The king’s decree ends not with confidence but with a question. מִֽי־יוֹדֵ֣עַ — “Who knows?” — is a fixed Hebrew formula for a hope that cannot be claimed as a right. Everything after it hangs on that uncertainty: God may turn, may relent, may turn back from his burning anger, and then — the only clause with no modal hedge — “we will not perish.”

Three things carry the verse.

First, the root שׁוּב (“turn”) appears twice here and once in v. 8. The Ninevites turn from their evil way; God may turn from his anger. The Hebrew makes the two movements one word, and the English should let that be heard.

Second, נִחַם is not “repent” in the sense of confessing sin. It names a change of course — God reversing a declared intention. The same verb returns in 3:10 (וַיִּנָּחֶם) and in Jonah’s accusation at 4:2, where it is precisely what he resents.

Third, the Ninevite king gets no promise. He has no covenant, no prophet’s assurance, no conditional clause from the oracle in v. 4 — which said only “forty days and Nineveh is overturned.” He reasons from nothing but the possibility that a god who sends a warning might not want to execute it. The theology of the verse is pagan, provisional, and — as 3:10 shows — correct.

מִֽי־יוֹדֵ֣עַ is an idiom, not a genuine question seeking an answer. It stands at the head of a clause and functions adverbially: “perhaps, it may be.” The closest parallel in the Hebrew Bible is David’s at 2 Sam 12:22, where the same formula introduces the hope that YHWH might spare the child — and the child dies. Joel 2:14 uses it in a context remarkably close to this one: a summoned fast, torn hearts, and then מִי יוֹדֵעַ יָשׁוּב וְנִחָם, “who knows, he may turn and relent.”

The formula does two things at once. It leaves the outcome entirely with God (there is no leverage, no mechanism), and it is nonetheless a reason to act. HALOT and BDB both treat it as expressing possibility rather than doubt about God’s character.

This matches the glossary decision already taken on אוּלַי at Jonah 1:6, where the captain says “perhaps the god will give a thought to us.” A Gentile captain and a Gentile king use the two Hebrew idioms of divine freedom, and in both cases the narrator lets them be right. The rendering must not strengthen either into confidence.

Built onhalot · bdb · dch

יָשׁ֔וּב is a 3ms imperfect with no expressed subject. הָאֱלֹהִ֑ים does not appear until after the second verb. Two readings are live.

The accentuation is some help: the zaqef qaton on יָשׁ֔וּב separates it from what follows, which slightly favours taking it as a self-contained clause, but the Masoretic accents reflect phrasing, not syntactic parsing, and should not settle the question. The rendering here leaves the subject unspecified in the literal line and supplies the most defensible subject in the modern line, with this note carrying the alternative.

Built onwaltke-oconnor · jouon-muraoka · bhs

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

וְנִחַ֖ם is niphal of נָחַם. The stem covers a range: to be sorry, to be moved to pity, to console oneself, and — the sense here — to change a declared course of action.

The English word “repent” is a trap. In modern usage it implies turning from sin, which cannot be the sense when God is the subject. The Hebrew carries no admission of wrongdoing; it names a reversal of intention, often in explicit response to intercession or to a change in the human party (Exod 32:14; Jer 18:8; Amos 7:3, 6). Jer 18:7–8 is the programmatic statement: when God declares disaster against a nation and that nation turns from its evil, God relents (וְנִחַמְתִּי) of the disaster.

That is exactly the logic the Ninevite king is working from, though there is no indication in the text that he knows the principle. He infers it from the bare fact that a warning was given.

The verb returns at 3:10 and at 4:2, where Jonah names נִחָם עַל־הָרָעָה as part of the creedal formula he finds intolerable. One English word at all three keeps the chain audible.

Built onhalot · bdb · dch

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

יָשׁ֔וּב … וְשָׁ֛ב. The root occurs twice in this verse and once in the king’s command of v. 8, and again in the narrator’s report at 3:10. It is the pivot of the whole chapter.

The Hebrew verb is spatial before it is moral: to turn round, to go back. Used of persons and conduct it becomes the standard term for reorientation of life; used of God with מִן and a noun of anger it means to turn away from an intended act.

The point is that the Hebrew uses one word for both movements. The Ninevites turn from their evil way; God turns from his burning anger. Any English that renders the first “repent” and the second “relent” destroys the symmetry the narrator built. This apparatus therefore fixes שׁוּב → turn for the whole book, with “turn back” permitted where the preposition מִן requires it.

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Proposed — pending reviewErnst Jenni and Claus Westermann, eds., Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament, trans. Mark E. Biddle, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1997.

מֵחֲר֥וֹן אַפּ֖וֹ is a fixed collocation, literally “from the burning of his nose.”

חָרוֹן derives from the root meaning “to burn, be hot,” and is used almost exclusively of anger. אַף is the nose or nostril; because anger flares visibly in the nostrils, the word became the standard Hebrew term for anger itself. The pair together is a frozen idiom — in the classification of §8, a dead metaphor at the level of אַף, but one whose image חָרוֹן keeps alive.

The rendering therefore splits: the literal line keeps “the burning of his nose” so the reader sees the Hebrew body-image; the modern line gives “his burning anger,” which preserves the heat while using the English word the idiom requires. Nothing is softened — the Hebrew is about a god whose anger is hot enough to destroy a city, and the English says so.

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The articular הָאֱלֹהִ֑ים is worth noting. Jonah 3 uses אֱלֹהִים consistently from v. 5 onward (בֵּאלֹהִים v. 5, אֶל־אֱלֹהִים v. 8, הָאֱלֹהִים here and twice in v. 10) and does not use YHWH at all after v. 3. The name YHWH belongs to Jonah’s world; אֱלֹהִים is what the Ninevites can reach.

The glossary decision is to render אֱלֹהִים “God” where Israel’s God is in view and “the god / a god” in Gentile speech or generic use, so the narrator’s irony stays unresolved. This verse is Gentile speech (the king’s decree), so the modern line reads “the god.” But the irony cuts both ways: the narrator uses the same articular form in v. 10 in his own voice, where it unambiguously means the God of Israel. The Ninevite king aims at a god he cannot name and hits the right one.

The rendering does not resolve that. The Hebrew holds it open and so does the English.

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נֹאבֵֽד — qal imperfect 1cp, “we will perish.”

This is the third appearance of אָבַד in Jonah, and the three are deliberately linked. At 1:6 the captain rouses Jonah: “perhaps the god will give a thought to us and we will not perish” (וְלֹא נֹאבֵד — the identical form). At 1:14 the sailors pray: “let us not perish.” Here the Ninevite king ends his decree with the same two words the pagan captain used.

The sentence structure is worth noticing: every verb before this one is hedged by מִי־יוֹדֵעַ. This clause is not. Once the turning and the relenting are granted, non-perishing follows — and the narrator confirms it in v. 10. The hope is uncertain; the consequence, if granted, is not.

The root’s force is strong: to be destroyed, to be lost beyond recovery, not merely to die. It will return in 4:10 of the plant that perished, closing the book’s argument.

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LXX Jonah 3:9 reads: τίς οἶδεν εἰ μετανοήσει ὁ θεὸς καὶ ἀποστρέψει ἐξ ὀργῆς θυμοῦ αὐτοῦ καὶ οὐ μὴ ἀπολώμεθα;

Three differences bear on meaning.

1. The Greek supplies εἰ (“whether”) after τίς οἶδεν, and reduces the Hebrew’s three finite verbs to two, collapsing יָשׁוּב וְנִחַם into a single μετανοήσει with ὁ θεός as explicit subject. This resolves the syntactic ambiguity discussed above in favour of God-throughout. It is best read as the translator’s interpretation, not evidence of a shorter Hebrew text.

2. μετανοήσει renders נִחַם. In Hellenistic Greek μετανοέω is “change one’s mind,” which is a fair equivalence for the niphal here; the heavily moral sense the word later carries in the New Testament is not yet dominant. Reading New Testament repentance back into this line is anachronistic.

3. ἐξ ὀργῆς θυμοῦ αὐτοῦ renders מֵחֲרוֹן אַפּוֹ with a doubled anger-word, flattening the body-image of אַף entirely. The Greek loses the nostril; it does not lose the heat.

The Vulgate has quis scit si convertatur et ignoscat Deus, following the LXX in supplying “whether” and in making God the subject of the turning.

Built ongoettingen-lxx-xii · muraoka-lxx · bhs

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 consonantal text is stable and the WLC reading raises no difficulty. BHS records no significant variant for the verse.

One point worth stating plainly: the vocalization וְנִחַ֖ם (niphal perfect, with pataḥ) is the Masoretic reading, and the consonants ונחם would equally support a niphal participle or, with different pointing, a piel. The niphal perfect in weqatal sequence is the natural reading after an imperfect and is what the parallel at Joel 2:14 has. There is no reason to depart from the Masoretes here; the note records only that the points are a layer later than the consonants.

The absence of Jonah 3:9 from a legible portion of the Wadi Murabbaʿat or Naḥal Ḥever Twelve Prophets material should be checked against the apparatus before any claim is made about Dead Sea Scroll support; this apparatus makes none.

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.

Joel 2:13–14 is the closest parallel and the link is at the level of shared wording, not merely theme. Joel 2:14 opens מִי יוֹדֵעַ יָשׁוּב וְנִחָם — the same formula, the same two verbs, in the same order, in the same setting of a proclaimed fast. Joel 2:13 immediately precedes it with the creedal formula (gracious, merciful, slow to anger, abundant in ḥesed, and relenting of evil) that Jonah himself quotes back at God in 4:2. The two books are reading the same tradition.

Which direction the dependence runs is disputed and not settled here.

Jer 18:7–8 states the principle the king’s hope depends on: a declared judgment is withdrawn when the nation turns.

2 Sam 12:22 gives the formula in a private setting, and — importantly — with a negative outcome. מִי יוֹדֵעַ does not guarantee.

Exod 32:12, 14 has Moses pleading שׁוּב מֵחֲרוֹן אַפֶּךָ וְהִנָּחֵם, nearly the exact phrasing of this verse, on behalf of Israel. The Ninevite king, with no Moses and no covenant, arrives at the same prayer.

Built onbdb · dch

This section records how later readers used the verse. It is not evidence for what the Hebrew means.

Second Temple and rabbinic. The repentance of Nineveh became a standard exemplar in rabbinic discussion of teshuvah, and the Jonah narrative is read in full at the Minḥah service of Yom Kippur — a liturgical placement that makes this verse part of the Day of Atonement’s own argument about whether repentance avails. Rabbinic tradition also preserves a critical line, questioning whether the Ninevites’ repentance was sincere or merely expedient; the detail about restoring stolen property (reading הֶחָמָס of v. 8 concretely) belongs to that discussion.

New Testament. Jesus invokes the Ninevites as witnesses against his own generation — “the men of Nineveh will rise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented (μετενόησαν) at the preaching of Jonah” (Matt 12:41; Luke 11:32). The Greek verb is the LXX’s μετανοέω, though the NT applies it to the Ninevites rather than to God.

Early Church. The Fathers read Nineveh’s deliverance as a demonstration that God’s threats of judgment are framed to be averted. Jerome, commenting on Jonah, treats the conditionality of the prophecy as the point — a warning is given precisely so that it need not be carried out. Later Christian reading made the fast of Nineveh a model for penitential practice, and in the East a three-day Fast of Nineveh entered the liturgical calendar of the Syriac churches.

None of this is required by the Hebrew, which says only: who knows.

Proposed — pending reviewJerome, Commentarium in Ionam prophetam (Commentary on Jonah), in Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 76.

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.