It is hard to say what was the gourd that covered Jonah’s head at Nineveh: Jerome says, it was a small shrub, which, in the sandy places of Canaan, grows up in a few days to a considerable height, and with its large leaves forms an agreeable shade. It is now generally thought to be the _Palma Christi_, which is somewhat like a lily, with large smooth and black spotted leaves; one kind of it grows to the height of a fig-tree, and whose branches and trunk are hollow as a reed; there is also the wild gourd, which creeps along the surface of the earth, as those of cucumbers; its fruit is of the size and form of an orange, containing a light substance, but so excessively bitter that it has been called the gall of the earth. I have now given you a short account of the History of Jonah, which could be greatly enlarged if space would permit--also the command given by God to preach at Nineveh--Jonah’s disobedience to that command--the pursuit and arrest of him for that disobedience by a storm, in which he was asleep--the discovery of him and his disobedience to be the cause of the storm--the casting of him into the sea, for the stilling of the storm--the miraculous preservation of his life there in the belly of a fish, which was his preservation for further services. We have also Jonah’s praying unto God: in his prayer we have, the great distress and danger he was in--the despair he was thereby almost reduced to--the encouragement he took to himself in this deplorable condition--the assurance he had of God’s favour to him--the warning and instruction he gives to others--the praise and glory of all given to God--his deliverance out of the belly of the fish--and his coming safe and sound upon dry land again--his mission renewed--and the command a second time given him to go preach at Nineveh--his message to Nineveh faithfully delivered, by which its speedy overthrow was threatened--the repentance, humiliatian, and reformation of the Ninevites hereupon--God’s gracious revocation of the sentence passed upon them, and the preventing of the ruin threatened. We have also Jonah’s repining at God’s mercy to Nineveh, and the fret he was in about it--the gentle reproof God gave him for it, Jonah’s discontent at the withering of the gourd, and justifying of himself in that discontent--God’s improving of it for his conviction, that he ought not to be angry at the sparing of Nineveh. Man’s badness and God’s goodness serve here for a foil to each other, that the former may appear the more exceeding sinful, and the latter the more exceeding gracious.