So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days' journey.
So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord - like the son who was at first disobedient to the father's command, "Go work in my vineyard," but who afterward "repented, and went" (Matthew 21:28-29). As in the former call Jonah "arose" at once, and lost no time in disobeying, so now he loses no time in obeying God. Jonah was thus the fittest instrument for proclaiming judgment, and yet the hope of mercy on repentance, to Nineveh, being himself a living exemplification of both-judgment in his entombment in the fish, mercy on repentance exemplified in his deliverance. Israel professing to obey, but not obeying, and so doomed to exile in the same Nineveh, answers to the son who said, "I go, sir, and went not." In Luke 11:30 it is said that Jonas was not only a sign to the men in Christ's time, but also "unto the Ninevites." On a later occasion (Matthew 16:1-4), when the Pharisees and Sadducees tempted Him, asking a sign from heaven, He answered, "No sign shall be given, but the sign of the prophet Jonas."
Thus, the sign had a two-fold aspect, a direct bearing on the Ninevites, an indirect bearing on the Jews in Christ's Thus, the sign had a two-fold aspect, a direct bearing on the Ninevites, an indirect bearing on the Jews in Christ's time. To the Ninevites he was not merely a prophet, but himself a wonder in the earth, as one who had tasted of death, and yet had not seen corruption, but had now returned to witness among them for God. If the Ninevites had indulged in a captious spirit, they never would have inquired, and so known Jonah's wonderful history; but being humbled by God's awful message, they probably learnt from Jonah himself that it was the previous concealing in his bosom of the same message of their own doom that caused him to be entombed as an outcast from the living. Thus he was a "sign" to them of wrath on the one hand, and, on the other, of mercy. Guilty Jonah saved from the jaws of death gives a ray of hope to guilty Nineveh. Thus God, who brings good from evil, made Jonah, in his fall, punishment, and restoration, "a sign" (an embodied lesson or living symbol) through which the Ninevites were roused to hear and repent, as they would not have been likely to do had he gone on the first commission, before his living entombment and resurrection. To do evil that good may come is a policy which can only come from Satan; but from evil already done to extract an instrument against the kingdom of darkness is a triumphant display of the grace and wisdom of God.
To the Pharisees in Christ's time who, not content with the many signs exhibited by Him, still demanded a sign from heaven, He gave a sign in the opposite quarter-namely, Jonah, who came "out of the belly of hell" (the unseen region). They looked for a Messiah gloriously coming in the clouds of heaven; the Messiah, on the contrary, is to pass through a like, though a deeper humiliation than Jonah; He is to lie "in the heart of the earth." Jonah and his antitype alike appeared low and friendless among their hearers; both victims to death for God's wrath against sin, both preaching repentance. Repentance derives all its efficacy from the death of Christ, just as Jonah's message derived its weight with the Ninevites from his entombment. The Jews stumbled at Christ's death, the very fact which ought to have led them to Him, as Jonah's entombment attracted the Ninevites to his message. As Jonah's restoration gave hope of God's placabilty to Nineveh, so Christ's resurrection assures us God is fully reconciled to man by Christ's death. But Jonah's entombment only had the effect of a moral suasive. Christ's death is an efficacious instrument of reconciliation between God and man (Fairbairn).
Nineveh was an exceeding great city - literally, great to God, i:e., before God. All greatness was in the Hebrew mind associated with GOD: hence, arose the idiom (cf. Psalms 36:6; Psalms 80:10), "great mountains," margin, 'mountains of God; "goodly cedars," margin, 'cedars of God.' Genesis 10:9, "a mighty hunter before the Lord."
Three days' journey - i:e., about sixty miles round, allowing about twenty miles for a day's journey. Jonah's statement is confirmed by pagan writers, who describe Nineveh as 480 stadia in circuit (Diodorus Siculus, 2: 3). Herodotus defines a day's journey to be 150 stadia; so three days' journey will not be much below Diodorus' estimate. The parallelogram in central Assyria covered with remains of buildings has Khorsabad northeast; Koyunjik and Nebbi Yunus, near the Tigris, northwest; Nimroud, between the Tigris and the Zab, southwest; and Karamless, at a distance inward from the Zab, south east. From Koyunjik to Nimroud is about 18 miles; from Khorsabad to Karamless, the same; from Koyunjik to Khorsabad, 13 or 14 miles; from Nimroud to Karamless, 14 miles. The length thus was greater than the breadth; cf. Jonah 3:4, "a day's journey," which is confirmed by pagan writers and by modern measurements. Each of the longer sides was 150 furlongs; each of the shorter 90; the whole circuit being thus 480 furlongs (60 miles). Nineveh was thus much larger than Babylon, to which Clitarchus (in Diodorus, 2: 7) assigns a circuit of 365 furlongs. The walls were 100 feet high, and broad enough to allow three chariots abreast, and had, moreover, 1,500 lofty towers. The space between, including large parks and arable ground, capable of supplying food in time of siege, as well as houses, was Nineveh in its full extent. The oldest places are at Nimroud, which was probably the original site. Layard latterly has thought that the name Nineveh belonged originally to Koyunjik rather than to Nimroud. Jonah (Jonah 4:11) mentions the children as numbering 120,000, which would give about a million to the whole population. Existing ruins show that Nineveh acquired its greatest extent under the kings of the second dynasty - i:e., the kings mentioned in Scripture: it was then that Jonah visited it, and the reports of its magnificence were carried to the west (Layard).