A Prophet, Like Jonah, of Galilee, Spite of Jewish Prejudice
Singular was the reproach of the Jews in the time of our Lord (John 7:5252They answered and said unto him, Art thou also of Galilee? Search, and look: for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet. (John 7:52)); for there were prophets who had arisen out of Galilee. Josiah and Nahum were both Galileans. There is nothing in which men are apt to be so blind as in reading the Bible; and even the facts of scripture are too commonly passed over with greater carelessness than those of any other book. People readily forget what it does not suit them to remember.
“Segnius irritant animos demissa per aurem,
Quam quae sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus, et quae
Ipso sibi tradit spectator.”
Affections, too, govern the judgment. Hence the tendency to forget the plainest facts, and to find some artificial means of exalting whatever to our minds takes the highest place in religious matters. As once by God’s appointment Jerusalem had such a place, the Jews, spite of their reversed sentence, were striving hard to exaggerate whatever invested it with halo and to deny what God had wrought elsewhere. But God loves to work in unexpected grace; and hence I do not doubt that there was a fitness in the call of these two prophets, both of them having to do with Nineveh. Galilee was a district which both bordered on the Gentiles and had not a few dwelling in its midst. Hence people there, though prejudiced as everywhere, could not but be open to thoughts and exercises of heart about the Gentiles. Nevertheless, as we have seen in Jonah, there might be a feeling as decidedly Jewish as in any prophet that God ever raised up even in Jerusalem itself.