Jonah 3
1 And there is a word of YHWH to Jonah a second time, saying,
This message from the Lord came to Jonah the second time,
2 “Rise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and proclaim to it the proclamation that I am speaking to you”;
‘Arise, go to that great city, Nineveh, and proclaim to it the message that I tell 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.
So Jonah started for Nineveh, as the Lord commanded. Now Nineveh was so large a city that it took three days’ journey to cross 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 began by going a day’s journey into the city, and he proclaimed, ‘Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown.’
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 people of Nineveh believed God; and they ordered a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them.
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,
And when word came to the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his robe, dressed in 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;
And he made this proclamation and published it in Nineveh: ‘By the decree of the king and his nobles: People, beast, herd, and flock shall not taste anything; let them not eat nor drink water.
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.
Let both people and animals put on sackcloth and let them cry earnestly to God; let them each turn from their evil ways and from the deeds of violence which they are doing.
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 relent and avert his fierce anger, so that we may not die.’
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 that they turned from their evil course, he relented the evil which he said he would do to them, and did not do it.
