Unexpected
When God saw their deeds, that they turned from their evil way, then God relented of the disaster which He had declared He would bring on them. So He did not do it. Jonah 3:10 NASB
They turned – “The repentance of the Ninevites, from a psychological standpoint, is less plausible than the physical possibility of the miracles that happened to Jonah. There is nothing like it anywhere else in the Bible. What is more, their repentance, unlike miracles, cannot be ascribed to divine intervention, because it is emphatically described as a human action.”[1] “They turned.” Amazing! When in all human history have you ever heard of an entire city, a metropolis, voluntarily turn toward God? But not even “turn.” More than that. The Hebrew verb is familiar, šûb.
The Bible is rich in idioms describing man’s responsibility in the process of repentance. Such phrases would include the following: “incline your heart unto the Lord your God” (Josh 24:23): “circumcise yourselves to the Lord” (Jer 4:4); “wash your heart from wickedness” (Jer 4:14); “break up your fallow ground” (Hos 10:12) and so forth. All these expressions of man’s penitential activity, however, are subsumed and summarized by this one verb šûb. For better than any other verb it combines in itself the two requisites of repentance: to turn from evil and to turn to the good.[2]
According to this story, this city, an equivalent of Sodom, re-turned to God’s ways. They were lost. They determined to be found. They were faced with extinction. They determined to do all they could do enlist God’s compassion. They did not make God forgive them. They simply acted in a way that would make God notice. The outcome was never foreordained. As the king of Ninevah said, “Who knows? Perhaps God might be willing to change his mind and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we might not die” (Jonah 3:9 NET). They turned away from their evil ways in hope, not with a guarantee. For all they knew, the verdict was written in the heavens and they would all die, but rather than eat, drink, and be merry because there was nothing they could do, they chose as a city to turn around. Had God not relented, we would still have no argument against their extinction. Mercy is never a foregone conclusion.
In the six thousand years of biblical history, Ninevah is the only metropolis that voluntarily repented. Think about that. Can we make the same statement about human history since the end of the first century? Can you think of any large human habitation that actually turned away from their past evil acts and embraced righteousness as a way of living? Perhaps a group here or there. Maybe a pilgrim community. But a major metro? No, I don’t think so. What does that tell us about the power of the crowd? What does that say about our evangelistic efforts? Šûb might be the twelfth most frequent verb in the Tanakh, but it’s very rare outside the history of Israel. Do you find that frightening?
Topical Index: šûb, turn, return, repentance, mercy, Jonah 3:9, Jonah 3:10
[1] Uriel Simon, The JPS Bible Commentary: Jonah (The Jewish Publication Society, 1999), p. xvi.
[2] Hamilton, V. P. (1999). 2340 שׁוּב. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament(electronic ed., p. 909). Moody Press.
