Jonah 3:1-5--Jonah Goes to Nineveh

Jonah 3:1-5
English Standard Version

Jonah Goes to Nineveh
3 Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time, saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.” 3 So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD . Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days' journey in breadth. 4 Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” 5 And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.

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Jonah gets another bite at the apple now as the LORD speaks to him and calls him to go to Nineveh once again.  The call is the mostly the same, but there is a slight, but important difference.  Chapter 1 verse 2 says, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.”   Now we see in Chapter 3 verse 2 that the LORD says, ​ “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.”  Did you notice the difference?  In chapter 1, the LORD is talking about their evil being noticed by Him, but the message has changed to telling Jonah to go and cry out (proclaim) the message that the LORD gives to Jonah.  There is no indication anymore that the message will be a message of judgement or destruction.

The author takes a brief aside to let us know why Nineveh was called a "great city."  Just to walk through the breadth of the city on foot would take three days (Jonah knows this and it will be important to what he proclaims).  Jonah enters the city and goes in a day's journey so that he is about one-third of the way into the city.  He then proclaims a message that we hope is the message that the LORD gave to him, but I have my suspicions that Jonah is inserting his own message in the place of the one the LORD had given him here because of some conversation that occurs later in the book.

Amazingly, this exceedingly wicked group of people that we would think of today like modern-day terrorists believed God and repented of their sin.  Smallest to greatest, young to old, man and animal all fasted and put on sackcloth as an outward sign of their humiliation and repentance.  This was not the response that Jonah expected or wanted (notice that his message gave no kind of "altar call").  Don't you imagine that the LORD's true message gave some sort of call to turn from their sin and repent? Fortunately the LORD can be faithful to transmit His intended message even through faithless messengers.  Jonah proclaimed the part of the message that he favored--destruction for the people that were his enemies, but he did not want to proclaim a message of salvation being available to all--to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile.  The LORD is again exposing the heart of Jonah here, that he does not have the heart of the LORD, and Jonah will admit as much and say that this is why he ran away when he heard the LORD's call.  He knew the LORD was going to have compassion and forgive them of their sin, and he did not want to be any part of that, because he only wanted to see this people judged and destroyed.  He wanted to see them die in their sins and be condemned to eternal damnation.  That's how much he hated these people.  Is there any group of people that you might resist taking the gospel to or that you would have a hard time seeing them repent and become brothers or sisters in Christ? Would you ever be angry at God for saving someone because you have been nursing hatred for that person or that people group for so long that you can't imagine God loving them? Before we are so quick to judge Jonah, let's take the time to examine our own hearts here and see if there is not a log in our own eye before we try to pick the speck out of Jonah's eye. 

The ESV Study Bible puts the timing of the setting of the book of Jonah around 760 B.C. (about 38 years before the fall of Israel).  At that time, Israel was not in direct conflict with Assyria, so we would probably assume that Jonah's hatred is due to him feeling indignant about the great evil that he saw (like the LORD did) and wanting to see the LORD's wrath poured out on the wicked.  Jonah was ready to see the LORD be the Judge of these people, but not ready to see Him be their Redeemer and Savior.  That was a relationship the Jonah imagined was exclusive for the Jewish people.  This is not just a problem with Jonah, but we see this carry over into the people Jesus spoke to in the New Testament.  Feel how these words of Jesus would sting, "41 The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here." (Matthew 12:41).