Our text today is from the Book of Jonah, Chapter 4, Verse 11:

"And should I not spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand . . ."

On the other hand, brethren, some very irritated American people, perhaps 15% of the population, might consider Nineveh's ambidexterity a saving grace.

They are the left-handers and they have a gripe. Is not life in a right-handed world irritating enough? Must they be discriminated against in death as well? Lefties have now been told, you see, that they are likely to meet their Maker nine years sooner than righties. Never mind the Ninevites, Lord, pity the southpaws.

Lefties are long accustomed to gloomy lore about sinistrality, the term the experts use for left-handedness. But that shorter life span statistic is particularly unsettling. Its source is a recent book, "The Left-Hander Syndrome," by Stanley Coren, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia.

"Actually," Coren said on the phone from Vancouver, "I've received some quite positive mail. Not from left-handers but from neuropsychologists. They found it interesting.

"Left-handers really should thank me. The book makes it clear that many left-handers' accidents result when they use equipment designed for right-handers. Accidents account for about half of the early left-hander deaths, and many of those causes can be corrected."

Any left-hander who has knocked over an electric iron because the cord sticks out the wrong side, or pinched a finger using right-handed scissors, or scraped a knuckle by having to push rather than pull the thumb lever on a file drawer, will say amen to that.

But a nine-year-shorter average life span is another matter. Five researchers questioned by The Associated Press were unconvinced. All said they wanted to see the study duplicated before they would buy it.

One, Alan Searleman of St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., called the finding "outrageous." Someone, he said, would have noticed such a startling discrepancy long ago.

So you might think. From the beginning of recorded history, lefties have not exactly gone unnoticed.