The big picture
The second commission in Jonah 3 does not offer a new assignment. It sends Jonah back to the city he tried to avoid, and this time he goes "according to the word of the LORD." The account records obedience without yet claiming that his attitude has changed. Against Nineveh's great scale, Jonah's preserved warning is strikingly short: forty days and an overthrow. The response is anything but small. The people believe God before the king enters the scene, and the king then lays aside his robe, sits in ashes, and extends the fast throughout the city. Yet sackcloth is not the chapter's final measure of repentance. The decree names evil and violence, and verse 10 says God saw their works, specifically that they turned from their evil way. Mercy is sought without being presumed, and the threatened calamity is withheld. Nineveh's resistance is no longer the problem. The next chapter will expose Jonah's resistance to its preservation.
Central truth
Jonah 3:1–4 gives Jonah the commission again, records his obedient journey into Nineveh, and delivers the stark warning of overthrow in forty days. Jonah 3:5–10 shows Nineveh answering warning with belief, fasting, humility, prayer, and turning from violence, while God sees that change and withholds the announced calamity.
The study notes have a page of their own
The movement by movement analysis, the words to trace, the verse by verse notes and where readers differ are written for someone studying alone. They are on the Deep Personal Reflections page for this chapter. This page is the lesson.
A chapter-specific teaching brief
These anchors come from this chapter itself. They help a teacher use the Level 1 overview, the Level 2 study, and the Scripture text as one lesson.
Open with the chapter’s first image
Jonah 3:1: “And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time, saying,”
Slow down at the turning point
Jonah 3:8: “But 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…”
Keep this word trail visible
Nineveh, city, evil, Jonah, sackcloth, turn
What to explain, in order
Teach the passage in this order. Each step names the verses it rests on, so every point can be shown in the text before it is applied.
Jonah 3:1–4
Jonah 3:1
The second time
Begin with two words most readers pass over: "the second time". Point out what is missing: no rebuke, no conditions, no probation period. The same word that Jonah ran from comes to him again on the beach. Teach this first because it is the gospel of the chapter before Nineveh appears. God does not merely forgive Jonah; he gives him his calling back. Ask the class what they would expect God to say to a prophet who had fled, and then read what he actually says, which is simply the commission again.
Jonah 3:2
Same city, same task, words to come
Lay 1:2 and 3:2 side by side on the board and mark the identical words: arise, go, Nineveh, that great city. The assignment has not been softened because the prophet struggled with it. Then mark the one change. In chapter 1 Jonah was to cry against it; now he is to "preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee". Explain that the content is not given in advance. Jonah must set out before he knows exactly what he will say, trusting the LORD to supply the words. That is part of what obedience means for a messenger.
Jonah 3:3
He arose, and this time he went
Read 1:3 and 3:3 aloud one after the other. "Jonah rose up to flee"; "So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD." The same rising now has the right direction. Teach the phrase according to the word of the LORD as the measure of the change. Then add a careful limit: the Book of Jonah describes what he did, not how he felt. Do not preach a transformed heart here; chapter 4 will reveal that. It is enough that the feet now match the word.
Jonah 3:3
A city great to God
Read "Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days' journey". Explain that the Hebrew says, more literally, a great city to God, or great before God. Some take that simply as very great; others hear in it God's own estimate of the city, which he will put into words in 4:11. Either way, the size matters to the book. Then deal with three days' journey briefly and honestly: it may mean the walk across a greater Nineveh district, or the time a visitor needed to go through it. Do not spend the session on measurements.
Jonah 3:4
Five words and forty days
Jonah goes "a day's journey" in and cries, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown." Point out how short it is; in Hebrew it is five words. Explain that forty is a number the Bible uses for periods of testing, such as the rain of the flood and Israel in the wilderness, and that overthrown is the word used of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19:25. Then stop. Read no further. The class should hear the warning as Nineveh heard it, without the comfort of verse 10, and feel the weight of a whole city given forty days.
Jonah 3:5–10
Jonah 3:5
They believed God
Read verse 5 and stop on the first clause, "So the people of Nineveh believed God". Point out the speed: one short sentence from Jonah in verse 4, and belief in verse 5. Note too that the verse says God, not the LORD; the Ninevites respond to the God whose warning they have heard, with no temple and no law of Moses behind them. Then add the response, a fast and sackcloth "from the greatest of them even to the least of them". Teach belief first, because the rest of the passage is what that belief looks like.
Jonah 3:6
From the throne to the ashes
Read verse 6 slowly and act out the four verbs with your hands: he arose from his throne, laid his robe from him, covered himself with sackcloth, sat in ashes. Show that the word reached the king after the people had already begun. Explain sackcloth as rough goat-hair cloth worn in mourning, and ashes as the sign of grief and humiliation. Do not try to name the king; the book leaves him unnamed. The point is the reversal: the man at the top of an empire takes his place at the bottom alongside his people.
Jonah 3:7-8
A decree that reaches the hands
Read the decree aloud. It extends the fast to "man nor beast, herd nor flock", which strikes modern ears as strange; explain that in the ancient world mourning could include the animals of a household, and that the point is a whole city in grief. Then go to the heart of verse 8: "let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands". Teach this as the moral centre of the passage. Repentance names the actual sin and stops it. Mention Nahum 3:1 so the class knows what kind of violence Nineveh was known for.
Jonah 3:9
Who can tell
Read the king's question and let it stay a question. He does not assume mercy; he hopes for it. Put 1:6 beside it, the shipmaster's "if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not", and show the pattern: the outsiders in this book approach God with humble uncertainty, while the prophet who knows God's mercy best resents it. Read Joel 2:13-14 if time allows, where Israel is invited to the same hope with the same words, "Who knoweth". Teach this before verse 10 so the mercy arrives as an answer to an open question.
Jonah 3:10
God saw, God repented, God did it not
Read verse 10 in three parts. First, "God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way": the turning, not the sackcloth, is what is seen. Second, "God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them": explain repented as relented and evil as the calamity announced, not as wickedness in God. Third, "he did it not". Read Jeremiah 18:7-8 to show that this is the way God has said he deals with nations. Close by noting that the city that was told forty days and overthrown is still standing, and that chapter 4 is about who is unhappy with that.
Where learners get stuck
The misreadings this passage tends to produce, and how to answer each from the text.
Jonah 3:1–4
"By chapter 3 Jonah has learned his lesson and wants Nineveh saved."
Verse 3 says he went "according to the word of the LORD", and that is real obedience. But nothing in 3:1-4 says what he thought or hoped, and 4:1-3 shows him exceedingly displeased when the city is spared. He obeyed the command while still resisting the mercy behind it. Teaching that honestly helps learners who obey God with reluctance; the book does not pretend that obedience and agreement always arrive together.
"Jonah's prophecy was false, because Nineveh was not destroyed in forty days."
Jeremiah 18:7-8 sets out the principle: when the LORD announces judgment on a nation and that nation turns from its evil, he will repent of the evil he thought to do. A warning of judgment carries an unspoken condition, which is why it is a warning and not merely a forecast. The king of Nineveh understood that in 3:9, "Who can tell if God will turn and repent". The word came true in its purpose: the city turned. Keep this answer short today and develop it in the next passage.
"Three days' journey proves the city was about sixty miles across."
The phrase in 3:3 is debated, and the text does not give a width. It may describe the extent of the wider region around the walled city, the time needed to visit its quarters, or the scale of a diplomatic visit. Archaeology gives the walled city a much smaller circuit. Tell learners the honest position: Scripture stresses that the city was exceedingly great, and readers explain the measure in different ways. Then return to why its size matters, which is 4:11.
"Jonah preached only one sentence because he was trying to fail."
Verse 4 records the warning; it does not claim to give everything Jonah said over a day's journey. The text also does not say he preached poorly on purpose. That theory reads chapter 4 back into chapter 3. What verse 2 does say is that the message was the one the LORD bid him preach, so whatever its length, its content was God's. Keep learners from building a psychological portrait out of silence.
Jonah 3:5–10
"If God changed his mind about Nineveh, how can we trust anything he says?"
God did not change his character; he acted in keeping with it. Jeremiah 18:7-8 states the principle in advance: if a nation warned of judgment turns from its evil, God will repent of the evil he thought to do. Jonah himself names the character behind it in 4:2: gracious, merciful, slow to anger, and one who "repentest thee of the evil". The warning was true and the mercy was true. What changed was Nineveh, and God responded as he has always said he would.
"Nineveh earned God's mercy by fasting hard enough."
Verse 10 says God saw "that they turned from their evil way", so their response mattered. But the Ninevites themselves did not think they had earned anything: the king's words in verse 9 are "Who can tell". Mercy remained God's to give, and the book's whole argument in chapter 4 is that God is free to show it. Teach repentance as the way into mercy, not the price of it. The fast expressed their turning; it did not purchase their pardon.
"The whole of Nineveh converted and became faithful worshippers of the God of Israel."
The text says they "believed God", fasted, cried to God and turned from violence. That is real and Jesus honours it in Matthew 12:41: they "repented at the preaching of Jonas". But the book does not say they abandoned their gods, kept the law or came to Jerusalem, and later prophets such as Nahum announce Nineveh's fall for renewed cruelty. Teach the repentance with full weight and refuse to add a conversion the text does not record.
"Animals in sackcloth shows this cannot be a real event."
Learners sometimes find 3:7-8 comic and conclude the account is a fable. Ancient writers record animals being included in public mourning, and a royal decree that covered the whole household, livestock included, was a way of saying that nothing in the city was exempt. The detail strengthens the picture of total humility rather than weakening it. Acknowledge that it sounds odd to modern ears, then return to the line that matters most in the decree, the call to turn from violence.
Learning objectives
- Compare Jonah’s first and second commissions.
- Identify the decisive change between Jonah 1:3 and 3:3.
- Explain who determines the content of Jonah’s preaching.
- Describe what “three days’ journey” does and does not establish.
- State the warning in verse 4 without softening it.
- Recognize how little commentary appears before Nineveh’s response.
- Trace Nineveh’s response from people to king and decree.
- Identify what verse 5 connects with believing God.
- Explain why repentance includes turning from violence.
- Interpret “Who can tell” as humble uncertainty.
- Explain “repented of the evil” in King James usage.
- State what the passage does not say about later Nineveh.
Teacher preparation
- Place Jonah 1:1–3 beside 3:1–3 and mark repeated language.
- Review the debated meanings of “three days’ journey” without converting it into false mileage precision.
- Do not assume Jonah 3:4 preserves every word Jonah spoke in Nineveh.
- Teach “overthrown” here as a direct announcement of coming destruction.
- Stop before verse 5 so the warning carries its own weight.
- Mark every response verb so sackcloth does not swallow the moral movement.
- Explain the two senses of “evil” in verse 10: wrongdoing and announced calamity.
- Read Jeremiah 18:7–8 for the biblical pattern of judgment withheld after repentance.
- Do not assign a historical name to the unnamed king of Nineveh.
- Treat animal fasting and sackcloth as part of comprehensive public mourning without unnecessary detours.
Evidence and interpretation checks
Explicit
Verses 1–2 renew the commission; verses 3–4 record Jonah’s going, entering, and announcing forty days until overthrow. Verse 5 records belief, fasting, and sackcloth; verses 6–9 record the decree; verse 10 records turning and withheld calamity.
Scripture-supported
Jonah 1:1–3 supplies the first commission; Matthew 12:41 later identifies Nineveh’s response to Jonah’s preaching. Jeremiah 18:7–8 describes the same pattern of a nation turning from evil after announced judgment.
Strong inference
The repeated wording strongly invites comparison between Jonah’s first flight and present obedience. Because verse 10 highlights turning from evil, changed conduct matters more than mourning symbols alone.
Possible or traditional reading
“Three days’ journey” has been read as crossing, circling, or traversing a broader urban district. Various Assyrian kings have been proposed, but the passage itself leaves the ruler unnamed.
Limit
Verses 1–4 do not reveal Jonah’s attitude, exact route, or whether verse 4 records his entire sermon. The unit does not say every Ninevite remained faithful or that Assyria escaped all later judgment.
Discussion with answer guidance
1. Which words in 3:1–2 echo the first commission?
What a good answer contains
"And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah" repeats 1:1, and "Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city" repeats 1:2 almost exactly. Two things are new: "the second time" in 3:1, and the message, which is now "the preaching that I bid thee" rather than cry against it. A good answer establishes the sameness first, because the point is that God's assignment has not changed. A weak answer imagines a softer or different commission; the LORD has not adjusted the task to Jonah.
Show teacher guidance
Mark the word of the LORD, arise, go to Nineveh, and proclamation. Establish continuity first.
2. What phrase in verse 3 marks Jonah’s changed behavior?
What a good answer contains
"According to the word of the LORD" (3:3). Put it beside 1:3, where Jonah "rose up to flee". Both verses begin with Jonah rising; one ends at Tarshish, the other at Nineveh. A good answer names the change in behaviour precisely and stops there. A weak answer claims the phrase proves Jonah's heart had changed; the text describes obedient action, and chapter 4 will show that his attitude toward Nineveh has not moved much.
Show teacher guidance
Require “according to the word of the LORD,” then contrast it directly with Jonah 1:3.
3. Who determines the preaching Jonah is to deliver?
What a good answer contains
The LORD does. Verse 2 says "preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee". Jonah is not told the content in advance; he must go first and receive the words as he goes. A good answer sees that the prophet is a messenger, not an author, and that the authority of the warning is God's, not Jonah's. A weak answer treats verse 4 as Jonah's own summary or opinion of the city; the commission makes it the LORD's message.
Show teacher guidance
Verse 2 says, “the preaching that I bid thee.” Jonah carries an assigned message.
4. How does verse 3 describe Nineveh before Jonah preaches?
What a good answer contains
As "an exceeding great city of three days' journey" (3:3). Explain that the Hebrew can be read as a city great to God, which anticipates God's concern for it in 4:11. A good answer is honest that three days' journey is debated: it may describe the time needed to cross the wider district, or to visit it properly, and nobody should convert it into a precise mileage. A weak answer either ignores the phrase or turns it into an argument about archaeology.
Show teacher guidance
Use “an exceeding great city of three days’ journey” while explaining the measurement uncertainty honestly.
5. How far has Jonah entered when verse 4 records the proclamation?
What a good answer contains
He had gone "a day's journey" (3:4). He has gone a third of the way in, by the measure of verse 3, when the warning is recorded. A good answer keeps to that: Jonah is well inside the city and speaking, and the response in verse 5 begins before any complete tour is finished. A weak answer invents a street-by-street route or a single dramatic sermon in the main square; the text gives only the distance and the words.
Show teacher guidance
The text says a day’s journey. Do not invent a street-by-street itinerary.
6. What makes the recorded warning striking beside the city’s scale?
What a good answer contains
"Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown." In Hebrew it is only five words. It names a time, a city and an outcome, and it states no condition and offers no way out. Beside a city of three days' journey and more than six score thousand people (4:11), it is startlingly small. A good answer feels that contrast and lets the warning stand without softening it. A weak answer reads verse 10 back into verse 4 and calls it a call to repent, which the recorded words do not say.
Show teacher guidance
It is brief, definite, and time-bound: forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown.
7. What is Nineveh’s first stated response in verse 5?
What a good answer contains
"So the people of Nineveh believed God" (3:5). Belief comes first in the verse, and the fast and the sackcloth follow from it. A good answer keeps that order, because it shows the outward signs were the expression of taking God's word seriously, not a ritual to buy him off. A strong answer also notices that the people respond before the king does; the decree in verse 7 confirms what the city has already begun. A weak answer starts with the sackcloth and makes it the whole response.
Show teacher guidance
The people believed God. Fasting and sackcloth follow; keep belief at the front of the sequence.
8. How widely does verse 5 say the sackcloth response reaches?
What a good answer contains
The response runs "from the greatest of them even to the least of them" (3:5). The phrase covers the whole social scale, and verse 6 then shows the greatest of all, the king, joining in. A good answer sees that no one is exempt by rank and that the response runs through the city rather than being imposed on the poor by the powerful. A weak answer passes over the phrase as a figure of speech; the book uses it to show how complete the turning was.
Show teacher guidance
Use “from the greatest of them even to the least,” then note that verse 6 includes the king.
9. What four actions does the king take in verse 6?
What a good answer contains
The king acts: "he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes" (3:6). Four movements, all downward: off the throne, out of the royal robe, into mourning cloth, down into ashes. A good answer traces the descent of status and notices that the most powerful man in the city takes the place of the humblest. A weak answer lists the actions without noticing their direction, or treats them as a performance.
Show teacher guidance
He rises, removes his robe, covers himself with sackcloth, and sits in ashes. Trace the downward movement.
10. Which command in verse 8 goes beyond outward mourning?
What a good answer contains
The decree says, "let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands" (3:8). Fasting and sackcloth express grief, but this command asks for changed conduct, and it names the city's particular sin. A good answer sees that violence is concrete, the kind of cruelty the prophet Nahum would later describe in Nineveh, and that repentance here means stopping it. A weak answer keeps the lesson on sackcloth and never reaches the moral centre of the decree.
Show teacher guidance
Require turning from evil ways and from violence in their hands. This is the passage’s behavioral center.
11. What does “Who can tell” reveal in verse 9?
What a good answer contains
"Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?" (3:9). The king hopes, but he does not presume. He commands his people to turn without any guarantee that God will turn. A good answer notices that the shipmaster used almost the same words in 1:6, "that we perish not", so twice in the book outsiders show a humble hope that Jonah lacks. A weak answer turns the verse into a confident bargain the text does not make.
Show teacher guidance
The king hopes God may turn from fierce anger, but he does not claim mercy as guaranteed.
12. What does God see in verse 10, and what follows?
What a good answer contains
"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" (3:10). What God sees is not the sackcloth but the turning. Explain that evil here means the calamity announced, not wrongdoing by God. A good answer links the outcome to Jeremiah 18:7-8 and to God's character in 4:2. A weak answer either skips the word repented or treats it as God admitting a mistake.
Show teacher guidance
God sees their works, especially turning from evil, and does not bring the announced calamity.
Responsible application
Preserve the assigned message
Give learners a communication exercise requiring them to preserve the core warning before adapting presentation or examples.
Separate behavior from motive
Compare Jonah 1:3 with 3:3 and list what changed explicitly, then list what remains unknown inwardly.
Let warning remain warning
Read verse 4 without chapter 3:10 and summarize only the urgency Nineveh hears at that moment.
Make repentance observable
Test a hypothetical public apology by asking what concrete behavior must stop before its symbols of regret mean much.
Build humility into appeals
Contrast the king’s firm command to turn with his uncertain hope for mercy, then draft a responsible response.
Read old English by context
Place both uses of “evil” in verse 10 side by side and distinguish wrongdoing from threatened calamity.
Session plans
Two timings of the same lesson. The shorter keeps the reading, the central discussion and one response; the longer gives the confusions and the application their own time.
Jonah 3:1–4
45 minutes
The second time
Read 3:1 and ask what is missing that we might expect God to say. Write the second time on the board.
Same commission
Read 1:1-2 and 3:1-2 side by side. Ask questions one and three, marking the repeated words and the new phrase about the preaching.
This time he went
Read 1:3 and 3:3 together. Ask question two, then take confusion one so the class does not overstate Jonah's change.
The great city
Ask question four. Explain great to God briefly and handle confusion three in two minutes.
The warning
Read 3:4. Ask questions five and six, then stop at verse 4. Read the key verse together, give out the handout and pray.
90 minutes
On the beach
Read 2:10 and 3:1. Ask what the group would expect God to say to Jonah now, and list answers before reading what he says.
Two commissions
Put 1:1-2 and 3:1-2 in two columns. Take questions one and three, and discuss what it means to set out before knowing exactly what you will say.
Two risings
Read 1:3 and 3:3a. Take question two and confusion one. Ask the group whether obedience without agreement is still obedience.
Nineveh's size
Read 3:3b and 4:11. Ask question four. Explain great to God and work through confusion three without letting it take over.
Forty days
Read 3:4. Take questions five and six. Read Genesis 19:25 for overthrown, and confusion four on the length of the sermon.
Is it a false prophecy
Read Jeremiah 18:7-8 and work through confusion two briefly, saving its full answer for the next passage.
Application
Use the application on preserving the assigned message: what is the core of the gospel that must not be softened when we pass it on?
Handout and prayer
Read the key verse together and pray for anyone who needs a second time from God.
Jonah 3:5–10
45 minutes
Believed God
Read 3:4-5 together. Ask questions one and two, and write believed, fast, sackcloth in that order.
The king comes down
Read 3:6. Ask question three and have the class act out the four movements.
The decree
Read 3:7-8. Touch confusion four in a minute, then ask question four and spend the time on turning from violence.
Who can tell, and what God saw
Read 3:9-10. Ask questions five and six. Take confusion one with Jeremiah 18:7-8.
Response and handout
Do the application on making repentance observable. Read the key verse together and pray.
90 minutes
Forty days remembered
Reread 3:4. Ask what the group would do if they heard that warning about their own town, then read 3:5.
From the greatest to the least
Take questions one and two. Note that the verse says God, not the LORD, and discuss what the Ninevites did and did not know.
Throne to ashes
Read 3:6. Ask question three. Explain sackcloth and ashes and the reversal of status.
The violence in their hands
Read 3:7-8 and Nahum 3:1. Ask question four, then confusion four. Give most of the time to what turning from violence would have required.
Who can tell
Read 3:9 beside 1:6 and Joel 2:13-14. Ask question five and confusion two.
God repented of the evil
Read 3:10 and Jeremiah 18:7-8. Ask question six, then confusions one and three. Read Matthew 12:41.
Application
Use the application on making repentance observable, with a fictional public apology, and draft what real turning would look like.
Handout and prayer
Read the key verse together and pray for a city or community you know that needs to turn.
Adapting the lesson
Jonah 3:1–4
Children
Reuse the arrows from the first lesson: one pointing to Tarshish, one to Nineveh. Ask which way Jonah walked the first time and which way now. Then tell them God gave Jonah a second chance and the same job, and let them say the warning of verse 4 together, slowly. Keep the idea of a city being overthrown simple and calm, and tell them the next lesson shows what the people did.
Youth
Ask whether anyone has been given a second chance at something they messed up, without sharing details, and what they expected to hear first. Then read 3:1-2. Point out that God does not lecture Jonah, and does not change the task either. Ask them to compare the first and second commissions in pairs, and then to discuss whether doing the right thing while still not wanting to counts.
Adults
Spend time on the comparison of 1:1-3 and 3:1-3, and on what the book does not say about Jonah's inner life. Give the three days' journey debate its due without letting it dominate. Raise the question of conditional prophecy with Jeremiah 18:7-8 and let the group test it against verse 4. Some adults may carry guilt about past failures in ministry; let the second time be heard as real grace.
One to one
Ask the person whether there is something God asked of them earlier that they walked away from. If there is, read 3:1-2 slowly and let them hear that the same word came again without a rebuke. Do not press them to act at once; ask what the first step according to the word of the LORD would be for them. If the passage raises no personal issue, spend the time on the brief, stark warning of verse 4.
Jonah 3:5–10
Children
Use four cards: a crown, a rough cloth, praying hands, and a picture of hands letting go of a stick. Lay them down as you read verses 5 to 8, and ask what each one shows. Spend the most time on the last card: being sorry means stopping the wrong thing. Then read verse 10 and let them say together, God saw and God did not destroy them. Keep the idea of judgment gentle and the mercy clear.
Youth
Give them a fictional case: a school group has been bullying someone and gets caught. List the responses that are only symbols, such as a sad post or a hashtag, and the responses that are real change. Then read verses 5 to 10 and sort Nineveh's actions the same way. End on verse 8 and ask what the violence in our hands might be today, in words, online, or in groups, without pointing at anyone in the room.
Adults
Give time to the hard words in verse 10, repented and evil, and work through Jeremiah 18:7-8 and Numbers 23:19 together so the group can see how Scripture holds God's faithfulness and his responses together. Discuss Nahum and the later history of Nineveh so no one imagines a permanent conversion. Then press the application: what does repentance look like for a community or an institution, not only for an individual?
One to one
Ask the person whether there is something they have been sorry about without changing. Read verse 8 and let it do its work quietly. If they are carrying guilt, read verse 10 and the king's humble hope in verse 9, and assure them from the text that God sees turning. If the conversation moves toward confession, listen rather than teach, and pray with them.
Song and video learning lab
A song or video may interpret, compress, or dramatize the text. Its value becomes clearer when its choices are compared with Scripture.
- Before the media: the exact passage and its central movement.
- During the media: the words, people, events, and emotions the artist emphasizes.
- After the media: what it clarifies, what it leaves out, and what belongs back in the biblical text.
Handout
One page for learners to take home. The print button prints this section alone.
Jonah 3:1–4
The passage in brief
After the fish put Jonah on dry land, the word of the LORD came to him a second time with the same instruction: go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach the message God would give him. This time Jonah went, as the LORD said. Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days' journey across. Jonah went a day's journey into it and cried out that in forty days Nineveh would be overthrown.
A verse to keep
And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.
Jonah 3:1-2 · King James Version
Questions to take home
What was the same, and what was new, when God spoke to Jonah the second time?
Compare 1:3 and 3:3. What did Jonah do differently?
What did Jonah's warning in 3:4 say, and what did it leave out?
This week
If God has asked something of you that you set aside, take it up again this week as a second time from him.
Jonah 3:5–10
The passage in brief
When Jonah warned that Nineveh would be overthrown in forty days, the people believed God. Everyone, from the greatest to the least, fasted and put on sackcloth. The king left his throne, put on sackcloth and sat in ashes. He ordered the whole city to cry to God and to turn from their evil ways and from the violence in their hands, hoping that God might turn from his anger. God saw that they turned from their evil way, and he did not bring the destruction he had announced.
A verse to keep
And 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 3:10 · King James Version
Questions to take home
What was the first thing the people of Nineveh did in 3:5?
What did the king's decree in 3:8 ask people to stop doing?
According to 3:10, what did God see?
This week
Name one wrong thing you are sorry for, and this week stop doing it, not only feel bad about it.
Music and video connected to the passage
Related media appears when its Scripture reference overlaps this study. Music and video can illuminate a theme while the biblical text remains the foundation.
