by Ptr. Art Calaguas
Shalom.
In the past 2 chapters we have seen the prophet make 2 great confessions about the LORD. First, he feared/revered “the God of Heaven who made the sea and dry land.” Jonah understood that the LORD caused the storm at sea to punish his disobedience and resulted in him being thrown overboard as the sailors did what he asked them to do to stop the tempest. Second, God had mercy on him and saved him from the deep, from Sheol. In fact, God had saved the mariners and their ship from the sea first, and subsequently had also saved Jonah from the sea. Indeed salvation belongs to the LORD. And the Hebrew word for salvation (“yeshuah”) is the basis of the Hebrew name of our Lord Jesus (“Yeshua”). It certainly makes us look again at the fact that when asked for a sign by the Jewish authorities, the Lord said no sign shall be given except for the sign of Jonah (Matthew 12:39-40/Luke 11:29-30). From what we have discovered so far, one may ask if there was another layer of meaning intended in the Lord’s answer.
Chapter 2 of the Book of Jonah ends with the punished prophet shown mercy by God and vomited back on the shore, perhaps near Joppa. Chapter 3 now has the LORD commissioning Jonah a 2nd time with the first 7 Hebrew words of the Masoretic Text (MT) version of Jonah 3:2 exactly the same as in Jonah 1:2 as shown below (read left to right; followed by my formal translation):
…ק֠וּם לֵ֧ךְ אֶל־נִֽינְוֵ֛ה הָעִ֥יר הַגְּדֹולָ֖ה וּקְרָ֣א (Jonah 1:2)
…ק֛וּם לֵ֥ךְ אֶל־נִֽינְוֵ֖ה הָעִ֣יר הַגְּדֹולָ֑ה וִּקְרָ֤א (Jonah 3:2)
Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city and cry out…
In Jonah 1:2 the reason for Jonah to cry out against the great city of Nineveh was given: its evil has come up before the LORD. In Jonah 3:2 the prophet is instructed to cry out the proclamation given by the LORD to him. Further details of the message are not given but it can be presumed to be the same as before.
The narrative in Chapter 3 now focuses on Jonah’s proclamation to Nineveh and the reaction of its people to God’s message. There will be no more mention of the sea monster found in Jonah 1:17; 2.1 and 2:10. It had done its part. But other agents will be appointed by the LORD for didactic purposes as we shall see later in Chapter 4.
The disobedient Jonah who ran away from his prophetic calling and specific mission now obeys and heads east for Nineveh in Mesopotamia. It is about 880 km. away from Joppa. At around 40 km./day caravan walking pace, commentators reckon Jonah would take more than 22 days (as he would stop for the Sabbaths) to reach his destination. Nineveh’s environs were described as quite extensive (literally “a large city to God” in the Hebrew) and would take 3 days to journey around and within it. Jonah 3:4 narrates that when Jonah began to enter the city on his first day, he cried out (followed by my formal translation):
עֹ֚וד אַרְבָּעִ֣ים יֹ֔ום וְנִֽינְוֵ֖ה נֶהְפָּֽכֶת׃ …
… yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown.
However, the Greek Septuagint (LXX) renders Jonah 3:4 this way (followed by my formal translation):
… Ἔτι τρεῖς ἡμέραι καὶ Νινευὴ καταστραφήσεται.
… yet three days and Nineveh will be overthrown.
The obvious difference is highlighted above: the Hebrew MT has forty days in the proclamation while the Greek LXX only has three days before God destroys the city. Scholars are unsure how this happened. It may be that the LXX translators used a different, no longer extant Hebrew text. Nevertheless, the message to Nineveh was of divine judgment. The number of days remaining was a minor detail; the city’s destruction was imminent.
Both the underlying Hebrew (הָפַךְ “haphak”) and Greek (καταστρέφω “katastrepho”) words translated as “overthrown” can also be rendered as “turned,” “overturned,” “inverted,” “upset,” “thrown down,” even “changed” or “transformed.” One can even recognize the English word “catastrophe” from the Greek. But reading through to the end of this chapter may make one choose a different, but appropriate alternative word to “overthrown.”
Verses 5-9 say that the Ninevites immediately believed God’s warning, called for a fast and from the greatest to the least of the populace, put on sackcloth as if in mourning. Some commentaries suggest that Nineveh may have had earlier other omens and divinations that corroborated the judgment pronouncement of Jonah, leading them to believe this foreign prophet was telling the truth about their impending doom.
The swift reaction of the people (not to mention the presence of a prophet in their midst) reached the king of Nineveh and so he himself removed his (royal) robe, covered himself with sackcloth and sat on ashes. Prophets are taken quite seriously by kings and ordinary people in the ancient Near East (ANE). Adding to these things, the king and his nobles decreed that both men and animals in Nineveh would fast; taking neither food nor water. Both men and animals would even be covered with sackcloth! They would all mightily cry out to God (אֱלהִים “elohim”) and turn from each one’s evil and violent way. They asked themselves who can tell if God will turn back and relent and turn away from his fierce anger so that they will not perish.
Scholars say that pagan Ninevites covering even their animals in sackcloth and having them fast together with people was atypical for Assyrians and Babylonians. But they cite ancient Greek historian Herodotus saying the Persians did this in their mourning. In the Deuterocanonical/Apocryphal Book of Judith 4:10 livestock are mentioned as also being covered with sackcloth as the Jews prayed when the Assyrian general Holofernes threatened Judah with destruction.
Jonah 3:10 narrates that God saw what they did, that the Ninevites turned from their wicked way(s); God relented from the disaster he threatened to bring upon them (similar to Sodom and Gomorrah?) and held back.
What Nineveh did was parallel to what the sailors did in chapter 1. They were still polytheist pagans who did not abandon their other gods. They may not have converted to become monotheists, let alone Jewish proselytes, but they seemed to be contrite, penitent, humble, and had enough good sense to pray to the God of Israel for their forgiveness and the stay of divine judgment.
Note that Matthew 12:41 and Luke 11:32 speak of the repentance of Nineveh due to the preaching of Jonah. The pagans’ actions are in contrast with the unbelieving Jews when the Lord Jesus was with them. And he is definitely much greater than Jonah.
[In today’s on-going conflict in the Middle East, can we ever hope that the terrorist perpetrators of the gruesome civilian deaths in the kibbutzim (villages) of Israel would repent like the Ninevites?]
Jonah did not expect the wonderful reaction of the Ninevites. But under any kind of metric, the prophet Jonah’s preaching was definitely effective and tremendously successful. It caused all in Nineveh to repent and pray to the true God for mercy! So we can understand why the commentaries remark that Jonah was extraordinarily more successful than Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel or any other prophet during their respective ministries.
One would then expect the prophet Jonah to be exceedingly joyful for this miraculous turn of events. But was he?
We will continue after the holiday break.
God bless us all.