Jonah — Chapter 3

Adhuc quadraginta dies et Ninive subvertetur

Jonah's five-word sermon: 'Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be destroyed.' À Lapide marvels at the economy of the prophetic word: the briefest possible message produces the greatest repentance in history. He notes that forty days figures probation and penance throughout Scripture—the Flood, Moses on Sinai, Elijah's journey, Christ's fast. The Ninevites understand this: they respond with the full penitential apparatus.

Et vidit Deus opera eorum quia conversi sunt

'And God saw their works, that they were turned from their evil way; and God had mercy with regard to the evil which he had said he would do to them.' À Lapide resolves the apparent divine inconsistency: God's threats are conditional on impenitence; when the condition changes, the sentence changes. This is not divine weakness but divine fidelity to his own nature of mercy. He cites Thomas Aquinas: God's immutability is consistent with responsive mercy because mercy is what His nature always decreed for the penitent.