³⁶ Then King Sennacherib of Assyria left, went home, and lived at Nineveh.^(A)

² “Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it, for their wickedness has come up before me.”^(A)

³³ By the way that he came, by the same he shall return; he shall not come into this city, says the Lord.^(A)

⁷ I myself will put a spirit in him so that he shall hear a rumor and return to his own land; I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.”^(A)

⁴¹ The people of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the proclamation of Jonah, and indeed something greater than Jonah is here!^(A)

1 An oracle concerning Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum of Elkosh.^(A)

² “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” ³ So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. ⁴ Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” ⁵ And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.^(A)

⁶ When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.^{(B) 7} Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water.^{(C) 8} Humans and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands.^{(D) 9} Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.”^(E)

¹⁰ When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them, and he did not do it.^(F)

¹¹ From that land he went into Assyria and built Nineveh, Rehoboth-ir, Calah, and ¹² Resen between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city.