Five-year Bible reading plan for 14 September 2019

King James Version (en)

King James Version (en)

Jonah, Chapter 3, verses 6-10

⁵ Upon their repentance, ¹⁰ God repenteth

⁶For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.

⁷And 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:

⁸But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.

⁹Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?

¹⁰And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.

Read more:Jonah, Chapter 4

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3 Jonah's mission renewed and executed, Jon 3:1-4.
The humiliation and reformation of the Ninevites, Jon 3:5-9.
Their sentence revoked, Jon 3:10.

3:6 The king - Probably Phul Belochus.His robe - Put off his rich apparel.

3:7 Taste any thing - Man and beast are to forbear to eat and drink, that the fast might be most solemn, that the cry of man, seconded with the cry of hungry cattle, might enter the ears of God, who preserveth man and beast.

3:8 And beast - Their horses and camels, both which they adorned with rich and costly clothing, they must now in testimony of an hearty repentance, clothe with sackcloth; the clothing of beasts must witness for men. The violence - Oppression and rapine. In their hands - Which are practised by them.

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NOTES

Sometimes, when reading the Bible, one can think that God makes His decisions in the same way people do: first He plans to punish a person or an entire people, and then sometimes, depending on the circumstances, He takes pity and changes His mind, changing His decision. When it comes to...

Can God revoke His decision? And if He can, in what cases? What are fate, doom, predestination? Do they exist? Prophetic experience gives the best answer to this question. Prophets are often considered predictors of future...

Can God revoke His decision? And if He can, in what cases? What are fate, doom, predestination? Do they exist? Prophetic experience gives the best answer to this question. Prophets are often considered predictors of future events, to whom God Himself reveals His plans so that people may learn about them.

But is that so? The biblical language has no word that in other languages is conveyed by concepts such as doom, fate, or destiny. The Bible does not use them at all. In that case, naturally, there is no reason to speak of any predestination, since predestination is impossible if nothing is programmed in advance. Nineveh was supposed to perish; it seemed doomed. But its inhabitants repented of their sins and turned to God, and He, seeing their repentance, canceled what even Jonah himself thought was already the inevitable end.

The natural question arises: what about God's plans and purposes? How can one plan anything at all if one never knows exactly whether events will happen as planned? Meanwhile, when the matter concerns us ourselves, we, being in just such a position, are still able to plan our actions and often to carry out what we have intended, provided, of course, that nothing goes completely contrary to what we were counting on. The goal remains the same; only the ways of reaching it change. Why, then, should we be surprised that God too often acts in the same way?

He could act differently. He could simply carry out His plan without paying any attention to us or to our choices. He could forgive us nothing and give each of us only one chance. But He does not want merely to carry out what He has conceived; He wants to do it in such a way that we are drawn as deeply as possible into His works. Not because He cannot manage without us, but because being drawn into His works also means becoming participants in His plans and, in the end (if, of course, we do not leave on our own), inhabitants of His Kingdom. The Kingdom without which there can be no talk either of salvation or of life.

The biblical prophets often warned both their own people and other nations of coming disasters that threatened them because of their sins and unrighteous lives. Of course, when it comes to pagan nations that know neither God nor the commandments He has explicitly given, the requirements are somewhat less strict...

The biblical prophets often warned both their own people and other nations of coming disasters that threatened them because of their sins and unrighteous lives. Of course, when it comes to pagan nations that know neither God nor the commandments He has explicitly given, the requirements are somewhat less strict. God does not, for example, require strict monotheism of any nation other than His own.

But when it comes to how people treat one another, everything remains in force. This is hardly surprising: here the voice of conscience is usually enough, reminding people of the same divine commandments that God gives explicitly to His own people. It is enough to listen to that voice and follow it. If there are difficulties in following the voice of conscience, they arise not from a lack of information, but simply from an unwillingness to follow it. At the time when the Book of Jonah was written, Nineveh was seen as the symbol and centre of the world's evil in its defiance of God.

It was the capital of the Assyrian Empire, whose destruction, according to the prophet's testimony, no one regretted either during or after it. Later, after the Babylonian Exile, Babylon took Nineveh's place in the Bible's imagery and symbolism. But that happened later, several centuries after the Book of Jonah appeared. And now, in this centre of the world's evil, which had become a symbol of worldwide opposition to God, a sermon is heard that, quite unexpectedly, brings the city's inhabitants to repentance and conversion. Incredible, but true. What follows seems even more incredible: God abandons His plans to punish Nineveh.

Can a single conversion really have outweighed all the evil the Ninevites had done? If we take a strictly arithmetical approach, counting evil deeds and good ones, then of course not. One act of repentance, one conversion, does not outweigh all the sins committed, either in the life of an individual or in that of an entire people. But arithmetic is not what matters to God. He does not calculate the balance of evil and good deeds; if He did, no one would stand a chance. All that matters to Him is conversion.

What matters is with whom a person or an entire people stands here and now: with Him or with those who oppose Him. If they stand with Him, He will do everything to give those who have turned to Him the opportunity to change their lives, perhaps even to make a fresh start. For He does not want sinners to die because of their sins. He wants the sinner to turn to Him, repent of the sin committed and begin a new life. If the sinner truly repents and turns to Him, He will do everything to make that new life possible for the one who has repented.

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