Jonah 1:2

‘Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness is come up before me.'

YHWH's command was that Jonah should go to Nineveh to proclaim His word there, because He was aware of their ‘wickedness', or alternatively ‘the evil that had come upon them'. In fact both meanings might have been seen as reflected in the word. As well as indicating moral wickedness the word used can also indicate ‘evil' in the sense of ‘afflictions' or ‘natural evils' But Jonah's message to it was to be such (Jonah 3:2; Jonah 3:4) that it is made clear that it was his view that YHWH certainly had their wickedness in mind, even if He was also aware of their misfortunes. As the largest city within the purview of Jonah it would necessarily have been seen with some justification as the home of much villainy and vice, to say nothing of extremities of pleasure, of a kind which both Jonah and YHWH would certainly have frowned on (1 John 2:15). Scripture always sees large cities outside of Israel/Judah as centres of all kinds of evil (which in fact they were) so that Isaiah, for example, portrays the world's sinfulness in terms of ‘a city' (e.g. Isaiah 24:10).

‘That great city' was probably indicating Greater Nineveh which was made up of four large cities seen as forming one. Nimrod was said to have ‘built Nineveh and Rehoboth-Ir, and Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah, the same is the great city' (Genesis 10:11). It was seemingly this conurbation that YHWH is presented as having in mind. It was probably the ruling centre of Assyria (compare how the king of Assyria was known as ‘the Great King').

It should be noted that intrinsic in this command is that Nineveh is responsible to YHWH and can be called into account by Him, and furthermore that its future fate depends on YHWH. He is thus revealed as the God of the whole of creation, as He will now make apparent. This is not a new teaching. It was the message of Genesis 1-11, and was made apparent by God's activities in Egypt, in the wilderness, and in Canaan. It was also made apparent in the activities of Elijah and Elisha.

This opportunity being given to Nineveh and its king in its time of weakness can be seen as God's final attempt to prevent Assyria from going into the excesses of which it will shortly be guilty. Had they listened and responded permanently how different their future might have been. As it was they would finally be destroyed, and that within two hundred years.