Jonah 3–4

JONAH’S PREACHING

3The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time:^{l 2}“Get up! Go to the great city of Nineveh^m and preachⁿ the message that I tell you.” ³Jonah got up and went to Nineveh according to the Lord’s command.

Now Nineveh was an extremely great city,^Fo a three-day walk. ⁴Jonah set out on the first day of his walk in the city and proclaimed,^p “In forty days Nineveh will be demolished!” ⁵Then the people of Nineveh believed God. They proclaimed a fast^q and dressed in sackcloth—from the greatest of them to the least.

⁶When word reached the king of Nineveh, he got up from his throne, took off his royal robe, covered himself with sackcloth,^r and sat in ashes. ⁷Then he issued a decree^s in Nineveh:

By order of the king and his nobles: No person or animal, herd or flock, is to taste anything at all. They must not eat or drink water. ⁸Furthermore, both people and animals must be covered with sackcloth, and everyone must call out earnestly to God.^t Each must turn from his evil ways^u and from his wrongdoing.^{G 9}Who knows?^v God may turn and relent; he may turn from his burning anger so that we will not perish.^w

¹⁰God saw their actions—that they had turned from their evil ways^x—so God relented from the disaster^y he had threatened them with. And he did not do it.

JONAH’S ANGER

4Jonah was greatly displeased and became furious.^{z 2}He prayed to the Lord,^aa “Please, Lord, isn’t this what I said while I was still in my own country? That’s why I fled toward Tarshish in the first place.^ab I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God,^ac slow to anger, abounding in faithful love, and one who relents from sending disaster.^{ad 3}And now, Lord, take my life from me,^ae for it is better for me to die than to live.”^af

⁴The Lord asked, “Is it right for you to be angry?”

⁵Jonah left the city and found a place east of it.^ag He made himself a shelter there and sat in its shade to see what would happen to the city. ⁶Then the Lord God appointed a plant, and it grew over Jonah to provide shade for his head to rescue him from his trouble.^A Jonah was greatly pleased with the plant. ⁷When dawn came the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, and it withered.^ah

⁸As the sun was rising, God appointed a scorching east wind.^ai The sun beat down on Jonah’s head^aj so much that he almost fainted, and he wanted to die. He said, “It’s better for me to die than to live.”^ak

⁹Then God asked Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?”

“Yes, it’s right!” he replied. “I’m angry enough to die!”

¹⁰And the Lord said, “You cared about the plant, which you did not labor over and did not grow. It appeared in a night and perished in a night. ¹¹So may I not care about the great city of Nineveh,^al which has more than a hundred twenty thousand people who cannot distinguish between their right and their left,^am as well as many animals?”^an