meta: {"file": "/data/tomer/Sefaria-Export/txt/Tanakh/Commentary/Ibn Ezra/Prophets/Ibn Ezra on Jonah/English/merged.txt"}
text: Ibn Ezra on Jonah
  אבן עזרא על יונה
  merged
  
  This file contains merged sections from the following text versions:
  -Sefaria Community Translation
  -
  
  Ibn Ezra on Jonah
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Verse 1
  
  
  
  Verse 2
  
  Nineveh - the royal seat of Assyria, which is a ruin today. And the sages of Israel in Greece say that it is the city called Ortei [Ortygia, Sicily?], but I do not know. Note that God did not command Jonah to say "In forty days..." only that "their evil has come before Me."
  And those who explain that Jonah feared that he would be called a false prophet - by God forgiving them their evil - are incorrect, because God did not say this reason until the second time, where it says: 'the proclamation that I speak to you," - and that is when God says it will be forty days.
  Moreover, how could a prophet rebel against God's command out of his fear that the people of Nineveh would call him a false prophet? How would that harm him? Would he dwell among them?
  Further, the people of Nineveh weren't stupid. Why would God send a prophet to them for them to repent, and if they refused, the decree against them would be fulfilled - if they knew that this was so, that if they repent, God would forgive their evil - why would they then call Jonah a false prophet?!
  Our sages of blessed memory were correct when they said that Jonah was distressed, for Israel's sake, that the people of Nineveh would escape [their fate].
  [...]
  The people of Nineveh had once been God-fearing, and had only begun to do evil in Jonah's time. And were it not that they used to be God-fearing, God would not have sent a prophet to them. We see that they did a complete, even unparalleled teshuvah, and we do not find any text that says they tore down their altars to Baal or their idols. And so we learn that they were not idolaters.
  
  Verse 3
  
  He went and fled to Jaffa: The gaon said that Tarshish is Tarsus. But Rabbi Mevaser says that it is Tunis in Africa.
  
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  He lay down and slept - from seasickness, and perhaps this was his first time on a ship.
  
  
  
  
  
  Verse 1
  
  
  and Jonah remained: no one can survive in the belly of a fish even for an hour, so if this is the duration, it must have been a miracle.
  
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  Verse 11
  
  Commanded: this is a metaphor. God caused it to do God's will.
  
  
  
  
  
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  went: Rabbi Yeshuah said that the sailors went to Nineveh and spoke about [or, spoke the message of!] Jonah. This is why they believed him...
  
  
  
  
  
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  Now: seeing that Israel had not repented, he feared that harm would come to them, and so he prayed, "please take my life," like Moses said "erase me [from Your book]...