Was Jonah a false prophet because Nineveh was not destroyed?

In the Old Testament, the mark of a true prophet was that he must always be 100% accurate in all his prophecies. If a prophet prophesy something that is not fulfilled, that prophet is false and must be put to death.

Deut 18:20-22 (NET) writes:
²⁰ “But if any prophet presumes to speak anything in my name that I have not authorized him to speak, or speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet must die. ²¹ Now if you say to yourselves, ‘How can we tell that a message is not from the Lord?’— ²² whenever a prophet speaks in my name and the prediction is not fulfilled, then I have not spoken it; the prophet has presumed to speak it, so you need not fear him.”

In Jonah, we read about how God told Jonah to preach to the wicked nation of Nineveh and to proclaim a message that:

Jonah 3:4-5, 10 (NET)
⁴ When Jonah began to enter the city one day’s walk, he announced, “At the end of forty days, Nineveh will be overthrown!” ⁵ The people of Nineveh believed in God, and they declared a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them…
¹⁰ When God saw their actions—they turned from their evil way of living!—God relented concerning the judgment he had threatened them with and he did not destroy them.

Was Jonah a false prophet for declaring disaster on Ninevah in 40 days when in the end, Ninevah repented and God did not destroy the city?

1. First, Jonah was not a false prophet, because Jonah 3:1-3 tells us that Jonah spoke exactly what God had told him to say. This is the opposite of false prophets who prophesy things that God has never spoken. In other words, Jonah 3:1-3 affirms that Jonah was a true prophet.
2. Second, we must understand that it is quite clear from this passage in Jonah that Jonah as well as the King of Nineveh understood that what Jonah was preaching was a conditional prophecy. In fact, this is the reason why the King made the nation repent, and this is also the reason why Jonah refused to preach to Nineveh in the first place—Jonah was afraid that the Nineveh would repent at his preaching and God would relent and not destroy them. Jonah hated Nineveh, so his reluctance to preach to them is evidence that he understood his prophecy to be a conditional one. If Nineveh did not repent, it would be have been overthrown in 40 days. But Nineveh did repent, so the condition in Jonah’s prophecy was met.

⁹ Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.”¹⁰ When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.

Just in case there is any further doubt that Jonah’s prophecy was a conditional one, let us consider Jeremiah 18:7-10.

Jeremiah 18:7-10 (NET)—⁷ There are times, Jeremiah, when I threaten to uproot, tear down, and destroy a nation or kingdom. ⁸ But if that nation I threatened stops doing wrong, I will cancel the destruction I intended to do to it. ⁹ And there are times when I promise to build up and establish a nation or kingdom. ¹⁰ But if that nation does what displeases me and does not obey me, then I will cancel the good I promised to do to it.

From this passage in Jeremiah, we know that when it comes to prophecies regarding the destruction of nations, they are always conditional. God promises us that if a nation repents, he will not carry out the threats of judgment he said he would do to them.

These two reasons we have covered so far should be more than enough to vindicate Jonah from the charge of false prophecy.

However, there is a third reason I would like to bring to the attention of my readers.

Not many people realize that what God said he would do from the beginning, actually came to pass. This requires a bit of knowledge about the Hebrew and its play on words. Unfortunately, as it is with most translated works into English, such word plays are often lost in translation; but the concept here is not hard to understand, and I think most people should be able to follow what I am about to say here.

3. The third reason why Jonah was not a false prophet is that what he had preached actually came to pass.

Jonah 3:4-5 (NET) says, “At the end of forty days, Nineveh will be overthrown!”

The Hebrew word often translated overthrown, is the Niphal form of the word הפך (hpk), meaning: to overturn or change. This word can also be translated as a reference to an altered/changed heart. 

Consider these two examples in the Bible, which like Jonah 3:4, have the same Hebrew verb stem (i.e. Niphal) for the word, הפך (hpk). In both cases, the word is translated as a reference to an altered/changed heart.

Exodus 14:5 (NET)—When it was reported to the king of Egypt that the people had fled, the heart of Pharaoh and his servants was turned against the people, and the king and his servants said, “What in the world have we done?

Hosea 11:8 (NET)—How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I surrender you, O Israel? How can I treat you like Admah? How can I make you like Zeboiim? I have had a change of heart! All my tender compassions are aroused!

In the same way, Jonah’s prophecy against Nineveh can be translated two ways. First, it can be interpreted as:

“Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”: or, it can be translated as:

“Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be changed (of heart)!”

In other words, Jonah, who was merely repeating God’s word to the people (Jonah 3:1), was actually 100% correct in his prophecy. While he misunderstood his words to mean that Nineveh would be destroyed in 40 days, God intended those words to mean the opposite—in 40 days, Nineveh shall repent!

Jonah was not a false prophet. If anything, his prophesy was fulfilled in an incredible fashion—in a fashion that Jonah himself did not expect. True to Jonah’s prophecy, the entire nation of Nineveh was converted within an extremely short period of time.

In the same fashion, the Bible tells us that one day, we will see another incident similar to what happened to Nineveh. This time round, it would involve the sudden miraculous conversion of Jerusalem.

The Bible tells us that towards the end of the Tribulation period, Jerusalem will likewise repent and cry out to the LORD (c.f. Rev 11:13). In just a short time span, all of Jerusalem will miraculously repent and recognize Jesus Christ’s kingship over them after an earthquake destroys one tenth of Jerusalem and kills 7,000 people. All who survive the earthquake in Jerusalem will repent and turn to the LORD. When Jerusalem cries out, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the LORD!”(c.f. Matthew 23:39b), Christ will return, defeat the enemies of Israel, bring an end to the Tribulation, and establish his Kingship in His millennial kingdom (c.f. Zech 14).