Annotatio CCLIV

”Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” — Jonah 3:4

The Seventy Interpreters, for that which in Hebrew is read ארבעים יום (Arbaim yamim), that is, “forty days,” translated τρεῖς ἡμέραι, that is, “Three days”:¹ which Jerome so much wonders at — that they so rendered [it], when in Hebrew there is no community either of syllables, or of accents, or of the words [themselves], and the ternary number does not suit penitence, to which the number forty is more accommodated according to the sacred letters. Hence it happened that Chrysostom, and very many of the Greek expositors who followed the Septuagint edition, said various things upon this ternary number of days, [things] pertaining nothing to the truth of the Hebrew Scripture. Theophylact, in the commentaries upon Jonah, civilly excuses the error of the Septuagint interpreters in these words: “It is to be observed here, that the other interpreters said forty days for three, and received it as a fitting number — [reading it thus,] since in three days he first went round the whole city, then they offered that laborious Penitence of Nineveh to God, [and] afterward the Prophet, sitting before the gates of the city, awaited the end of his prophecy: whence also they say the space of forty days to be the truer [reading]. And yet it is likely that the Seventy first put forty days, and that those who at the beginning transcribed erred, and that afterward the error was diffused into all the copies. Nevertheless see, that neither to those taking [it as] three days does anything absurd befall: for neither was it necessary for the Prophet to go round the whole city, but, having at the same time set out on the journey of one day, preaching, that this preaching might be carried to all, and might reach even to the king himself, and that this grave and anxious penitence of the Ninevites might be shown, and received by God — there sufficed, after the preaching, [some] days, whether we posit those three, or two: since indeed one day would have been enough to show that men had genuinely repented, and had put on a better mind.*” Thus far Theophylact.