Commento su Giona 1:2

and proclaim against—My proclamation.

The questions: we do not find in any text that God would send a prophet of Israel to go to another country to get them to repent. This is specific to Israel, to whom divine providence applies, as our sages said...How was Nineveh different, that God sent Jonah? And why did Jonah not heed God's voice? He should have sprinted joyfully to get human beings to repent from their evil way, and what matter is it that they were not of Israel? And how could Jonah transgress God's command by suppressing his prophecy? A prophet who does this is liable to the death penalty! And why did God say, "Proclaim" without saying what to proclaim, and only specifying the second time "Proclaim that which I shall tell you"?

Nineveh - the royal seat of Assyria, which is a ruin today. And the sages of Israel in Greece say that it is the city called Ortei [Ortygia, Sicily?], but I do not know. Note that God did not command Jonah to say "In forty days..." only that "their evil has come before Me."

"Arise, go to Nineveh and proclaim upon it": so that they repent. Jonah's mission was not for the sake of Nineveh, ...but for Israel's sake. After Assyria was assigned to be the rod of God's wrath with Israel for their sins, God wanted to bring them [Assyria] to repentance so that they would be ready to fulfill God's decree...Also, God wanted to show that Assyria had more merit than Israel, because they listened to the words of the prophet and repented, while Israel stiffened their necks. And when Jonah realized that, from this mission, harm would come upon Israel, this is when he began to think about not going. He chose to drown himself in the sea instead of bringing about harm to Israel.

And those who explain that Jonah feared that he would be called a false prophet - by God forgiving them their evil - are incorrect, because God did not say this reason until the second time, where it says: 'the proclamation that I speak to you," - and that is when God says it will be forty days.

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Moreover, how could a prophet rebel against God's command out of his fear that the people of Nineveh would call him a false prophet? How would that harm him? Would he dwell among them?

And because, in the first instance, God only said to "proclaim," without specifying what, this meant proclaiming to them general words of morality and rebuke so that they would repent....God was only sending him to rebuke them, and not to inform them of God's decree on them. Hence, Jonah thought that by not going, he was not guilty of suppressing his prophecy; he wasn't being sent to prophesy at all, and he would be only violating the positive command from God to rebuke them.

Further, the people of Nineveh weren't stupid. Why would God send a prophet to them for them to repent, and if they refused, the decree against them would be fulfilled - if they knew that this was so, that if they repent, God would forgive their evil - why would they then call Jonah a false prophet?!

Our sages of blessed memory were correct when they said that Jonah was distressed, for Israel's sake, that the people of Nineveh would escape [their fate].

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The people of Nineveh had once been God-fearing, and had only begun to do evil in Jonah's time. And were it not that they used to be God-fearing, God would not have sent a prophet to them. We see that they did a complete, even unparalleled teshuvah, and we do not find any text that says they tore down their altars to Baal or their idols. And so we learn that they were not idolaters.