God Sees Their Turning and Relents

God sees what the Ninevites do—that they turn from their evil way—and does not bring the announced disaster. This is not divine moral inconsistency; it fits the prophetic principle later stated in Jeremiah 18: when a threatened nation turns from evil, God may relent from announced judgment. Jonah’s vocabulary creates a deliberate wordplay: the city turns from its “evil,” and God relents from the “evil” or disaster he had announced. The same mercy will become “evil” in Jonah’s eyes in 4:1.