The Ninevites had numerous idols, but their honour for the
Lord had not quite faded away; and about the year 830, about the time of
Amaziah in Judah, and Jeroboam II. in Israel, the prophet Jonah was
sent to rebuke them for their many iniquities. In trying to avoid the
command, by sailing to Tarshish in a Phoenician ship, he underwent that
strange punishment which was a prophetic sign of our Lord's Burial and
Resurrection; and thus warned, he went to Nineveh and startled the
people by the cry, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be destroyed!" At
that cry, the whole place repented as one man; and from the king to the
beggar all fasted and wept, till God had mercy on their repentance and
ready faith, and turned away His wrath, in pity to the 120,000 innocent
children who knew not yet to do good or evil.
The prophet Nahum afterwards prophesied against the bloody city, and
foretold that her men should become like women, and that in the midst of
her feasting and drunkenness an overflowing flood should make an end of
her. But first God had a work for the Ninevites to do, namely, to punish
His own chosen, who would not have Him for their God.
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