Jonah 3:10 in the KJV reads:
And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil
way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them;
and he did it not.
Joseph changed this text, as
was his habit, to remove reference to God “repenting,” but God changing his mind is still in
view. On p. 118 of OT manuscript 2, we read:
And God saw their
works, that they turned from their evil way and repented; and God turned away
the evil that he had said he would bring upon them.
In a recent scholarly translation
of the book of commentary, we read the following about this passage:
This verse once again employs the root נחם, indicating that God does indeed relent or
think better about the punishing destruction that he had commanded Jonah to
declare against Nineveh. Here one can compare Exod 32:14, which shares with
Jonah 3:10 formulaic language involving quite precise repetition of the same
words; in the Exodus text, after hearing Moses’s remonstrations, God relents
from the punishment he had planned in response to the incident of the golden
calf. The two examples evidence slight variations: in Exodus, the deity is
called יהוה,
the divine name, whereas in Jonah the deity is אלהים, God. In addition, Jonah 3:10 lengthens
the relenting act with the phrase ולא עשׂה, “and he did not do it.” In Exodus, the
change of heart is a response to Moses’s intervention, his reminder that God
has a reputation to uphold among the Egyptians and a promise to keep to Israel.
Another example of the same conventionalized language describing divine
relenting in regard to punishment is found in Jer 18:8 (to be contrasted with
the variant in Jer 18:10 declaring that the deity may change his mind in regard
to positive or salutary plans).
God leads the prophet Jeremiah to a potter whose clay
pots are shown to be malleable; the spoiled pot can be reshaped and made good.
In the same way, human nations can be transformed, can indeed transform
themselves, allowing the deity to relent. In Jer 18:8, נחם is employed in first-person speech by God,
and the phrase “that he had spoken/declared to do to them” uses the variant, “I
thought to do to it,” חשׁבתי
לעשׂות לו. Jeremiah 18:8 is especially pertinent to
the tale of Jonah and Nineveh, as both authors grapple with questions about the
disposition of nations. While Jeremiah applies this case to Judah, the referent
in 18:7–10 potentially has more universal applicability, as the rabbis will
notice in their reception of Jonah 3:10 and their midrashic juxtaposition of
these two texts. (Susan Niditch, Jonah: A Commentary [Hermeneia—A
Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress
Press, 2023], 97)
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