Jonah and the Great City

“So should I not care about the great city of Nineveh?” — Jonah 4:11

God spoke to Jonah a second time. “Get up! Go to the great city of Nineveh and give them the message I tell you.”

This time Jonah went. Nineveh was enormous. It took three days to walk through it! On his first day there, Jonah walked into the city and shouted, “Forty more days, and Nineveh will be destroyed!”

And an amazing thing happened. The people of Nineveh believed God! They stopped eating, to show they were sorry, and they all put on rough, scratchy clothes called sackcloth, from the most important people to the least important.

When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he got up from his throne, took off his royal robes, put on sackcloth and sat down in the dust. He sent out an order: “No one is to eat or drink, not even the animals. Everyone must cry out to God and turn away from their wicked ways. Who knows? God may change His mind and not destroy us.”

When God saw that they had turned away from their evil ways, He had mercy on them, and He didn’t destroy the city.

You would think Jonah would be happy. His preaching had worked! A whole city had turned to God!

But Jonah wasn’t happy. He was very angry.

“I knew it!” Jonah prayed. “That’s why I ran away in the first place. I knew that You are a gracious and kind God, slow to get angry and full of love. I knew You would forgive them. Now just let me die!”

“Is it right for you to be angry?” God asked.

Jonah went out of the city and sat down on the east side. He made himself a little shelter and sat in its shade, to see what would happen to the city.

Then God made a leafy plant grow up over Jonah, to give him shade from the hot sun. Jonah was very happy about the plant. But the next morning, God sent a worm, which chewed the plant so that it withered. When the sun came up, God sent a scorching east wind. The sun blazed down on Jonah’s head until he felt faint. “I’d be better off dead,” he said.

“Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?” God asked.

“Yes, it is,” said Jonah. “I’m angry enough to die!”

“You care about this plant,” God said, “even though you didn’t plant it or make it grow. It grew in a night and died in a night. So shouldn’t I care about the great city of Nineveh? There are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people there who don’t know their right hand from their left, and many animals too.”

And that is how the book of Jonah ends: with God’s question. God cared about the people of Nineveh, even though they were Jonah’s enemies. God loves people Jonah didn’t love.

Looking ahead to Jesus: Jesus said that the people of Nineveh turned to God when Jonah preached, “and now One greater than Jonah is here” (Matthew 12:41). Jesus is the greatest preacher of all, and He came to save people from every nation.

Read it in your Bible: Jonah 3–4

Dear God, thank you that you are kind and full of love, even to people who have done terrible things. Help me to care about people the way you do, even people I don’t like. Amen.