Two short clauses, and then a parenthesis that has generated more argument than anything else in the book.

The first half is pure obedience, and it is built out of the same words as the first disobedience. וַיָּקָם … וַיֵּלֶךְ answers the commission of 3:2 (קוּם לֵךְ) word for word; at 1:3 Jonah also arose (וַיָּקָם) but then went down (וַיֵּרֶד) to Joppa. One verb is changed and the whole trajectory of the book reverses. The clause כִּדְבַר יְהוָה, “according to the word of YHWH,” closes the loop opened in 3:1.

The second half steps out of the narrative to describe the city. Three decisions carry the weight:

1. הָיְתָה — a qal perfect in a circumstantial clause. It can be a simple background “was,” or (less securely) a pluperfect “had been,” which is what has made this verse a datum in arguments about Jonah’s date.
2. עִיר־גְּדוֹלָה לֵאלֹהִים — literally “a city great to God.” Either a superlative idiom (“an exceedingly great city”) or a theologically loaded statement that Nineveh was great in God’s estimation. The two are not mutually exclusive, and the book’s last verse (4:11) suggests the ambiguity is deliberate.
3. מַהֲלַךְ שְׁלֹשֶׁת יָמִים — “a going of three days.” What is being measured — diameter, circuit, the administrative district, or the time a herald needs to work the city — is not stated.

The rendering keeps all three open rather than resolving them.

The verse is constructed to be heard against 1:3. Set the two side by side:

• 1:3 — וַיָּקָם יוֹנָה לִבְרֹחַ תַּרְשִׁישָׁה מִלִּפְנֵי יְהוָה וַיֵּרֶד יָפוֹ (“and Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from before the face of YHWH, and he went down to Joppa”)
• 3:3 — וַיָּקָם יוֹנָה וַיֵּלֶךְ אֶל־נִינְוֵה כִּדְבַר יְהוָה

The opening three words are identical. In ch. 1 the arising served an infinitive of flight and was followed by the first of the book’s descents (יָרַד, 1:3 twice, 1:5, and conceptually 2:6). Here the arising is followed by plain הָלַךְ toward the commissioned destination, and the measuring phrase is מִלִּפְנֵי יְהוָה replaced by כִּדְבַר יְהוָה — from before YHWH’s face, to according to YHWH’s word.

The glossary decisions on קוּם (“arise / get up”), הָלַךְ, יָרַד (“go down”) and מִלִּפְנֵי were made precisely so that this inversion is visible in English. Nothing in the clause comments on Jonah’s motives; the narrator reports compliance and no more. The complaint of 4:2 will show what the obedience concealed, but 3:3 does not anticipate it.

Built onwaltke-oconnor

The preposition כְּ on דְּבַר is comparative-normative: not “like the word” but “in conformity with the word.” The collocation is a standard formula for a prophetic word being carried out or fulfilled (1 Kgs 17:5, 16; 2 Kgs 1:17; 4:44; 7:16).

The binding glossary entry fixes דְּבַר־יְהוָה as “the word of YHWH” at 1:1 and 3:1. Here the construct chain is prefixed rather than absolute, so the English becomes “according to the word of YHWH” — the same lexemes, the formula intact. The phrase has a double function: it reports Jonah’s motive formally (he acted in accordance with the command) and it signals to the reader that the commission of 3:2 is now in force.

Built onhalot · bdb

וְנִינְוֵה הָיְתָה breaks the wayyiqtol chain. Waw plus a fronted subject plus a perfect is the standard Hebrew device for circumstantial or background information — the narrator steps aside to tell the reader something he needs before v. 4 makes sense.

The open question is the temporal reference of the perfect:

Built onwaltke-oconnor · jouon-muraoka

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

The crux of the verse. Literally “a city great to God” — the adjective גְּדוֹלָה modifies עִיר, and לֵאלֹהִים is a prepositional phrase attached to the adjective.

Note first what the Hebrew does not say. Elsewhere the narrator says הָעִיר הַגְּדוֹלָה, “the great city” (1:2; 3:2; 4:11). Here the phrase is anarthrous and the divine name is added. אֱלֹהִים stands, not YHWH — consistent with the pattern in ch. 3, where the Ninevites and the narrator speaking of them use אֱלֹהִים (3:5, 8, 9, 10) while YHWH belongs to the commission (3:1, 3) and to Jonah’s prayer (4:2).

On the leitwort: גָּדוֹל is fixed as “great” throughout the book per the glossary (great city, great wind, great storm, great fear, great fish, great evil, and here). The repetition is the point, and the English must not vary it.

Built onhalot · bdb · dch · waltke-oconnor

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

מַהֲלָךְ is a rare noun of the maqtal pattern from הָלַךְ: a going, a walk, and by extension the distance covered. It occurs four times in the Hebrew Bible, two of them in this chapter (3:3, 3:4) — the other instances are in Ezekiel 42 and Nehemiah 2, where the sense is architectural or route-related rather than a measure of days. The lexicons gloss it both as “journey” and as “walk, passage”; the Jonah usage is clearly a measure of extent reckoned in travel time.

The construct שְׁלֹשֶׁת is the feminine-form numeral used with the masculine counted noun יָמִים, the normal Hebrew pattern for the numerals three through ten.

What is being measured is left unstated, and the four standard proposals all remain live:

Built onhalot · bdb · dch

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

OSHB flags this verse as one where it agrees with both BHS and BHQ on an unusual reading. The anomaly is orthographic and prosodic rather than substantive. The two occurrences of the city’s name are pointed differently — נִֽינְוֶ֖ה with seghol in the first (pausal position under tifḥa before the athnaḥ clause) and נִֽינְוֵ֗ה with tsere in the second — and עִיר־גְּדוֹלָה֙ is joined by maqaf into a single accentual unit, which is not what one would expect for a noun with an ordinary attributive adjective.

Neither feature points to a variant in the consonantal text, and no consonantal variant is known to me here. The maqaf is the Masoretic phrasing decision: it binds “great city” tightly together and so throws לֵאלֹהִים out as a separate unit under its own accent — which is itself a small piece of evidence for how the Masoretes construed the phrase (see the lexical section above). The accents are evidence of a reading tradition, not of the text, and they are weighed rather than obeyed.

Built onbhs · bhq

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 Greek reads, in substance: καὶ ἀνέστη Ιωνας καὶ ἐπορεύθη εἰς Νινευη καθὼς ἐλάλησεν κύριος· ἡ δὲ Νινευη ἦν πόλις μεγάλη τῷ θεῷ ὡσεὶ πορείας ὁδοῦ ἡμερῶν τριῶν.

Three things are worth noting.

καθὼς ἐλάλησεν κύριος, “just as the Lord spoke.” The translator has turned the nominal כִּדְבַר יְהוָה into a verbal clause. This is a normal translational move, not evidence of a different Hebrew; the formula is rendered the same way elsewhere in the Twelve.

πόλις μεγάλη τῷ θεῷ. The Greek reproduces the Hebrew dative construction word for word, leaving the ambiguity exactly where the Hebrew leaves it. The translator did not read it as a superlative and flatten it to μεγάλη σφόδρα, nor did he gloss it. This is useful: the oldest reader whose judgement we can recover declined to resolve the phrase.

ὡσεὶ πορείας ὁδοῦ ἡμερῶν τριῶν, “about a journey of a road of three days.” The ὡσεί (“about, roughly”) has no counterpart in the Hebrew and softens the figure into an approximation; the doubled πορεία/ὁδός is a padded rendering of the single noun מַהֲלַךְ. Both look like the translator’s own handling rather than a different Hebrew text. The Hebrew states the figure flatly, and the English should not import the Greek’s hedge.

The Vulgate’s Nineve erat civitas magna itinere trium dierum keeps the Hebrew’s dative-free construction by omitting a rendering of לֵאלֹהִים in the phrase — a simplification worth noting, not a witness to a shorter Hebrew.

Built ongoettingen-lxx-xii · muraoka-lxx

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.

New Testament. The verse itself is not quoted. Jesus’ appeal to Jonah (Matt 12:41; Luke 11:30, 32) presupposes the Ninevites’ repentance in 3:5–10 rather than the description of the city here.

Early Church. Jerome, in his commentary on Jonah, discusses the three days’ journey and the size of Nineveh, treating the measure as a datum about the city’s real extent and finding in it the scale of the task given to one prophet. Patristic readers generally took the civitas magna as an index of the greatness of the mercy that followed — a reading of the narrative’s shape, not a lexical claim about לֵאלֹהִים.

Jewish tradition. The Targum of the Minor Prophets renders the verse closely; rabbinic discussion of Jonah 3 concentrates on the repentance of the Ninevites and its sincerity, and the city’s dimensions receive little independent attention. I can describe the tendency but not point to a specific locator with confidence here.

All of this is how the verse was read. None of it bears on what the Hebrew clause asserts.

Built onbhq

Proposed — pending reviewJerome, Commentarii in Ionam prophetam (Commentary on Jonah), in Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 76, Turnhout: Brepols. · Kevin J. Cathcart and Robert P. Gordon, The Targum of the Minor Prophets, The Aramaic Bible 14, Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 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.