Peregrinações

He has every reason to refuse from the human standpoint. It is veritable
folly to go to Nineveh, that great city which was always in arms against
God and his people. To begin with, he would have to make a tremendous
journey across the desert: about 750 miles on foot. Then he would arrive
at a very large city with far more than 120,000 inhabitants, and he would
be quite alone there... [T]he Ninevites... [were] a traditional foe of Israel.
The age of Jonah was the zenith of Assyrian power...The kingdom of
Israel where Jonah lived was an Assyrian province. God orders Jonah to
go to the very place he could not go—a light among the darkness. In sum,
Nineveh is the 'world' in the theological sense.


J. Ellul, The Judgment of Jonah (trans. G.W. Bromiley; Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1971), pp. 26-27.