Jonah, Chapter 3

1. The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time:    2. "Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it what I tell you."    3. Jonah went at once to Nineveh in accordance with the LORD's command. Nineveh was an enormously large city a three days' walk across.    4. Jonah started out and made his way into the city the distance of one day's walk, and proclaimed: "Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!"    5. The people of Nineveh believed God. They proclaimed a fast, and great and small alike put on sackcloth.    6. When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his robe, put on sackcloth, and sat in ashes.    7. And he had the word cried through Nineveh: "By decree of the king and his nobles: No man or beast -- of flock or herd -- shall taste anything! They shall not graze, and they shall not drink water!    8. They shall be covered with sackcloth -- man and beast -- and shall cry mightily to God. Let everyone turn back from his evil ways and from the injustice of which he is guilty.    9. Who knows but that God may turn and relent? He may turn back from His wrath, so that we do not perish."    10. God saw what they did, how they were turning back from their evil ways. And God renounced the punishment He had planned to bring upon them, and did not carry it out.