Jonah 3:4

And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey,.... As soon as he came to it, he did not go into an inn, to refresh himself after his wearisome journey; or spend his time in gazing upon the

And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.

The former verse gives us intelligence of Jonah’ s arrival at Nineveh; now, so soon as come, he preacheth. Jonah began to enter into the city a day’ s journey, and he cried, and said; to walk through and to preach the dreadful threats of God against Nineveh, and he proclaimed openly and plainly what God commanded; he feared not to tell all what concerned all; he did it with earnestness, as deeply affected with what he spake from God against this mighty city. Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown; a very short time, some might think, for this great city; but it is more time than God was bound to give, or than they could deserve, or than God gave to Sodom and Gomorrah, the sins of which cities were no doubt found in Nineveh now Jonah preached, and grew ripe by that time Nahum came to foretell their ruin; see Nahum. The threat is express and peremptory in its form and words; though there be a reserve with God on condition of repentance, which operated in due time, and manifestly proved that God intended mercy to repenting Nineveh, though he threatened an overthrow to impenitent Nineveh. How it should be overthrown is not expressed; some conjecture by a foreign enemy, which carrieth unlikelihood with it; others guess by fire from heaven: but since it was not destroyed we need not inquire how it should have been, and had they not repented the event would have informed us fully.

Jonah 3:4 And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’ s journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.Ver. 4. And Jonah began to enter into the city] Having seen God he now fears no colours, dreads no danger; as neither did Moses, Micaiah, Isaiah, Isaiah 6:9-12, Paul, Acts 21:13, Luther going to Worms. "Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men," 2 Corinthians 5:11, we forewarn them to flee from the wrath to come, Matthew 3:7, we pull them out of the fire of hell, as firebrands, Judges 1:23. A day’ s journey] One of the three days, Jonah 3:3. Not all the three in one day, for haste, as Jerome would have it. And he cried, and said] Not fearfully muttering his message, but delivering it with a courage, Boanerges-like, able almost to make his hearers’ hearts fall down and hairs stand upright, as one saith of Master Perkins. Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown] The word properly noteth a sudden, inevitable, and perpetual destruction, such as was that of Sodom and her sisters, Genesis 19:25 Jeremiah 20:16 Isaiah 13:19 Amos 4:11. Now we must not think that Jonah said no more than is here set down; that he expressed no condition, such as was that, Revelation 2:5, "except ye repent"; or that like a madman he ran up and down the city (as one did once about Jerusalem, and another lately about London), repeating and thundering out these words only, inconditis et ineptis clamoribus, with harsh and hoarse outcries. God therefore threateneth that he may not punish, and all his threats are conditional, Jeremiah 18:8, if they repent, he will also. This, if Jonah expressed not, yet the Ninevites understood; for else they would never have repented, but despaired (as Judas with his poenitentia Iscariotica), and defied Jonah as an evil messenger sent against them. They might well enough think that if God had not meant them mercy he would never have forewarned them, never have given them forty days’ respite: the Septuagint cannot be refused for rendering it three days’ (though some have attempted it). It is probable that Jonah omitted nothing that pertained to the preaching of repentance, though here we have it set down in some only. The Hebrews tell us that the mariners also went to Nineveh; and, telling what had befallen Jonah at sea, confirmed his doctrine and sentence against the Ninevites, who thereupon repented. But these, as they affirm without reason, so they may be dismissed without refutation.

(4) And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey.—This is apparently equivalent to And Jonah entered the city, and walked for a day through it. To enter on a minute inquiry as to whether his course was straight or circuitous seems trivial. The writer has no thought of furnishing data for ascertaining the exact dimensions of Nineveh, but only of producing a general sense of its vast size. Yet forty days.—The conciseness of the original, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh overthrown,” forcibly expresses “the one deep cry of woe” which the prophet was commissioned to utter. “This simple message of Jonah bears an analogy to what we find elsewhere in Holy Scripture. The great preacher of repentance, St. John the Baptist, repeated doubtless oftentimes that one cry, “Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Our Lord vouchsafed to begin His own office with those self-same words. And probably, among the civilised but savage inhabitants of Nineveh that one cry was more impressive than any other would have been, Simplicity is always impressive. They were four words which God caused to be written on the wall amid Belshazzar’s impious revelry: Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin. We all remember the touching history of Jesus, son of Anan, an unlettered rustic, who, “four years before the war, when Jerusalem was in complete peace and affluence,” burst in on the people at the Feast of Tabernacles with the oft-repeated cry, “A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice on Jerusalem and the Temple, a voice on the bridegrooms and the brides, a voice on the whole people;” how he went about through all the lanes of the city, repeating, day and night, this one cry, and when scourged till his bones were laid bare, echoed every lash with “Woe, woe, to Jerusalem!” and continued as his daily dirge and his one response to daily good or ill treatment, “Woe, woe, to Jerusalem!” (Pusey.) Instead of “forty days” the LXX. read “three.”

Verse 4. Yet forty days] Both the Septuagint and Arabic read three days. Probably some early copyist of the Septuagint, from whom our modern editions are derived, mistook the Greek numerals μ forty for γ three; or put the three days' journey in preaching instead of the forty days mentioned in the denunciation. One of Kennicott's MSS., instead of ארבעים arbaim, forty, has שלשים sheloshim, thirty: but the Hebrew text is undoubtedly the true reading; and it is followed by all the ancient versions, the Septuagint and Vulgate excepted. thus God gives them time to think, reflect, take counsel, and return to him. Had they only three days' space, the denunciation would have so completely confounded them, as to excite nothing but terror, and prevent repentance and conversion.

4. And Jonah began to enter into the city] Calvin well brings out the moral grandeur of the scene which this verse so simply and briefly describes; the promptitude of Jonah’s action, in entering without delay or hesitation or enquiry, immediately, as it would seem, upon his reaching the city, upon his difficult and dangerous task; his boldness, as a helpless and unprotected stranger, in standing in the heart of “the bloody city,” and denouncing destruction upon it. It was, indeed, to “beard the lion in his den” to adventure himself on such an errand into “the dwelling of the lions and the feeding place of the young lions, where the lion, even the old lion, walked, and the lion’s whelp, and none made them afraid.” (Nahum 2:11.) a day’s journey] “He began to perambulate the city, going hither and thither, as far as was possible, in the first day.” (Maurer.) And as he went he cried. In him was personified the description of the wise King of Israel: “Wisdom crieth without; She uttereth her voice in the streets: She crieth in the chief place of concourse, in the openings of the gates: In the city she uttereth her words, Saying, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Turn ye at my reproof.” Proverbs 1:20-23. Some have supposed that, as a day’s journey would suffice to traverse from one side to the other a city, of which the dimensions were such as have been assigned (Jonah 3:3) to Nineveh, and as, moreover, Jonah is found afterwards (Jonah 4:5) on the east side of Nineveh (i. e. the opposite side to that on which he would have entered it in coming from Palestine), we are intended here to understand that he walked quite through the city in a single day, uttering continually as he went “his one deep cry of woe.” The other view, however, is more natural, and it enhances the idea of the impressibility of the Ninevites, and their readiness to believe and repent, which it is evidently the design of the inspired writer to convey, if we suppose that while the preacher himself was seen and heard in only a portion of the vast city, his message was taken up and repeated, and sped and bore fruit rapidly in every direction, till tidings of what was happening came to the king himself (Jonah 3:6), and in obedience to the yet distant and unseen prophet, he issued the edict which laid the whole of Nineveh, man and beast, abashed and humbled before the threatened blow. Yet forty days] “He threatens the overthrow of the city unconditionally. From the event, however, it is clear that the threat was to be understood with this condition, ‘unless ye shall (in the mean time) have amended your life and conduct.’ Comp. Jeremiah 18:7-8.”—(Rosenm.) God’s threatenings are always implied promises.

And Jonah began to enter the city a day’s journey - Perhaps the day’s journey enabled him to traverse the city from end to end, with his one brief, deep cry of woe; “Yet forty days and Nineveh

1-4. The preaching of Jonah. Jonah 3:1, is almost identical with Jonah 1:1, the only difference being the addition of “the second time” and the omission of “the son of Amittai”; Jonah 3:2 a, is