Bedside Watchman God's Pity for the Penitent

Last Updated on : October 11, 2014

The Bedside Watchman

January	February	March	April	May	June
July	August	September	October	November	December

December 2nd -- Jonah 3

God's Pity for the Penitent

THE goodness of the character of God comes out in a way that all can easily see in the case of Nineveh. A large city given over to wicked life, like all large cities(and small ones, too, for the matter of that) -- is threatened with destruction in forty days. The occupant of the throne hears the threat (proclaimed by Jonah); orders and takes part in a fast and humiliation in which all the citizens join. Their penitence moves Jehovah (Yahweh) to pity, and He suspends the execution of the sentence, to the mortification of Jonah, who feels he will be personally discredited as the herald of a vengeance that never came -- an incident by the way which is one among hundreds which prove the genuineness of the narrative, for an inventor writing to sustain the credit of the prophets, would never have invented such a story.

ROBERT ROBERTS, Seasons of Comfort, page 70