Jonah and the People of Nineveh
“ You are a gracious and merciful God , slow to anger and abundant in loving kindness , One who relents from doing harm " ( Jonah 4:2 ) The Book of Jonah is one of the shortest books of the Old Testament . It is only four chapters . In this Book , God is the One who searched for the people of Nineveh to bring them to repentance . The book showed God ’ s love and concern for all His creation not just for His people , Israel . God sent to these people the prophet Jonah who tried to run away instead of following God ' s direction . He took a ship that was going to Tarshish . He was thrown overboard from the ship and swallowed by a great fish . Jonah remained inside the fish for three
consecutive days before being cast out to the shore unharmed . God made use of Jonah ’ s disobedience . The saintly fathers taught us that In the Book of Jonah , God wants us to know an
important fact : that the prophets were not of a different nature than us . The only thing was that the grace of God worked in them and gave them power .
The people of Nineveh were not Jews yet they believed in God and decided to repent . The prophet Jonah did not teach them about the mercy of God or how to repent . He did not even give them any hope for salvation . They believed without seeing one sign from him . On the contrary , he proclaimed destruction to these people . These people truly gave us an outstanding example of how to repent in a way God informed us about in chapter 3 of the book of Jonah . Thus , God accepted their fasting and forgave their sins . May the Lord who accepted the fasting of the people of Nineveh accept also our fasting and grant us a true repentance through the intersession of the mother of God ( Saint Mary ) and Saint Stephen and Saint Jonah , the great prophet
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