Jonahchapter 3
10 verses · Jonah, by tradition · 8th century BC · The Twelve
When God saw their actions—that they had turned from their evil ways—He relented from the disaster He had threatened to bring upon them.
Introduction
Jonah, by tradition, The Twelve, Jonah Overview.
This chapter begins the second half of the book, and it opens the way the first half did. Nineveh was a royal city of Assyria, the empire that would carry the northern kingdom into exile within a few decades of Jonah's day. An Israelite hearer knew the name as a name of terror. Listen for how short the prophet's message is and how wide the answer to it runs. Listen also for the question the king asks, which no one in the chapter can answer for him. The chapter asks what God will do with an enemy who turns.
Context
- Who
- Israelites hearing that their nightmare city got mercy
- What
- A narrative of Jonah's second call, his preaching in Nineveh, the city's repentance, and God relenting from the disaster He had threatened.
- Where
- Nineveh, the great city of Assyria on the east bank of the Tigris River.
- When
- Soon after the events of chapter 2, in the first half of the eighth century BC, before Assyria's great expansion under Tiglath-pileser III from 745 BC.
- Why
- To show that God's warning leaves room for repentance, and that He shows mercy to a Gentile city that turns from its violence.
Historical context
Nineveh was one of the great cities of the ancient world. Excavations on the mounds at Kuyunjik and Nebi Yunus have uncovered enormous palaces, a wall circuit of roughly eight miles, and the library of Ashurbanipal with tens of thousands of tablets. The city was described as "an exceeding great city of three days' journey," which likely takes in the whole built-up district and its surrounding towns rather than the walled core alone.
Show the rest of the historical context, 4 more paragraphs
Assyria's reputation was not exaggerated by its enemies; the Assyrians advertised it themselves. Royal inscriptions and palace wall reliefs boast in detail about flaying captives, impaling prisoners outside besieged towns, and stacking heads. This was deliberate policy, terror as a cheaper alternative to fighting every city twice.
Assyria went through a rough stretch in the first half of the eighth century: military setbacks, plague, and a total solar eclipse recorded in 763 BC, an omen a Mesopotamian court would have taken with deadly seriousness. Whether any of that lies behind the city's readiness to listen, the text does not say, and it should not be pressed.
The response follows Mesopotamian mourning practice, sackcloth, ashes, fasting, and a royal decree, with the king coming down off his throne and out of his robe. The animals fasting in sackcloth strikes modern readers as odd; ancient mourning could indeed include a household's livestock, and Greek writers describe similar customs among Persians.
The message Jonah preaches is one sentence long: yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. No promise of mercy is attached. The king reasons his way to it, "who can tell if God will turn?"
Significance
For an Israelite audience this was almost unbearable. The city that would later deport the northern kingdom fasts, and God relents.
Show the rest of the significance, 1 more paragraph
The chapter says plainly what God did: He saw their works, that they turned from their evil way, and He repented of the evil He had said He would do. Warning is itself mercy. A prophet announcing forty days is giving a city forty days.
This chapter in Jewish lifeWhat this chapter is in Jewish life and reading.
What is done
This is the chapter the Day of Atonement reads the book for. The site's table in src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts gives the reason for reading Jonah at the afternoon service as the book's subject, a city that repents and is spared, and cites Babylonian Talmud Megillah 31a. Probed for this lane, the table printed parashot 0 and haftarah 0 for this chapter, so the fast of Nineveh is heard once a year, on the fast of Israel.
The corpus also ties the chapter to the tractate on public fasts. Rashi's note on the eighth verse records how Nineveh fasted. "They bound the dams alone and the young alone. They said to Him, “Lord of the world! If You have no pity on us, we will not have pity on these.”" The note sends the reader to Taanith 16a (Rashi on Jonah 3:8:1). Rashi is quoted in this card from The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg, CC-BY. The corpus carries that folio among its locators on the same verse, at Taanit 16a:11, 16a:12 and 16a:13, with Jerusalem Talmud Taanit 2:1:13. It carries Jerusalem Talmud Taanit 2:1:1 on the tenth verse. The locators come without their text, so this site names where the rabbis took the fast of Nineveh into their law of fasting and does not report what they said there.
How it is read
The commentators part over the one word of Jonah's message. Rashi's edition carries a bracketed gloss, marked in the edition as the gloss of Rabbi Akiva with a question mark, which reads overturned as a word with two meanings, bad and good. "If they do not repent, it will be destroyed". Otherwise, "if they repent, then “overturned” refers to the people of Nineveh, that they will be changed from bad to good, and they will repent" (Rashi on Jonah 3:4:1). Ibn Ezra reports the same reading and says that "this interpretation is not correct". He reads the word as a plain threat of the kind God may withdraw, and he points to Jeremiah 18:7 (Ibn Ezra on Jonah 3:4:1 and 3:4:2, the Sefaria Community Translation, CC0).
The reason the city believed is also asked. Ibn Ezra reports Rabbi Yeshuah, that the sailors went to Nineveh and spoke about Jonah. "This is why they believed him" (Ibn Ezra on Jonah 3:3:1, the same translation). He reads the belief of the fifth verse by the belief of Israel in Exodus 4:31, and as belief "in the word of God" (Ibn Ezra on Jonah 3:5:1 and 3:5:2). He reads the king's decree through Abraham's plea for Sodom at Genesis 18:32 (Ibn Ezra on Jonah 3:8:1). On the three days' walk he weighs more than one measure and allows that Jonah walked only one day's journey to call out (Ibn Ezra on Jonah 3:3:2). Radak reads the great city of God as a way Hebrew enlarges a thing by joining it to God's name. He gives the mountains and the cedars of God from the Psalms as his examples (Radak on Jonah 3:3:1, the same translation).
The king's words "Who knows" are read two ways. Radak gives both. Perhaps God will relent when the city repents, or whoever knows the ways of repentance should repent. He adds the rendering of the Targum of Jonathan, that one who knows he has sins should repent of them (Radak on Jonah 3:9:1, the same translation). Rashi takes the second way, "the sins he has committed, shall repent" (Rashi on Jonah 3:9:1). Metzudat David notes that the message of the forty days is left unspoken at the second verse "because it is obvious" (Metzudat David on Jonah 3:2:1, the same translation). The second commission Ibn Ezra reads as God showing Jonah that his flight had not carried him away from Nineveh (Ibn Ezra on Jonah 3:2:1). Radak reads what God speaks there as the first word and the present word together (Radak on Jonah 3:2:1). Shorter notes stand at Ibn Ezra on Jonah 3:1:1, 3:6:1 and 3:10:1, Radak on Jonah 3:1:1, and Rashi on Jonah 3:6:1, 3:7:1, 3:7:2 and 3:10:1.
One note on this chapter stands without an English text. Malbim on Jonah 3:1:1 is marked linked because the licence Sefaria reports does not permit keeping the text.
What the rabbis say
The corpus carries forty rabbinic locators on this chapter and the text of none, so each is cited here and none is quoted. On the first verse, the word coming to Jonah a second time, it holds Bereshit Rabbah 21:5, Bereshit Rabbati, Parashat Miketz 4, Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Yevamot 11:1 and Ein Yaakov, Yevamot 11:1. It holds Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, Tractate Pischa 1:18, Midrash Lekach Tov, Exodus 12:1:3 and Yevamot 98a:6 there as well. On the second it holds Bereshit Rabbah 39:9 and 55:7 and Midrash Sekhel Tov, Bereshit 22:2:7.
On the third verse, the great city of three days' walk, the corpus holds Bereshit Rabbah 37:4, Ein Yaakov, Yoma 1:12, Midrash Aggadah, Genesis 10:12:1 and Midrash Lekach Tov, Genesis 10:11:1. It holds Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Shemot 14:2, Midrash Tanchuma, Shemot 18:4 and Midrash Tannaim on Deuteronomy 14:2:13 there too. On the fourth, the forty days, it holds Bereshit Rabbati, Parashat Vayechi 37, Pesikta DeRav Kahana 24:11, Sanhedrin 89b:5 and Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 729:5.
The king and his decree follow. On the sixth verse the corpus holds Aggadat Bereshit 2:1 and Midrash Sekhel Tov, Shemot 14:28:2. On the seventh it holds Esther Rabbah, Petichta 10, Midrash Tanchuma, Shmini 9:1 and Pesikta Rabbati 33:1. On the eighth, the sackcloth on man and beast, it holds Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Taanit 1:26 and 2:2, Ein Yaakov, Taanit 1:27, Jerusalem Talmud Taanit 2:1:13, and Taanit 16a:11, 16a:12 and 16a:13.
On the tenth verse, God seeing their deeds and relenting, the corpus holds Bereshit Rabbah 44:12 and Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Rosh Hashanah 1:10 and Taanit 2:1. It holds Ein Yaakov, Rosh Hashanah 1:12, Ein Yaakov, Taanit 2:1 and 2:4, and Jerusalem Talmud Taanit 2:1:1 there too. What each of them teaches is a saying of the rabbis, and is reported as theirs wherever this site quotes one.
Sources: Rashi, Rashi on Jonah 3:4:1 to 3:10:1, The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg, reported CC-BY; Ibn Ezra, Ibn Ezra on Jonah 3:1:1 to 3:10:1, the Sefaria Community Translation, reported CC0; Radak, Radak on Jonah 3:1:1, 3:2:1, 3:3:1 and 3:9:1, the Sefaria Community Translation, reported CC0; Metzudat David, Metzudat David on Jonah 3:2:1, the Sefaria Community Translation, reported CC0; Malbim, Malbim on Jonah 3:1:1, cited by ref because the licence Sefaria reports does not permit keeping the text; The Sefaria corpus, scripts/data/sources/sefaria/jonah/3.json, the 40 Talmud and Midrash locators of this chapter; The site's own files, src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts, the festival reading for Jonah citing Babylonian Talmud Megillah 31a, probed for this chapter and printing parashot 0 and haftarah 0.
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
The word of the LORD comes a second time
Jonah 3:1-3
Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time: This time Jonah "got up and went to Nineveh," the verb that took him toward Tarshish at 1:3 now taking him where he was sent. Henry and Keil read the three days as the time needed to cover its districts, since the site of Nineveh does not stretch that far.
Jonah 3:1
“He neither endeavored to avoid hearing the command, nor did he decline obeying it; he made no objections, as he had done, that the journey was long, the errand invidious, the delivery of it perilous, and, if the threatened judgment did come, he should be reproached as a false prophet, and the impenitence of his own nation would be upbraided, which he had objected, ch. iv.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
The second call repeats the first almost exactly. Albert Barnes notes that Jonah is told to cry to the city where the first call said against it, which may hint at mercy. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown add that the content is left open, to be spoken as God gives it.
Jonah 3:2
“And preach unto it the preaching - וקרא את הקריאה vekera eth hakkeriah, “And cry the cry that I bid thee.” Be my herald, and faithfully deliver my message. The word κηρυξ in Greek answers to the Hebrew קורא kore: both signifying a crier, a herald, a preacher; one that makes proclamation with a loud and earnest cry. Such was John Baptist, Isa 40:3; such was Jesus Christ, John 7:18-37; and such were all his apostles.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Jonah 3:2
“There is here set before us a remarkable proof of God's grace, -- that he was pleased to bestow on Jonah his former dignity and honor. He was indeed unworthy of the common light, but God not only restored him to life, but favored him again with the office and honor of a prophet. This, as I have said, Jonah obtained through the wonderful and singular favor of God.”
John Calvin · Commentaries (1554)reformed
Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown
an exceedingly great city: This time Jonah goes as he is told. The three days may measure the whole district around the city or the time needed to cross it on foot while preaching. John Wesley counts Nineveh in that day the greatest city of the known world.
Jonah 3:3
“Exceeding great - The greatest city of the known world at that day, it was then in its flourishing state greater than Babylon, whose compass was three hundred eighty-five furlongs, but Nineveh was in compass, four hundred and eighty.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
3 more voices on this verse
Jonah 3:3
“And Jonah arose and went unto Nineveh - , ready to obey, as before to disobey. Before, when God said those same words, “he arose and fled;” now, “he arose and went.” True conversion shows the same energy in serving God, as the unconverted had before shown in serving self or error. Saul’s spirit of fire, which persecuted Christ, gleamed in Paul like lightning through the world, to win souls to Him.”
Jonah 3:3
“However, Christ's resurrection, typified by that of Jonah's, served for the confirmation of his gospel, and contributed abundantly to their great success who in his name preached repentance and remission of sins to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. They brought word to the king of Nineveh, who, some think, was at this time Sardanapalus, others Pul, king of Assyria.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Jonah 3:3
“They looked for a Messiah gloriously coming in the clouds of heaven; the Messiah, on the contrary, is to pass through a like, though a deeper, humiliation than Jonah; He is to lie "in the heart of the earth." Jonah and his Antitype alike appeared low and friendless among their hearers; both victims to death for God's wrath against sin, both preaching repentance.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
The whole of Jonah's recorded preaching is "Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned!", with no call to repent. Gill and Calvin note that he speaks it on the first day, one day into a city of three. Verse 5 shows the whole city taking it as a warning.
Jonah 3:4
“Yet forty days - Both the Septuagint and Arabic read three days. Probably some early copyist of the Septuagint, from whom our modern editions are derived, mistook the Greek numerals μ forty for γ three; or put the three days’ journey in preaching instead of the forty days mentioned in the denunciation.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Jonah 3:4
“It is no longer a cry against the sins of Nineveh, but an announcement of its ruin in forty days. This number is in Scripture associated often with humiliation. It was forty days that Moses, Elijah, and Christ fasted.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Sackcloth from the throne down, and God relents
And the Ninevites believed God: The Ninevites "believed God". Jesus holds this against His generation at Matthew 12:41, where "they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now One greater than Jonah is here". Wesley and Barnes note that the Hebrew verb for believed is the word used elsewhere of settled trust.
Jonah 3:5
“So the people of Nineveh believed God,.... Or "in God" (r): in the word of the Lord, as the Targum; they believed there was a God, and that he, in whose name Jonah came, was the true God; they believed the word the prophet spake was not the word of man, but, the word of God; faith came by hearing the word, which is the spring of true repentance, and the root of all good works. Kimchi and R.”
3 more voices on this verse
Jonah 3:5
“And the people of Nineveh believed God; - strictly, “believed in God.” To “believe in God” expresses more heart-belief, than to “believe God” in itself need convey. To believe God is to believe what God says, to be true; “to believe in” or “on God” expresses not belief only, but that belief resting in God, trusting itself and all its concerns with Him. It combines hope and trust with faith, and love too, since, without love, there cannot be trust.”
Jonah 3:5
“If what the Apostle has said is not enough, let them hear the Prophet saying, I chastened myself with fasting. He therefore who fasts not is uncovered and naked and exposed to wounds. And if Adam had clothed himself with fasting he would not have been found to be naked. Nineveh delivered itself from death by fasting. And the Lord Himself says, This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.”
Ambrose of Milan · written before 397 · Letters, Letter 44patristic
Jonah 3:5
“The wearing of sackcloth, especially to those who were used to fine linen, was a very uneasy thing, and they would not have done it if they had not had a deep sense of their sin and their danger by reason of sin, which hereby they designed to express.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
When 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," setting aside each mark of rank. Clarke and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown weigh whether he was Adad-nirari the third or another ruler, since no Assyrian record names the episode.
Jonah 3:6
“Word came unto the king - This, some think, was Pul; others, Sardanapalus his son, king of Assyria, who flourished in the reign of Jeroboam the Second: but it seems more probable that the monarch here alluded to was a king of Assyria contemporary with Joash, king of Judah. It was by the decree of the king that the fast was instituted, and became general.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Jonah 3:7-9
Let no man or beast, herd or flock, taste anything at all: The fast reaches even the animals, which the commentators read as an eastern custom. The decree names the sin, calling each one to "turn from his evil ways and from the violence in his hands," and goes past ritual. The king asks for mercy without presuming it.
Jonah 3:7
“And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh; - literally, “And he cried and said, etc.” The cry or proclamation of the king corresponded with the cry of Jonah. Where the prophet’s cry, calling to repentance, had reached, the proclamation of the king followed, obeying. “By the decree of the king and his nobles.” This is a hint of the political state of Nineveh, beyond what we have elsewhere. It was not then an absolute monarchy.”
1 more voice on this verse
Jonah 3:7
“Taste any thing - Man and beast are to forbear to eat and drink, that the fast might be most solemn, that the cry of man, seconded with the cry of hungry cattle, might enter the ears of God, who preserveth man and beast.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
the violence in his hands: The decree joins sackcloth and fasting to a turning from the city's own sin. John Wesley glosses the violence as oppression and robbery. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown say prayer without reform mocks God, and that reform itself begins with prayer.
Jonah 3:8
“And beast - Their horses and camels, both which they adorned with rich and costly clothing, they must now in testimony of an hearty repentance, clothe with sackcloth; the clothing of beasts must witness for men. The violence - Oppression and rapine. In their hands - Which are practiced by them.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Jonah 3:8
“Let man and beast be covered - This was done that every object which they beheld might deepen the impression already made, and cause them to mourn after a godly sort. Virgil tells us that the mourning for the death of Julius Caesar was so general, that the cattle neither ate nor drank: - Non ulli pastos illis egere diebus Frigida, Daphni, boves ad flumina: nulla neque amnem Libavit quadrupes, nec graminis attigit herbam. Ecl. 5:24. “The swains forgot their sheep, nor near the brink Of running waters brought their herds to drink.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Who knows? God may turn and relent: The king has no promise, only that God sent a warning, which Jamieson, Fausset and Brown call the whole ground of the city's hope. Joel 2:14 asks the same question. Spurgeon preached it as comfort for anyone who despairs of a wicked age.
Jonah 3:9
Look here then, say you: I discover a self-incriminating case in the matter of the Ninevites, when the book of Jonah declares, "And God repented of the evil that He had said that He would do unto them; and He did it not." In accordance with which Jonah himself says unto the Lord, "Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish; for I knew that Thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest Thee of the evil."
Tertullian · written before 220 · Against Marcion Book IIpatristic
3 more voices on this verse
Jonah 3:9
“Who can tell if God will turn and repent? - The Ninevites use the same form of words, which God suggested by Joel to Judah. Perhaps He would thereby indicate that He had Himself put it into their mouths. “In uncertainty they repented, and obtained certain mercy” . “It is therefore left uncertain, that men, being doubtful of their salvation, may repent the more vehemently and the more draw down on themselves the mercy of God” . “Most certain are the promises of God, whereby He has promised pardon to the penitent.”
Jonah 3:9
“They cannot object against the equity of the judgment, they pretend not to set it aside by appealing to a higher court, but hope in God himself, that he will repent, and that his own mercy (to which they fly) shall rejoice against judgment.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Jonah 3:9
“The only ground which their ready faith rested on, was the fact of God sending one to warn them, instead of destroying them at once; this suggested the thought of a possibility of pardon. Hence they are cited by Christ as about to condemn in the judgment those who, with much greater light and privileges, yet repent not (Mt 12:41).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
God "saw their actions" and answers the hope of verse 9 with His own turning. The threat of verse 4 was a warning the city could answer. Calvin and Keil both note that this mercy falls on the capital of Assyria, the power that would later destroy Israel.
Jonah 3:10
“And Gods saw their works - They repented, and brought forth fruits meet for repentance; works which showed that they did most earnestly repent. He therefore changed his purpose, and the city was saved. The purpose was: If the Ninevites do not return from their evil ways, and the violence that is in their hands, within forty days, I will destroy the city. The Ninevites did return, etc., and therefore escaped the threatened judgment. Thus we see that the threatening was conditional.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Jonah 3:10
“Thus he spared Nineveh, and did not the evil which he said he would do against it. Here were no sacrifices offered to God, that we read of, to make atonement for sin, but the sacrifice of God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, such as the Ninevites now had, it what he will not despise; it is what he will give countenance to and put honour upon.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
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Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes; Carl Friedrich Keil, The Twelve Minor Prophets; Charles Spurgeon, The New Park Street Pulpit, Sermon No. 275, Who Can Tell?; Edward Bouverie Pusey, The Minor Prophets: A Commentary; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Calvin, Commentaries on the Twelve Minor Prophets; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.