A Study by John King (c. 1560-1621) Jonah 1:2, pt. 2 - The City of Nineveh [This continues a study taken from a series of lectures given in 1594 by John King, who later became the Bishop of London in 1611.] 1 The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me” (Jonah 1:1-2, KJV). [Dr. King, in the previous study, laid out three sections upon which he would speak, about the command to Jonah to go to Nineveh: 1. The place which Jonah was sent unto; 2. His business there; 3. The cause. Dr. King continues here with section 2. His business there.] 2. And so I come to the second general part, wherein we are to consider what Jonah was to do at Nineveh. It is manifested in the words following, “Cry against it” . Lay not thine hand upon thy mouth, neither draw in thy breath to thyself, when the cause of thy master must be dealt in. Silence can never break the dead sleep of Nineveh; softness of voice cannot pierce her heavy ears; ordinary speaking hath no proportion with extraordinary transgression; speak, and speak to be heard, so that when she heareth of her fall, she may be wounded with it. It was not now appropriate that Jonah should go to Nineveh, as God came to Elijah, in 1 Kings 19:11-12, in a “still and soft voice,” but rather as a “mighty strong wind, rending the mountains, and breaking the rocks,” abasing the highest looks in Nineveh, and tearing the hardest heart in pieces; as an “earthquake and fire,” consuming all her dross, and making her quake with the fear of the judgments of God, like the trees of the forest. Jericho must be overthrown with trumpets and a shout, and Nineveh will not yield but to a vehement outcry. A prophet must arm himself, I say not with the spear, but with the zeal of Phinehas, when sin is impudent and cannot blush (see Num. 25:7). God cannot endure dallying and trifling in weighty matters. The gentle spirit of Eli is not sufficient to amend children past grace, and a passive prophet doth but bolster a sinner in his froward ways. God chargeth his messenger otherwise in the prophecy of Isaiah: “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, shew my people their transgressions, and to the house of Jacob their sins” (Isa. 58:1). Much less can God abide flattery and guilefulness in his business, for “cursed be he that doth the work of the Lord negligently” (Jer. 48:10), or rather, as the word importeth, with deceit . “Woe unto them that sow pillows under men’s arm-holes” (Ezek. 13:18), when it is more time to prick them up with goads, “that sell the cause of the Lord for handfuls of barley, and pieces of bread,” for favour, for fear, for lucre, or any the like worldly respects. And when the people committed unto them shall “say unto their seers, ‘See not,’ and to their prophets, ‘Prophesy not right things,’” who speak pleasings, and prophesy errors (Isa. 30:10), they are easily drawn to betray the will of their Lord, and to satisfy their humours. God hath disclosed his mind in this treachery, “Behold, I will come against the prophets that steal my word from their neighbours. Behold, I will come against the prophets that have sweet tongues, that cause my people to err by their lies and flatteries” (Jer. 23:30- 31). For then is the word of the Lord stolen and purloined from our brethren, when we “justify the wicked, and give life to the souls that should not live;” when we “heal the hurts of Israel with sweet words,” when we anoint the heads of sinners with precious balms, whose hearts we should rather break with sharp corrosives; when we put honey into the sacrifice instead of salt; when we should frame our song of judgment, and we turn it into a song of mercy; when we should mourn to make men lament, and we pipe to make them dance, putting the evil day far from them, and hunting for their praise and acceptation of us with pleasing discourses, affected eloquence, histrionical jests, rather than grave and divine sentences. Jerome gave an exhortation to Nepotian, “Let the tears of thy auditors be thy praises.” And Augustine had a stranger opinion of these applauses and acclamations of men: “These praises of yours” (saith he to his hearers) “do rather offend and endanger me.” We suffer them, indeed, but we tremble when we hear them. We cannot promise you such deceitful handling and battering of the word of God, for whether you hear or hear not the prophecy that is brought unto you, yet you shall know that there have been prophets amongst you. We will not suffer your sins to sleep quietly in your bosoms, as Jonah slept in the sides of the ship, but we will rouse them up. If we see your pride, your usury, your adulteries, your oppressions, we will not only cry them, but cry against them, lest they cry against us. We will set up a banner in the name of the Lord of hosts, and proclaim them in your hearing; and if our cry will not help, we will leave you to that cry at midnight, when your bodies that sleep in the dust of the earth, and your sins that sleep with your bodies, both shall be awaked, and receive their due at God’s hands. We will charm your deafness with the greatest cunning we have. If our charming cannot move you, we will send you to the judgment- seat of God with this writing upon your foreheads, They would not be charmed. 3. The reason of Jonah’s crying against Nineveh is this, “For their wickedness is come up before me.” They that are skillful in the original, observe that the name of wickedness , here used, importeth the greatest extremity that can be, and is not restrained to this or that sin, one of a thousand, but is a most absolute and all-sufficient term, for “three transgressions, and for four,” as it is in Amos; that is, for seven; that is, for infinite corruption. Whatsoever exceedeth modesty, and is most contrary to the will of God, beyond all right or reason, settled into dregs, frozen like ice, given over, sold to the will of Satan, is here meant. Where every person in the commonwealth is degenerated, “there is none good, no, not one,” (Ps. 14). And every part in the body and soul of man doth his part to lift up the head of sin: “The throat an open sepulchre, the tongue used to deceit, the poison of asps under the lips, the mouth full of cursing and bitterness, the feet swift to shed blood, destruction and calamity in all their ways, no knowledge of the way of peace, no fear of God before their eyes.” And whether the word hath that power, yea or no, it takes not much skill to dispute, for the words adjoined in the text make it plain without further amplification. First, it is wickedness; secondly, it ascendeth; thirdly, into the presence of God himself . Whereby you may perceive, that the wickedness of Nineveh was not base and shamefaced, fearful to advance itself, but a high kind of wickedness, swelling like Jordan above his banks. It lay not close in the bottom of the sea, nor in the holes of rocks, nor in the covert and secrecy of private chambers; it hath “an whorish forehead, and could not be ashamed” (Jer. 3:3); they “declared their sins as Sodom, they hid them not” (Isa. 3:9), and as a fountain casteth out waters, so they their malice. (1.) The phrase here used noteth a great aggravation of the thing intended. So in the sixth of Genesis it is said, that “the earth was corrupt before the Lord;” and in the tenth of that book, “Nimrod was a mighty hunter before the Lord;” that is, the corruptions of the world, and the violence of Nimrod, were so gross, that the Lord could not choose but take knowledge of them. So it is here said, “Their wickedness is come up before me.” It knoweth no end, it climbeth like the sun in the morning, and passeth the bounds of all moderation; it is not enough that the brunt and fame thereof is blown into the ears of men, but it hath filled the earth, possesseth the air, lifteth itself above the stars amongst the angels of God, offereth her filthiness and impurity before the throne of his majesty, and if there were farther to go, such is her boldness and shamelessness, she would forbear no place. What! Are there seasons and times when the Lord beholdeth sin and wickedness, and when he beholdeth it not? “He that made the eye, doth he not see?” (Ps. 94:9). Doth he slumber or sleep that keepeth Israel? Or hath he not torches and cresset light at all times to descry the deeds of Babylon? Or is he subject to that scoff which Elijah gave Baal “It may be he sleepeth, and must be awaked” (1 Kings 18:27)? Or what else is the meaning of that phrase, “Their wickedness is come up before me” ? As if there were some wickedness which came not to his notice. Surely, besides the increase and propagation of their wickedness (for there is difference betwixt creeping and climbing), it noteth some order in the actions of God. He saw their sins in the book of eternity, before their hearts did ever conceive them; he saw them in their breasts, before their hands committed them; he saw their infancy and their full strength, their thirst and drunkenness, their beginning and proceeding. But then he saw them indeed and to purpose, when he saw them perfected and fulfilled; and having winked as it were before, and in patience forborne them, now beheld them with fiery eyes, and his heart unremoveably bent to take vengeance. “The wild ass used to the wilderness, snuffeth up wind at her pleasure; who can turn her back? They that seek after her, will not weary themselves, but will find her in her month” (Jer. 2:24). God seeth and observeth at all times the untamed madness of the wicked, wearying themselves like the wild ass, or the dromedary, in a race of abominations; but he will take them in their month, and turn them back when their sins are ripe and his wrath thoroughly incensed. (2.) Their wickedness is come up before me. The phrase doth minister a further instruction unto us. Sin, in the eyes of some men, seemeth not sin. Lactantius writeth of those who were not ashamed of their faults, but rather sought out patronage and defence for them, that at the least they might seem to sin honestly. Jeremiah speaketh of the Jews in the same manner, “Were they ashamed when they had committed abominations? nay, they were not ashamed, neither could they have shame” (Jer. 6:15). He smiteth them afterward in chap. 11 of his prophecy, with a sharper reproof, that “when they did evil, they rejoiced at it” (Jer. 11:15). And it is the fashion of us all, to bolster and bear out the vices of our friends, changing sour into sweet, and evil into good, even for their friendship’s sake. Alceus took a mole on the body for a grace, yet was it a blemish. One mule nibbeth another; a hypocrite liketh an hypocrite, because he is like unto him; a drunkard, a drunkard; an usurer, him that practiseth the same trade; he that transformed himself into an angel of light, being a fiend of darkness, hath taught a harlot to clothe herself like an honest matron, and vices to disguise themselves under the habit of virtues. But howsoever the eyes of men are blinded with partiality, yet “the eyelids of the Lord shall try the children of men” (Ps. 11:4); his righteous and flaming countenance shall soundly examine their actions, uncover the faces of their iniquities, and call them rightly and truly by their proper names. (3.) But whatsoever we find else in the riches and store of these words, this we may gather from the nature of them, that there are some sins winged, of a high elevation, ascending above the top of Carmel, aspiring and pressing before the majesty of God’s own throne. The speech is but altered in other scriptures, the substance and signification all one, where it is said that some sins cry in the ears of God; that which is the wings or chariot unto them in this place, to make them mount so high, is their cry in those others: in this I mean, their outrage and enormity. Cain’s sin cried unto the Lord, Gen. 4. And in the 18th of Genesis, “Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great,” which is expounded in the next words, “and because their sin is exceeding grievous, I will now go down, saith the Lord, and see whether they have done altogether according to that cry which is come up unto me” (Gen. 18:20-21). “Behold, the hire of the labourers which have reaped the fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of hosts” (James 5:4). Answerable to that part of Job, his apology, which he presenteth unto his judge, in the 31st of his book, “If my land cry against me, or if the furrows of my field complain… let thistles grow instead of wheat, and cockle instead of barley” (Job 31:38-40). Oppression is threatened by the like terms, in the second of Habakkuk, “The stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber shall answer it. Woe unto him that buildeth a town with blood, and erecteth a city with iniquity!” (Hab. 2:11-12). All which sentences of Scripture, expressing the loudness and vocality of sin, are of the same force, as before I said, with those that declare the sublimity and reach of it. God speaketh to Sennacherib in another manner of speech, but the matter and purpose is not different from this, 2 Kings xix. 28, “Because thou ragest against me, and thy tumult is come up to mine ears, I will put my hook in thy nostrils” etc. (2 Kings 19:28). Likewise the prophet telleth the children of Israel in the second of Chronicles, chap. 28:3, that because the Lord God was wroth with Judah, he had delivered them into the Israelites’ hands, and they had slain them in a rage, that reached up to heaven. By these and the like conferences, a man may determine the nature, and set down a catalogue in some sort of crying sins. Bloodshed is a crying sin, but (I say) not all kinds of bloodshed; for the speech of God to Cain hath bloods , not blood, which denoteth an insatiable appetite, wherewith he was so dry, that if his brother had possessed a thousand times as much blood, he would have spilt it all; and though he took away his life, yet he took not leave of his own malicious thirst of blood. Blasphemy and rage against God is a crying sin; oppression, extortion, fraud against poor labourers, against right-owners, is a crying sin; and sin with outrageousness and impudency, in any way, public, infamous, enormous sin, contemning the judgment of God and censures of men, committed with greediness, drawn with cart-ropes, gloried in, where men even sell themselves to work wickedness, is a crying sin. Such immoderate and proud humour of viciousness is notably expressed in the sixth of Genesis, where it is alleged, that “when the Lord saw the wickedness of man was great upon the earth, and all the imaginations of the thoughts of his heart were only evil continually, then it repented the Lord that he had made man, and he was sorry in his heart” (Gen. 6:5-6). 1. It was wickedness; 2. great; 3. evident, for the Lord saw it; 4. their hearts were evil; 5. every thought of their heart; 6. every imagination of thought; 7. only evil; 8. continually, or day by day, there was no hope of amendment. Equal hereunto is that general and unbridled corruption, which David setteth down in the 14th Psalm, where they begin with a most damnable principle of atheism, the gate and highway into all iniquity, “The fool saith in his heart. There is no God.” And then is the sink or channel opened to all dissolution of life: “They are corrupted, and do abominably, there is none that doth good. The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that would understand, and seek after God; but they were all gone out of the way,” &c. When this canker of impiety hath so overspread and eaten into the manners of people, then is fulfilled that which Isaiah putteth down for a sound position: “Let mercy be shewed to the wicked, yet he will not learn righteousness ; in the land of uprightness will he do wickedly, and will not behold the majesty of the Lord” (Isa. 26:10). If neither the mercy nor the majesty of God, nor the company of the righteous, can reform him, then is his bettering despaired and past hope. I need no farther examine this part. The cause why Jonah cried against Nineveh, was the cry of their sins. Their regions were white to harvest, their iniquities ripe, and looked for a sickle from heaven to cut them down. The sufficiency of which cause to derive the judgments of God upon us, Jeremiah layeth down in his prophecy: “Many nations shall pass by the city” (meaning of Jerusalem), “and shall say every man to his neighbour, Wherefore hath the Lord done thus to this great city? Then shall they answer. Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord then God,” &c. (Jer. 22:8-9). For the judgment of the Lord, pronounced by David, shall stand longer than the stars in the firmament: “Him that loveth iniquity, doth his soul hate. Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and stormy tempests: this is the portion of their cup” (Ps. 11:6). And in the first Psalm, it is a singular opposition that is made between the just and the wicked, “the wicked are not so ” (Ps. 1:4). That thou mayest unmoveably believe how unmoveably God is bent to deny the wicked his grace: he strengtheneth the negative by doubling it. Therefore “the wicked shall not stand in judgment” (Ps. 1:5), for they are fallen before their judgment cometh. What! Shall they not rise again? Surely yes; but in judgment, saith Jerome, for they are already judged. The wickedness of our land, what it is, and in what elevation of height, whether modest or impudent, private or public, whether it speaketh or crieth, standeth or goeth, lieth like an asp in her hole, or flieth like a fiery serpent into the presence of God, yourselves be judges. Write my words in tables, that they may be monuments for latter days; for when your children’s children shall hear them hereafter, they will scarcely believe them. The months of the year have not yet gone about, wherein the Lord hath bowled the heavens, and come down amongst us with more tokens and earnests of his wrath intended, than the oldest man of our land is able to recount of so small a time. For say if ever the winds, since they blew one against the other, have been more common, and more tempestuous, as if the four ends of heaven had conspired to turn the foundations of the earth upside down; thunders and lightnings, neither seasonable for the time, and withal most terrible, with such effects brought forth, that the children unborn shall speak of it. The anger of the clouds hath been poured down upon our heads, both with abundance, and (saving to those that felt it) with incredible violence; the air threatened our miseries with a blazing star; the pillars of the earth tottered in many whole countries and tracts of our island; the arrows of a woeful pestilence have been cast abroad at large in all the quarters of our realm, even to the emptying and dispeopling of some parts thereof; treasons against our queen and country, we have known many and mighty, monstrous to be imagined, from a number of lions’ whelps, lurking in their dens, and watching their hour to undo us; our expectation and comfort so failed us in France, as if our right arms had been pulled from our shoulders. We have not altered the colour of the hair of our heads, nor added one inch to our stature, since all these things have been accomplished amongst us. Consider then well, and think it the highest time to forsake your highest wickedness. I call it highest wickedness, for if we knew how to add anything, in our several veins and dispositions, to those idols of sin which we serve, some to our covetousness, some to our pride, some to our unchasteness; some to our malice, and such like, we would break our sleep, nay, we would compass sea and land to increase it. Yet, howsoever it fareth with the multitude, let there be a seed and remnant among us, left to entreat for peace. Ten righteous persons would have saved Sodom, and it may so stand with the goodness of God, that a few innocent fools shall preserve the island, as Job speaketh, in chap, 22:30. Let us thankfully embrace the long sufferance of our God forepast, leading us as by a hand of friendship to repentance; and let us redeem with newness of life our days and years formerly misspent, lest by impenitent transgressions against the law of our Maker, we fall upon his sentence of wrath, irrevocably passed and resolved by him, “I have thought it, and will not repent, neither will I turn back from it” (Jer. 4:28). [This study will continue, D.V., in the next issue.] This article is taken from: King, John (Bishop of London). Lectures Upon Jonah. Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1864 (originally published c. 1600). A PDF file of this book can be downloaded, free of charge, at: http://www.ClassicChristianLibrary.com.