Verse 2
Nineveh was indeed a great city whose history stretched back as far as Nimrod, who built it as well as Babel and several other cities in Mesopotamia (Genesis 10:8-12). [Note: For further description of its greatness, see my comments on 3:3 and 4:11.] The word "great" occurs frequently in this book (Jonah 1:2; Jonah 1:4; Jonah 1:12; Jonah 1:16-17; Jonah 3:2; Jonah 4:1; Jonah 4:6; Jonah 4:11). Nineveh occupied about 1800 acres and stood on the east bank of the Tigris River across from the modern Iraqi city of Mosul.
Jonah was to "cry against it" (NASB) or "preach against it" (NIV) in the sense of informing its inhabitants that God had taken note of their wickedness. He was not to identify their sins as much as announce that judgment was imminent. God apparently intended that Jonah’s condition as an outsider would have made the Ninevites regard him as a divine messenger. The Lord did not send him to be merely a foreign critic of that culture.
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