Jona 3:4

Lutherbibel

Und da Jona anfing hineinzugehen eine Tagereise in die Stadt, predigte er und sprach: Es sind noch vierzig Tage, so wird Ninive untergehen.

Parallel Translations

Schlachter Bibel (1951)
Und Jona fing an, eine Tagereise weit in die Stadt hineinzugehen, und predigte und sprach: Noch vierzig Tage, und Ninive wird zerstört!

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

Yet: Jonah 3:10, Deuteronomy 18:22, 2 Kings 20:1, 2 Kings 20:6, Jeremiah 18:7-10

Reciprocal: Genesis 20:3 - a dead Exodus 5:1 - and told Exodus 33:3 - for I Esther 4:1 - rent Esther 4:16 - fast Isaiah 30:18 - wait Isaiah 38:1 - for thou Jeremiah 20:16 - repented Micah 6:9 - Lord's Nahum 1:1 - Nineveh

Gill's Notes on the Bible

And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey,.... As soon as he came to it, he did not go into an inn, to refresh himself after his wearisome journey; or spend his time in gazing upon the city, and to observe its structure, and the curiosities of it; but immediately sets about his work, and proclaims what he was bid to do; and before he could finish one day's journey, he had no need to proceed any further, the whole city was alarmed with his preaching, was terrified with it, and brought to repentance by it:

and he cried; as he went along; he lifted up his voice like a trumpet, that everyone might hear; he did not mutter it out, as if afraid to deliver his message, but cried aloud in the hearing of all; and very probably now and then made a stop in the streets, where there was a concourse of people, or where more streets met, and there, as a herald, proclaimed what he had to say:

and said, yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown; not by a foreign army besieging and taking it, which was not probable to be done in such a space of time, but by the immediate power of God; either by fire from heaven, as he overthrow Sodom and Gomorrah, their works being like theirs, as Kimchi and Ben Melech observe, or by an earthquake; that is, within forty days, or at the end of forty days, as the Targum; not exceeding such a space, which was granted for their repentance, which is implied, though not expressed; and must be understood with this proviso, except it repented, for otherwise why is any time fixed? and why have they warning given them, or the prophet sent to them? and why were they not destroyed at once, as Sodom and Gomorrah, without any notice? doubtless, so it would have been, had not this been the case. The Septuagint version very wrongly reads, "yet three days", c. and as wrongly does Josephus q make Jonah to say, that in a short time they would lose the empire of Asia, when only the destruction of Nineveh is threatened though, indeed, that loss followed upon it.

q Antiqu. l. 9. c. 10. sect. 2.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

And Jonah began to enter the city a day’s journey - Perhaps the day’s journey enabled him to traverse the city from end to end, with his one brief, deep cry of woe; “Yet forty days and Nineveh overthrown.” He prophesied an utter overthrow, a turning it upside down. He does not speak of it as to happen at a time beyond those days. The close of the forty days and the destruction were to be one. He does not say strictly, “Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown,” but, “Yet forty days and Nineveh overthrown.” The last of those forty days was, ere its sun was set, to see Nineveh as a “thing overthrown.” Jonah knew from the first God’s purpose of mercy to Nineveh; he had a further hint of it in the altered commission which he had received. It is perhaps hinted in the word “Yet” . “If God had meant unconditionally to overthrow them, He would have overthrown them without notice. ‘Yet,’ always denotes some long-suffering of God.” But, taught by that severe discipline, he discharges his office strictly.

He cries, what God had commanded him to cry out, without reserve or exception. The sentence, as are all God’s threatenings until the last, was conditional. But God does not say this. That sentence was now within forty days of its completion; yet even thus it was remitted. Wonderful encouragement, when one Lent sufficed to save some 600,000 souls from perishing! Yet the first visitation of the cholera was checked in its progress in England, upon one day’s national fast and humiliation; and we have seen how general prayer has often-times at once opened or closed the heavens as we needed. “A few years ago,” relates Augustine, “when Arcadias was Emperor at Constantinople (what I say, some have heard, some of our people were present there,) did not God, willing to terrify the city, and, by terrifying, to amend, convert, cleanse, change it, reveal to a faithful servant of His (a soldier, it is said), that the city should perish by fire from heaven, and warned him to tell the Bishop! It was told. The Bishop despised it not, but addressed the people. The city turned to the mourning of penitence, as that Nineveh of old. Yet lest men should think that he who said this, deceived or was deceived, the day which God had threatened, came. When all were intently expecting the issue with great fears, at the beginning of night as the world was being darkened, a fiery cloud was seen from the East, small at first then, as it approached the city, gradually enlarging, until it hung terribly over the whole city.

All fled to the Church; the place did not hold the people. But after that great tribulation, when God had accredited His word, the cloud began to diminish and at last disappeared. The people, freed from fear for a while, again heard that they must migrate, because the whole city should be destroyed on the next sabbath. The whole people left the city with the Emperor; no one remained in his house. That multitude, having one some miles, when gathered in one spot to pour forth prayer to God, suddenly saw a great smoke, and sent forth a loud cry to God.” The city was saved. “What shall we say?” adds Augustine. “Was this the anger of God, or rather His mercy? Who doubts that the most merciful Father willed by terrifying to convert, not to punish by destroying? As the hand is lifted up to strike, and is recalled in pity, when he who was to be struck is terrified, so was it done to that city.” Will any of God’s warnings “now” move our great Babylon to repentance, that it be not ruined?

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse Jonah 3:4. Yet forty days — Both the Septuagint and Arabic read three days. Probably some early copyist of the Septuagint, from whom our modern editions are derived, mistook the Greek numerals μ forty for γ three; or put the three days' journey in preaching instead of the forty days mentioned in the denunciation. One of Kennicott's MSS., instead of ארבעים arbaim, forty, has שלשים sheloshim, thirty: but the Hebrew text is undoubtedly the true reading; and it is followed by all the ancient versions, the Septuagint and Vulgate excepted. thus God gives them time to think, reflect, take counsel, and return to him. Had they only three days' space, the denunciation would have so completely confounded them, as to excite nothing but terror, and prevent repentance and conversion.