Shouldn't I be concerned for Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred twenty thousand persons who can't discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?"
III. Both Jonah and Jesus were executed by Gentiles, Jonah by the pagan mariners, and Jesus by the platoon of Roman soldiers, acting upon the orders of the Roman governor.  Like so many of these comparisons, this one also is emphasized and intensified by amazing occurrences which reveal design in the remarkable similarities.  Although both were executed by Gentiles, the Jewish insistence upon death in each case is fully evident, not only in Jonah's command that he should be overthrown, but in the Saviour's repeated prophecy of his Passion, and in the clamoring of the Jewish mob in Jerusalem for his death.  The similarity does not end there, for Gentile elements in both events declared the innocence of the one condemned.  The mariners prayed the Lord not to lay "innocent blood" upon them (Jonah 1:14), just as Pilate washed his hands and said,