Jonah is sent again to preach in Ninive. Upon their fasting and repentance, God recalls the sentence by which they were to be destroyed.

¹ And the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying:

² Rise, and go to Nineveh, the great city. And preach in it the preaching that I say to you.

³ And Jonah rose, and he went to Nineveh in accordance with the word of the Lord. And Nineveh was a great city of three days’ journey.¹

1. 3:3Of three days’ journey: By the computation of some ancient historians, Ninive was about fifty miles round: so that to go through all the chief streets and public places was three days’ journey.(Challoner)

⁴ And Jonah began to enter into the city one day’s journey. And he cried out and said, “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed.”

⁵ And the men of Nineveh believed in God. And they proclaimed a fast, and they put on sackcloth, from the greatest all the way to the least.

⁶ And word reached the king of Nineveh. And he rose from his throne, and he threw off his robe from himself and was clothed in sackcloth, and he sat in ashes.

⁷ And he cried out and spoke: “In Nineveh, from the mouth of the king and of his princes, let it be said: Men and beasts and oxen and sheep may not taste anything. Neither shall they feed or drink water.¹

1. 3:7The first part of this verse seems redundant. He cried out and said (dixit) . . . saying (dicens).... It seems that the second use of this verb is part of the decree itself. Therefore, it is rendered loosely as ‘let it be said,’ rather than as ‘saying,’ because the context is a formal decree.(Conte)

⁸ And let men and beasts be covered with sackcloth, and let them cry out to the Lord with strength, and may man be converted from his evil way, and from the iniquity that is in their hands.¹

1. 3:8Here is an unusual example of the use of ‘vir’ in the singular to refer to a group of persons, similar to the use of Man to signify mankind in English. The man who must convert from his evil way is mankind. This becomes clear with the use of the plural in the last part of the verse.(Conte)

⁹ Who knows if God may turn and forgive, and may turn away from his furious wrath, so that we might not perish?”¹

1. 3:9This verse has a question mark, but it is more of a statement than a question. The question mark is probably not necessary in the English translation. Notice that ‘et non peribimus’ is translated as ‘so that we might not perish,’ instead of ‘and we might not perish.’ The word ‘et’ is not always equivalent to the English word ‘and.’(Conte)

¹⁰ And God saw their works, that they had been converted from their evil way. And God took pity on them, concerning the harm that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.