Jonah and Nineveh

About this time, we are told, the remarkable faith of the Ninevites was shown. Their city, founded long before by Asshur, the son of Shem, was the capital of the kingdom of the Assyrians. It was then full of people, holding one hundred and twenty thousand men, and it abounded in wickedness, as usually happens where vast crowds of people gather. God, moved by their sins, commanded the prophet Jonah to go from Judea and announce destruction on the city, just as Sodom and Gomorrah had long ago been burned up by fire from heaven. [a]

But the prophet turned down that task of preaching, not out of stubbornness but out of foresight, for he could see that God would be reconciled through the people’s repentance. He boarded a ship bound for Tarshish, in a very different direction. But after they had put out to sea, the sailors, hard pressed by the violence of the sea, cast lots to find out who was the cause of their suffering. When the lot fell on Jonah, he was thrown into the sea to be a kind of sacrifice to calm the storm, and he was seized and swallowed by a whale, a monster of the deep.

Three days later he was cast up on the shores of the Ninevites, and he preached as he had been commanded: that the city would be destroyed in three days as a punishment for the people’s sins. The prophet’s voice was heeded, and not with mere pretense, as at Sodom long ago. At once, by the king’s order and following his example, the whole people, even newborn babies, were commanded to go without food and drink. Even the beasts of burden in the place, and animals of every kind, driven by hunger and thirst, looked as though they were mourning along with the people. In this way the threatened disaster was turned aside. When Jonah complained to God that his words had not been fulfilled, he was answered that pardon could never be refused to those who repent.