Jonah 3 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.

A message came from Yahweh to Jonah a second time:

"Get up and go to Nineveh, that huge city, and call out to it the message I give you."

This time Jonah got up and went to Nineveh, the way Yahweh had told him. Nineveh was an enormous city, three days' walk across.

Jonah started into the city, one day's walk in, and he called out, "Forty more days and Nineveh is turned upside down."

The people of Nineveh believed God. They called a fast and put on rough sackcloth, every one of them, from the most important to the least.

Word reached the king of Nineveh. He got up off his throne, took off his robe, pulled sackcloth over himself, and sat down in the ashes.

Then he had this announced through Nineveh: "By order of the king and his officials. No person and no animal, no herd and no flock, is to taste anything. They are not to graze, and they are not to drink water."

"People and animals alike are to be covered in sackcloth. Everyone is to call out to God with everything they have. Every person is to turn back from the harm they are doing and from the violence in their hands."

"Who knows? God may turn around and change his mind and let go of his burning anger, and we won't die."

God saw what they did, that they turned back from the harm they were doing, and God changed his mind about the disaster he had said he would bring on them, and he did not do it.