Jonah walks for a day before proclaiming the only words of prophecy in the book: “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown”

Certainly a message of judgment fits a view of God’s world as one where evil is punished and good rewarded.

The narrator is quoting from the story of the golden calf in Exodus: “And God repented of the evil which he planned to do to his people” (Exod 32:14). In that story the unrepentant Israelites are spared when Moses intercedes for them. In this story Jonah proclaims judgment upon the Ninevites, who proceed to repent extravagantly

Jonah went in obedience to God’s command, but not with God’s compassionate Spirit.

The reader is not supposed to do arithmetic. He is supposed to be lost in astonishment …”

The king’s behavior is exemplary. He humbles himself by divesting himself of his symbols of authority, his throne and his robe, and by putting on sackcloth and sitting in ashes

We have already noted the bad reputation of Nineveh. The prophet Nahum labeled it “vile” (Nah. 1:14), “the bloody city, all full of lies and booty” (3:1), comparing it to a den of lions (2:10–12) or a harlot (3:4–7), and announcing its fall in chilling terms (3:1–19). When Nineveh’s end came, no one would feel sorry, “For upon whom has not come your unceasing evil?” (Nah. 3:19).

Who cares for the city in the story to this point? Certainly not Jonah, the insider representing the people of God. The answer is that God does

It speaks a word of criticism against a people who prefer huddling and cuddling (like Jonah in the hold of the ship) in the safety of their own groups to being about the task to which Jesus called them: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations”