I have been much struck with the way in which the Book of Jonah and the 139th Psalm mutually illustrate each other. There are several points of coincidence which may have escaped even intelligent readers and which it may be well to notice. First, as to the import of the name Jonah. It signifies "a dove." This at least seems to be one of the meanings of the word (see Cruden). It was a godly wish in the Psalmist, "O that I had wings like a dove" to escape from the presence of the ungodly (see Psa. 4:66There be many that say, Who will show us any good? Lord, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us. (Psalm 4:6)). But it was a most ungodly wish in Jonah to seek to flee from the presence of the Lord. And the presence of the Lord is the thought with which the 139th Psalm opens: "O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me. This taken by itself is one of the simplest truths of natural religion. It needs no grace to perceive' (though it needs much grace to remember and act upon it) that He that formed the eye can see, that He that planted the ear can hear. This nature itself teaches us; and thus learned men of the world are very familiar with the doctrine of God's omnipresence. They admit it without hesitation, they prove it logically from the very being of a God, nay, from the existence of anything at all, or as if all proof were superfluous, rank it among the first and simplest axioms of philosophy. Still they know rather than believe it.
But this truth sat heavy on the mind of Jonah, he felt the omnipresence of God. And whether in the case of Jonah, the Lord's disobedient servant, or in that of Adam immediately after his fall, the conscience of a sinner can only suggest to him the false and fruitless endeavor to get away from the presence of God. Adam leeks to screen himself behind the trees in the garden. Jonah's plan, if possible, is more deliberate. " But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord." Here then we have the "silly dove without heart" taking the wings of the morning (i.e. going from the east), and preparing to dwell in the uttermost part of the sea, forgetting that there should God's hand lead her, and his right hand hold her. And God's right hand does overtake her. Strictly speaking, with God there is no time. Before the mountains were brought forth or ever God had formed the earth and the world, God knew what the heart of Jonah would be, and knew the precise spot at which the storm would overtake him. "But the Lord sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken." To the eyes of men the storm was an accident, the natural accompaniment, perhaps, of that season of the year. But to the eye of faith it was the Lord that sent it. If God makes His angels spirits it is also true that he makes the winds his angels (i.e. messengers). Or, again, some may advance a step farther and do more than merely attribute the storm to natural causes. They may know something of morality and something of Providence, but they know nothing of grace. And these might say, "Jonah was an Israelite, the mariners were heathens, therefore God sent the storm against them." But this would have been a mistake. Servants of God were not yet called Christians, and the discipline of God's house was not yet set up; but the same principle was so far in exercise that even then it was true "them that are without God judgeth (or will judge)." "You only have I known of all the families of the earth, therefore will I punish you for all your iniquities." Jonah's conscience does its office, "For my sake this tempest is come upon you." He was the lightning conductor of the vessel, at once attracting and carrying off the storm. " The men rowed hard." Men have often prevailed against wind and tides but no one has ever prevailed against God. Who has hardened himself against God and prospered? And here I would notice the striking contrast between Jonah's history and the event recorded in John 6. In both cases the problem is to bring the ship to land. In the one case, Jonah must be cast out; in the other, Jesus must be taken in. Jonah is cast out and the sea ceases from its raging. Jesus is taken in, and the boat is " immediately at the land whither they went." God is Jonah's God, therefore Jonah is afflicted.
It is now time to remark, that a greater than Jonah is here. One antitype in Scripture has often many types; and sometimes, though not so frequently, one type has several antitypes: This will be found to be the case in several of the Psa. 1 would instance the fortieth. There we have. David, the Lord Jesus, the Jewish people, and less strictly the Church, and every. individual saint belonging to the Church.
We must, of course, bear in mind that sometimes the antitype goes beyond the type, and also that neither David nor any other mere man can come up to the measure of the stature of the fullness of that character which exactly describes the Lord Jesus. None but Jesus could say in the same high sense, "Thy law is within my heart: Lo I come to do thy will, O God."
The case of Jonah, however, is more simple. He is a real, historical, and at the same time, typical personage. He represents, as a little Sunday-school child knows, the Lord Jesus laid in the heart of the earth and raised again. He also represents the Jewish people, and every individual saint. In other words the following order is found in the case of all three of the parties death, resurrection, testimony. There was of course, this difference, that Jesus could be a witness without death, but not be the head of His people. They, whether Jews or gentiles, must pass through death before they can testify. And here again we find a coincidence between the Book of Jonah and Psa. 139 That Psalm may be divided into three parts:-The unburied, unraised, unquickened soul, apprehends (at all events may apprehend) the truth of God's searching presence carnally. There is no echo of the spirit to the voice of God, no heart Amen; to bid the light welcome as it enters the recesses of but soul. There is all this at the end of the Psalm; but this is the very doctrine we are taught, as it seems to me, by the threefold division of it, that death and consequently resurrection must come between the beginning and the-end. The Apostle, once alive without the law-Jonah, without the experience of the whale's belly-the Psalmist, contemplating the naked doctrine of God's omnipresence apart from grace-these three agree in one. And the Apostle thanking God through Jesus Christ when the law of the spirit of life had made him free from the law of sin and death Jonah knowing that Jehovah was God, and that salvation was of the Lord, and the Psalmist, crying at the end of the Psalm, "Search me, O God, and know my heart, try me and know my thoughts," all bear witness to the same gospel fact-that spiritual life can only be attained through death. It is one of our Father's most glorious titles that He is " God which _raiseth the dead;" and it would seem that He would have us acknowledge the principle of resurrection in several distinct and what some might think dissimilar processes. I would especially mention the finding the lost, and the ushering an infant into the light of the natural world from the place where it was "made in secret" and visible to no eye but God's. Birth and resurrection are clearly associated in the mystic generation of our Lord from the grave (who we know was the Son of God in another sense from all eternity). "Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten Thee." Again, resurrection and finding the lost one are identified in the case of the Prodigal Son: "This my son was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found." May we not then, seeing that not man, but God has joined these ideas together, consider that both in Jonah and the 139th Psalm the Spirit (to say the least), glances at the finding the lost tribes of Israel (qy. the body of Moses?) which God buried, whose sepulcher no man knows of, and which none but God can find?
But we must not forget that in each of these cases of deliverance the Lord has a practical purpose to answer, "Let my people go that they may serve me." This people have I formed for myself and they shall show forth my praise." The prophet, the restored house of Israel, and the converted sinner in our own day, are all in turn witnesses of this. God not only sets their feet on a rock and orders their goings, but he also puts a new song into their mouth, even praise unto their God. He opens their lips, and their mouths show forth His praise. Jonah has learned two lessons. The one is his own badness, " They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy." The second is God's goodness: " Salvation is of the Lord." In giving utterance to this critical truth, Jonah seems to have touched the spring which made the doors of his prison-house fly open. For immediately after we read, "And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land." I would mention one or two parallel cases in Scripture (2 Cor. 3). "When it (i. e. the heart of the Jews) shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away." Another instance, as it seems to me, is afforded by the account of Zacharias as the representative of unbelieving Israel. He is dumb for a season, because he believed not the words of the angel. But at last he gives a striking proof of faith. He refuses, as we may say, to know his own child after the flesh, and though none of his kindred were so called, he gives him the name of John (i.e. the grace of the Lord). " And his mouth was opened immediately and his tongue loosed, and he spake, and praised God." May not the case of Zacharias, I would ask, lawfully remind us of the condition of Israel as described in the first verse of Psa. 65 (marginal reading). "Praise is silent for thee, O God, in Zion"? Israel is dumb till they can speak of grace. Then shall the veil be taken away, and the tongue of the dumb sing.
But praise to God is testimony to man, and conversely we then honor God in this world, when we faithfully (i.e. obediently) testify for Him in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation. This, Jonah, raised from the dead in a figure, is now prepared to do. Marvelous is the grace of God in thus dealing with this rebellious one, not only pardoning, but employing him in His service. And this is the privilege of all believers. To preach, i.e. bear testimony for God, was what Jonah was first commanded to do, he is not prepared to do it till he has been through the waters of death. He is God's missionary to Nineveh, the great gentile city, typical, we may suppose, of Israel in the latter day when they, or part of them, shall "call the people to the mountain."
I would not pursue the history of Jonah farther, instructive as the two last chapters are, but conclude with a few thoughts suggested by the latter part of the 139th Psalm, in connection with that which has been our subject throughout. We have seen that resurrection must precede testimony, and of course death must precede resurrection; but there is a certain moral qualification which fits us for testimony, and which we only possess in virtue of our interest in Christ's death and resurrection. This is truth or truthfulness, " Grace AND truth came by Jesus Christ." And this truth or truthfulness, this honesty of soul, is the special subject of the concluding verses of the 139th Psalm, " Search me, 0 God, and know my. heart, try. me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."
A good conscience toward God is the great practical blessing of the new covenant. The leading thought of the New Testament, as regards God, we may say is grace, as regards man is conscience (see Hebrews, passim). And where the one is purged by the operation of the other, we have peace with God through Jesus Christ. The word conscience does not appear in the Old Testament; and this very omission is not without significance, for the veil was not rent. But though the name of a good conscience does not occur in the vocabulary of the Old Testament, the nature of it is described in Psa. 32:22Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. (Psalm 32:2). "Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile." The light of the Gospel has a reciprocal effect. It enables us to see God, and makes us willing that God should see us. Then we are spiritually Israelites indeed, in whom is no guile. Then having beheld with unveiled face the glory of the Lord, and having received mercy, we faint not, but have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty. And thus the conscience being purged from dead works, we are prepared to serve the living God. Many know that faith without works is dead, who do not know that works without faith are dead also. And service to the living God rendered by a living soul is the essence of real good works, or usefulness, or testimony.
To recapitulate briefly what has been said, the beginning of the Psalm states the fact of the omnipresence of God, the latter part says Amen to it willingly. The first part gives us a doctrine, the last the experience of a soul capable of contemplating the doctrine without fear. Between the two, in a confessedly obscure passage, we may discern the secret formation of a predestinated body, described in one verse as a process of covering in the womb, in another as a curious operation in the lowest part of the earth. Viewing this Psalm in connection with other parts of Scripture, it is almost impossible not to perceive the same principle in action whether in the restoration of the Jews, the resurrection of the saints, or the conversion of a soul. The lowest parts of the earth clearly testify of burial and death, and generation is a type of regeneration. If any question the analogy between the raising of the dead and the restoration of Israel, that point seems to be settled by the divine authority of the 37th of Ezekiel, ver. 11, " Son of Man, these bones are the whole house of Israel." There may be more room for doubt, though I confess I do not think there is much as to whether Dan. 12:22And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. (Daniel 12:2), does not at least allude to the restoration of Israel; and still less reason do I perceive for questioning whether Isaiah 26:1919Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead. (Isaiah 26:19), refers to the same subject.
I would add a few words to prevent mistake on the subject of the body of Moses. To speak, as some have done, of Israel being the body of Moses in the sense in which the Church is the body of Christ is foolish, not to say profane, but to say there is a striking coincidence between what Scripture says of Israel and what it says of the body of Moses is only to state a fact of which any reader of the Bible may judge for himself. In Deut. 34.5,6, we read that the Lord buried Moses, and no man knows where sepulcher is to this day. In Ezek. 20.23, and elsewhere, the Lord threatens to scatter Israel. Ezek. 37:2121And say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land: (Ezekiel 37:21), Israel is scattered, of course by the Lord, and, referring to ver. 11, this seems to be the antitype of the figure of the resurrection of the dry bones. It is not unworthy of notice that both the burial of Moses and the vision of the dry bones are said to have taken place in a valley, (i.e. if the translation of Ezekiel is correct). Again, it will hardly be denied that in Zech. 3, whatever else may be meant, the brand plucked from the burning is Israel or some part of Israel. There we read, " And the Lord said unto Satan, The Lord rebuke thee, O Satan, even the Lord that hath chosen Jerusalem, rebuke thee." In Jude, ver. 9, we read, "Michael the archangel when contending with the Devil, he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against, him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee."