Chapter 3

Jonah Goes to Nineveh

1 Then the LORD spoke to Jonah a second time:
2 "Get up and go to the great city of Nineveh, and deliver the message of judgment I have given you."
        3 This time Jonah obeyed the LORD's command and went to Nineveh, a city so large that it took three days to see it all.
4 On the day Jonah entered the city, he shouted to the crowds: "Forty days from now Nineveh will be destroyed!"
5 The people of Nineveh believed God's message, and from the greatest to the least, they decided to go without food and wear sackcloth to show their sorrow.
        6 When the king of Nineveh heard what Jonah was saying, he stepped down from his throne and took off his royal robes. He dressed himself in sackcloth and sat on a heap of ashes.
7 Then the king and his nobles sent this decree throughout the city: "No one, not even the animals, may eat or drink anything at all.
8 Everyone is required to wear sackcloth and pray earnestly to God. Everyone must turn from their evil ways and stop all their violence.
9 Who can tell? Perhaps even yet God will have pity on us and hold back his fierce anger from destroying us."