Jonah 3
1 And there is a word of YHWH to Jonah a second time, saying,
Then the Lord spoke to Jonah for a second time.
2 “Rise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and proclaim to it the proclamation that I am speaking to you”;
“Go immediately to the great city of Nineveh and announce the message I'm giving 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.
Jonah did what God told him. He set out and went to Nineveh, a city that was so big it took three days to walk through it.
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!”
Jonah went into the city, walking for one day, shouting out, “In forty days Nineveh will be destroyed!”
5 And the men of Nineveh believe in God, and proclaim a fast, and put on sackcloth, from their greatest even to their least,
The people of Nineveh believed in God. They announced a fast, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.
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 the news of what was happening reached the king of Nineveh he came down from his throne, took off his robe, put on 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 the king and the nobles issued a proclamation throughout Nineveh: “No person, no animal, no herd, and no flock, shall eat or drink anything.
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.
Every person and every animal is to wear sackcloth. Everyone is to pray sincerely to God, give up the evil things they do, and stop using violence.
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 change his mind and relent. He may decide not to destroy us in his fierce anger.”
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].
God saw what they had done—that they had given up their evil ways—so he changed his mind and did not carry out the destruction he had threatened.
