¹¹ And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left and also many animals?”^(A)

³³ Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’

²⁸ Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. ²⁹ But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command, yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. ³⁰ But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your assets with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’^{(A) 31} Then the father^[a] said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. ³² But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’ ”^(B)

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

³⁹ And as for your little ones who you thought would become plunder, your children who today do not yet know right from wrong, they shall enter there; to them I will give it, and they shall take possession of it.^(A)

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.^(A)

Jonah’s Anger

4 But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry.^(B)

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.