The Book of Jonah chapter 4
Prophecy is not merely for the sake of proving God’s omniscience by the verification of predictions of the future but is mainly designed to vindicate God’s justice and mercy in dealing with the impenitent and penitent respectively (Romans 11:22). The Bible ever assigns the first place to the eternal principles of righteousness, rooted in the character of God, subordinating to them all divine arrangements. God’s sparing Nineveh, when in the jaws of destruction, on the first dawn of repentance encourages the timid penitent, and shows beforehand that Israel’s doom, soon after accomplished, is to be ascribed, not to unwillingness to forgive on God’s part, but to their own obstinate impenitence.
