Jonah 3:6: “For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.”

Jonah lived somewhere around 780 BC.  He was probably in his thirties or forties when he preached in Nineveh.  The phrase King of Nineveh is curious.  This is the only reference to a King of Nineveh rather than the King of Assyria.  The Aramaic word mlk (Melek) is often translated with the Akkadian word skn (sakin) which means a governor.  The language in the Book of Jonah is not a pure Hebrew dialect but seems to relate more to the Northern Israelite dialect.  The Hebrew language was in state of flux at this time where it eventually died out during the captivity time of 742 BC.  There was a strong Phoenician influence a strong Aramaic influence from the West and North as well as an influence of the Assyrian Akkadian language.

This is why I often reference a certain word in the Hebrew as having its origins in other Semitic languages as Biblical Hebrew is not a pure language, but a language like all languages which have a strong influence from other languages in its language group which in this case is the Semitic languages of Sumerian, Akkadian, Persian, Phoenician Aramaic and others.  Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch a 19th century linguist and master of Semitic languages spoke of a unified, organic language which could not be produced by the haphazard, random word-making of individuals. All languages stem from this one organic language that was spoken at the time of the Tower of Babel which was a Semitic language.  We could more accurately apply the word Aramaic rather than Hebrew as the divine language.  The English word Hebrew is often used in the New Testament for what we know today as the Aramaic.  Yet, there is a school of thought that the mother of all languages is Aramaic.  I’ve mentioned Mark Siljander’s book where he believes that common ground between Islam, Christian and Judaism is the Aramaic.  This could very well be the case as Arabic and Hebrew are all descendants from the Aramaic. Ok, so much for my digression but I had to address this issue as many wonder why I refer to other Semitic languages when I do my word studies.

So back to the issue at hand.  The ruler of Nineveh at this time was not the King of Assyria but one of its governors.  The city was eventually destroyed in 612 BC about a hundred years after the Jonah revival. The King of Assyria at this time was most likely Adad-nirari (810-782BC) and took the throne as a boy,  His mother Semiramis really ruled the empire until 806 when Adad–nirari took the reins of power and went on to conquered Israel.  It was most likely during this little window between 810-806 BC that Jonah brought revival to the city.  The capital city of Assyria at this time would have been Assur.  Nineveh did not become the capital until about 705 BC  and then about a hundred years later moved to Harrah where the Assyrian Empire finally fell during the time of King Josiah when the Assyrian-Egyptian alliance was defeated by the Babylonians and Medes in 609 BC.  Thus, Nineveh was not a capital city at this time and the  King of Assyrian did not rule out of Nineveh, it was just another city, albeit one of the major cities of the Assyrian Empire.

There was no real outside threat against Nineveh at this time, so if destruction was to come it would have had to come internally.  Basically people were no different then as to day.  They struggled to make a living, loved their children, sought to raise their children well, and just wanted to have a nice life. They enjoyed some leisure activity and shared many different religious beliefs.  The city was the size of maybe an average American town today.  For just the sake of comparison it would have been a town like the Town of Ferguson, Missouri.  It had about the same number of people and was a hot bed of frustration and fear.  When Jonah entered the city of Nineveh it would have been like entering the town of Ferguson prior to the breakout of the riots.  This riots did not happen overnight,  there was a brewing of anger, fear, racial misunderstandings, in a word it was what we call a hotbed, ready to explode.  People knew, as many of us feel in our communities today, that but for the grace of God our community would suffer a similar outbreak.

It wasn’t too farfetched to think that Jonah appearing in the town after spending three days in the stomach acids of a fish, his skin white, hair burned off and ever how hideous he must have appeared would have set off local gossip.  Here is a guy who claims to have been in the belly of fish for three days, looks it and then claims to have been barfed up on the shore telling us that in forty days we’re toast. Man we’ve got to do something.  On top of that the chief god of Nineveh was the god Dagana, the fish god.  You can imagine the effect of Jonah saying that he was swallowed by what they assumed was their god and was rescued by His God Jehovah for the sole purpose of being able to warn them of coming destruction unless they surrender to the God Jehovah.  I mean that must have had quite an effect. The Bible says the Word of the Lord came to the king. Actually, it says the word which is the Hebrew word debar meaning the words of God’s heart, became for the King. The King recognized God’s heart and declared a fast.

The Bible talks about this revival. Jonah’s only message was that in forty days Nineveh would be overthrown.  That word in Hebrew for overthrown is haphak which means to be overturned, transformed, chaos, devastation.  In other words you are going to turn into another Ferguson, riots, chaos, mass murder, buildings burned unless you repent of your evil ways.  The word evil way in Hebrew is ra’ah which is giving pain, misery, and unhappiness to others. There were no mass healings, outpourings of manifestations, miracles and signs as we have come to expect in our revivals.  There was only mass repentance, people repenting to God and to each other. Old emotional wounds being healed, people speaking to each other again, forgiving each other.   I am writing a book right now entitled: We Prayed for Revival and All We Got Was a Hug.  I was a pastor of a church which experienced a great revival. Not the Brownsville type revival where there were great manifestations, ours was a quiet revival, one that did not make the news media.  It was revival that any church could experience.  It was a Nineveh revival of repentance, forgiveness, and the mending of old deep wounds created by members of the church who followed evil ways – ra’ah – giving pain, misery and bringing unhappiness to each other. 

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