And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented of the disaster, that he had said that he would bring upon them; and he did it not.
All Commentaries on Jonah 3:10 Go To Jonah 3
John Chrysostom
AD 407
And that these words are not a vain boast shall be made manifest to you for things that have already happened. What could be more stupid than the Ninevites? What more devoid of understanding? Yet, nevertheless, these barbarian, foolish people, who had not yet heard any one teaching them wisdom, who had never received such precepts from others, when they heard the prophet saying, “Yet three days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown,” laid aside, within three days, the whole of their evil customs. The fornicator became chaste; the bold man meek; the grasping and extortionate moderate and kind; the slothful industrious. They did not, indeed, reform one or two or three or four vices by way of remedy, but the whole of their iniquity. But where does this appear, says someone? From the words of the prophet; for the same who had been their accuser and who had said that “the cry of their wickedness has ascended up even into heaven,” himself again bears testimony of an opposite kind by saying, “God saw that every one departed from their own evil ways.” He does not say from fornication or adultery or theft, but from their “own evil ways.” And how did they depart? As God knew; not as people judged of the matter. After this are we not ashamed, must we not blush, if it turns out that in three days only the barbarians laid aside all their wickedness, but that we, who have been urged and taught during so many days, have not got the better of one bad habit? These people had moreover gone to the extreme of wickedness before; for when you hear it said, “The cry of their wickedness is come up before me,” you can understand nothing else than the excess of their wickedness. Nevertheless within three days they were capable of being transformed to a state of complete uprightness.
