Jonah Starts Preaching In Nineveh

God is a God of second chances.

Nineveh was a very wicked city, and yet the people of Nineveh repented in response to Jonah's preaching.

God is longsuffering and patient. There are many examples of this in the Bible.

God was not only gracious to backslidden and disobedient Jonah; He was also gracious to the wicked city of Nineveh.

“Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days' journey” (Jonah 3:3). And Jonah walked for one day before he began preaching (3:4).
Nineveh was located on the famous Tigris River, referred to in Genesis 2:14 as “Hiddekel.” Jonah 4:11 says there were “more then sixscore thousand persons” in Nineveh. Perhaps 120,000 were saved in Nineveh.

In Luke 11:30, our Lord said, “Jonas was a sign unto the Ninevites.” This means they knew what had happened to Jonah. The conversion of all those wicked Ninevites (including the king) was a greater miracle than Jonah being swallowed by the great fish. “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown” (3:4). The 40 day “grace period” implies God was giving them time to repent.

Genesis 18:25, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”

Our Lord said in Matthew 12:41, “The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.”

The LORD said in Jeremiah 18:8, “If that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them.”