游斯丁護教辭與對話 第 3-107 章

And that He was to rise on the third day after being crucified, it is written in the memoirs that those of your race who disputed with Him said, 'Show us a sign'; and He answered them, 'An evil and adulterous generation seeks a sign, and no sign shall be given it except the sign of Jonah.' And when He said this, it was veiled, so as to be understood by the hearers that after His crucifixion He would rise on the third day.

And He declared your generation to be more wicked and more adulterous than the city of the Ninevites—who, when Jonah preached to them, after he had been cast up on the third day from the belly of the great fish, that after three days they should all utterly perish, proclaimed a fast of all living creatures, both men and beasts, with sackcloth and earnest wailing and true repentance from their hearts and renunciation of unrighteousness, believing that God is merciful and loving toward all who turn from wickedness; so that even the king of that city himself and the great men, likewise putting on sackcloth, continued in the fast and supplication, and obtained that their city should not be overthrown.

But when Jonah was grieved that the city was not overthrown on the third day as he had preached, by the dispensation of a gourd springing up from the earth for him—under which he sat and was shaded from the heat (and the gourd was sudden, Jonah neither having planted nor watered it, but it sprang up suddenly to give him shade)—and of its withering by another means, at which Jonah was grieved, God reproved him for being unjustly downcast that the city of the Ninevites was not overthrown, saying:

'You had pity on the gourd, for which you did not labour, neither did you rear it, which came up under a night and perished under a night; and shall not I have pity on Nineveh, the great city, in which dwell more than twelve myriads of men, who do not know their right hand from their left, and much cattle?'