1 The word ofAdonaicame to Yonah a second time:
2 “Set out for the great city of Ninveh, and proclaim to it the message I will give you.”
3 So Yonah set out and went to Ninveh, asAdonaihad said. Now Ninveh was such a large city that it took three days just to cross it.
4 Yonah began his entry into the city and had finished only his first day of proclaiming, ‘In forty days Ninveh will be overthrown,’
5 when the people of Ninveh believed God. They proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least.
6 When the news reached the king of Ninveh, he got up from his throne, took off his robe, put on sackcloth and sat in ashes.
7 He then had this proclamation made throughout Ninveh: “By decree of the king and his nobles, no person or animal, herd or flock, is to put anything in his mouth; they are neither to eat nor drink water.
8 They must be covered with sackcloth, both people and animals; and they are to cry out to God with all their might — let each of them turn from his evil way and from the violence they practice.
9 Who knows? Maybe God will change his mind, relent and turn from his fierce anger; and then we won’t perish.”
10 When God saw by their deeds that they had turned from their evil way, he relented and did not bring on them the punishment he had threatened.