Following the logical order of events, some, for example, Moffatt, would transpose 4.5 to stand here, since that verse describes how Jonah waited to see the outcome of his message.
But the order of the Hebrew is reasonable enough as it stands, since it immediately goes on to describe the reaction of The people of Nineveh to what they heard, namely, that they believed God’s message. There is nothing in the Hebrew to correspond to message (New English Bible “word”), but the word “believe” normally carries with it the implication that God has said something which is either believed as true or rejected as untrue. So also in Gen 15.6 Abraham believes God’s promise, while in 2 Kgs 17.14 the Israelites refuse to believe God.
The expression believed God’s message must sometimes be restructured as “believed what God had said through Jonah.” However, if in verse 2 one has used “my message,” it would be possible to employ in verse 5 “God’s message.” In some cases a verb such as “believe” refers primarily to people rather than to messages, and therefore it may be better to translate “believed God” in the sense of “believed what God had said.”
The Hebrew verb translated believe is generally followed by the preposition be, rather less frequently by the preposition le, and sometimes by a noun clause, as in Lam 4.12. Here it occurs with the preposition be, which has a great variety of meanings, mostly related to the English prepositions “in” or “by.” Gesenius-Kautzsch, section 119.1, translates this phrase as “to trust in (to cleave trustingly to) somebody or something.” There are two instances of this verb followed by le in the Old Testament (Deut 9.23; Isa 43.10) in which God is the object, as against nine followed by be (Gen 15.6; Exo 14.31; Num 14.11; 20.12; Deut 1.32; 2 Kgs 17.14; 2 Chr 20.20; Psa 78.22; and Jonah 3.5). The verb does not occur with God as direct object.
Whereas there is a difference in meaning between “believe God” and “believe in God,” there appears to be no corresponding difference in usage between the two Hebrew prepositions used with this verb. The verb “believe” means acceptance as true of what is stated by someone or something, such as a document. But to “believe in” or “put one’s trust in” indicates a deeper measure of reliance on, or faith in, the object of one’s trust. As an indication of the identity in meaning of the verb with these two prepositions, Deut 1.32 may be compared with Deut 9.23. In both passages the verb is translated “trust” in New English Bible and Good News Translation, and the meaning indicated by the context is the same in both passages, though the preposition is not the same. Again, in Psa 106.12, 24, the preposition varies, but the meaning is “believe” in both verses. On the other hand, in 2 Chr 20.20, where the same preposition be occurs twice after this verb, Good News Translation understands a difference in meaning between the first occurrence and the second, “put your trust in the LORD your God … Believe what his prophets tell you.”
The only conclusion to be drawn from this is that, where the usage varies so much from one passage to another, the translator must be guided by the context.
Here in Jonah there is a real difference between believed God’s message or “believed God’s word” (New English Bible) on the one hand, and “believe in God” (Jerusalem Bible and New American Standard Bible) or “showed faith in God” (Knox) on the other. There is nothing in the form of the Hebrew, or parallels elsewhere in the Old Testament, to indicate which is correct. That the writer would say of the people of Nineveh that they believed in God, might seem an overstatement, but such a meaning is at least a possible one in practically all passages where God is the object of this verb phrase. To quote J. D. Smart (page 889): “The Ninevites did not merely believe Jonah’s prediction to be true and repent in fear; they responded in faith to Israel’s God.” Compare A. Jepsen (column 327): “When Jonah proclaimed to them ‘Yet three (so the Septuagint) days, and Nineveh will be destroyed,’ the people of Nineveh did what Israel, and even Moses or Aaron were incapable of doing. They put their trust in God, and did so without the occurrence of signs and wonders such as preceded the statements in Exo 4.31; 14.31, but solely on the word of Jonah. The translation ‘they believed in God’ weakens the effect. It could be paraphrased as ‘they took the message seriously, as a message that really came from God,’ even though Jonah’s proclamation made no mention of God.”
The name of Yahweh is not used at this point, however, and is avoided in the rest of this chapter, which uses the more general term “God.” There is no justification for the translation in Living Bible, “they believed him,” referring to Jonah.
The last part of the verse in Good News Translation, to show that they had repented, does not correspond formally to any words in the Hebrew. These words simply make explicit for the modern reader what would be implicitly understood by the first readers of the books. A good translation often requires additions such as this, and in making such an addition, a translation is not to be judged as lacking in faithfulness to the original, since it is more faithful to the sense than a translation that leaves the reader wondering why the people of Nineveh wore sackcloth. There is, of course, no need to repeat the explanation in verse 6.
The phrase to show that they had repented, which identifies the purpose of both fasting and the wearing of sackcloth, should in some way be related to both of these events. It may be necessary, therefore, to introduce the final phrase by “they did all this to show that they had repented.”
An expression for fast may be simply “they went without food purposely.” It is very important to avoid a translation of fast that would suggest only the lack of food or a famine.
Since the decision made by the people of Nineveh was something that was no doubt communicated, it may be necessary in some languages to put this into the form of direct discourse; for example, “So they decided, ‘We must all fast….’ ”
A common equivalent for the expression from the greatest to the least is “including both the rich and the poor,” or “including those who command and those who obey,” or as in some instances “including those in the center of town as well as those who live in the outskirts,” or “from the shopkeepers to the beggars.”
Repented may be rendered in a number of languages as “turned away from their sins,” or “were extremely sorry for their sins,” or “resolved to sin no more.”
The word for “sackcloth” is one of the few that has come over to us in English in much the same form as in Hebrew, retaining its sound in Greek and Latin on the way. It was a coarse material, worn next to the skin, as is seen from 2 Kgs 6.30, where a king wears sackcloth as a sign of distress at his people’s suffering.
Quoted with permission from Clark, David J. et al. A Handbook on the Book of Jonah. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1978, 1982, 1993. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .