town or village

Nineveh

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Events

1. 612 BCNineveh falls
2. AD 627Heraclius defeats the Persians near Nineveh

In ancient writers

• Xenophon, Anabasis 3.4.10 — In 401 BC the Ten Thousand reached a great deserted stronghold called Mespila, once inhabited by the Medes, its wall footing of polished shell-stone fifty feet thick and fifty high; Xenophon does not name Nineveh, but these were its ruins.
• Strabo, Geography 16.1.3 — Nineveh, much larger than Babylon and lying in the plain of Aturia, was destroyed as soon as the Assyrian empire fell.
• Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 2.3.2–4 — Ninus founded a rectangular city 480 stades around with walls 100 feet high and wide enough for three chariots abreast, and 1,500 towers of 200 feet; he named it Ninus after himself.

Questions

• When did Nineveh fall?
• Where was Jonah sent, and where did he flee?
• Where was Nineveh?

History

Nineveh stood on the east bank of the Tigris, opposite modern Mosul, where the small Khosr river joins it; its ruins are the two mounds of Kuyunjik and Nebi Yunus. People lived there from about 6000 BC, and by the third millennium it was a town known for its temple of Ishtar. In the fourteenth century BC the king of Mitanni sent the statue of Ishtar of Nineveh to Egypt, as one of the Amarna letters records. Genesis lists Nineveh among the first cities of Mesopotamia.

Nineveh was long one of Assyria's royal cities, but its great age began when Sennacherib (705–681 BC) made it his capital about 700 BC. He built a vast palace, a wall about 12 km long and canals bringing water from the hills; reliefs from that palace show his siege of Lachish in 701 BC. The Bible says he returned from Judah to Nineveh and was killed there by his sons, and the Babylonian Chronicle also records his murder in 681 BC. Ashurbanipal later gathered a library of more than twenty thousand tablets and fragments in the city.

The Book of Jonah tells of the prophet sent to the great city and of its repentance, and Jesus held up the men of Nineveh as an example. Nahum and Zephaniah foretold its ruin. In 612 BC the Babylonians under Nabopolassar and the Medes under Cyaxares took and destroyed Nineveh after a siege of about three months, as the Babylonian Chronicle records, and Assyria never recovered.

Only a small settlement lived on at the site under the Persians, the Seleucids and the Parthians, while the town that became Mosul grew on the opposite bank. Tradition placed the tomb of Jonah on the Nebi Yunus mound. From the 1840s Botta, Layard and their successors uncovered the palaces, the reliefs and Ashurbanipal's library.

Scripture: Gen 10:11; 2 Kgs 19:36–37; Jonah 1:2; Jonah 3:3–10; Nah 1:1; Nah 3:7; Zeph 2:13; Matt 12:41; Luke 11:30–32

Checked against its sources; not yet read by a historian.

Verses (30)

Gen 10:11

Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah,

Gen 10:12

And Resen between Nineveh and Calah: the same is a great city.

2 Kgs 19:36

So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and went and returned, and dwelt at Nineveh.

Isa 37:37

So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and went and returned, and dwelt at Nineveh.

Jonah 1:2

Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me.

Jonah 3:2

Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.

Jonah 3:3

So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days’ journey.

Jonah 3:4

And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.

Jonah 3:5

So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.

Jonah 3:6

For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.

Jonah 3:7

And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water:

Jonah 4:11

And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?

Nah 1:1

The burden of Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite.

Nah 1:8

But with an overrunning flood he will make an utter end of the place thereof, and darkness shall pursue his enemies.

Nah 1:11

There is one come out of thee, that imagineth evil against the LORD, a wicked counsellor.

Nah 1:14

And the LORD hath given a commandment concerning thee, that no more of thy name be sown: out of the house of thy gods will I cut off the graven image and the molten image: I will make thy grave; for thou art vile.

Nah 2:1

He that dasheth in pieces is come up before thy face: keep the munition, watch the way, make thy loins strong, fortify thy power mightily.

Nah 2:5

He shall recount his worthies: they shall stumble in their walk; they shall make haste to the wall thereof, and the defence shall be prepared.

Nah 2:7

And Huzzab shall be led away captive, she shall be brought up, and her maids shall lead her as with the voice of doves, tabering upon their breasts.

Nah 2:8

But Nineveh is of old like a pool of water: yet they shall flee away. Stand, stand, shall they cry; but none shall look back.

Nah 2:9

Take ye the spoil of silver, take the spoil of gold: for there is none end of the store and glory out of all the pleasant furniture.

Nah 2:11

Where is the dwelling of the lions, and the feedingplace of the young lions, where the lion, even the old lion, walked, and the lion’s whelp, and none made them afraid?

Nah 3:1

Woe to the bloody city! it is all full of lies and robbery; the prey departeth not;

Nah 3:4

Because of the multitude of the whoredoms of the wellfavoured harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts, that selleth nations through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts.

Nah 3:7

And it shall come to pass, that all they that look upon thee shall flee from thee, and say, Nineveh is laid waste: who will bemoan her? whence shall I seek comforters for thee?

Nah 3:11

Thou also shalt be drunken: thou shalt be hid, thou also shalt seek strength because of the enemy.

Zeph 2:13

And he will stretch out his hand against the north, and destroy Assyria; and will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like a wilderness.

Matt 12:41

The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.

Luke 11:30

For as Jonas was a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of man be to this generation.

Luke 11:32

The men of Nineve shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.

King James Version

Tours through this place

• Empires of the biblical world →
• Jonah →
• Hezekiah and Isaiah →