Giô-na 3

Nineveh turns from its evil

¹The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time: ²“Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out to it the message that I am giving you.” ³So Jonah got up and went to Nineveh, as the LORD had told him. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three days’ walk across.^{ab 4}Jonah began by going a day’s walk into the city, and he called out, “Forty more days, and Nineveh will be overthrown!”^{c 5}The people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and dressed in sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them. ⁶When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, laid aside his royal robe, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the ashes. ⁷Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: “By order of the king and his nobles: Let no person or animal, herd or flock, taste anything at all. They must not graze, and they must not drink water. ⁸People and animals alike must be covered with sackcloth. Let them call out to God with all their might, and let each one turn from their evil ways and from the violence they do. ⁹Who knows? God may yet turn and change his mind; he may turn back from his fierce anger, and we will not perish.” ¹⁰When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God relented of the disaster he had said he would bring on them, and he did not do it.