Chapter 7: The City on Its Knees

They heard the message and believed the God behind it. Not Jonah.

It started in the streets. People stopped what they were doing. Merchants closed their stalls. Families gathered together. A fast spread through the city. People took off their fine clothes and put on sackcloth, rough fabric worn in that culture as a sign of mourning and repentance. From the richest to the poorest, the entire city began to turn.

When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he did the same. He rose from his throne, removed his royal robes, covered himself in sackcloth, and sat down in the dust. The most powerful man sitting in dirt and dressed like a beggar.

Then he issued a decree. No person and no animal was to eat or drink anything. Even the livestock was to be covered in sackcloth. Everyone was to cry out to God and turn away from their evil ways and their violence.

KING“Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from His fierce anger so that we will not perish.”— Jonah 3:9

And God saw that they turned from their evil ways. Their repentance was real. So God did not bring the destruction He had threatened. One hundred and twenty thousand people, spared. An entire city was spared.