My pastor when I was growing up often said that “delayed obedience is disobedience.” He was trying to get across to us that we should obey the Lord immediately, right when He tells us to do something. That’s true, of course, but I think Jonah shows us in today’s passage that God’s grace and mercy are such that He often multiplies opportunities for His people to obey.

After Jonah’s ordeal on the ship and in the fish’s belly, the reluctant prophet is vomited onto dry ground (Jonah 2:10). Once again “the word of the LORD came to Jonah” (3:1). The Lord’s word is much the same as it was before: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you” (v. 2). This time, instead of tucking his tail and heading in the opposite direction, “Jonah obeyed the word of the LORD and went to Nineveh” (v. 3). There Jonah proclaimed the message, just five words in Hebrew, that “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown” (v. 4). If you know the history of Israel and how they treated the prophets in the Old Testament— with obstinate and repeated refusal to repent—the next verse is wholly unexpected: “the Ninevites believed God” (v. 5). What’s more, the Ninevites accompanied their repentance with outward expressions of their inward change. They fasted— “all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth” (v. 5).

We’ll read in chapter 4 that this is exactly what Jonah expected would happen, and their repentance made him exceedingly angry. But today let’s reflect on the unlikeliness of the Ninevites’ repentance. They were a pagan people steeped in idolatry, and yet the Lord pierced their hearts with Jonah’s five-word sermon, and they all turned to Him. Indeed, “salvation comes from the LORD” (2:9).

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