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| On the History of Jonah, from the Book on the Resurrection.
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Fragments.
————————————
On the History of Jonah.
From the Book on the
Resurrection.2963
| 2963 [A
fragment given by Combefis, in Latin, in the Bioliotheca
Concionatoria, t. ii. p. 263, etc. Published in Greek
from the Vatican ms. (1611), by Simon de
Magistris, in Acta Martyrum ad ostia Tiberina sub Claudio
Gothico. (Rome, 1792, folio. Append. p. 462.)] |
I. The history of
Jonah2964
| 2964
[Matt. xii. 40. This history comes to us
virtually from the Son of God, who confirms the testimony of His
prophet. See the very curious remarks of Edward King in his
Morsels of Criticism, vol. i. p. 601, ed. 1788.] | contains a
great mystery. For it seems that the whale signifies Time, which
never stands still, but is always going on, and consumes the things
which are made by long and shorter intervals. But Jonah, who fled
from the presence of God, is himself the first man who, having
transgressed the law, fled from being seen naked of immortality, having
lost through sin his confidence in the Deity. And the ship in
which he embarked, and which was tempest-tossed, is this brief and hard
life in the present time; just as though we had turned and removed from
that 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 the
land, that our present life is to that which is immortal. And the
storm and the tempests which beat against us are the temptations of
this life, which in the world, as in a tempestuous sea, do not permit
us to have a fair voyage free from pain, in a calm sea, and one which
is free from evils. And the casting of Jonah from the ship into
the sea, signifies the fall of the first man from life to death, who
received that sentence because, through having sinned, he fell from
righteousness: “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou
return.”2965
And his
being swallowed by the whale signifies our inevitable removal by
time. For the belly in which Jonah, when he was swallowed, was
concealed, is the all-receiving earth, which receives all things which
are consumed by time.
II. As, then, Jonah spent three days and as
many nights in the whale’s belly, and was delivered up sound
again, so shall we all, who have passed through the three stages of our
present life on earth—I mean the beginning, the middle, and the
end, of which all this present time consists—rise again.
For there are altogether three intervals of time, the past, the future,
and the present. And for this reason the Lord spent so many days
in the earth symbolically, thereby teaching clearly that when the
forementioned intervals of time have been fulfilled, then shall come
our resurrection, which is the beginning of the future age, and the end
of this. For in that age2966
there is neither past nor future, but
only the present. Moreover, Jonah having spent three days and
three nights in the belly of the whale, was not destroyed by his flesh
being dissolved, as is the case with that natural decomposition which
takes place in the belly, in the case of those meats which enter into
it, on account of the greater heat in the liquids, that it might be
shown that these bodies of ours may remain undestroyed. For
consider that God had images of Himself made as of gold, that is of a
purer spiritual substance, as the angels; and others of clay or brass,
as ourselves. He united the soul which was made in the image of
God to that which was earthy. As, then, we must here honour all
the images of a king, on account of the form which is in them, so also
it is incredible that we who are the images of God should be altogether
destroyed as being without honour. Whence also the Word descended
into our world, and was incarnate of our body, in order that, having
fashioned it to a more divine image, He might raise it incorrupt,
although it had been dissolved by time. And, indeed, when we
trace out the dispensation which was figuratively set forth by the
prophet, we shall find the whole discourse visibly extending to
this.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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