Jonah3chapter 3

Jonah 3:1-3

And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying, repeats the commission of 1:2 almost word for word, the second time marking mercy renewed toward the very prophet who had run from the first calling. This time Jonah arose and went unto Nineveh according to the word of the Lord, the same verb that once carried him toward Tarshish now carrying him where he was sent. Nineveh is described as an exceeding great city of three days across, and Henry and Keil both read the phrase as the time needed to cover the city's full extent or its districts rather than a straight-line crossing, since the site of ancient Nineveh does not stretch that far.

Jonah 3:4

Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown is the whole of Jonah's recorded preaching, a handful of words with no call to repent stated in the sermon itself and no naming of the God who sent him. Gill and Calvin both note that Jonah offers this after entering only one day into a city the text measures at three days across, a fraction of the ground the message needed to cover, so that the report of his own recent deliverance may have carried further than his words did. The sentence names no condition and no way of escape, yet the chapter's next verse records the whole city treating it as a warning rather than as a fixed decree already passed.

Jonah 3:5

So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them, records a repentance moving through the city from the ordinary people upward, before verse 6 shows the throne itself responding. The Lord Jesus later held this repentance against his own generation's unbelief, saying the men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment against it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonas, his own words at Matthew 12:41 and Luke 11:32 treating the episode as a real event rather than an illustration. Wesley and Barnes both note that Nineveh believed God, not merely feared destruction, the same word used elsewhere in Scripture of a settled trust rather than passing alarm.

Jonah 3:6

For word came unto the king of Nineveh shows the repentance reaching the throne only after it has already spread through the city, the king following his people's example rather than issuing the first order. He arose from his throne, laid his robe from him, and covered himself with sackcloth, sitting in ashes, every mark of royal dignity set aside for the clothing of mourning. Clarke and Jamieson, Fausset & Brown both weigh the identity of this king, whether Adad-nirari the third or another Assyrian ruler of the period, without any Assyrian record naming the episode directly, and note that the text itself is content to call him simply the king of Nineveh.

Jonah 3:7-9

Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing extends the fast even to the city's animals, a detail without parallel elsewhere in Scripture that the commentators read as eastern custom rather than an invented flourish, since classical writers record similar mourning practices among other Near Eastern peoples. The decree goes past ritual, commanding that man and beast cry mightily unto God and that every one turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in their hands, naming violence specifically as the sin Nineveh must abandon. The king's own uncertainty, who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not, asks for mercy without presuming it, and Henry and Pusey both read this as the humility the book commends against Jonah's own presumption that he already knew how God would act.

Jonah 3:10

And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way, answers the king's own uncertain hope, the turning asked for at verse 8 met by God's own turning in the same chapter. The text says plainly that God repented of the evil that he had said he would do unto them, and he did it not, language the commentators take as describing a real change in God's dealing with Nineveh rather than any change in his character, since the destruction was always conditioned on the city's response to Jonah's warning. Calvin and Keil both note that this verse, not the fish, is the scandal the book was written to explore, mercy extended to Israel's own future destroyer on the strength of one day's unwilling preaching.