But to the sound of praise I will sacrifice to Thee;
What I have vowed I will perform.
Salvation is Jehovah’s.
And Jehovah spake to the fish, and it threw up Jonah on the dry land.
CHAPTER XXXVII
THE REPENTANCE OF THE CITY
JONAH iii
Having learned, through suffering, his moral kinship with the heathen, and having offered his life for some of them, Jonah receives a second command to go to Niniveh. He obeys, but with his prejudice as strong as though it had never been humbled, nor met by Gentile nobleness. The first part of his story appears to have no consequences in the second.[1538] But this is consistent with the writer’s purpose to treat Jonah as if he were Israel. For, upon their return from Exile, and in spite of all their new knowledge of themselves and the world, Israel continued to cherish their old grudge against the Gentiles.