20
in forty days. When the inhabitants heard this,
they were greatly afflicted; a fast of three days both
for man and beast was appointed, and they cried
mightily, to God for the preventing of this stroke ;
he heard their prayers, and long delayed their ruin.
Displeased with the divine mercy, Jonah angrily
wished to die, rather than live and see his prediction
unfulfilled. While he sat without the city, waiting
for his desired view of Nineveh’s ruin, God caused
a gourd quickly to spring up to overshadow him
from the scorching heat of the sun, but next day,
a worm having bitten its root, it suddenly withered.
The scorching sun and blasting wind vehemently
beating on Jonah, he fainted and angrily wished to
die, and averred to God himself, that he was right in
doing so. The. Lord bid him think, if he had pity on
the short-lived gourd, was there not far more reason
for his and their maker to pity the penitent inhabi-
tants of Nineveh?
Nineveh at last was destroyed about one hundred
years after Jonah. The Medes and Persians had
several times laid siege, to it, but were diverted by
various accidents ; but after the massacre of the
Tartars in Media, they repeated the siege, Cyaxares
and Nebuchadnezzar being the commanders: after
they had lain, before it three years, the river Tigrus
or Sycus, being exceedingly swollen, washed away
two and a half miles of the wall; when the waters ass-
uaging the besiegers rushed into the city, and mur-
dered the inhabitants, who lay buried in their drunk-
eness, occasioned by an advantage which they had
just before gained over the enemy. When the king,
whose name we suppose was Sardanapalus, heard the
city was taken, it is said, he shut up himself, family,
and wealth to the value of about twenty-five thou-
sand millions sterling, in the palace, and then set
fire to it, and destroyed all that was in it, and it was
fifteen days before the flames were quenched
