Jonah 3:8

and cry mightily These words are to be restricted to "man." They do not include, as some have thought (comparing Joel 1:18; Joel 1:20), "beast" as well. The addition "mightily" favours the restriction, and so also does the exact order of the Hebrew: "Let them be clothed with sackcloth, man and beast (the parenthesis is inserted here as qualifying what precedes only), and let them cry … and let them turn," &c.

let them turn The prominence of the moral element in the repentance of heathen Nineveh is very striking. Complete as was the outward act of humiliation, the king's decree implies that it would be worthless without a corresponding moral reformation. The tenth verse tells us that it was to this that God had respect, "He saw their works, that they turned from their evil way," and the heathen king seems clearly to have understood that it would be so. Here again, the favourable light in which these heathen show, in comparison with the chosen people, is most marked. Frequent and indignant is the remonstrance of the Hebrew prophets against the attempt of their countrymen to gain the favour or avert the displeasure of Almighty God by fasting and sackcloth, while the heart remained unchanged and the life unrenewed. "Is it such a fast that I have chosen?" is God's own indignant question to His people by the prophet Isaiah (ch. 58).

the violence that is in their hands "Violence" was their chief sin, as all we learn of the Assyrians, both from sacred and secular history, shows. Comp. Nahum 2:11-12; Nahum 3:1, and Isaiah 10:13-14. The form of expression, in their hands, the hand being the instrument of violence, is the same as in Psalms 7:3 (Hebrews 4), and elsewhere.