Unforgiven Nineveh

It should not escape our notice that no language of forgiveness or pardon appears in the story--God relents, but the Ninevites' prior sis remain unpunished....The city believed God's word through Jonah, and abandoned their violence and wickedness in the hope that God would spare them. This is a striking moral reform, but there is nothing in Jonah 3 that requires us to say it was more than that.

--Daniel C. Timmer, A Gracious and Compassionate God: Mission, Salvation and Spirituality in the Book of Jonah (New Studies in Biblical Theology; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2011), 103.