in that way with the Ninivites. God has always acted. When He was forced by the many sins of mankind to inflict some general punishment on the world, He hardly ever did so without having long beforehand announced it by His prophets, or by signs and portents, so that people by doing timely penance might escape the effects of His anger. Thus He acted towards the Ninivites, to whom He sent the Prophet Jonas to announce through all the streets of the city: “Yet forty days, and Ninive shall be destroyed.”[1] Who, on hearing this terrible threat, would not imagine that God was exceedingly embittered against the wicked cit? Yet it is beyond a doubt that by that very threat He showed Himself most merciful and gracious to it. St. John Chrysostom, considering this circumstance, turns to God in wonder and asks Him: My Lord and my God! what art Thou doing? “Why dost Thou announce the punishment Thou art about to inflict?”[2] I do so, answers the Almighty, that I may not be obliged to punish; that My threats may not have to be fulfilled. And the Ninivites found out the truth of that; they knew God and were aware that He is a merciful Lord, says St. Ephrem.[3] When they heard the sermon of Jonas they entered into themselves, did penance, and thus appeased the anger of God, so that His threats against them came to nothing.
With Pharao and the city of Jerusalem. So He acted towards the wicked king Pharao, who so cruelly persecuted the people of Israel. The many and wonderful plagues with which He afflicted the whole land of Egypt are well known from Scripture, yet He did not actually inflict one of them until He had sent Moses to Pharao to give him warning. “Behold,” says the Lord, if thou wilt not let My people go, “I will kill thy son, thy first-born.”[4] I will send on thy land a plague of grasshoppers, etc. If Pharao had submitted, not one of the threats would have been fulfilled. And so the Almighty acted afterwards. When He was minded to give the city of Jerusalem into the hands of its enemies, Isaias had to wander about the streets for a long time beforehand without clothing, to give warning of the impending calamity. When He threatened the Jewish people with slavery under the hard yoke of the Assyrians, He sent Jeremias bound in chains on before. And again when about to punish the inhabitants of
