Jonah 3

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Jonah 3:1 And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time, saying,

• Will Jonah listen to God this time?

2 Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.

• Act 2 = The Holy Spirit came to the disciples

3 So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days' journey.

4 And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.

• Forty days means: probation, probation of trial, related to a period of evident probation. Divine order applied to earthly things.

5 So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.

• The people of Nineveh believed God
• From the king on down, proclaimed a fast
• People = men = enosh = heathen
• Believed = Hebrew A man

6 For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.

• Proclaimed a fast = Professor Rawlings has shown just at this time Nineveh was in a time of trouble, and Assyrian history was "shrouded in darkness for forty years".
• Hope was given to all the neighbouring countries which were asserting their independence.
• This explains the readiness of Nineveh to hearken and obey, as was done on another occasion when the prophet of Nineveh declared it needful.
• The Higher Criticism and the Monuments, by the Persians in a national trouble; in Greece, a fast which included cattle and by Alexander the Great.
• This decline of Nineveh gave hope to Israel: which hope had been encouraged by the prophet Jonah himself.
• Jonah 3:4 And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
• 2 Kings 14:25 He restored the coast of Israel from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the plain, according to the word of the Lord God of Israel, which he spake by the hand of his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, which was of Gath-hepher.
  26 For the Lord saw the affliction of Israel, that it was very bitter: for there was not any shut up, nor any left, nor any helper for Israel.
  27 And the Lord said not that he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven: but he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam the son of Joash.
• This may have been the reason for Jonah's not wishing to avert the overthrow of Nineveh, by giving it the opportunity to repent and thus secure God favour.
• Joel 2:14 Who knoweth if he will return and repent, and leave a blessing behind him; even a meat offering and a drink offering unto the LORD your God?

7 And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water:

• This was a whole nation and the animals he was talking to = let them not feed, nor drink water
• Nobles = great ones

8 But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.

• Jonah was preaching to the people. Let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.

9 Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?

• Jonah, for one, thought God might do so. Hence his reluctance to give Nineveh the opportunity to repent.

10 And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.

• The Assyrians repented from their evil ways

• Exactly 2520 years from the exile of Benjamin, Iceland became an independent nation.

 

•  The first tribe to be conquered by the Assyrians was Manasseh, in 745 B.C. Exactly 2520 years later America became a nation on July 4, 1776.

 

• Study the book: Abrahamic Covenant, (A study outline of the identity of God's people) By E. Raymond Capt - page 25