Jonah 3

1Then the word of Yahweh came to Jonah a second time:

2“Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.”

3So Jonah got up and went to Nineveh, as Yahweh had told him. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city; it took three days to walk through it.

4Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk, and he proclaimed, “Forty more days, and Nineveh will be overthrown!”

5The people of Nineveh believed God. They proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least.

6When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he got up from his throne, took off his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in the ashes.

7Then he issued a proclamation in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: No person or animal, no herd or flock, is to taste anything. They must not eat, and they must not drink water.

8Let both people and animals be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out urgently to God. Let everyone turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands.

9Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his burning anger, so that we do not perish.”

10When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God relented concerning the disaster he had said he would bring on them, and he did not do it.