The commission itself: three imperatives in a row — ק֠וּם (arise), לֵ֧ךְ (go), וּקְרָ֣א (call out) — followed by a כִּֽי clause giving the ground. Four things carry the weight.

1. קוּם לֵךְ is not two separate commands but the standard Hebrew ingressive pair: “up and go.” The literal line keeps both verbs because the same pair returns verbatim at Jonah 3:2, where the commission is restarted.
2. הָעִ֥יר הַגְּדוֹלָ֖ה introduces גָּדוֹל, the book’s leitwort. From here it attaches to wind, storm, fear, fish, and back to the city in chs. 3–4. One English word throughout, or the pattern vanishes.
3. עָלֶ֑יהָ is genuinely ambiguous. עַל after קָרָא can mean “against” (hostile proclamation) or “concerning/over” (proclamation about). The choice pre-decides whether Jonah is sent to condemn or to warn — which is the hinge of the whole book, and the text does not settle it here.
4. עָלְתָ֥ה רָעָתָ֖ם לְפָנָֽי is an idiom of outcry reaching God, with a clear echo of Sodom (Gen 18:20–21). רָעָה is itself a leitwort: the same noun will name the sailors’ disaster (1:7, 8), Nineveh’s conduct (3:8, 10), and Jonah’s displeasure (4:1). The Hebrew uses one word for moral evil and for the trouble it brings; English cannot.

The verse is prose narrative in the prophetic commission form, and the register should stay plain and urgent, not liturgical.

Proposed — pending reviewHans Walter Wolff, Obadiah and Jonah: A Commentary, trans. Margaret Kohl, Continental Commentaries, Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1986.

Two qal imperatives, masculine singular, asyndetic (no connecting waw) — the second imperative is joined by waw only at וּקְרָ֣א. The asyndeton between ק֠וּם and לֵ֧ךְ is the marker: when קוּם stands immediately before another verb of motion without a conjunction, it functions ingressively, signalling the inception of the action rather than a separate act of standing. Joüon–Muraoka and Waltke–O’Connor both treat this as an auxiliary or quasi-auxiliary use.

The literal line keeps “Arise, go,” because the pair is structurally load-bearing: it recurs word for word in Jonah 3:2 (ק֚וּם לֵ֣ךְ אֶל־נִֽינְוֵ֔ה), and it is answered — ironically — in 1:3 by וַיָּ֤קָם יוֹנָה֙ (“and Jonah arose”), where the prophet obeys the first verb and inverts the second. The modern line’s “Get up, go” keeps both verbs at ordinary register.

Note also that the command is to go to (אֶל) Nineveh. In 3:2 the preposition is the same. Jonah never argues with the destination in this chapter; he simply leaves.

נִֽינְוֵ֛ה is the Assyrian capital on the east bank of the Tigris, opposite modern Mosul. It became the imperial capital under Sennacherib (late 8th century BC) and fell in 612 BC. The historical Jonah son of Amittai is placed in the reign of Jeroboam II (2 Kgs 14:25), so the eighth century; the book’s own date of composition is disputed (see below).

הָעִ֥יר הַגְּדוֹלָ֖ה — article on both noun and adjective, in apposition to the anarthrous proper name, the normal construction. The phrase recurs at 3:2 and 4:11 (with the addition of the population figure), and 3:3 adds the famous עִיר־גְּדוֹלָה֙ לֵֽאלֹהִ֔ים. Whether that later phrase is a superlative (“an exceedingly great city”) or means “great to God” is a question for 3:3, not here.

גָּדוֹל is bound by the glossary to “great” at every occurrence. The term here is not merely descriptive: it sets up the contest of scale that the book runs — a great city, a great wind, a great storm, a great fear, a great fish — all of which God handles with the same ease.

Proposed — pending reviewDouglas Stuart, Hosea–Jonah, Word Biblical Commentary 31, Waco: Word Books, 1987.

וּקְרָ֣א is the ordinary verb for calling out, proclaiming, summoning. It is also a leitwort: the captain tells Jonah קְרָ֣א אֶל־אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ (1:6), the sailors call to YHWH (1:14), Jonah calls from the fish (2:2), and Nineveh’s herald proclaims the fast (3:4–5). Rendering it consistently with a “call/proclaim” family is worth the effort.

The weight falls on עָלֶ֑יהָ. Two readings are defensible from the preposition:

• “against it.” עַל after verbs of speaking regularly marks the object of hostile speech or an oracle of judgment. The parallel in 3:2 uses a different construction (וִּקְרָ֤א אֵלֶ֨יהָ֙, “to it”), and the variation looks deliberate: 1:2 is an announcement against, 3:2 an announcement to. On this reading the softening between the two commissions is part of the narrative movement.
• “concerning it” / “over it.” עַל also marks simple topic, and the semantic overlap with אֶל in late Hebrew is well attested, which would make 1:2 and 3:2 functionally the same command and the variation stylistic.

Proposed — pending reviewJack M. Sasson, Jonah: A New Translation with Introduction, Commentary, and Interpretation, Anchor Bible 24B, New York: Doubleday, 1990.

רָעָתָ֖ם — feminine singular noun in construct with a 3mp suffix. The suffix is masculine plural although the antecedent הָעִ֥יר is feminine singular: the sense slides from the city to its inhabitants, a common constructio ad sensum. The word order also puts the subject after the verb, the unmarked prose order, so no emphasis is to be read from it.

רָעָה spans moral wickedness and the calamity that follows from it, and Jonah exploits the whole range:

• 1:2 — Nineveh’s רָעָה, moral evil
• 1:7, 8 — הָרָעָ֥ה הַזֹּ֖את, the disaster on the ship
• 3:8, 10 — מִדַּרְכּ֣וֹ הָֽרָעָ֔ה, their evil way; and the רָעָה God had said he would do to them
• 4:1 — וַיֵּ֥רַע אֶל־יוֹנָ֖ה רָעָ֣ה גְדוֹלָ֑ה (verbal and nominal together), Jonah’s displeasure
• 4:6 — deliverance מֵרָעָתֽוֹ, from his evil/discomfort

English has no single word covering wickedness, disaster and vexation. The policy adopted here: render “evil” in the literal line wherever the noun stands, so the repetition is traceable, and let the modern line take the contextual sense (“wickedness” here, “disaster” at 1:7). Every deviation is footnoted in its own verse. This is an instance of §4’s polysemy rule, and the honest answer is that the pun does not survive translation intact — the study reader needs to be told so rather than shown a smoothed text.

HALOT, BDB and DCH agree on the double range; they differ mainly in how they subdivide it, not on the facts.

עָלְתָ֥ה is qal perfect 3fs, agreeing with the feminine רָעָתָ֖ם — a completed state of affairs presented as the standing ground of the command: their evil has come up and is now before God. Not a future, not a general truth.

לְפָנָֽי is literally “to my face” (פָּנִים, plural in form, with the 1cs suffix). The literal line keeps “before my face”; §6 of the rules forbids softening an anthropomorphism in the literal line. The modern line gives “before me,” which is what the idiom means.

The image is of something rising from the earth to the divine court. Two overlapping conventions stand behind it:

• Outcry rising to God — Gen 18:20–21 (Sodom and Gomorrah: their outcry has become great, and God “goes down to see”); Gen 4:10 (Abel’s blood crying from the ground); Exod 2:23 (Israel’s cry going up to God). In these the thing that rises is the victims’ cry.
• Evil itself rising — here the subject that ascends is not an outcry but the רָעָה, which collapses the two: the wickedness is its own accusation.

The Sodom parallel is the strongest, and it sets up a reader expectation of destruction that the book will frustrate. Note that the verb עָלָה also recurs in Jonah with Jonah himself as subject in reverse motion — he goes down (יָרַד) to Joppa, down into the ship, down into sleep, down to the roots of the mountains (1:3, 1:5, 2:6) — while in 2:6 God brings his life up (וַתַּ֧עַל מִשַּׁ֛חַת חַיַּ֖י) from the pit. The ascent/descent axis is deliberate.

LXX Jonah 1:2 reads: Ἀνάστηθι καὶ πορεύθητι εἰς Νινευη τὴν πόλιν τὴν μεγάλην καὶ κήρυξον ἐν αὐτῇ, ὅτι ἀνέβη ἡ κραυγὴ τῆς κακίας αὐτῆς πρός με.

Three differences matter.

1. καὶ πορεύθητι — the Greek supplies a conjunction between the two imperatives, losing the asyndetic ingressive construction and turning “up and go” into two coordinated commands. A translator’s normalization, not evidence of a different Hebrew text.
2. κήρυξον ἐν αὐτῇ, “proclaim in it,” against MT’s עָלֶ֑יהָ. ἐν is not a natural equivalent for עַל in the hostile sense; the translator has read the preposition as locative or topical rather than adversative. This is best taken as the translator’s interpretation (possibly assimilating to the sense of 3:2), not as a variant Vorlage. It is independent support that the ambiguity in עָלֶיהָ was felt early.
3. ἡ κραυγὴ τῆς κακίας αὐτῆς, “the cry of its wickedness,” against MT’s plain רָעָתָ֖ם, “their evil.” The Greek both supplies κραυγή (“outcry”) and reads a feminine singular suffix (“its,” the city) where MT has masculine plural (“their,” the inhabitants). The added κραυγή is most plausibly harmonization to the Sodom idiom of Gen 18:20 LXX, where κραυγή is the subject that ascends; the translator has made the idiom explicit. Whether the suffix reflects a different consonantal text (רעתה for רעתם — a single-letter difference) or a grammatical smoothing toward the feminine city cannot be decided from the Greek alone. MT’s harder masculine plural, requiring the sense-shift to the inhabitants, is the better reading on internal grounds.

The Göttingen edition of the Twelve should be consulted for the manuscript spread within the Greek tradition. No Qumran witness to this verse is cited here; the Minor Prophets scroll material would need checking against the apparatus before any claim is made about it.

The Vulgate has praedica in ea (“preach in it”), following the Greek reading of the preposition rather than the adversative sense.

Draft — witness readings here are an AI’s recollection and have not been checked against the apparatus (BHQ, the Göttingen Septuagint, DJD). Verify before relying on them.

The verse is built from stock prophetic-commission language, and the resonances are deliberate rather than accidental.

• The Sodom frame. Gen 18:20–21 is the controlling intertext: a great outcry, a wickedness that has become heavy, and God acting on what has come up before him. Jonah 1:2 compresses that into one clause. The reader who hears Sodom expects fire; the book delivers a fast and a reprieve.
• The commission form. “Arise, go … and say/call” appears across the prophetic corpus (compare the sending of Elijah, 1 Kgs 17:9, with the identical ק֥וּם לֵ֛ךְ). Jonah receives the standard form and breaks it in the next verse by rising to flee.
• Nineveh in the prophets. Nahum and Zephaniah 2:13–15 both announce Nineveh’s destruction. Jonah is the counter-text: the same city, the same judgment vocabulary, the opposite outcome. Whatever the relative dates, the canonical juxtaposition is doing deliberate work.
• A foreign city as addressee. Prophetic oracles against the nations are normally delivered in Israel about the nations. Jonah is sent to the nation itself. That is the structural oddity the book is built on, and it is set in place here by the single word אֶל־.

Strictly later reading, not evidence for the Hebrew.

New Testament. Jesus refers to the Ninevites’ repentance at the preaching of Jonah (Matt 12:41; Luke 11:32), making the commission of 1:2 the hinge of a judgment saying against his own generation. The focus there is the response of the hearers, not the wording of the command.

Rabbinic. The Targum to the Twelve and the Mekhilta tradition treat Jonah’s flight as motivated by concern for Israel’s honor — that Nineveh’s repentance would indict Israel’s refusal. That reading supplies a motive the Hebrew of ch. 1 withholds; 4:2 gives a different one in Jonah’s own mouth. Jonah is read in full as the haftarah at Minḥah on Yom Kippur, which fixes the book’s reception as a text about repentance and divine relenting; the liturgical placement is medieval in its present form and the practice is attested earlier.

Early Church. Jerome’s commentary on Jonah is the most substantial patristic treatment, and he reads “the great city” and the command to preach against it as a figure of the Gentile mission. Augustine discusses Jonah at length in correspondence with Jerome, chiefly over the gourd of ch. 4 and over Jonah as a figure of Christ’s three days. Patristic reading overwhelmingly runs through Matt 12:40–41, which means ch. 1 is usually read typologically rather than for its own commission language.

Proposed — pending reviewJerome, Commentary on Jonah (Commentariorum in Ionam prophetam liber unus), in Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 76. · Kevin J. Cathcart and Robert P. Gordon, The Targum of the Minor Prophets, The Aramaic Bible 14, Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989.

Draft — the later uses cited here (New Testament, rabbinic, patristic) are an AI’s recollection and have not been checked against the sources. Verify before relying on them.