Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 13, 2025
The Ninevites' remedy he felt was now called for. A true, sturdy Englishman, Bunyan, with Baxter and Howe, "refused an indulgence which could only be purchased by the violent overthrow of the law." Bunyan did not live to see the Revolution.
Only a wicked people look for a sign, He said, and no sign should be given except the sign that Jonah gave to the Ninevites a call to repentance. Then He left them, for He saw the hardness of their hearts.
The widest charity, the humbling lesson for people brought up in the blaze of revelation, that dwellers in the twilight or in the darkness are dear to God and may be more susceptible of divine impressions than ourselves, the rebuke of all pluming ourselves on our privileges, the boundlessness of God's mercy, are among the other lessons of this strange book; but none of them is more precious than its truly evangelic teaching of the blessedness of true penitence, whether exemplified in the renegade Prophet returning to his high mission, or the fierce Ninevites humbled and repentant, and finding mercy from the God of the whole earth.
The solicitude of "the Lord God of the Hebrews" for the welfare of the Ninevites is to the sceptical mind an extraordinary phenomenon. It is one of the very few cases in which he shows the slightest concern for any other people than the Jews.
I want to deepen and make clear to you this consciousness that the world has had essentially a Trinity of ages the Classical Age, the Middle Age, the Modern Age; each of these embracing races and individuals of apparently enormous separation in kind, but united in the spirit of their age, the Classical Age having its Egyptians and Ninevites, Greeks and Romans, the Middle Age having its Goths and Franks, Lombards and Italians, the Modern Age having its French and English, Spaniards and Germans; but all these distinctions being in each case subordinate to the mightier and broader distinction, between Classicalism, Mediævalism, and Modernism.
The prophet Nahum afterwards prophesied against the bloody city, and foretold that her men should become like women, and that in the midst of her feasting and drunkenness an overflowing flood should make an end of her. But first God had a work for the Ninevites to do, namely, to punish His own chosen, who would not have Him for their God.
But the wave of feeling soon retired, and there is no reason to believe that more than a transient impression was made. It does not seem certain that the Ninevites knew what 'God' they hoped to appease. Probably their pantheon was undisturbed, and their repentance lasted no longer than their fear.
Jonah sat under the shadow of his gourd rejoicing, in isolated, selfish indifference, caring nothing for the millions of the Ninevites at his feet. What was the consequence? God prepared a worm to smite the gourd, that it withered.
So parted from one another, the young and the old began to bellow aloud. Then the Ninevites cried: "If Thou wilt not have mercy upon us, we will not have mercy upon these beasts." The penance of the Ninevites did not stop at fasting and praying. Their deeds showed that they had determined to lead a better life.
They had nearly the same gods as the Ninevites, but thought the special protector of their city was Bel-Merodach, the name by which they called the planet Jupiter.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking