Jonah 3
1 And there is a word of YHWH to Jonah a second time, saying,
Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time:
2 “Rise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and proclaim to it the proclamation that I am speaking to you”;
“Get up! Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message that I give you.”
3 and Jonah rises, and he goes to Nineveh, according to the word of YHWH. And Nineveh has been a great city before God, a journey of three days.
This time Jonah got up and went to Nineveh, in accordance with the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, requiring a three-day journey.
4 And Jonah begins to go into the city—a journey of one day—and proclaims and says, “Yet forty days and Nineveh is overturned!”
On the first day of his journey, Jonah set out into the city and proclaimed, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned!”
5 And the men of Nineveh believe in God, and proclaim a fast, and put on sackcloth, from their greatest even to their least,
And the Ninevites believed God. They proclaimed a fast and dressed in sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least.
6 seeing the word comes to the king of Nineveh, and he rises from his throne, and removes his honorable robe from off him, and spreads out sackcloth, and sits on the ashes,
When word reached the king of Nineveh, he got up from his throne, took off his royal robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.
7 and he cries and says in Nineveh by a decree of the king and his great ones, saying, “Man and beast, herd and flock—do not let them taste anything, do not let them feed, do not even let them drink water;
Then he issued a proclamation in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Let no man or beast, herd or flock, taste anything at all. They must not eat or drink.
8 and let man and beast cover themselves [with] sackcloth, and let them call to God mightily, and let them each turn back from his evil way, and from the violence that [is] in their hands.
Furthermore, let both man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and have everyone call out earnestly to God. Let each one turn from his evil ways and from the violence in his hands.
9 Who knows? He turns back, and God has relented, and has turned back from the heat of His anger, and we do not perish.”
Who knows? God may turn and relent; He may turn from His fierce anger, so that we will not perish.”
10 And God sees their works, that they have turned back from their evil way, and God relents of the evil that He spoke of doing to them, and He has not done [it].
When God saw their actions—that they had turned from their evil ways—He relented from the disaster He had threatened to bring upon them.
