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Updated: June 13, 2025
Mark the bold use of the word 'repent, applied to God, which, though it be not applied to the Ninevites in the previous verses, is implied in every line of them. The same expression is found in Exodus xxxii. 14, which may be taken as the classical passage warranting its use.
Of their own accord others appeared before the courts of justice, and confessed their secret crimes and sins, known to none beside themselves, and declared themselves ready to submit to well-merited punishment, though it be death that was decreed against them. One incident that happened at the time will illustrate the contrition of the Ninevites.
29 And when the multitudes were gathering together unto him, he began to say, This generation is an evil generation: it seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of Jonah. 30 For even as Jonah became a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of man be to this generation. 31 The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with the men of this generation, and shall condemn them: for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and behold, a greater than Solomon is here. 32 The men of Nineveh shall stand up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, a greater than Jonah is here.
Don't you feel as if you were actually in Nineveh; that as we now walk between these slabs, so walked Ninevites between them once? 'Yes. . . . Faith, it is all over. Ethelberta and I have parted. 'Indeed.
Forced at last to deliver his message, he announced it with the grim satisfaction of expecting to see Nineveh destroyed. And the final text of the book is that Jonah must learn not merely to proclaim his message to the Ninevites, but to proclaim his message with sympathy and genuine human interest. The Jews were a long time learning the lesson, but not longer than other peoples have been.
Thus he regarded the fast of the Ninevites, Jonah 3, and the lamentations and tears of King Hezekiah, 4:2; 2 Kings 20. For this cause all the faithful should follow the advice of St. Paul: "As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith," Gal. 6:10. For Christ says: "The night cometh when no man can work." John 9:4.
Neither rested satisfied until the judge succeeded in finding out who had hidden the treasure and where were his heirs, and the joy of the two was great when they could deliver the treasure up to its legitimate owners. Seeing that the Ninevites had undergone a real change of heart, God took mercy upon them, and pardoned them.
He paused a moment, and thus resumed: "It was on the banks of the frozen Seine, this day thirty-and-one winters ago, that two holy monks, to whom the gift of prophecy was vouchsafed, told me of direful woes that should fall on England; 'For God, said they, 'after thy death, has delivered England into the hand of the enemy, and fiends shall wander over the land. Then I asked in my sorrow, 'Can nought avert the doom? and may not my people free themselves by repentance, like the Ninevites of old? And the Prophets answered, 'Nay, nor shall the calamity cease, and the curse be completed, till a green tree be sundered in twain, and the part cut off be carried away; yet move, of itself, to the ancient trunk, unite to the stem, bud out with the blossom, and stretch forth its fruit. So said the monks, and even now, ere I spoke, I saw them again, there, standing mute, and with the paleness of dead men, by the side of my bed!"
The eagerness of the heathen queen to hear, the willingness of the Ninevites to repent, rebuked the stubborn unbelief of the Jews who refused to accept “a greater than Solomon,” “a greater than Jonah.” Vs. 29-32. Finally Jesus showed that their guilty unbelief was not due to lack of evidence or to the need of a new “sign,” but to their indifference and their impenitence.
If Shalmaneser continued to direct in person the siege of Samaria during the three years of its continuance, we cannot be surprised that the patience of the Ninevites was exhausted, and that in the third year they accepted the rule of the usurper who boldly proclaimed himself king.
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