Jonah 3:1-101And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying, 2Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. 3So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days' journey. 4And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. 5So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them. 6For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 7And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: 8But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. 9Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not? 10And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not. (Jonah 3:1‑10)
Returning, however, to the history itself, we may now observe that as one that had been thus taught, taught his need of God’s grace, Jonah is sent on a second message to Nineveh. He goes, and with words of judgment on his lips, he enters that great city, that Nimrod—city, the representation, in that day, of the pride and daring of a revolted world. “Within forty days,” he proclaims as a herald, “and Nineveh shall be destroyed.”
Thus he “mourned.” It was his commission. Responsively, Nineveh “lamented.” The king rose from his throne, and all the nation put themselves in sackcloth; and in such condition, as humbled under the hand of God, a king of Nineveh shall find the Lord as a king of Israel had before found Him. “I said,” says David, “I will confess my transgression unto the Lord, and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.” “Who can tell,” says this royal Gentile, “if God will turn, and repent, and turn away from His fierce anger, that we perish not?” And so it was. “God repented of the evil that He had said that He would do unto them, and He did it not.”
“Is He the God of the Jews only,” again I ask with the Apostle? and with him again I answer, “Nay, but of the Gentile also.” Grace is divine. Government may know a people, and order them as such; grace knows sinners just as they are, whoever, wherever. The earth has its arrangements, heaven holds its court in sovereignty. Nineveh, like Jerusalem, is spared; the hand of the destroying angel is stayed over the one city as well as over the other (1 Chron. 21; Jonah 3).