Jer. 18
Joel 2
| Again Jonas is commanded to preach in Nineveh, that within forty days it shall be destroyed: 5. They all fast, and repent: 10. and God recalls His sentence.
1
And
the word of the Lord came to Jonas the second time, saying:
2 Arise, and go to a.Ninive the great city: and preach in
it the preaching that I bid thee.
3 And Jonas arose, and went to Ninive, according to the
word of the Lord: now Ninive was a great city of three days' journey.
4 And Jonas began to enter into the city one day's
journey: and he cried, and said: Yet b.forty days, and Ninive shall be destroyed.
5 And the men of Ninive believed in God: and they
proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least.
6 And the word came to the king of Ninive; and he rose
up out of his throne, and cast away his robe from him, and was clothed with
sackcloth, and sat in ashes.
7 And he caused it to be proclaimed and published in
Ninive from the mouth of the king and of his princes, saying: Let neither c.men
nor beasts, oxen nor sheep, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink
water.
8 And let men and beasts be covered with sackcloth, and
cry to the Lord with all their strength, and let them turn every one from his
evil way, and from the iniquity that is in their hands.
9 Who can tell if God will turn, and forgive: and will
turn away from his fierce anger, and we shall not perish?
10 And God saw their works, that they were turned from
their evil way: and God had mercy with regard to the evil which he had said
that he would do to them, and he did it not.
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a. Diodorus Siculus bk. 3.c.1. writes that Nineveh was in length 150 stadia, or furlongs, in breadth 90, so it was in circle of the walls 480. And every furlong having 125 paces of true foot pace, the compass was 60. Italian miles, about 50, or 48 English miles sufficient travel of three days, to pass through the principal streets, and more public places thereof.
b. As well this, as many other like prophecies, show that God's threats are conditional, if sinners will repent; for then God changes his sentence. (St. John Chrysostom ad popul. St. Jerome in hunc locum. St. Gregory Is. 16.c.18 Moral. The same is also clear Jeremiah 18.v8.)
c. Great remorse and detestation of sin makes penitents to exceed in joyful works, which being well meant is accepted at God's hands, so it be not indifferent.
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