Комментарий к Йона 3:1

The second prophecy begins with "And the Word of Gd came to Yonah a second time" until the end of the book and it has two sections The first begins her and the second with Gd asking Yonah "are you that deeply grieved". And I have six questions.

The first one. Yonah called out that in 40 days Ninveh would be overturned. But this never happened and we know that every word of prophecy is true. And if you say that it was a conditional prophecy that if they didn't repent like the conditional prophecy in Jeremiah 18:7-9 but the people of Ninveh were not Bnei Yisrael so they didn't know how to interpret a conditional prophecy so Yonah should've made the condition clear in his warning to them so that the Word of Gd would be vindicated and the words of the prophet would be made true and would teach people to repent.

The second question is about "It was bad for Yonah and distressed him" why was he so distressed. Didn't Yonah already know that they would do teshuva and that was why he ran away to Tarshish to begin with. And he already repented when he left the fish and he was prepared to help Ninveh repent so what changed here that made him so upset.

The third question when Yonah asked Hashem "take my soul because death is better than my life." Is there a crazy person in the world that would say something like this?! THat because Hashem forgave the Assyrians and the people of Ninveh that death was preferable to life?! And why wasn't Yonah embaressed to daven this after he just prayed for Hashem to save his life from inside the finish and he vowed to go to NInveh and now he is praying to die. Avraham Aviny prayed for the people of Sodom and Amorah for them not to die. And it doesn't seem like Hashem repsonded to this at all. And this is strange.

The fourth question is about Hashem's rebuke to Yonah that he cared about the kikayon tree that he didn't work for. This seems not to make sense for many reasons. The first is that Yonah had a reason to care about the kikayon more than Ninveh since the kikayon tree saved his life and Ninveh never helped him at all. And also Hashem replied that kikayon tree was only a day old and he didn't work for it, and the meaning of the metaphor was that Ninveh was the work of Gd but the kikayon was only a day old and it doesn't seem to apply to Ninveh whcih wasn't created a night ago and wasn't lost.

The fifth question is Hashem saying to Yonah, "should I not have mercy on Ninveh, the large city that has many people that doesn't know their right from left and many animals." And didn't Hashem take back the decree from them only because of the Atrribute of Judgement because of their teshuva. And not because of the young chilrne who don't know their right from left and not because of the animals were they saved but because of the people's repentance.

The sixth question is how would the children and animals be able to make up for the wickedness of the people. In the generation of the flood the many youngsters and animals didn't help, neither with Sodom and Amorah. And amongst Israel and Jerusalem, did Hashem overlook the people's wickedness because of the youth that had never sinned or because of the animals. So why with regards to Ninveh are they mentioned. Now I will explain the pesukim according to these questions.

The overarching meaning of the the proephcy is to let us know that Yonah fulfilled the word of Gd and called out about Ninveh that Hashem decreed in 40 days it would be overturned. And the people of Ninveh took his words to heart and believed in Gd and repented and Hashem took back the decree. And because Yonah was upset that his words weren't fulfilled, Hashem made the kikayon tree as a parable that if he cared so much about the tree wouldn't Hashem care much more about Ninveh as will become clear from the pesukim.

The Word of Gd came to Ninveh a second time...Blessed is Gd who chose the wisdom of our sages and the depth of their knowledge that they said nothing that was empty. And they say in the midrahs that because Yonah was more concerned about the honor of the "children" than the honor of the "Father", his punishment was that he only received this second prophecy and never got prophecy afterwards. And this can be explained only derech drash because we know that Yonah was the one who annointed Yehu ben Nimshi in the year 3072 and Yonah lived until King Zecharia who ruled in year 3174. Meaning that after he had his first prophecy, Yonah lived 102 years and since we don't see him recieving any other prophecy during this time, we can assumed that after the two prophecies about Ninveh he had no more prophecies about this. And this was fitting since he had fled from the prophecy and tried to avoid it so the punishment was according to the deed that the prophecy fled from him. And with regards to this prophecy, Hashem commanded Yonah to go to Ninveh after he got on dry land and tell them about Hashem's decree and that Hashem was concerned about it because it was a large city. And it is not like the Ibin Ezra said that hte people there were worthy but rather they were Assyrians who did wickedness to Gd and Gd only had mercy on them because they were a large people and this is clear from the fact that city was 3 days large and according to the simple explanation the Ibin Ezra said that the three day journey was to go all around the city and the direct route through it would only take 1 day. And I don't agree with them because it says in the pesukim that Yonah went one day's journey into the city and this seems like he was only partwa through at this point so we have to say it was actually 3 days journey through it all.