1 The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time:
2 "Up, go to Nineveh, the great city, and proclaim to it the message I am giving you."
3 This time Jonah got up and went to Nineveh, in obedience to the LORD's word. Now Nineveh was a city great even to God, a three days' walk.
4 Jonah started into the city and went one day's walk, crying out, "In forty more days Nineveh will be overturned!"
5 The men of Nineveh believed God. They declared a fast, and all of them, from the greatest to the smallest, dressed in sackcloth.
6 When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he got up from his throne, took off his royal robe, wrapped himself in sackcloth and sat down in the ashes.
7 Then he had a proclamation cried throughout Nineveh: "By order of the king and his great men: No person or animal, no cattle or sheep, may taste anything; they must not graze, and they must not drink water.
8 People and animals alike are to be clothed in sackcloth and call on God with all their strength. Each one must turn back from his evil course and from the violence his hands have done.
9 Who can tell? Perhaps God will turn and change his mind and turn back from his burning anger, and we will not die."
10 God saw what they did, how they turned back from their evil course, and God changed his mind about the harm he had said he would bring on them; he did not carry it out.