Jonah 1:2
“Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me.”
King James Version (KJV)
Read this verse in context with translation switching:
Read Full Chapter →God commissions Jonah to go to the great Gentile city of Nineveh and warn it because its wickedness has reached Him.
What Does Jonah 1:2 Mean?
Nineveh was the chief city of Assyria, Israel's feared and brutal enemy, lying far to the east on the Tigris. To call it great is to name both its size and its menace. God tells Jonah to arise and cry against it, the language of a herald announcing judgment. The phrase that their wickedness has come up before Him echoes the way Scripture describes sin reaching God's attention, as it did at Sodom and at Babel.
What is striking is that God concerns Himself with a pagan city at all. He is not the God of one nation only; the moral life of Nineveh matters to Him, and so does its rescue. The command to cry against it is not merely a sentence of doom but the opening of a door, for a warning given is a mercy offered. Here already we glimpse the heart that sends prophets and at last sends the Son, seeking even those far off. God's reach extends to the people we might be tempted to write off.
In the Original Language
ra'ah (רָעָה), 'wickedness' -- a broad word for evil or harm that runs through the book, naming Nineveh's sin, the storm, and later Jonah's displeasure.