Seeing this, as their petitions ended, while the Muslims went back to their houses, disappointed but resigned, and muttering to themselves, "It is written," they had returned to their synagogues, convinced that the plague was a judgment, and resolved, like the sailors of the ship going down to Tarshish, to cast lots and to know for whose cause the evil was upon them.
They were more than a hundred and twenty families, and had thought they were therefore entitled to elect a Synhedrin.

This was in defiance of ceremonial law, for they knew full well that the formation of a Synhedrin and the right to try a capital charge had long been forbidden.
But they were face to face with death, and hence the anachronism had been adopted, and they had fallen back on the custom of their fathers.
So three-and-twenty judges they had appointed, without usurers, or slave-dealers, or gamblers, or aged men or childless ones.
The judges had sat in session the same night, and their judgment had been unanimous.

The lot of Jonah had fallen on Israel.

He had sold himself to their masters and enemies, the Moors, against the hope and interest of his own people; he had driven some of the sons of his race and nation into exile in distant cities; he had brought others to the Kasbah, and yet others to death: he was a man at open enmity with God, and God had given him, as a mark of His displeasure, a child who was cursed with devils, a daughter who had been born blind and dumb and deaf, and was still without sight and speech.
Could the hand of God's anger be more plain if it were printed in fire upon the sky?
Israel was the evil one for whose sin they suffered this devastating plague.

The Lord was rebuking them for sparing him, even as He had rebuked Saul for sparing the king and cattle of the Amalekites.
Seventeen years and more he had been among them without being of them, never entering a synagogue, never observing a fast, never joining in a feast.