The Ninevites Repent
The word of the LORD comes to Jonah a second time, repeating the command that had launched the book's conflict. This time Jonah goes to Nineveh in obedience to God's word. The city's greatness is emphasized, and Jonah begins his proclamation with a stark warning: forty days remain before Nineveh is overturned. The paragraph is brief and restrained, but that restraint heightens the force of the moment. The prophet who once fled is now speaking, and the city once marked only by wickedness now stands under a mercifully given deadline.
T1hen the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time: 2“Get up! Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message that I give you.” 3This time Jonah got up and went to Nineveh, in accordance with the word of the LORD. 4Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, requiring a three-day journey. On the first day of his journey, Jonah set out into the city and proclaimed, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned!”
Nineveh's response is immediate and comprehensive. The people believe God, fast, and clothe themselves in sackcloth, and when the message reaches the king, he descends from his throne and joins the city's humiliation. His decree extends repentance across the whole population and insists that each person turn from evil and from violence. The final note is not presumption but hope: perhaps God will turn and relent. When God sees that the people have actually turned from their evil ways, He withholds the threatened disaster. The paragraph therefore reveals repentance not as empty ritual but as visible moral turning answered by divine mercy.
5And the Ninevites believed God. They proclaimed a fast and dressed in sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least. 6When word reached the king of Nineveh, he got up from his throne, took off his royal robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 7Then he issued a proclamation in Nineveh: 8Let no man or beast, herd or flock, taste anything at all. They must not eat or drink. Furthermore, let both man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and have everyone call out earnestly to God. Let each one turn from his evil ways and from the violence in his hands. 9Who knows? God may turn and relent; He may turn from His fierce anger, so that we will not perish.” 10When God saw their actions— that they had turned from their evil ways— He relented from the disaster He had threatened to bring upon them.