Jonah 3:7 - Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. The brute creatures share in the evil effects of man's sin (Jonah 4:11, "Should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand ... and also much cattle;" Romans 8:20; Romans 8:22): so they here, according to Eastern custom, are made to share in man's outward indications of humiliation. God's "tender mercies are over all His works" (Psalms 145:9); God "preserves man and beast" (Psalms 36:6). The cattle would suffer if the city should suffer, as God Himself so lovingly declares in His appeal to Jonah (Jonah 4:11). They, therefore, rightly were made, in dumb show, to plead for mercy to God in the general mourning. 'When the Persian general Masistius was slain, the horses and mules of the Persians were shorn as well as themselves' (Newcome, from Plutarch; also Herodotus, 9: 24). The association of the nobles with the king in the decree (as in Medo-Persia, under Darius) throws light on the political state of Nineveh. It was then not an absolute monarchy. The nobles probably originated the decree and the king confirmed it, (cf. Daniel 6:1-28.)