Charles Ellicott Commentary Jonah 3

ITS RESULT.

Preach. — In Jonah 1:2 the word is rendered “cry.”

Now Nineveh was...—The past tense here certainly seems to imply that at the time when the author wrote, the city was no longer in existence, but the force of a Hebrew tense should not be estimated by the analogy of modern languages.

An exceeding great city.—Literally, A city great to God; an expression equivalent to a divinely great city, and taken, as Ewald thinks, from the language of the people, like the Arabic “to Allah,” in the saying “to Allah (i.e., divine) is he who composed this.” In the Hebrew poetic and prophetic writings a finer form is found, e.g., “mountains of God,” “cedars of God” (Psalms 36:6; Psalms 80:10), “trees of Jehovah” (Psalms 104:16), but in Genesis 10:9 a precisely similar proverbial use is found, also belonging to the Mesopotamian region, Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the Lord.

Of three days’ journey.—Hitzig takes this as giving the diameter of the city, but most commentators refer it to the circumference. The circuit of the walls was the most obvious measurement to give of an ancient city. Herodotus variously reckons a day’s journey at about eighteen or twenty-three miles (v. 53, iv. 101), and the circuit of the irregular quadrangle composed of the mounds of Koujunjik, Nimrud, Karamless, and Khorsabad, now generally accepted to represent ancient Nineveh, is about sixty miles. This agrees sufficiently with the obviously vague and general statement of the text.

And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey. —This is apparently equivalent to And Jonah entered the city, and walked for a day through it. To undertake a minute inquiry about whether his course was straight or circuitous seems trivial. The writer has no intention of providing data for determining the exact dimensions of Nineveh, but only to produce a general sense of its vast size.

Yet forty days. —The conciseness of the original, Yet forty days, and Nineveh overthrown, forcibly expresses “the one deep cry of woe” which the prophet was commissioned to utter. This simple message of Jonah is analogous to what we find elsewhere in Holy Scripture. The great preacher of repentance, St. John the Baptist, undoubtedly often repeated that one cry, Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Our Lord graciously chose to begin His own ministry with those very same words.

And probably, among the civilized but savage inhabitants of Nineveh, that one cry was more impressive than any other would have been. Simplicity is always impressive. They were four words which God caused to be written on the wall amid Belshazzar’s impious revelry: Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin.

We all remember the touching history of Jesus, son of Anan, an unlettered rustic, who, “four years before the war, when Jerusalem was in complete peace and affluence,” burst in on the people at the Feast of Tabernacles with the often-repeated cry: “A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice on Jerusalem and the Temple, a voice on the bridegrooms and the brides, a voice on the whole people;”

He went about through all the lanes of the city, repeating, day and night, this one cry. When scourged until his bones were laid bare, he echoed every lash with “Woe, woe, to Jerusalem!” and continued as his daily dirge and his one response to daily good or ill treatment, “Woe, woe, to Jerusalem!” (Pusey.)

Instead of “forty days,” the Septuagint read “three.”

Believed God. —Or, believed in God. Notice again an implied contrast to the dullness of the Jews, who were “slow to believe” the prophetic warnings addressed to themselves.

Proclaimed a fast. —Apparently on a spontaneous resolution of the people themselves. (See Note to Jonah 3:6.) The fast would no doubt be for one day, according to the Jewish and the general Eastern custom.

For word came. —Rather, And the matter reached. The Authorized Version treats the royal edict that follows as the same with the proclamation in Jonah 3:5. This is possible, but it is more probable that the writer intended to describe the effect produced on each district of the vast city in succession, and on all grades of people. The piercing cry, uttered from street to street, from square to square, reaches at last the king on his throne of state.

And he laid ...—Stripping off the state mantle, the monarch assumed a mourning dress. The Hebrew word for this mantle implies amplitude; see 1 Kings 19:13. It is also interesting that this word is used for the “Babylonish garment” found in Achan’s tent; see Joshua 7:21. To form a conception of the change involved, the descriptions of Assyrian royal magnificence should be studied in Layard, or their representations in the Assyrian courts of the Crystal Palace. For the usual signs of Oriental mourning, compare Genesis 37:34; 2 Samuel 3:31; Job 2:8; Psalms 35:13; Ezekiel 26:16, etc.