Jonah’s Preaching

3 The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time:^{(A) 2} ‘Get up! Go to the great city of Nineveh^(B) and preach^(C) the message that I tell you.’ ³ Jonah got up and went to Nineveh according to the Lord’s command.

Now Nineveh was an extremely great city,^[a](D) a three-day walk. ⁴ Jonah set out on the first day of his walk in the city and proclaimed,^(E) ‘In forty days Nineveh will be demolished! ’ ⁵ Then the people of Nineveh believed God. They proclaimed a fast^(F) and dressed in sackcloth – from the greatest of them to the least.

⁶ When word reached the king of Nineveh, he got up from his throne, took off his royal robe, covered himself with sackcloth,^(G) and sat in ashes. ⁷ Then he issued a decree^(H) in Nineveh:

By order of the king and his nobles: No person or animal, herd or flock, is to taste anything at all. They must not eat or drink water. ⁸ Furthermore, both people and animals must be covered with sackcloth, and everyone must call out earnestly to God.^(I) Each must turn from his evil ways^(J) and from his wrongdoing.^{[b] 9} Who knows?^(K) God may turn and relent; he may turn from his burning anger so that we will not perish.^(L)

¹⁰ God saw their actions – that they had turned from their evil ways^(M) – so God relented from the disaster^(N) he had threatened them with. And he did not do it.