Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.
All Commentaries on Jonah 1:2 Go To Jonah 1
Jerome
AD 420
Apart from that which the Septuagint translates as, "the noise of their wickedness has risen up even to me", it has translated the rest similarly. Jonah is sent to the gentiles to condemn Israel, because Nineveh had to repent, but the Israelites still persisted in their sin. And when God says, "their wickedness has come up to me", or "the noise of their wickedness…" it is exactly the text of Genesis: "the noise of Sodom and of Gomorrah is very loud"[8], and to Cain: "the blood of your brother cries to me from the earth"[9]. According to tropology the Lord, our Jonah, that is to say 'dove' or 'suffering', (he is given both meaning, either because the Holy Spirit descends in the form of a dove and stays with him[10], or because he has suffered for our wounds, wept for Jerusalem[11], and because we have been cured by his malice[12]) is truly the son of Truth, for God is Truth[13]. He is sent to Nineveh the beautiful, that is to the world, where there is nothing more beautiful to our eyes than flesh. In Greek the idea of adornment is in the word cosmos. And when everything had been completed, each one by one, it was said, "and God saw that it was good"[14]. It is to Nineveh that he goes, the great city, so that although Israel has not wanted to listen, the whole world of peoples will hear God's word. And this is because their wickedness has gone up to God. For although God had made the most beautiful house for man who was devoted to serving his creator, man deprived himself of this by his own will; from childhood his heart fixed upon wickedness[15]. He turned his face to the heaven[16] and constructed a tower of pride[17]. He deserves then God to come down to him so that he may be able to rise to heaven by the destruction of repentance, he that did not succeed by the swell of pride.
