Updated Church Father Jonah commentary Chapter 1

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I have purchased additional sources of the Church Fathers to add to my work on the commentary of Jonah. This is most likely my final revision of Chapter 1, I am about finished with Chapter 2 and will post it on here too for anyone who wants to have it for their own study purposes. I have been putting many hours into this project, and a tremendous amount of research is being done. Each verse is commentated on from the Church Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and I have supplied in front of each quote what sense of interpretation has been given, whether it is literal, historic, spiritual, anagogical, allegorical, moral/life application, analogical. Among the quotes you will find valuable nuggets of insight from some of the greatest minds that the Christian world has ever seen!
 
Jonah Commentary Based Upon The Early Church Fathers, and Doctors of the Church
1:1And the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amathi, saying, 1:2”Arise, and go to Nineveh the great city, and preach in it, for the crying of its wickedness has ascended up to me.”
History “Nineveh was the greatest city of olden times, containing the palace of the king of the Assyrians.” [Theodoret Commentary on Jonah 81:1721] 393AD
Etiology and Moral“God will threaten to destroy the city of Nineveh for the very reason that He might not destroy it. When God makes a threat concerning our sins, He makes the threat beforehand so that we may be sobered by fear, so that our repentance will bring about God’s mercy so He will not have to follow through with the threat.” [St. John Chrysostom Hom. On Paralytic 3] 400AD

Etiology “’The crying of their wickedness has ascended up to me’ is to be understood as nothing else than excess of their wickedness.” [St. John Chrysostom Concerning Statues Hom. XX 21]

Etiology “At one time, God had been offended by the sins of the Ninevites. He was appeased by the crying and the wailing of children. For, though we read that the whole people wept, yet the lot and the innocence of the little ones merited the greatest mercy.” [Salvian the Presbyter Letter 4] 400AD

History and Etiology and Poetic

“The mild Avenger calls that prophet stern,

And bids him go as herald of the coming woe,

But knowing that the Judge who threatens evil dread,

Is prone to pardon rather than to scourge and smite,

[Prudentius Hymn 7; 105] 348AD
 
*1:3And Jonah arose to escape into Tharsis from the face of the Lord. And he went down into Joppa, and found a ship going to Tharsis. And he gave his money, and ascended into it, to sail with them to Tharsis from the face of the Lord.

**

History “Tharsis is the same as Tharsus. This was the name the ancients gave to Cilicia. So even today Tarsus, the most important city in the entire province, retains the ancient name, the Greek letter theta being altered to the Greek tau.” [Josephus Antiquities Book 1 chapter 2] 50AD

Etiology “The prophet knows, the Holy Spirit teaching him, that the repentance of the Gentiles is the ruin of the Jews. A lover of his own country, he does not so much envy the deliverance of Nineveh, but that his own country will perish. Seeing that his fellow prophets are sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel to excite the people to repentance, and that Balaam the soothsayer too prophesied the salvation of Israel, he grieves that he alone is chosen to be sent to the Assyrians, the enemies of Israel, and to the greatest enemies where there was idolatry and ignorance of God.” [St. Jerome Commentary on Jonah 1:3] 400AD

Etiology “He fled from having to announce the dreadful and awful message to the Ninevites, and from being subsequently convicted of falsehood, if the city was saved by repentance; not that he was displeased at the salvation of the wicked, but he was ashamed of being made an instrument of falsehood, and exceedingly zealous for the credit of prophecy, which was in danger of being destroyed in his person, since most men are unable to penetrate the depth of the Divine dispensation in such cases.

Jonah was not ignorant of the mighty hand of God, nor did he imagine that he could utterly escape the Divine power; this we are not to believe; but when Jonah saw the falling away of Israel, and he realized the grace passing over to the Gentiles in the prophecy- this was the cause of his ceasing from preaching and the delay in fulfilling the command. He left Joppa, which in Hebrew it means ‘beautiful’, and he fell into a deep sorrow and ran from his command given to him.” [St. Gregory Nazranzen [In Defence of His Flight to Pontus Oration 2; 107,109]

Etiology “When God sent Jonah as the preacher of the destruction of Nineveh, he fled because of his knowledge of the diverse meanings and causes of God’s words. Lest the people make fun of him when his prophecy was unfulfilled, he fled from prophesying.” [St. John of the Cross The Ascent of Mount Carmel Chapter 20:7] 1560AD
*1:4And the Lord raised up a wind upon the sea, and there came great waves on the sea, and the ship was in danger of being crushed. 1:5And the sailors were afraid, and cried everyone to his god, and they cast out the baggage that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it from them. But Jonah went down into the interior of the ship, and went to sleep, and snored.
Allegory “And the ship in which Jonah embarked, and which was tempest and tossed, is this brief and hard life in the present time; just as though we had turned and removed from the blessed and secure life, to that which was most tempestuous and unstable, as from solid land to a ship. For what a ship is to land, that our present life is to that which is immortal. And the storm and the tempests which beat us are the temptations of this life, which in the world, as in a tempest sea, do not permit us to have a fair voyage free from pain, in a calm sea, and one which is free from evils.” [St. Methodius Fragments on the History of Jonah] 260AD
 
*1:5And the sailors were afraid, and cried everyone to his god, and they cast out the baggage that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it from them. But Jonah went down into the interior of the ship, and went to sleep, and snored.
Etiology “They threw the baggage that was in the ship into the sea, but the ship was not getting any lighter, not because the nature of the weight of the material that was on the ship but from the weight of sin. For nothing is so heavy and onerous to bear as sin and disobedience.” [St. John Chrysostom Homily on Repentance 3:8] 400AD

1:6And the navigator came to him, and said to him, “What, you are snoring? Get up, and call upon your God, so that God may bring us safely through, and we shall never perish.”

Etiology For the expression ‘your God’ the sailor makes as if to one who knew Him (God) by way of knowledge; and the expression ‘that God may bring us safely through’ revealed the consciousness in the mind of the heathens who had applied their mind to the Ruler of all, but had not yet believed.” [St. Clement of Alexandria Stromata Bk. 5 Chapter XIV]

Analogy On Verses 6-12“When we examine the story of Jonah, great is the resemblance. Jesus was sent to preach repentance; Jonah also was sent, but fled not knowing what should come to pass; the other of course willingly, to give repentance unto salvation. Jonah was asleep in the ship, and snores during the stormy sea; while Jesus also slept, the sea, according to God’s providence, began to rise, to show the might of Him who slept. The one they said, ‘What, you are snoring? Get up and call upon your God, so that God may bring us safely through;’ but in the other case they say to the Master, ‘Lord, save us (Matthew 25:26).’ Where in Jonah’s case they said, ‘Call upon your God’; with Jesus the disciples said, ‘You save.’ But the one says, ‘Take me, and cast me into the sea; so shall the sea be calm for you; the other, Himself rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm.” [St. Cyril Catech. Lectures Letter XIV 17] 318AD

1:7And each one said to his fellow man, “Come let us cast lots, and we may know for whose sake this evil is upon us.” And they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah.

**

Etiology “Not because of this example, nor because the prophet Jonah was found out by lot, are we to believe indiscriminately in lots. For in this instance pagan men were compelled by a storm to seek by lot the source of their danger. Matthias was chosen by lot so that their choice of the apostle would not appear to be out of harmony with the command of the Old Law, where it was ordered that the high priest be sought. [St. Jerome Commentary on Jonah 1:7] 400AD
Moral “Lots: If we ascribe it to chance it does not seem to imply any vice other than vanity. If, on the other hand, the decision by lot be left to a spiritual cause, it is sometimes ascribed to demons, as in the case in Ezekiel 21:21, which is unlawful and forbidden. Sometimes, however, the decision is left to God, according to Proverbs 16:33. This sortilege is not wrong in itself. If anyone resort to the drawing of lots in Church elections, this should be carried out by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Wherefore as Bede says (Super Act. Apos.) ‘Before Pentecost the ordination of Matthias was decided by lot; because as yet the fullness of the Holy Spirit was not yet poured forth into the Church.’ [St. Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica] 1250AD
 
*1:9And he said to them, “I am a slave of the Lord, and I worship the Lord God of Heaven, the One Who made the sea and the dry land.”

Etiology “This was said by Jonah so that those sailors might receive an unhoped for salvation from God, and might turn and glorify God, and repeat that word which was uttered by Jonah, ‘I am a slave of the Lord, and I worship the Lord God of Heaven, the One Who made the sea and the dry land.’ [St. Irenaeus Against Heresies Chapter 20:1-2] 120AD

11And they said to him, “What will we do to you, so that the sea will die down for us?” because the sea went on and lifted swells all the more.

Hymn “Jonah surely teaches us that the sea and stars are moved under God’s control. By vainly seeking to flee from God the controller of all things whom none can escape, he aroused the anger of both sky and sea. Nature, which belongs to the Almighty Lord, realized that Jonah was revolting, and it was afraid to play conspirator by transporting the guilty man safely through its domain, it chained the runaway with winds and waves.” [St. Paulinus of Nola Poem 22] 354AD

1:12And Jonah said to them, “Lift me up, and throw me into the sea, and the sea will die down for you. Because I know that because of me this great swell is upon you.”

*1:13And the men pressed on to turn around towards the land, and they were not able, for the sea went on and it lifted up upon them all the more.

Etiology “Although the ocean condemned him and the lot exposed him, when he implicated himself and confessed his flight, they still were not in a hurry to annihilate the prophet, rather, they demonstrated toleration and contraint and did everything possible to keep him from the fury of the ocean after such proof of his guilt. However, the ocean did not permit even this, or better yet, God did not allow this to happen, because he wanted to sober him through the sailors in the same way as through the whale. For this reason when they heard, *‘Lift me up, and throw me into the sea, and the sea will die down for you,’ *theystrained to reach the shore, although the waves did not allow it.” [St. John Chrysostom Homily on Repentance 3:8]

Allegory “Jonah, in his humility was thrown into the deep that he might rise in glory to be a type of the Lord.” [St. Jerome Letter CXXXIII 12] 400AD
 
*1:14And they cried out to the Lord, and said, “By no means O Lord! You should not destroy us because of the soul of this man. And let it not be permitted against us the blood of the just. For you, O Lord, in what manner you desire, you do.”

**

Literal “They do not know the reasons why the prophet, a fugitive servant, deserved to be punished. And yet they justify God and acknowledge the blood of him whose deeds they do not know to be innocent. And in conclusion, they say, ‘*For you, O Lord, in what manner you desire, you do.’ *They do not question the justice of the judgment of God but acknowledge the veracity of the just Judge.” [St. Jerome Against the Pelagians 2:23] 400AD
1:15And they took Jonah, and they cast him into the sea, and the sea stopped from its fury.

**Allegory and Moral **“The sailors therefore threw Jonah in the sea, and the ship was preserved. Let us then drown our sins, and our vessel will assuredly be safe! Flight will certainly be no advantage to us; for it did not profit him; on the contrary, it did him injury.” [St. John Chrysostom Concerning Statues Homily 5:18] 400AD

Allegory “And the casting of Jonah from the ship into the sea signifies the fall of man from life to death, who received that sentence because, through having sinned, he fell from righteousness.” [St. Methodius Fragments On the History of Jonah] 260AD
 
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