Jonah 3:4

Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.

The knell of Nineveh

Sardanapalus puts off his jewelled array, and puts on mourning, and the whole city goes down on its knees, and street cries to street, and temple to temple. A black covering is thrown over the horses, and the sheep, and the cattle. Forage and water are kept from the dumb brutes so that their distressed bellowings may make a dolorous accompaniment to the lamentation of six hundred thousands souls. God heard that cry. He turned aside from the affairs of eternal state, and listened. He said, “Stop! I must go down and save that city. It is repenting, and cries for help).”

I. The precision and punctuality of the Divine arrangement. God knew exactly the day when Nineveh’s lease of mercy should end. He has determined the length of endurance of our sin.

II. Religious warning may seem preposterous. To many still it is more a joke than anything else. Men boast of their health, but I have noticed that it is the invalids who live long. “In such an hour as ye think not, the Son of Man cometh.”

III. God gives every man a fair chance for his life. The iniquity of Nineveh was accumulating. Why did not God unsheath some sword of lightning from the scabbard of a storm-cloud and slay it? It was because He wanted to give the city a fair chance. And God is giving us a fair chance for safety, a better chance than He gave to Nineveh.

IV. When the people repent, God lets them off. While Nineveh was on its knees, God reversed the judgment. When a sinner repents (in one sense) God repents (in another). Then repent, give up your sin and turn to God, and you will be saved. (T. De Witt Talmage, D. D.)

God has many preachers

God has many preachers that are not in human flesh. For instance, fever is a terrible Elijah. When the cholera came to London it was a Jonah in our streets. Many then began to think who would have gone blindfold down to perdition. When poverty visits some men’s houses, and they can no longer indulge in drunkenness and gluttony, then they bethink themselves of their Father’s house, and the hired servants who have bread enough and to spare. Omnipotence has servants everywhere; God can make use of even the ills of life to work eternal good.

A warning cry in the city

It was a great and wonderful thing that was wrought that day when Jonah “began to enter into the city.” The great capital was suddenly startled by a voice of warning in her streets. A strange, wild man, clothed in a rough garment of skin, moved from place to place, and announced to the inhabitants their coming doom. Had the cry fallen on them in their prosperous time, it would probably have been heard with apathy and ridicule. But coming as it did when their glory had declined; when their enemies, having been allowed a breathing space, had taken courage, and were acting on the offensive in many quarters, it struck them with fear and consternation. It was a single day, apparently, that was marked by such wonders in the city of Nineveh. The prophet’s “one day’s journey” is supposed to have carried him about nineteen miles. The repentance of the men of Nineveh prolonged, in God’s mercy and providence, the continuance of their city for more than a hundred years. (Archdeacon Harrison.)

Divine threatenings

I. Divine threats are conditional It is with them in this respect as it is with the promises recorded in the Scriptures. The appropriate condition is implied, whether it is mentioned or not, in all the promises, and in all the threats which are recorded in the Scriptures as coming from God.

II. Divine threats are merciful. The threat fulminated against Nineveh was the means of bringing the Ninevites to repentance, and saving their city from destruction, as it was intended to be. It is the preacher’s consolation that the Divine threats are always merciful. Observe also the suitableness of Jonah’s preaching. It might be said, was not Jonah’s preaching quite as likely to amuse or annoy the Ninevites as to effect a reformation on their part? They were certainly more likely to be annoyed than amused. If not mobbed and molested in the streets, the magistrate might be expected to deal with him as a disturber of the peace. But nothing of this kind occurred.

1. Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites of Jehovah’s power.

2. Of Jehovah’s justice.

3. Of Jehovah’s mercy.

Observe, too, how the preaching of Jonah was supplemented in Nineveh. The manner in which this royal proclamation was produced deserves consideration. It was not produced by the king alone, but by the king and his nobles. The drift of the proclamation may be regarded as either imperative or hortatory. It counselled the people to fast, to cover them selves with sackcloth, to pray, to reform their manner of life, to associate the very brutes with their appeal to God. Observe, the reason which the proclamation gives for acting as it counsels is couched in very plaintive terms. “Who can tell? “ etc. This was language equally removed from despair and presumption. (S. C. Burn.)

The repentance of Nineveh

“The great city rises before us, most magnificent of all the capitals of the ancient world--‘great even unto God’ It included parks, and gardens, and fields, and people, and cattle within its vast circumference. Twenty miles the prophet penetrates into the city. He has still finished only one-third of his journey through it. His utterance, like that of the wild preacher in the last days of the siege of Jerusalem by Titus, is one piercing cry, from street to street, from square to square. It reaches at last the king on his throne of state. The remorse for the wrong and robbery and violence of many generations is awakened. The dumb animals are included, after the fashion of the East, in the universal mourning, and the Divine decree is revoked.”

I. The penitent prophet. Recall the indications of his penitence given in his prayer (chap. 2.). And note the signs in his obedient attitude, and his readiness at once to do God’s commands. Truly penitent people give up their own wilfulness, and cheerfully submit and obey. If we have not this spirit we may be quite sure that our penitence has neither been sincere nor thorough. Picture the prophet setting to his work.

II. The penitent city. Note the signs of earnestness and sincerity. All classes joined in the penitent acts. They united in prayer. They put away their sins. The king showed the good example. What a picture! A whole people prostrate before the God of judgment!

III. God’s relation to both. Long-suffering to both. Forgiving to both. A prayer-hearer to both. Describe--How very strange it was that Jonah, though himself a forgiven man, was offended with God for making Nineveh a forgiven city. Our own sense of God’s mercy in forgiving us, ought to make us very hopeful about others, and very thankful when we find that God’s grace reaches also to them. There is joy among the angels over one penitent, and we should share their joy. (Robert Tuck, B. A.)

The excitement produced by Eastern prophets

Orientals are still impressed, more or less readily, by the appearance of “holy men,” such as their own dervishes, whose enthusiasm, in some cases, where high sincerity inspires them, is much like that which marks a true prophet in all ages. The name “dervish,” Dr. Wolff tells us, means “one who hangs at the gate of God,” awaiting His inspiration; and the ecstasy of some of the class may be compared to that of which we read, for example, of Micah, who, we are told, went about “ stripped and naked, and howled like the jackals, and roared like the ostrich.” I do not suppose that Jonah bore himself thus, but the fact that such appearances as those of Micah were familiar over all Asia must have opened the way for his influence in Nineveh. We may suppose him showing himself in such a garb as that of Elijah, or others of the prophets,--his hair streaming down his shoulders, his outer dress a rude sheepskin mantle. He may have arrived in the disastrous time after the death of Shalmaneser II., when the nations conquered by that great monarch, from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean, were, in most cases, in rebellion, and troubles oppressed the Nineveh palaces. Wandering over the open spaces, with their mansions and huts, and through the lanes and bazaars of each part of the city, he terrified the crowd by a piercing, monotonous wail, in a dialect which, though intelligible in a short sentence on the Tigris, must have sounded barbarous and uncouth,--“Yet forty days, an Nineveh shall be overthrown.” His appearance proclaimed him a “holy man,” and he might have been sent, in these dark times, by the gods. (Cunningham Geikie, D. D.)