The Lord is patient with Jonah. He gives Jonah a second chance. Let’s compare the beginning of Chapter 1 with the beginning of Chapter 3 for they are parallel.

Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me.

And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.

The information is in the differences. In the first chapter the Lord commands Jonah to go into Nineveh and cry against it because they are so wicked.” In the third chapter the Lord commands Jonah to go into Nineveh and “preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.”

Jonah disobeys the Lord the first time.

But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord

Jonah obeys the Lord the second time.

So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days’ journey. He prophesies of the destruction of Ninevah.

In Chapter 4 we are given the number of citizens of Nineveh as 120,000, but we don’t know the standard of measurement. Was that the total number of every man, woman, and child? Probably not. For comparison, at that time Jerusalem had only from 8,000 to 15,000 inhabitants and Samaria, the capital of the Northern Tribes, had only from 20,000 to 30,000.

We only have the text to go by, and the text is very terse. On the one hand, we can read between lines and assume that Jonah gave the full message of the Lord. The full message of the Lord is that if the people repent they will be spared. But if we go by the text alone, Jonah didn’t give them a way out. He prophesied that they were going to be destroyed, and apparently Jonah believed that they would be destroyed. Either he didn’t anticipate their repentance, or he discounted their repentance and did not consider any alternative. At any rate, as we shall see in the next chapter, Jonah got really upset when they weren’t destroyed.

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.

Jonah’s reputation as a prophet is at stake. In fact, in Chapter 4 we learn that Jonah gets a front row seat to watch the destruction.

So Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what would become of the city.[6]

The people of Nineveh do a suprising thing. They repent.