Jonah

¹ The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time:

² “Get up! Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach the message that I tell you.”

³ Jonah got up and went to Nineveh according to the LORD’s command. Now Nineveh was an extremely great city, a three-day walk.

⁴ Jonah set out on the first day of his walk in the city and proclaimed, “In forty days Nineveh will be demolished!”

⁵ Then the people of Nineveh believed God. They proclaimed a fast and dressed in sackcloth — from the greatest of them to the least.

⁶ When word reached the king of Nineveh, he got up from his throne, took off his royal robe, put on sackcloth, and sat in ashes.

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

⁸ Furthermore, both people and animals must be covered with sackcloth, and everyone must call out earnestly to God. Each must turn from his evil ways and from his wrongdoing.

⁹ Who knows? God may turn and relent; he may turn from his burning anger so that we will not perish.

¹⁰ God saw their actions — that they had turned from their evil ways  — so God relented from the disaster he had threatened them with. And he did not do it.