_And the men of Niniveh believed upon God, and cried a fast, and from the greatest of them to the least of them they put on sackcloth. And word came to the king of Niniveh, and he rose off his throne, and cast his mantle from upon him, and dressed in sackcloth and sat in the dust. And he sent criers to say in Niniveh:—_
_By Order of the King and his Nobles, thus:—Man and Beast, Oxen and Sheep, shall not taste anything, neither eat nor drink water. But let them clothe themselves[1548] in sackcloth, both man and beast, and call upon God with power, and turn every man from his evil way and from every wrong which they have in hand. Who knoweth but that God may[1549] relent and turn from the fierceness of His wrath, that we perish not?_[1550]
_And God saw their doings, how they turned from their evil way; and God relented of the evil which He said He would do to them, and did it not._
[1538] Only in iii. 1, _second time_, and in iv. 2 are there any references from the second to the first part of the book.
[1539] The diameter rather than the circumference seems intended by the writer, if we can judge by his sending the prophet _one day’s journey through the city_. Some, however, take the circumference as meant, and this agrees with the computation of sixty English miles as the girth of the greater Niniveh described below.
[1540] LXX. Codd. B, etc., read _three days_; other Codd. have the _forty_ of the Heb. text.
[1541] For a more detailed description of Niniveh see above on the Book of Nahum, pp. 98 ff.
[1542] רחבות עיר, Gen. x. 11.
[1543] Gen. x. 12, according to which the Great City included, besides Niniveh, at least Resen and Kelach.
[1544] And taking the present Kujundschik, Nimrud, Khorsabad and Balawat as the four corners of the district.
[1545] iii. 2, iv. 11.
[1546] Compare the Book of Jonah, for instance, with the Book of Nahum.
[1547] Cf. Herod. IX. 24; Joel i. 18; Virgil, _Eclogue_ V., _Æneid_ XI. 89 ff.; Plutarch, _Alex._ 72.
[1548] LXX.: _and they did clothe themselves in sackcloth_, and so on.
[1549] So LXX. Heb. text: _may turn and relent, and turn_.
[1550] The alleged discrepancies in this account have been already noticed. As the text stands the fast and mourning are proclaimed and actually begun before word reaches the king and his proclamation of fast and mourning goes forth. The discrepancies might be removed by transferring the words in ver. 6, _and they cried a fast, and from the greatest of them, to the least they clothed themselves in sackcloth_, to the end of ver. 8, with a לאמר or ויאמרו to introduce ver. 9. But, as said above (pp. 499, 510, n. 1499), it is more probable that the text as it stands was original, and that the inconsistencies in the order of the narrative are due to its being a tale or parable.