God Calls and Jonah Obeys

3 Then the Lord spoke to Jonah again and said, ² “Go to that big city Nineveh, and say what I tell you.”

³ So Jonah obeyed the Lord and went to Nineveh. It was a very large city. A person had to walk for three days to travel through it.

⁴ Jonah went to the center of the city and began speaking to the people. He said, “After 40 days, Nineveh will be destroyed!”

⁵ The people of Nineveh believed God. They decided to stop eating for a time to think about their sins. They put on special clothes to show they were sorry. All the people in the city did this, from the most important to the least important.

⁶ When the king of Nineveh heard about this, he left his throne, removed his robe, put on special clothes to show that he was sorry, and sat in ashes.^{[a] 7} The king wrote a special message and sent it throughout the city:

A command from the king and his great rulers:

For a short time no person or animal should eat anything. No herd or flock will be allowed in the fields. Nothing living in Nineveh will eat or drink water. ⁸ But every person and every animal must be covered with a special cloth to show they are sad. People must cry loudly to God. Everyone must change their life and stop doing bad things. ⁹ Who knows? Maybe God will stop being angry and change his mind, and we will not be punished.

¹⁰ God saw what the people did. He saw that they stopped doing evil. So God changed his mind and did not do what he planned. He did not punish the people.