Jonas 1:2
Arise, and go to Ninive the great city, and preach in it: for the wickedness thereof is come up before me.
The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Surge, et vade in Niniven, civitatem grandem, et prædica in ea, quia ascendit malitia ejus coram me.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- Ἀνάστηθι καὶ πορεύθητι εἰς Νινευὴ τὴν πόλιν τὴν μεγάλην καὶ κήρυξον ἐν αὐτῇ, ὅτι ἀνέβη ἡ κραυγὴ τῆς κακίας αὐτῆς πρὸς μέ.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- ק֠וּם לֵ֧ךְ אֶל נִֽינְוֵ֛ה הָעִ֥יר הַגְּדוֹלָ֖ה וּקְרָ֣א עָלֶ֑יהָ כִּֽי עָלְתָ֥ה רָעָתָ֖ם לְפָנָֽי
Haydock's commentary
Ninive, the capital city of the Assyrian empire. (Challoner)
It was 150 stadia long and 90 broad, (Diod. ii.) on the western bank of the Tigris. (Pliny, [Natural History?] vi. 13.)
Mosul, which some mistake for it, stands on the northern side. See Genesis x. 10. At the time when Jonas preached, Ninive would contain about 600,000, chap. iv. 11. They were people less favoured by God, (Acts xiv. 15.; Calmet) but not abandoned. (Theodoret)
God took sufficient care of all his creatures, and foretold many things relating to foreign nations. (Calmet)
Romans iii. 29. (Worthington)
For the. Septuagint add, "cry of," Genesis iv., and xviii. (Haydock)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St John Chrysostom Homily on the Paralytic Let Down Through the Roof: and Concerning the Equality of the Divine Father and the Son, Homily on the Paralytic Let Down Through the Roof
3. Moreover it is possible to discern His forethought and consideration not only from this, but also from that which seems to be a rebuke. For He did not make a public exposure of his sins, but yet He told him that he suffered what he did suffer on account of his sins, but what those sins were He did not disclose; nor did He say “thou hast sinned” or “thou hast transgressed,” but He indicated the fact by one simple utterance “sin no more;” and having said so much as just to remind him of it He put him more on the alert against future events, and at the same time He made manifest to us all his patience and courage and wisdom, having reduced him to the necessity of publicly lamenting his calamity, and having displayed his own earnestness on the man’s behalf, “for while I am coming,” he says, “another steppeth down before me:” yet he did not publicly expose his sins. …
St John Chrysostom A Treatise to Prove that No One Can Harm the Man Who Does Not Injure Himself
14. But the Ninevites, although a barbarous and foreign people who had never participated in any of these benefits, small or great, neither words, nor wonders, nor works, when they saw a man who had been saved from shipwreck, who had never associated with them before, but appeared then for the first time, enter their city and say “yet three days and Nineveh shall be overthrown,” were so converted and reformed by the mere sound of these words, and putting away their former wickedness, advanced in the direction of virtue by the path of repentance, that they caused the sentence of God to be revoked, and arrested the threatened disturbance of their city, and averted the heaven-sent wrath, and were delivered from every kind of evil. “For,” we read, “God saw that every man turned from his evil way, and was converted to the Lord.” How turned? I ask. …