Jonah 3:3

The prophet had now learned obedience, that chief requirement for every servant. What a difference between the third verse of the third chapter of Jonah and the same verse of the first! In the first we read, "But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD. He went down to Joppa." How different in the third chapter!

If the Lord pursued His servant with His storm and tempest, and cast him into the deep, it was for restoration as well as correction. It was to put the prophet into a right condition of soul to be the vessel of the divine will. So he did not now attempt to flee, but he arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. It is always so in the Lord's dealings with His people. If we turn back from the path He marks out for us, we surely must meet the chastening of His hand. His dealings do not reach their end until He brings us face to face again with the path we left.

The Lord did not only save His servant from death. He also taught him the lessons he needed. Then the Lord sent him out once more — saved, pardoned and better equipped than before through these new lessons — on the very message he had refused before.

Jonah did not know what his message was to be when he set out. He proceeded "under sealed orders," as men say... The spirit of obedience had returned to him, at least in measure. So Jonah did not dare to reason with his Lord, as Ananias did in Damascus when told to call on Saul of Tarsus. Instead he "arose and went according to the word of the LORD."

He does not say, as we are sometimes tempted to, "I do not have the ability. I am not worthy of such a high and holy task. I have failed so badly in the past — send someone else."... If He sends us, all is well; then we may gladly go without a fear or a question; but woe to the one who runs unsent.

"Before the Lord" means simply that he was very great; as Moses was fair or beautiful "to God," and in Hebrews "exceedingly" fair. So too, in Jonah 3, "Nineveh was an exceedingly great city" is a city "great of God" (in the margin and literally).

Jonah, now obedient, goes to Nineveh; but before his preaching is described the Spirit of God pauses to call attention to the size of the city... Such was the result of human activity in alienation from God, priding itself on the greatness, the pomp and magnificence of its works... It was this judgment that Jonah heralded, proclaiming in the face of the world's proud glory, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown."

It was a city of vast size and population, and was the centre of the world's main trade. Its wealth, however, was not all from trade. It was a "bloody city," "full of lies and robbery"... At the same time it was strongly fortified. Its huge walls, a hundred feet high, with their fifteen hundred towers, defied all enemies.

"An exceedingly great city of three days' journey" indicates its vast size. It seems to have covered an area of sixty miles square. And yet it has been so overwhelmed that those who have tried to find its site had difficulty until very recently. God first sent the word of warning to Nineveh through the lips of Jonah.