Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Jonah · About this commentary
The Second Word
Jonah 3:1-4
1 Yahweh’s word came to Jonah the second time, saying, · WEB
The same command comes a second time, and this time the prophet goes — with the shortest sermon in Scripture.
The opening of chapter three repeats the opening of chapter one almost word for word: the word of Yahweh came to Jonah, arise, go to Nineveh, that great city. The repetition is the mercy. Nothing has been renegotiated and nothing has been explained; the commission is simply offered again to a man who refused it, which is more than the narrative has prepared the reader to expect.
One word has changed. In chapter one Jonah was to cry out against the city; here he is to proclaim to it the message God gives him. It is a small shift and the book does not comment on it, but the second form leaves room for a response the first does not.
The sermon is five words in Hebrew and contains no God, no summons to repent, and no offer of pardon: forty more days, and Nineveh is overturned. The verb is capable of meaning either destruction or a turning-around, and the ambiguity is not resolved here. What the city hears is a deadline. What it does with it is the next scene, and it is not what the deadline led anyone to expect.
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