Translations
F.O.G.MPrimary
F.O.G MessageAnd should I not be deeply concerned for Nineveh, that great city — with more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell right from wrong — not to mention all the animals?"
F.O.GSecondary
The F.O.GAnd should I not have pity on Nineveh — the great city — in which there are more than twelve ten-thousands of people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, as well as a great many animals?"
KJV
King James VersionAnd 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?
BSB
Berean Standard BibleSo should I not care about the great city of Nineveh, which has more than 120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well?”
Footnotes
אָחוּס (achus) — the same root as v.10's chasta — creates a verbal mirror: Yonah's chus for a plant exposes, by contrast, the magnitude of YHWH's chus for a city. הַרְבֵּה מִשְׁתֵּים-עֶשְׂרֵה רִבּוֹ is literally "more than twelve ten-thousands" = over 120,000; F.O.G preserves the ancient counting idiom, F.O.G Message converts it to modern numerals. אֲשֶׁר לֹא-יָדַע בֵּין-יְמִינוֹ לִשְׂמֹאלוֹ — "who do not know between their right and their left" — is a Hebrew idiom for moral or spiritual blindness, possibly including children too young to distinguish right from wrong. The book ends here on YHWH's unanswered question — a deliberate literary open-endedness that draws the reader into Yonah's silence and compels each person to answer for themselves.
