Jonah 3:1

Jonah 3:1 opens with the words that open the whole book, “the word of the LORD came unto Jonah” (Jonah 1:1), and adds “the second time”. Between the two calls lies everything Jonah did to get away from the first. He fled from the presence of the LORD (Jonah 1:3) and ended up in the great fish the LORD had prepared (Jonah 1:17). From inside it he prayed (Jonah 2:1–9), and at the LORD’s word the fish put him out on dry land (Jonah 2:10). The next thing we hear is God speaking to him again, with the errand unchanged.

The Hebrew for “word” is dâbâr, which means a word or speech and can also mean a matter or thing. “The word of the LORD came” is the way the Old Testament tells us that God gave a prophet his message, and here it means a clear, personal word from God to Jonah. The name behind “the LORD” is Yᵉhôvâh, God’s covenant name, the name of the God who keeps faith with his people and his purposes even when his servants fail him. The God who calls Jonah now is the same God, under the same name, who called him the first time.

The command begins as the first one did: “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city” (Jonah 1:2). The first time, God went on, “and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me.” This time he says, “preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.” The sending is the same, and the second half puts the weight on the message, which God himself will supply.

“Arise” is qûwm, the ordinary word for rising or standing up, and “go” is yâlak, to walk or go. Put together, “Arise, go” is a common Hebrew way of telling someone to set out on a task, and here it is a command for now. The prophet who had once fled is told to stand up and walk to the very place he ran from.

“Preach” is qârâʼ, which means to call out, to proclaim or to read aloud. It is the word for a public announcement, made in the open with authority, that expects an answer from those who hear it. The noun “preaching” comes from the same root (qerîʾāh, “the proclamation”), so the Hebrew says, in effect, “proclaim to it the proclamation”. The last words, “that I bid thee”, read literally “that I speak unto thee”. Jonah’s message would be God’s own, and his part was to deliver it whole, adding nothing of his own. Paul asks how anyone can hear without a preacher, and how anyone can preach unless he is sent (Romans 10:14–15). Here God sends the preacher and gives him the words.

Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, on the eastern bank of the Tigris River. Jonah prophesied in the reign of Jeroboam II of Israel (793–753 BC), when Assyria was a formidable power and a constant threat to Israel and Judah. Its armies were known for their cruelty to conquered peoples, with impalement, flaying and mass deportations. For an Israelite prophet, carrying God’s word to such a people was a bitter task, and Jonah 4 shows how deeply he resented God’s mercy to them.

Verse 2 calls Nineveh “that great city”, and verse 3 calls it “an exceeding great city of three days’ journey”. The word for great, gâdôwl, describes something great in size, age, standing or intensity. The phrase in verse 3 reads literally “a great city to God”, a Hebrew way of saying that something is exceedingly great, which is how the KJV renders it. It also reminds us that this city mattered to God. At the end of the book God himself speaks of its many people when he asks Jonah whether he should not spare it (Jonah 4:11).

“Three days’ journey” most likely means the time it took to go through the city, either around its circuit or through its main districts, so that a message could reach all of it. The exact sense is uncertain, and the point is clear enough: Nineveh was one of the largest cities of its day, and God sent one man to proclaim his word through all of it.

God’s purpose in sending him matches what Scripture says of him elsewhere. “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live” (Ezekiel 33:11). He “will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4). His goodness leads people to repentance (Romans 2:4). The greatness of Nineveh measured the size of its sin and the size of God’s compassion, which reached past Israel’s borders to the enemy’s capital.

Verse 3 answers the command point by point. God said “Arise”, and Jonah “arose”, the same verb qûwm. God said “go unto Nineveh”, and Jonah “went unto Nineveh”. He went “according to the word of the LORD”, the same word dâbâr as in verse 1, so his going followed exactly what God had said. The man who once fled from the presence of the LORD (Jonah 1:3) now walks toward the place he refused, a change God had worked through the discipline of the fish. The psalm says that “the steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD” (Psalm 37:23), and Jonah’s steps are ordered now, after his stumble.

His obedience was prompt, and it was also reluctant at heart, as his anger in chapter 4 shows. God used him all the same. His word carries its own authority, and he can bring it to pass through a messenger who is still learning to share his compassion.

“Began” is châlal, which in this form means simply to begin, and it is used of starting any action. Jonah went a day’s journey into the city, well inside it, and there he “cried”, qârâʼ, the same verb as “preach” in verse 2. His warning was given aloud and in public, where many would hear it.

The message is short and stark. “Overthrown” is hâphak, to turn about or turn over, and so to overturn and destroy completely. It is the word used for the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:25), and it set before Nineveh a judgment just as total.

Forty days gave the city a fixed time. In Scripture the number forty often marks a time of testing, probation or judgment: the forty days of rain in the flood (Genesis 7:4), Moses’ forty days on the mount with the LORD (Exodus 34:28), Israel’s forty years in the wilderness (Numbers 14:34), and Jesus’ forty days of fasting before his temptation (Matthew 4:2). For Nineveh the forty days were a set span in which to answer God’s warning before the judgment fell.

Jesus pointed to Jonah when he was asked for a sign: “there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here” (Matthew 12:39–41). The prophet who came up out of the fish and then preached to a great Gentile city points to the risen Christ, whose message goes to every nation. After his resurrection Jesus said that “repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations” (Luke 24:47), and he sent his disciples to be witnesses “unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8) and to teach all nations (Matthew 28:19–20). God’s concern for Nineveh is the same love by which “God so loved the world” (John 3:16).

Jesus himself preached, “repent ye, and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15), and his preaching carried the same urgency as Jonah’s. Paul told the men of Athens that God “now commandeth all men every where to repent: Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world” (Acts 17:30–31). Like the forty days, that appointed day gives time to turn.

The two messengers also differ. Jonah obeyed only after he had fled, and he obeyed with a resentful heart. Christ “humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8). The word of the LORD came to Jonah as a message to carry. In these last days God has spoken to us by his Son (Hebrews 1:1–2), who is himself the Word who was with God, was God, and made all things (John 1:1–3).

These four verses show us a God who keeps his purposes and keeps his servants. Jonah had run, and God came to him a second time with the same errand and the same trust. Nineveh was the cruel capital of Israel’s enemy, and God sent his word there, with a warning that held a door open for forty days. The LORD’s patience with his prophet and his patience with the city are one patience, and both come from his mercy.

We also see the power of his word when it is delivered as he gives it. Jonah’s message was short and he carried it unwillingly, and still it reached a great city, because the authority lay in the word of the LORD. If you have run from what God asked of you, Jonah 3:1 stands as his own record that he speaks again to the one who ran. The same God has now spoken to the whole world by his Son, and the preaching he bids his people carry is still a call to turn to him while there is time.