Verse 4
‘And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh will be overthrown.” ’
Jonah entered the city, presumably Nineveh itself, and walked a short distance into it. ‘A day’s journey’ simply indicates a few miles in contrast with a ‘three days journey’. He would walk this while he was looking for a suitable place to preach. Or it may simply indicate ‘a quick visit’. And there he began to preach what YHWH had told him, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh will be overthrown.” It was a simple message of judgment.
The details of how he went about it are, however, not considered important and the emphasis is all on his message. We do not thus know whether he sought formal permission to preach, or whether he simply gathered a crowd as a result of his strange clothing and appearance, and the rumour spreading around that he was a Hebrew prophet.
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