Jonah 3:1-10
1 And it happened the word of YHWH came to Jonah a second [time] saying, 2 “Get up and go to Nineveh the great city and proclaim to her the proclamation which I am speaking to you.”
3 And Jonah got up and went to Nineveh according to the word of YHWH and Nineveh was a great city to God, a distance of three days.
4 And Jonah began to go into the city a journey of one day and he proclaimed and he said, “Still forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown.”
5 And the people of Nineveh believed in God and they proclaimed a fast and they put on sackcloth from their greatest until their smallest.
6 And the word reached to the king of Nineveh and he got up from his throne and he took off his robe from on himself and he put on sackcloth and he sat on the dirt.
7 And he sent out a proclamation and he said, “In Nineveh by order of the king and his great ones: The people and the animals of the herd and the flock they are not to taste anything, they are not to feed and water they are not to drink. 8 And they will clothe themselves in sackcloth, the people and the animals, and they will call to God with strength and they will return, each from his way of evil and from the violence which is in their hands. 9 Who knows, God may turn and repent and he may turn from the burning anger of his nose and we will not perish.”
10 And God saw their deeds for they turned from their ways of evil and God repented over the disaster which he had said to do to them and he did not do it.
Comments
Now the story of Jonah pretty much starts over again. Whereas chapters 1-2 tell of Jonah fleeing from God and God acting to bring him back to do the task he was called for. Now in Jonah 3-4 the process starts again with God calling Jonah and this time Jonah actually does as God has commanded him. The language of 1:1-2 and 3:1-2 is almost identical. There are small differences, such as the “second time” in 3:1 and “proclaim to her the proclamation which I am speaking to you” in 3:2 as opposed to “proclaim against her for their evil has come up before me” in 1:2. In 3:2 the focus of the command by God is on the act of proclaiming the message, rather than the reasons for the message (Nineveh’s evil ways).
Instead of getting up and fleeing (1:3), Jonah gets up and goes to Nineveh. Nineveh is described as a great city to God, indicating that God cared about what happens to the Ninevites and this is why he has sent his prophet to them. Interestingly in chapter 3 elohim (God/gods) is used more often than YHWH as a name for God. This could be because Nineveh is not part of Israel and may not have known the personal name of God (YHWH).
The distance of three days most likely refers to the size of Nineveh. It would have taken three days to journey through the entire city. It doesn’t refer to the journey Jonah made to get there as to walk from the Mediterranean to Nineveh (in modern Iraq) would take much longer. The length of time is also the same amount of time as Jonah spent inside the fish, which indicates that the time he spent in the fish was to prepare him for his ministry to the city. However, when Jonah does go into the city to proclaim his message he does so only for one day. This could mean that the message spread so quickly that the whole city heard about it before the day was over, or that Jonah decided that one day was enough.
In verse 4 Jonah begins to proclaim his message to Nineveh. This is the shortest prophetic proclamation in the Bible, being just five words in Hebrew. Not only is it short, but it is a very bleak prophecy, especially when compared to all the other prophetic books which all contain messages of hope. Jonah is not giving Nineveh any chance to repent with his message. Although he is willing to do as God has commanded him and proclaim to Nineveh, he is doing the bare minimum required and still wants to see Nineveh destroyed. He gives them no hint that God may change his mind if they repent.
The opportunity to repent is implicit in any prophecy of destruction in the Bible because otherwise there is no point in giving to prophecy. Repentance is what prophecy is supposed to inspire, because prophecy is more about speaking into events that are happening or about to happen (forthtelling), rather than events that are a long way in the future (foretelling). Sometimes prophecies speak into both the present and the future, but they always have a meaning for the audience they were spoken to originally, otherwise there is not much point in the prophet telling them to his audience. Rather than simply predicting the future, Jonah’s message is a warning to the people about what will happen if they do not change. As a prediction it would have been proved wrong as Nineveh was not destroyed forty days later because the people repented and God withdrew his judgement.
The response of the people of Nineveh to Jonah’s prophecy would not have made Jonah very happy (as seen later in chapter 4). Instead of carrying on their evil ways and ignoring him, they proclaim a fast and put on sackcloth. Sackcloth appears quite a bit in the Old Testament, always as a sign of repentance, especially when paired with fasting or ashes. It is a way of humbling oneself before God, putting aside normal clothes and wearing uncomfortable sackcloth (usually accompanied by sitting in the dirt or covering the head with ashes), and not eating or drinking. In verse 5 it is the people of Nineveh that initiate the repentance. This reveals that their repentance is genuine and not forced on them by their king, who doesn’t get involved in the action until verse 6 where he makes the city-wide repentance official. And it is all the people of Nineveh who respond, from the great to the small. This reaction is all put down to their belief in God (3:5).
In many ways their reaction is surprising, especially because they are responding to the warnings of a foreign prophet whom they have never seen or heard of before that day. This was not always the case. In Jer 26, the prophet Jeremiah declares to Jerusalem that the city will be overthrown. Despite being a native of Jerusalem and a known prophet of God, he is arrested, thrown into prison and his message is ignored. As a result of this lack of repentance Jerusalem was destroyed in 687-86 BC by the Babylonians. By contrast the response of Nineveh is nothing short of miraculous.
When Jonah’s warning reaches the king, his reaction is the same as his peoples. He sets aside all signs of his royalty and power and puts on sackcloth and sits in the dirt. He makes the fast and sackcloth official for all the people and the domesticated animals. Along with this, he commands them to call on God and to each turn from their evil ways. Although Jonah did not mention why Nineveh would be destroyed, or even by whom, the people of Nineveh seem to have found out and are responding. As the king of Nineveh mentions, there is a chance that God will change his mind if they do repent of their evil ways.
Interestingly, God’s anger is described as “the burning anger of his nose” in verse 9. This is a Hebrew was of describing God’s burning anger which doesn’t really make sense to speakers of English. In Hebrew the nose has a lot to do with a person’s temperament. If they are “long of nose” (as God often is) they are patient. By contrast “short of nose” indicates a short fuse. If a nose becomes hot, then a person becomes angry. Thus the “burning anger of his nose” is just a Hebrew way of describing God’s anger.
As a result of the repentance of Nineveh, God also repents of his plans to destroy the city, and thus the prophecy of Jonah served its purpose. It warned the people that their city stood under God’s judgement because of their evil deeds. The people responded to the prophecy by repenting through fasting and wearing sackcloth. Upon seeing this, God lifted the judgement on the city. This shows that God’s judgements are not necessarily final, and that it is always possible to repent and turn back to God regardless of the situation. This does not mean that God is a very fickle God and constantly changes his mind. His judgement against Nineveh would have stood had they not repented. But by sending his prophet to them he was giving them a chance to repent. Thus there was room in his plan for Nineveh to repent otherwise he wouldn’t have given them the chance. This doesn’t change who God is or his overarching plan for his creation. Instead it shows that he gives us humans a choice to hear his message or to ignore it, and it is our response that determines what happens. I think that this is both more intriguing and more terrifying that a god who has it all figured out and just has to implement his plan because we have a part to play in it all.
The next section is Jonah 4:1-3.
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