already lying hidden in the whale's belly, not of the Red Sea, nor of the Euxine, yet more simply, and more according to the mind of St. Jerome, they are understood in the first sense. And the Lord spoke to the fish: and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land. The Rabbis, if anywhere they play the fool in fabling, here betray their ravings. These may be seen in Calmet in the aforesaid Dissertation, pag. 40 and following. The same men assert that Jonah was cast out upon the shore of the Red Sea, and thus the whale would in the space of three days have swum around a great part of the globe. Josephus, lib. 9 of the Antiquities, chap. XI, says that the holy Prophet was vomited out upon the shore of the Euxine Sea,
and thus the whale must have covered more than a thousand Roman miles, which is a miracle asserted without necessity. Sulpicius Severus, lib. 1 of his history, on Jonah, and Gregory the Great, lib. 6 of the Morals, chap. 12, are of opinion that the shore of Nineveh is meant; but either here they understand not the shores of the sea but the bank of the river Tigris, or they call the shore of Nineveh the Persian coast of the Eastern Ocean, or of the Persian Gulf, or else they run foul of geography, according to which Nineveh, set upon the Tigris, was exceedingly remote from the sea.
[40] Then the same difficulty awaits these men, for thus the fish, but of Syria, where to this day a rock is believed having traversed the Mediterranean, Atlantic, Ethiopian, Indian and Arabian seas, must have ascended the Tigris — than which scarcely anything appears less credible. A Lapide and others judge that Jonah was cast out upon the shore of Phœnicia and Syria, not far from Joppe whence he had sailed, and that thence he soon went on by land into Judæa, and, thanks having been given to God at Jerusalem, came through Mesopotamia to Nineveh. Eugène Roger, lib. 1 chap. 12, in Calmet, writes that the Orientals hold that Jonah was rendered up at the foot of a mountain which stretches somewhat far into the sea, and to which the name of Jonah's mountain has clung to this day. It lies between Berytus and Tripoli. Tavernier, Persian Itinerary, lib. 2 chap. 1, teaches that another rock, upon which they believe the Prophet was cast out, is assigned by the Orientals at the second milestone north of Alexandretta, next to the town of Païassas on the coast of Cilicia.
[41] Concerning these last traditions and opinions, which do not rise above probability, to be named from this prodigy. Jonah, cast forth, is sent it seems that in so great a darkness nothing can be pronounced save rashly. Let us therefore leave each man his own conjectures, and resume the history from the sacred Scriptures. And the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying: Arise and go to Nineveh, the great city, and preach in it the preaching which I shall speak to thee. It is probable that Jonah was at that time in Judæa or Samaria, and set out thence for Nineveh, so that the Ninevites might the more easily acknowledge that a Prophet of the true God had been sent thence. Further, taught by his own misfortune to obey the divine will, Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord: and Nineveh was a great city of three days' journey. Concerning the site of the city of Nineveh various things, and hardly less uncertain, are brought forward. Diodorus Siculus, lib. 2 chap. 1, places it upon the Euphrates: but all the other ancients, Ptolemy, Pliny and Herodotus, assert that it was situated upon the Tigris; and of these again one places Nineveh on the left, another on the right bank of that river.
[42] There are those who contend that some ruins of it survive to this day: to Nineveh, a very great city on the bank of the river Tigris, but these are shown by some in the town of Musol, of which above at num. XI; by others a mile and a half from it; by others, finally, ten miles from it. This much seems certain, that Nineveh, which for so many centuries had been the royal seat of the most powerful monarchs of Assyria, was, when Jonah came to it, most numerous in citizens and stupendous in extent: for there were reckoned in it, as the Divine oracle itself attests in chap. 4 ℣ XI, more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who knew not what was between the right hand and the left, that is, who, not yet possessed of the use of reason, could not discern between good and evil. Hence by computation, if that age be restricted to a fifth part of the citizens, Nineveh numbered 600,000 inhabitants. Of the greatness of this city Diodorus Siculus writes, lib. 3 chap. 1, and says that it had 480 stadia in circuit, 150 of length and 90 of breadth, when it was first founded or enlarged by Ninus. Hence Ptolemy and Strabo in Tirinus affirm that it was greater not only than Babylon, but than all the other cities which were founded before or after it.
[43] where he foretells the impending destruction of the city Finally its extent is sufficiently hinted by the word Great, which is here attributed to it as it were by excess, and equally by the asserted measure of a three days' journey. Its circuit was nearly 25 French leagues by the reckoning of stadia, and accordingly a single day's journey would be eight leagues. Nay, there are those who with Tirinus, from comparison with other great cities, assert that Nineveh had almost as many miles of diameter in length; which I shall not readily believe. For a compass of 25 French leagues is sufficient for the city to be called Great by antonomasia, and for us to understand whatever the sacred Pages and profane writers have handed down about Nineveh. However that may be, And Jonah began to enter into the city one day's journey: which, if it is to be so expounded that he is judged to have traversed only so much space as is usually covered in one day, he must be said to have begun to go round the city — which is St. Jerome's opinion — or to have wound about through the streets and the meanders and turnings of the ways, and thus to have gone over a third part of the city in preaching, as Theophylact and others judge. And Jonah cried and said: Yet forty days (the Septuagint have three days, on which see a Lapide here) and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
[44] by a sudden conversion they turn away the punishment, They judge that the Prophet preached these and like things to the Ninevites for many days, so that they may believe that Jonah's voice and threats reached every citizen, and thus they supply more efficacious motives for the conversion of the Ninevites. Certainly the sacred text immediately subjoins: And the men of Nineveh believed in God; and, their king commanding it and going before by his example, it proceeds to describe a stupendous penitence. Of so sudden a conversion — lest the Ninevites should seem to have proceeded imprudently — some Theologians seek out the causes and motives, contending that besides God's inward illumination and inspiration there were certain outward signs which at once moved these heathen men to believe that a stranger and unknown man was a Prophet of the true God, and thence to dread his so unusual threats. This opinion of theirs is highly probable from the words of Christ in Matthew 12 ℣ 38 and following, where the Savior answers the Scribes who sought a sign from Christ: An evil and adulterous generation seeketh a sign, and a sign shall not be given it, but the sign of Jonah the prophet, etc.; and Luke XI ℣ 30: As Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so shall the Son of man be also to this generation.
[45] to whom perhaps For from these words they argue that a sign was given to the Ninevites, whereby they might be moved to believe that Jonah had been sent by God: namely the prodigious stay of the Prophet three days in the whale's belly, and the other marvelous circumstances of this prodigy — just as to the Jews was to be given the sign of the Savior's death, burial and resurrection. Further, in order that this miracle wrought upon Jonah at sea should have been a sign with respect to them, it must have become known to them and been prudently credible. They conjecture therefore that it was set before them by Jonah. But why did they believe this prodigy — which was both more unusual and might seem to unbelievers a ridiculous fable — on Jonah's assertion, rather than the destruction hanging over their city, which he likewise threatened? They add therefore that the same story had already been spread through the whole East by the sailors. There may well have been among the passengers, with whom Jonah was striving to sail to Tharsus, some who were either Ninevites or Assyrians, and who had watched Jonah cast into the sea and swallowed by the whale.
[45] From these certainly, as they told the tale, the Ninevites were able to receive the whole history of the tempest that arose and was allayed, the things which had befallen Jonah at sea were known. and to understand that this was the very man who, earlier punished for disobedience, now as it were restored to life, was preaching to them the destruction divinely aimed at them. But these are only conjectures: for who would deny that a thousand ways of the divine providence lay open, by which it might win for its Prophet the highest esteem among those men, and an easy and prudent belief from them? The stupendous conversion and penitence both of the king and of his subjects, and God's mercy toward them, you have described in six verses, which I pass over. Then in chap. 4, when the end of the forty days was now at hand, the Prophet either was warned by God, or from so great a penitence of the Ninevites foresaw, that his oracle would be frustrated of effect, and that the city would not be overthrown as he had foretold.
[46] And Jonah was afflicted with a great affliction, and was angry — The Prophet grieves that his prophecy whether because the most mild God was so ready in pardoning enormous crimes, or because he burned with an immoderate zeal and a preposterous love of his own nation, or finally because he feared for his own reputation — and he prayed to the Lord and said: I beseech thee, O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my own country? For this cause I went before, that I might flee into Tharsis: for I know that thou art a God clement and merciful, patient and of much compassion, and forgiving of wickedness — which words easily bear the two latter senses, as I showed at num. 29. After this the Prophet broke out into the most grievous emotions of indignation, and said: Lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live. But the divine goodness wonderfully confounded the indiscreet zeal of its Prophet; for Jonah, having gone out of the city on the eastern side of Nineveh, built himself a shelter of leaves, meaning to watch from there what at last would befall the city, and whether the Lord would grant nothing to his indignation and expostulations, and would at least in part take vengeance on the enemies of his country, from whom a certain destruction awaited it.
[47] To the furnishing of this shelter the divine providence lent its labor in a singular manner. was void of effect; but, when the plant was prodigiously withered, And the Lord God prepared an ivy, and it came up over Jonah's head, that there might be a shade over his head and shelter him (for he had labored), namely in preaching, and he was seething with an inward and inconsiderate ardor. For Ivy, in Hebrew it is Kikaion, which the Septuagint, the Syriac text and the Arabic render by Gourd. Well known are St. Augustine's complaints about this version of Jerome's, and Jerome's replies to him. St. Jerome had followed the version of Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion, and, finding no proper word in Latin which would signify that plant or shrub specifically and determinately, adopted a generic appellation for it. The moderns almost unanimously agree that the Hebrew Kikaion is the Kiki of the Egyptians and the Ricinus of the Latins, called by men of today the Palm of Christ. Of this shrub Calmet assigns two species: one rather similar to lilies, the other, from Dioscorides lib. 1 chap. 38, which grows up to the height of a small fig-tree.
[48] which served him for a shelter, Of the latter Pliny, in Dalechamps' edition of the Natural History, lib. 15 chap. 7: The next (oil) is made from the Cici tree, plentiful in Egypt: some call it Croton, others Trixis, others Wild Sesame; and there, not long since — and in Spain it suddenly appeared — of the height of an olive, with a fennel-like stalk, a leaf like the vine's, and a seed like slender pale grapes: our people call it Ricinus from the likeness of the seed, namely to the Ricinus, that kind of tick which torments dogs and sheep by sucking them. This shrub was brought to this our own country long ago, and grows even without great care from the gardener
to a height not seldom of six feet and more. It supports itself by its own stalk, which is however hollow like a reed, and three or four fingers thick: it has leaves like the plane's, but very large, and extending to nearly two palms. Finally its speed in growing, and the shade which it makes, and the weakness of its hollow stalk have, I believe, won for it the opinion of men today.
[49] a shrub of a species unknown to us, There is one thing which keeps me from subscribing to a conjecture that is in other respects uncertain enough. The kind of shrub which the Hebrews call Kikaion, and which he himself had rendered Ivy, Jerome knew well and had often seen, and he describes it. Diligently, after those contentions over his version had arisen both at Rome and in Africa, he examined whatever bore upon it; and yet nowhere did he express a Latin name, nor probably did he find one. Shall we believe that he was ignorant of what Pliny had said about the Ricinus? Shall we believe that all the others who carped at his translation were ignorant of it, and that, when he pleaded that the Latin tongue had no name for this species of tree, they did not suggest to him the true name? I shall not believe it, and shall rather confess that the little tree is unknown to us, or at any rate was of such a kind as was then unknown to the Latins, and perhaps afterward, as commonly happens, received its name from those who devote themselves to the cultivation of foreign plants.
[50] by God At the sight of the ivy, to whose growth the divine hand had added speed, Jonah rejoiced, and, sheltered by its very dense shade against the burning of the sun, and having experienced the divine providence toward himself, he fell into a placid sleep. But God was consulting not so much the comfort of his Prophet as paving the way for rebuking and unteaching his indiscreet indignation against the Ninevites. And God prepared a worm when the morning arose on the following day: and it struck the ivy, and it withered. The shrub, if its stalk was hollow, could easily be gnawed by a worm and thrown down, so that Jonah on waking found the ivy overturned, or at least withering and, with its leaves drooping, collapsing. And when the sun was risen, the Lord commanded a hot and burning wind, and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, and he broiled: and he desired for his soul that he might die, and said: It is better for me to die than to live. The Lord asks the Prophet, brought to so great a sadness, affliction and near despair: Dost thou think thou art rightly angry over the ivy?
[51] he is taught mercy toward sinners. To this Jonah, overcome by his grief beyond measure, said: I am rightly angry, even unto death: that is, rightly and not without reason am I afflicted and made sorrowful, so that I long for death. And the Lord said: Thou grievest over the ivy, because it is cut off and no longer affords thee shade, in which (in the planting of which) thou hast not labored, nor didst thou make it grow. Thou grievest over a thing so worthless, which was born in one night, and in one night hath perished (namely the following one, with a day between). And shall I not spare Nineveh, the great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who know not what is between their right hand and their left, and many cattle? Thus God repressed the fervid disposition of the Prophet, and the immoderate zeal, sadness, complaints and a certain madness as it were which proceeded from it; and at the same time gave to mortals a specimen of his supreme mercy toward men.
[52] For the rest, this penitence of the Ninevites was indeed serious, Nineveh, returning to its crimes, was afterward overthrown. so that it suspended the divine vengeance, but it was not lasting: whence some years afterward their city was stormed by the Babylonians and the Medes, and afflicted with those evils which are wont to follow the fury of a conquering army. And thus the effect of Jonah's prophecy was in a manner deferred, according to what is read obscurely in the Vulgate, but thus in the Greek, at Tobias 14 ℣ 5: Son, behold I am grown old, and am at the point of departing out of my life; take thy sons and go into Media, my son; for I know what Jonah the prophet spoke of Nineveh, that it shall be overthrown. Whither Jonah afterward went, or what befell him, the sacred Pages are silent, and various men conjecture various things. Whoever would wish to read the sacred histories expounded and enlarged in a freer manner, let him consult the Works of St. Ephrem in Voss's edition, pag. 650, where he will find a sermon on Jonah attributed to that holy man, well stuffed with ornaments, and among other things Jonah invited by the king within the city, escorted by a royal retinue, and carried back to Jerusalem in a royal chariot, and very many things like these and of the same flour, which may seem the inventions of a poet at play rather than the narrative of a sacred writer. As his account has its end here, I likewise make an end.