The prayer of Jonah is an illustrious instance of the conflict between sense and faith. And it will give unity to our meditations on it, if we keep this in view, and use this as the key to its interpretation, namely, that it discloses the action and reaction in the prophet’s soul, of sense and faith – sense prompting to despair, faith pleading for hope, and procuring victory.
To the unawakened soul that knows nothing of the anxieties and anguish of the spiritual mind, this whole contemplation may be altogether uninviting. At best, it will be to such an one merely a very curious theme, but one in which he can discover nothing in common with his own heart-history or feelings.
The poor and contrite, on the other hand, who know something of the terrors of the Lord, the trials of an awakened spirit, the haunting anxieties of their own disobedience, and the great power of their own sins, will look on this wonderful prayer in circumstances that, save for faith, were altogether desperate – will commend it to every exercised believer, as a prayer to the proper understanding of which he will derive some light from his own experience, and which, when properly understood will, in its turn, reflect light on his own experience back again, and tend to purify and strengthen that experience, too.
For this prayer of faith, though in unparalleled circumstances, and spiritually noble in a marvellous degree, contains in it nothing but the ordinary principles of all believing prayer; and, though we may not equal it in degree, if our prayers are not the same in kind, they are false.
From: A Commentary on Jonah by Hugh Martin; reprint (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1958), pp. 188-189. Originally titled The Prophet Jonah and published in 1866. Comment at Jonah 2:1-9.
The Rev. Hugh Martin (1822-1885) was pastor of presbyterian churches in Panbride, Scotland (1844-1858) and in Edinburgh, Scotland (1858-1865).
