After trying to run as far as he can in the opposite direction from where he is supposed to be going, Jonah finds himself "spewed out on the land" after three days and nights in the belly of a fish, saved by God from drowning by this highly unusual method in this most unlikely of places. And where has he "landed" after three days and three nights of a captive journey through the Mediterranean Sea? Ninevah. Where he was supposed to have been going in the first place.
And so God reminds him of what the assignment was in the first place, now that Jonah has been profoundly unsuccessful at fleeing from the presence of God (who would have figured God was present in the belly of a fish?). Chapter 3 of Jonah begins thusly: "The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, ‘Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.’ So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord."
It seems that Jonah figures out that he's got to do what God is calling him to do. We'll see next week that he's not all that happy about doing it, or the successful results, but he goes to do it. After all, God has gone to extraordinary lengths to get God's point across, and Jonah gets that's it's only by God's grace that he's even still alive.
Ninevah has no idea what is coming. As a city not connected in any way with Yahweh God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob--not part of this ancestral heritage--Ninevah only knows the Israelites as a nation to wage war against. They are about to be hit with a prophet telling them that Yahweh God wants them to straighten up or there will be severe consequences--consequences that this God whom they don't know can bring about. Jonah tells them they have 40 days to get right or the evil they do to others is going to come down on them. Jonah must have been pretty convincing, because they do it, and Yahweh God relents, so the evil they have done will not come down on them.
Jonah knows from recent experience that God can and will save, redeem, forgive. God saved, redeemed, forgave Jonah when Jonah tried to run away from God. And so it seems that Jonah knew that God would do the same for Ninevah. We know that God saves, redeems, forgives us as we "turn it around". Maybe our lifelong experience of this grace causes us to be a bit less urgent about actually repenting than the Ninevites were, for whom this is their first experience of the depths of God's grace?
OLD TESTAMENT
Jonah 3
1 The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, 2 ‘Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.’ 3 So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. 4 Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, ‘Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!’ 5 And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.
6 When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 7 Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: ‘By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. 8 Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. 9 Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.’
10 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.