NOTES for Jon 3:4-5

It happens that in the life of individuals and peoples, there is something that we say that it cannot be because it can never be. The massive repentance of the inhabitants of Nineveh can be attributed to such events. That is in particular why the prophet did not want to leave over there, it was absolutely certain: to preach to Nineveh, to call its inhabitants to repentance is a thing manifestly absurd. But God sent him all the same in particular over there. Why? Bible scholars until now still argue, if the history told by the author of the Book of Jonas, is real or invented, but, be that as it may, one thing is obvious: we have before us a parable, and no matter what is on its basis: a historic fact or an artistic invention.

It is a parable about the prophet, who achieved an unexpected success where success was not expected, and not understanding that his success was really a success, and not a failure, as it seemed to him after the conversion of the Ninevites. Maybe the prophet compared them to his own people: because the Jews did not always take seriously the words of the prophets. And here, Jonah thought, probably, that the Ninevites, heathen and again living in the country, which was for his contemporaries and compatriots the symbol of all that is worst in the world, the symbol of the wickedness and theomachism.

Can such people hear God's call to conversion and to repentance? And here is happening exactly what the prophet considered improbable: his testimony is heard, the city repents. How it could arrive? The answer seems paradoxical, but it is in particular the measure of the sinfulness of the inhabitants of the city which could persuade them into repentance. The compatriots of the prophet (if it is not all, then many) usually considered themselves not at all as sinners; they sinned of course and knew it, and sinned "as all" and also lived "as everybody".

The feeling "we are not worse than others", "we are as everybody" is familiar to everyone, but not everyone thinks, which brake it can become on the spiritual way, not letting the thinker see his acts such as they are, from the point of view of the commandments of God and the way of righteousness. To the religious Jews this feeling was much stronger than to the non-religious Ninevites. That is why it was easier for them to repent: they had no illusions on their own account. And they [ninevites] outpaced on the way of repentance the compatriots of the prophet, who believed that, not considering some small things, everything is in order in their spiritual life.