And the men of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.
Jonah's warning of overthrow reached a city that lived without God at all. Verse 5 records what happened next: the people believed, and their faith showed itself at once in fasting and sackcloth.
Their faith went only so far. They were convinced of God's just anger against their sin, but they did not know Him as the sailors came to know Him.
They did not go as far as the sailors did: they "believed God." They were truly convinced that their wickedness had rightly offended His moral character. They knew they had been living as they pleased, which in practice means living without God at all.
The fasting and the sackcloth are not the root of the change. The verse traces them back to faith.
Faith and repentance. Repentance is a sweet grace, but faith sets it to work. Scripture credits Nineveh's repentance to their faith (Jonah 3:5). All is silent and still in an unbelieving soul. There is no news of repentance, no sound of any complaint against sin, until faith begins to stir.
Another writer notes what the sackcloth stood for, and sums up the order in one line.
Sackcloth all through Scripture is a sign of repentance. There never was a sermon in the world's history that produced such an effect as Jonah's eight words. The Ninevites "believed God" when He warned them of coming judgment, and so they repented. As has been well said, "Repentance is the teardrop in the eye of faith."
In Jonah 1 the sailors called on Jehovah, the name God used with Israel. Here the text says God, and the change carries meaning.
Notice that they believed GOD. In Jonah 1 the sailors cried to Jehovah. There His judgments had shown the glory of Jehovah in His relationship to the Jew. Here it is the world in relation to God as such, and that explains the difference. This chapter stands on the ground of the Creator's relationships, so it mentions the cattle too.
The fast had no fixed length. That silence shows how much they meant it.
The work was real. The message achieved God's purpose. It put the conscience of those ignorant pagans in touch with God. He was now everything to them; their idols were nothing... They prayed as they had never prayed before, to One they had not known or worshipped before. They agreed to fast and to clothe themselves in sackcloth. For how long? For a day? The decree named no set time. They turned from their evil ways. They were ready to fast and wear sackcloth until they knew for sure that the threatened doom had passed. What earnestness shows itself when the word of God reaches the conscience.
Verse 6 brings in the king, but verse 5 has already described the whole city.
Their repentance was genuine. They did not say, "Forty days yet?" and put off repentance until the last moment. They did not wait for the decree of the king and his nobles before putting on sackcloth. They did it all of their own accord, because it was the work of God. The royal decree was only the seal and the proof. The work was widespread, reaching from the highest to the least.
Jesus later set this city against those who heard His own preaching in Jerusalem.
When the prophet came out of his watery tomb, he went at last to Nineveh. His preaching brought the whole population low before God, from the king downward. The threatened overthrow never came. What a contrast when Jonah's Lord preached in Jerusalem! There was no repentance there. He who will in due time sit on the Great White Throne said, "The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here."
- Believed — it starts with faith. They took God at His word about their wickedness, though they did not yet know Him as the sailors did.
- Repented — faith set repentance moving. An unbelieving soul stays silent about sin until faith stirs.
- God — the text says God, not Jehovah, because here the world, not Israel, meets its Creator.
- All — greatest to least, and before any royal decree. The king's order only sealed a work already spreading.
- Judgment — the men of Nineveh will rise up and condemn those who heard a greater preacher than Jonah and stayed unmoved.
And the word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and laid his robe from him, and covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.
One line of warning travels through Nineveh until it reaches the palace. There the chapter turns: the mightiest ruler on earth leaves his throne and sits down in ashes.
One writer shows how hard such a ruler was to reach, and how fast he acted once the words got through:
The King of Nineveh no doubt lived shut away in a palace. Officials surrounded him, ready to obey his commands, however arbitrary and cruel they might be. It was not easy for any subject to approach an Eastern ruler. Esther was Queen, yet she felt she would risk her life by going into the King's presence uninvited (Esther 4:11). But Jonah's serious message travelled right into the throne room of Nineveh and reached the King. He acted at once. His conscience told him that the wickedness of his people fully deserved God's judgement.
One writer weighs the king's robe against the forty days he had left:
The Ninevites listened, believed, and repented. Imitate them. Even their king repented. I think I see that proud man bowed down before God. The King of Assyria was the ruling power on earth at that moment. The mightiest monarch on earth bows down before God. Wise man! Look at him... He seems to say, "What good is my kingly robe if the judgment of God is on me, and if in forty days I am a corpse?" Wise man, sensible man, humbled man, repentant man. Why? Because believing man.
Sackcloth and ashes carried a known meaning across Scripture:
Ashes, mostly from burnt wood, were used as a sign of sorrow or mourning, either put on the head, 2 Samuel 13:19, or on the body with sackcloth, Esther 4:1... or spread on a couch to lie on, Isaiah 58:5; Jonah 3:6... "Dust and ashes" was the picture Abraham used of himself before the LORD, Genesis 18:27.
One writer ties the king's seat in the ashes to Jonah's own grave:
On going to them the prophet at once puts them under sentence of death. "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown." And at once they hear these words as the sentence of death against themselves, as Jonah had heard it in the roar of the wind before. They bow their heads under it as he did, accepting the punishment of their sins. Then, like Jonah, they enter the grave, taking sackcloth on them, from the least to the greatest of them, from man and beast — the king himself rising from his throne, and sitting in ashes, the place of death.
The sackcloth came second. Something else came first.
This mighty work in Nineveh started with faith: but faith without works is dead. These people of Nineveh had the right order: first faith, then works. Had they not believed God, they would never have repented. Faith produced repentance. What is repentance? It means "thinking again"... In the light of coming judgment, they saw their conduct in all its awfulness, as God saw it. There was no excusing themselves; instead they took sides with God against themselves. That is what repentance really is.
What God saw went past the clothing.
What a sight! Thousands upon thousands of penitent sinners lay in sackcloth and ashes in the dust before God, grieving over their sins. They ranged from the king and his great men down to the lowest criminal and the poorest beggar... And as to the people, their cries of mourning were not merely signs of an outward repentance. They were accompanied by "fruits in keeping with repentance." God, who searches the hearts and minds, saw that Nineveh's repentance was genuine.
Jesus later set Nineveh beside a city that heard more and repented less.
When the prophet came out of his watery tomb, he at last went to Nineveh. His preaching brought the whole population, from the king downward, low before God, and the threatened overthrow never came. What a contrast when Jonah's Lord preached in Jerusalem! There was no repentance there. He who will in due time sit on the Great White Throne said, "the men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here."
- Word — The warning reached a throne room no ordinary subject could enter. Then the king's conscience did the rest.
- Faith — Belief came first; repentance followed it. Nineveh took God at His word, then took sides with God against itself.
- Robe — The one item that marked him out as king was the first thing he removed. A robe is worth nothing if judgment falls in forty days.
- Ashes — Sackcloth and ashes were the known language of grief. One writer calls the ashes the place of death, where the city accepted the sentence.
- Fruit — God saw more than clothing. He answered a real turning from evil. Jesus said these men will condemn a generation that heard more and repented less.
And 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 anything let them not feed, nor drink water;
Jonah's forty-day warning reaches the palace, and the king answers with a decree binding the whole city — herds and flocks included. Two questions follow: why make animals fast, and does an order to go hungry move God?
A warning shouted in the streets had no obvious road to the throne.
The King of Nineveh no doubt lived shut away in a palace. Officials surrounded him, ready to obey his commands, however arbitrary and cruel they might be. No subject found it easy to approach an eastern ruler with absolute power. Esther was Queen, yet she felt that going in to the King without a summons would risk her life (Esther 4:11). But Jonah's serious message travelled right into the throne room of Nineveh and reached the King. He acted at once, because conscience told him that the wickedness of his people well deserved God's judgement.
Another king, Belshazzar of Babylon, once trembled at God's word, and nothing came of it.
Like Belshazzar and his great men at Babylon, so the king of Nineveh and his lords trembled. But their fear, unlike that of Belshazzar and his great men, led to a repentance no one would ever regret.
The people had already put on sackcloth before this decree went out. That order changes what the decree means.
Their repentance was genuine. They did not say, "Forty days yet?" and put their repentance off to the last moment. They did not wait for the decree of the king and his nobles before putting on sackcloth. It all came freely, because it was the work of God. The royal decree was only the seal and the proof that the work was general, reaching from the highest to the least.
The fasting did not come first. It showed what had already happened inside.
First came faith, then repentance. The fasting, the sackcloth and the ashes showed how deep and how real that repentance was, from the greatest to the least.
Before the warning came, the city had felt fine about itself.
In the old days, the people had been quite content to go on in their usual wicked course. "No worse than others," they might have said. But when they heard of destruction just ahead, they believed it. In the light of coming judgment, they saw their conduct in all its awfulness, as God saw it. There was no excusing themselves; instead they took sides with God against themselves. That is what repentance really is.
The cattle are the hardest part of the decree. One writer ties them to God's place as Creator of all He made:
The reader will notice that they believed GOD. In Jonah 1 the sailors cried to Jehovah, because there His judgments had shown the glory of Jehovah in His relation to the Jew. Here it is the world in relation to God as such, and this explains the difference. This chapter stands on the ground of God as Creator, so it mentions the cattle too. The whole creation (and this includes them) shall one day be set free from its bondage to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. (Romans 8.)
Another writer traces the same spread of evil, and the order in which God opens a person's eyes:
So it was at Nineveh, only there it was the effect of sin rather than its root. "A little leaven leavens the whole lump." Where God works repentance in a soul, He first shows the sinner what sin is in His sight. Then He shows the effects of the evil and how terribly far they reach. Afterwards He shows the root of it.
What happened at Nineveh raises the question of how God treats nations that are not Israel.
No nation but Israel has ever been in direct relationship with God. But this does not mean He takes no interest in the crowds outside the family of Abraham... His heart still yearns at all times over people everywhere, not desiring the ruin of any.
Willis applies this to our own day.
Thank God for the days of prayer that certain rulers call for in the different nations. Suppose those days of prayer carried the deep, deep repentance and humiliation seen so clearly at Nineveh. How much greater the deliverance God would delight to give us!
- Word — the message travelled from the street to the throne room. A king no subject could approach heard it, and his conscience told him the charge was true.
- Faith — belief came first. The fast, the sackcloth and the ashes showed how real it was.
- Repentance — you see your own conduct as God sees it. You take His side against yourself and make no excuses.
- Reach — the decree covered everyone from the king to the least citizen, and the herds as well. Sin's effects run through the whole creation.
- Mercy — God's heart yearns over people everywhere, and He does not desire the ruin of any. A day of prayer joined to real repentance is what He delights to answer.
and let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God; and let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.
The king of Nineveh has left his throne, and his decree puts a whole city — people and animals — into mourning and prayer. What does real repentance look like, and does God take notice of it?
The Ninevites did not begin with the sackcloth. They began by believing a message of coming ruin.
This mighty work in Nineveh started with faith, but faith without works is dead. These people of Nineveh had the right order: first faith, then works. Had they not believed God, they never would have repented. Faith produced repentance. What is repentance? It means "thinking again"... The people, in the old days, had been quite satisfied to go on in their usual wicked course. "No worse than others," perhaps they would have said. But when they heard of destruction just ahead, they believed it. In the light of coming judgment, they saw their conduct in all its awfulness, as God saw it. There was no excusing of themselves. On the contrary, they took sides with God against themselves. That is what repentance really is.
The decree called for fasting and mourning clothes. Willis weighs those against the last command in the verse.
The sackcloth and the fasting were good, because they showed how real their deep repentance was. But one instruction from the king must have mattered even more to God: "Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands."
Wolston reads that command as the pattern of every converted life.
The life was to be changed. Mind that. When a man gets converted, his life is always altered afterwards. What he has been in, he comes out of. He shuns sin, and loves holiness.
Willis ties the cry in this verse to the turning, then sets it beside another great cry in Scripture.
After repentance — or rather, as part of the repentance — came that wonderful turning from their evil way, along with the command to call out mightily to God. The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah, God said, was great (Genesis 18:20), but it was a cry that brought down judgment. How different was this mighty cry that went up from nearly a million hearts and tongues in Nineveh. What music that cry must have been in heaven!
He then asks what God does with a cry like that:
Shall that mighty cry from Nineveh, from the king and all his subjects, be disregarded? Impossible! God's Word, in both Old and New Testaments, says, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved" (Joel 2:32, quoted in Romans 10:13).
Sackcloth on herds and flocks strikes modern readers as strange. Dennett traces it to the way this chapter presents God — not as Jehovah dealing with the Jew, but as Creator of the world.
In Jonah 1 the sailors cried to Jehovah. There His judgments had shown the glory of Jehovah in His relation to the Jew. Here it is the world in relation to God as such, and this will explain the difference. In this chapter we are on the ground of God as Creator, so the cattle are mentioned too. One day God will set the whole creation free from its slavery to decay — and that includes them — and bring it into the freedom of the glory of the children of God (Romans 8).
The next verse says God saw their works. Willis asks whether that was the first thing He saw.
"God saw their works." "Faith apart from works is dead" (James 2:26). Did God not first see their faith? Surely He did, but the works were the visible evidence to all men of their faith. We all might take good heed to this verse.
Wolston points to what Christ said about these people, then turns the question on the reader.
Notice what the Lord Jesus Christ says of their action. He says, "The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah." Yes, they believed and repented. Again I ask you, have you repented? Has there ever come a moment in your soul's history when you have put on moral sackcloth?
- Believe — Nineveh's turning started with faith. They took God's warning of coming ruin as true, and that faith produced repentance.
- Rethink — Repentance is "thinking again". You see your conduct as God sees it, and you take His side against yourself.
- Turn — Fasting and sackcloth were good, but the order to leave the evil way and the violence mattered more to God. A converted life is an altered life.
- Cry — Nineveh cried to God with all its might. No such cry is ignored: everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
- Prove — God saw their works, the visible evidence of their faith. Christ said these men of Nineveh will rise at the judgment and condemn a generation that would not repent.
Who knoweth but that God will turn and repent, and will turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?
Jonah's message to Nineveh set a deadline and offered no pardon. Yet the king's decree ends with a question: "Who knows?" Everything hangs on whether a doomed city may hope for anything from the God who threatened it.
The king's question is a guess, not a claim. But he already knew where his present course was heading.
What he felt was this. If we go on as we are doing, we are bound to perish. But if we repent, perhaps God will turn and repent, and we may be spared and not perish. I do not think the thought of eternal life rose in the King of Nineveh's soul. But was there any way of escaping the solemn doom God had warned him of, and threatened him with? He saw one doorway. And what was that? Repentance. So he covered himself with sackcloth, sat in ashes, and cried mightily to God.
Many assume Nineveh only repented because judgment was announced. One writer points to the king's closing question as a sign that something else was at work.
There is no possibility of repentance except as grace is understood. Someone may tell me that the Ninevites repented at the announcement of judgment. This is true, but the king of Nineveh lets us into the secret of that repentance. He says: "Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from His fierce anger, so that we may not perish." "WHO KNOWS?" The king was not hopeless. Without hope of grace, repentance is impossible.
A guilty conscience and a hopeful heart pull in opposite directions. One writer traces both to the same source.
The same Spirit of grace and truth does two things at once. He brings the sinner to recognise and confess his sins against God. He makes him feel the burden of them in his conscience, in God's holy presence. And at the same moment He fills the repentant heart with confidence in God's mercy and grace. While his burdened conscience would keep him at a distance from God, his heart, moved by the gentle and tender Spirit of grace, draws him towards God.
The order does not stop at crying out to God. It also names the violence in their hands.
The people were not only to "cry mightily to God," they were also to turn every one from his evil way, and from his deeds of violence. Prayer without action is worthless. Repentance is an absolute necessity with God.
Commentators are careful about what the sackcloth was meant to achieve. One notes that they did works fitting repentance "not to purchase immunity, but to show that their sorrow and alarm were real."
Nineveh had no promise to lean on. The king's words also picture God changing His mind, and one writer explains how to read that.
Here we see again what is in the heart of God towards men. He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. So if He announces judgment, His aim is to turn them from their evil way. The people of Nineveh did not know what He would do. They only said, "Who can tell if God will turn and repent?" And God responded to this feeble faith, as He always does, and spared them from destruction. It hardly needs adding that when Scripture says He repented, this is only a human way of speaking. His aim was to produce repentance in Nineveh. Once that repentance came, He could show His compassion and forgiveness, in keeping with His ways in government.
The king asked in the dark. No one had offered Nineveh mercy. That is not where anyone stands who has heard about God's Son.
The Holy One, blessed be His name, did not let them sink into despair. To Him they turned; they resorted to no go-between. They had to do with God... What mercy that He warned them, who did not deserve it, forty days before God's patience would run out. He desired to save; He does that still. "Who knows?" they cried — for no one had offered them mercy. Thank God, no one need say that now. We know, for God Himself has assured us that no one who comes to His Son will ever be cast out.
- Warning. God announced judgment on Nineveh to turn the city from its evil way. He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked.
- Hope. The king's "Who knows?" shows he was not hopeless. Without some hope of grace, repentance is impossible.
- Turning. The same decree ordered them to drop their violence. Prayer without a change of conduct is worthless.
- Answer. Nineveh had only a perhaps, yet God responded to that feeble faith and spared them.
- Certainty. No one had promised Nineveh mercy. Now God Himself has given His word: no one who comes to His Son will ever be cast out.