Jonah 3:5

The people repented, apparently after only one day of preaching (Jonah 3:4), because of the message from God that Jonah had brought to them. [Note: See Steven J. Lawson, "The Power of Biblical Preaching: An Expository Study of Jonah 3:1-10," Bibliotheca Sacra 158:631 (July-September 2001):331-46.] Fasting and wearing sackcloth demonstrated self-affliction that reflected an attitude of humility in the ancient Near East (cf. 2 Samuel 3:31; 2 Samuel 3:35; 1 Kings 21:27; Nehemiah 9:1-2; Isaiah 15:3; Isaiah 58:5; Daniel 9:3; Joel 1:13-14). Sackcloth was what the poor and the slaves customarily wore. Thus wearing it depicted that the entire population viewed themselves as needy (of God’s mercy in this case) and slaves (of God in this case). This attitude and these actions marked all levels of the city’s population (i.e., the chronologically old and young, and the socially high and low). The Ninevites did not want to perish any more than the sailors did (cf. Jonah 1:6; Jonah 1:14).

Some commentators believed that two plagues, a severe flood and a famine, had ravaged Nineveh in 765 and 759 B.C., plus a total eclipse of the sun on June 15, 763, and that these phenomena prepared the Ninevites for Jonah’s message. [Note: Wiseman, "Jonah’s Nineveh," p. 44; and Stuart, pp. 490-91.] The Ninevites probably viewed these phenomena as indications of divine displeasure, a common reaction in the ancient Near East. [Note: Ibid., p. 494.] However this providential "pre-evangelism" is not the concern of the text. It attributes the Ninevites’ repentance to Jonah’s preaching.

Some commentators have credited the repentance of the Ninevites at least partially to Jonah’s previous experience in the great fish’s stomach. They base this on Jesus’ statement that Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites (Matthew 12:39-41; Luke 11:29-32). Jonah was a sign in a two-fold sense. His three days and nights in the fish foreshadowed Jesus’ three days and nights in the grave (Matthew 12:40), and his ministry as a visiting prophet delivering a call for repentance to an evil people under God’s judgment previewed Jesus’ ministry (Matthew 12:41; Luke 11:30; Luke 11:32). These commentators note that the Ninevites worshipped Dagon, which was part man and part fish. [Note: E.g., Feinberg, p. 33.] They have also pointed out that the Assyrian fish goddess, Nosh, was the chief deity in Nineveh. Some of them have argued that Jonah came to the city as one sent by Nosh to proclaim the true God. However the text of Jonah attributes the repentance of the Ninevites primarily to the message that God had given Jonah to proclaim. Whatever the Ninevites may have known about Jonah’s encounter with the fish-the text says nothing about their awareness of it-the writer gave the credit to the word of the Lord, not to Jonah’s personal background.

One writer saw this text as support for the historic evangelical doctrine of exclusivism in salvation and used it to argue against religious inclusivism (pluralism). [Note: Wayne G. Strickland, "Isaiah, Jonah, and Religious Pluralism," Bibliotheca Sacra 153:609 (January-March 1996):31-32.]

"God delights to do the impossible, and never more so than in turning men to Himself. Instead, then, of denying on the grounds of its ’human’ impossibility the repentance that swept over Nineveh, let us see it as an evidence of divine power. For this, not the episode of the sea monster, is the greatest miracle in the book." [Note: Gaebelein, p. 103.]