Jonah chapter 3

After reading chapter 3:

Yahweh tells Jonah to go to Ninevah, again, and give them his message. Then we are told Ninevah is such an important city that a visit requires three days. (The same number of days Jonah was in the big fish! Coincidence?) on the first day, Jonah goes into the city and starts proclaiming that Ninevah will be overturned in forty days. (Forty days is another very familiar number of days.) Lo and behold, the Ninevites believed Jonah! That was easy. They declared a fast and put on sackcloth.

When word reached the king, he must have believed it too, because he took off his royal robes and also put on sackcloth. Theses people were obviously not sceptics, if they believed a stranger who roamed around saying that a foreign god told him they are doomed. Nevertheless, the king issued a proclamation that every man and beast (poor beasts) was to be covered in sackcloth, give up their evil ways, and call urgently on God, maybe he would relent. Or... Maybe it never was going to happen in the first place.

The last verse of chapter three says that when God saw how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring the destruction on them that he had threatened. So, God promised to destroy Ninevah (said Jonah) but he didn't. He broke his promise? But, if this happened, there was only Jonah's word that God spoke to him. God didn't tell this to anyone else, not even a single Ninevite. A revelation to one man is just that. Why should anyone believe it?

Plus, have you noticed, we aren't even told what the "evil ways" of the Ninevites were.