Pope Shenouda III
Jonah
Was it a condescension from God in using human expression, so He called it great being a capital city and having more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons?
Or did God behold it in its oncoming greatness in repentance, being a gentile that would reproach the Jews, as the Lord said of it: " The men of Nineveh will rise in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here" (Matt. 12:41).
The title 'great city' which the Lord gave to Nineveh is a beneficial lesson to those who walk by the letter and are meticulous in their usage of terms so that they complicate matters and subject the spirit to the literal meaning of words!
God commanded Jonah to cry out against Nineveh's destruction, yet at the same time He was disposing salvation for its people,