SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/22/2025 7:32 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-1 “A Rebuking Message”
Bible Reading and Meditation Reference: Jonah 3:-3b-4
Message of the verses: “Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three days’ walk. Then Jonah began to go into the city, one day’s walk; and he called out and said, “Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown.”
I have to take my wife to get her 2nd chemo treatment this morning and so I will have to make this a very short morning SD.
“Arriving at his destination, Jonah was struck by the size of the city: “Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three days’ walk.” As noted earlier (see discussion on Jonah 1:2), Nineveh was a city of significant size by ancient standards. The walls of Nineveh were magnificent, in both the strength of their fortification and the beauty of their construction. The inner city was surrounded by eight miles of walls, and the rest of the city had a circumference that extended to fifty-five miles around. Such a sprawling metropolis housed approximately 600,000 residents, including some 120,000 infants and children (cf. 4:1). One ancient writer remarked, ‘No one afterward built a city of such compass or with walls so magnificent.’ With Nineveh being such an exceedingly great city, the journey through Nineveh would have amounted to a three days’ walk. So, Jonah to preach repentance through the entire city would have been a formidable challenge.
“In describing Nineveh as an exceedingly great city, the Hebrew indicates that Nineveh was ‘God-sized,’ bringing forth its exceptional grandeur and magnitude. The Hebrew literally reads, ‘a great cit to God’ (cf. Gen. 23:6; Josh 10:2; Ps. 36:6). Such greatness foreshadowed the greatness of Nineveh’s repentance, and also highlighted the importance of this city to God. By declaring that He had a unique interest in and plan for the people of Nineveh, the Lord demonstrated that even Israel’s worst pagan enemies were not beyond the reach of His mercy. He had chose to give mercy to them, and that was the reason He had sent Jonah to Nineveh. Because God chose these Gentile people, He reached down to save them. Nothing like this had ever happened to another Gentile city. Repentance always comes from God (cf. Deut. 3o:1-6; Acts 5:31; 11:18; 2 Tim 2:25), and He purposed to bestow this gift on the Ninevites not because the city was exceedingly great, but because He is exceedingly gracious.”
10/22/2025 7:47 AM
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