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But some one may say, "How shall I know whether the prophet Jonah
said to the Ninevites, `Yet three days and Nineveh shall be
overthrown,' or forty days?" For who does not see that the prophet
could not say both, when he was sent to terrify the city by the threat
of imminent ruin? For if its destruction was to take place on the
third day, it certainly could not be on the fortieth; but if on the
fortieth, then certainly not on the third. If, then, I am asked
which of these Jonah may have said, I rather think what is read in
the Hebrew, "Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown."
Yet the Seventy, interpreting long afterward, could say what was
different and yet pertinent to the matter, and agree in the self-same
meaning,although under a different signification. And this may
admonish the reader not to despise the authority of either, but to
raise himself above the history, and search for those things which the
history itself was written to set forth. These things, indeed, took
place in the city of Nineveh, but they also signified something else
too great to apply to that city; just as, when it happened that the
prophet himself was three days in the whale's belly, it signified
besides, that He who is Lord of all the prophets should be three days
in the depths of hell. Wherefore, if that city is rightly held as
prophetically representing the Church of the Gentiles, to wit, as
brought down by penitence, so as no longer to be what it had been,
since this was done by Christ in the Church of the Gentiles, which
Nineveh represented, Christ Himself was signified both by the forty
and by the three days: by the forty, because He spent that number of
days with His disciples after the resurrection, and then ascended into
heaven, but by the three days, because He rose on the third day. So
that, if the reader desires nothing else than to adhere to the history
of events, he may be aroused from his sleep by the Septuagint
interpreters, as well as the prophets, to search into the depth of the
prophecy, as if they had said, In the forty days seek Him in whom
thou mayest also find the three days, the one thou wilt find in His
ascension, the other in His resurrection. Because that which could
be most suitably signified by both numbers, of which one is used by
Jonah the prophet, the other by the prophecy of the Septuagint
version, the one and self-same Spirit hath spoken. I dread
prolixity, so that I must not demonstrate this by many instances in
which the seventy interpreters may be thought to differ from the
Hebrew, and yet, when well understood, are found to agree. For
which reason I also, according to my capacity, following the
footsteps of the apostles, who themselves have quoted prophetic
testimonies from both, that is, from the Hebrew and the Septuagint,
have thought that both should be used as authoritative, since both are
one, and divine. But let us now follow out as we can what remains.
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