Jonah 3:5-6

So the people of Nineveh believed God, &c. “The fame,” says Lowth, “of the wonderful works God had wrought for the Jews, was spread over the eastern parts of the world. This might make the Ninevites hearken to a man of that nation, that came to them as sent by God. And it is likely that he gave them an account of the miraculous circumstances which attended his own mission. But, without question, a sense of their own guilt, and their deserving whatever punishment Heaven could inflict, was a principal reason that moved them to have a regard to this message. And by the men of Nineveh's repenting at the preaching of Jonah, God designed to upbraid the stubbornness of his own people, and shame them, as it were, into repentance; lest the men of Nineveh should rise up in judgment against them, as our Saviour speaks of the Jews in his own time, Matthew 12:41.” And proclaimed a fast The king and his nobles, or those in authority, ordered that every one should fast for three days, and put on habits of sorrow and humiliation. For word came unto the king of Nineveh Archbishop Usher, in his Annals ad A.M. 3233, supposes this prince to have been Pul, the king of Assyria, (Nineveh being then the capital city of that empire,) who afterward invaded the kingdom of Israel, in the days of Menahem, 2 Kings 15:19: it being very agreeable to the methods of Providence to make use of a heathen king, that was penitent, to punish the impenitence of God's own people Israel. And he arose from his throne, &c. He laid aside all his state, and put on the habit of a penitent.