The Book Of Jonah. Day 6, Repentance In Nineveh, Part One

In Chapter 1 the Lord commanded the prophet Jonah to go to the Assyrian capital city of Nineveh to preach against the sins of the heathens there. He refused, instead boarding a ship going in the opposite direction. The Lord sent a violent storm upon the sea until Jonah admitted to the Gentile sailors that he had disobeyed God and that their only hope was to cast him into the sea. They eventually did so, albeit very reluctantly, and called upon the God of Israel to forgive them. The Lord immediately calmed the sea and the men on the ship worshiped Him, sacrificed to Him, and made vows to Him. Meanwhile, Jonah was swallowed by a large fish. From the inside of this fish (or perhaps from the realm of the dead as we discussed earlier in our study of the book) he cried out to the Lord for mercy and repented of rebelling against him. When Jonah repented, the Lord commanded the fish to expel him onto the dry land, alive and well.

Now Jonah is in a frame of mind the Lord can work with! He issues the same commission to the prophet again and this time Jonah obeys. "Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: 'Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.'" (Jonah 3:1) We previously talked about Jonah's reasons for not wanting to go to Nineveh. One of those reasons was likely prejudice in his heart toward Gentiles, for he was a prophet of Israel---a nation founded upon the word of God---and probably considered it beneath him to go outside of Israel to preach to pagan idolaters. However, having just completed our study of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah, we know that by this point in history the people of Israel were quite idolatrous themselves. The preaching of Jonah and of Elijah and of Elisha and a number of other prophets did not prevent the majority of the populace from falling away from the Lord. This falling away from the Lord is what eventually caused the fall of the kingdom. Jonah's preaching, which may have had little to no effect on his fellow citizens, is going to be extremely effective on the citizens of Nineveh. 

I do not think he expected to be effective at Nineveh. I think he thought it would be a waste of time. Perhaps he said to himself, "If my own people are not listening to my message, why would these pagans listen to me? If the nation founded by the Lord does not repent at my preaching, who would these godless heathens repent?" But just as the Gentiles of the Apostle Paul's day were more interested in the gospel message than were his own fellow citizens, the Gentiles of Jonah's day in the city of Nineveh are going to listen to him and take his words to heart. 

Jonah could not have known how the Ninevites would react but his duty was to go where the Lord sent him. It's true that the Lord sends His word to people He knows will listen and to people He knows will not listen; He is holy and righteous and offers salvation to everyone. No one who has heard His word can stand at His judgment seat someday and claim they were never given an opportunity to repent. I think that Jonah has experienced his preaching being rejected a number of times in his own nation and that he expects to have it rejected by the people of Nineveh. But that's no excuse for refusing to do the work the Lord has called him to do. To his surprise, what is probably the greatest revival of his entire ministry breaks out in Nineveh. 

"Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go through it. Jonah began by going a day's journey into the city, proclaiming, 'Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.' The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth." (Jonah 3:3-5) Nineveh is believed to have been the largest city on earth at that time. Archaeological excavations have shown it to have been somewhere between fifty and sixty miles around the outer edge of the city limits. It was so large that the Bible states that it took three whole days for Jonah to make his way through and to preach within the hearing of every citizen inside the city limits. 

During the days of Jonah's ministry, the Assyrian Empire was the most powerful empire of the ancient world. The once-magnificent Egyptian Empire was on the decline. The original Babylonian Empire had been conquered by the Assyrians; the Neo-Babylonian Empire had not yet arisen to throw off the shackles of Assyria. The northern kingdom of Israel was on the decline politically and militarily because of its spiritual decline. Yet in spite of its power and prominence, the Lord states that Nineveh will be destroyed within forty days if the people do not repent, and it's important to note that in the original Hebrew the word translated into English as "overthrown" is the same Hebrew word that was used for the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. No nation on earth at the time was capable of destroying Nineveh but the Lord doesn't have to use any other nation to bring this city down. He can rain fire and brimstone down from the skies to destroy it just as He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.

The people who hear the warning of the Lord through Jonah clearly understand the type of fate that will soon befall them if they don't repent. They know it's a fate that will come directly from the God they have rejected. Jonah's three days in the belly of the whale causes him to preach for three days as he has never preached before---with a conviction and a passion he's never felt before---and the people can see the truth on his face and hear the truth in his words. The God who didn't hold back from placing this rebellious man in the belly of a fish won't hold back from burning this sinful city and everyone and everything in it to the ground. 

In tomorrow's passage we will study the second half of Chapter 3 dealing with the repentance of these people. Even the king of Assyria, who is the most powerful and wealthy king on earth in those days, bows his knees to the King of kings and Lord of lords.