250 Ph. Guillaume JHWH’s final words confirm the validity of his initial message. The coup de grâce is not for Jonah but for naïve readers who imagine that JHWH is ever ready to alter the march of world events at the sight of fasting lambs in sack- cloth and ashes (Jon 3,8). Divine sovereignty is beyond human understanding. God’s decrees cannot be manipulated. Neither Jonah’s escape nor Nineveh’s repentance can alter them. In the end, God confirms the validity of the judgment that Jonah was sent to proclaim. Rather than being rebuffed, Jonah is put on a par with Job (41). Both suspected God to be unfair, in Jonah’s case that God was too lenient and in Job’s that he was too hard. Both despised their own lives, not because of suicidal tendencies, but out of a deep consciousness of divine justice. God vindicated both in the end. Stelserstrasse 478A Ph. GUILLAUME CH-7220 Schiers SUMMARY Is God, at the end of the book of Jonah, claiming that he will not destroy Nineveh? Or should the straight-forward reading of the Hebrew and Greek texts be taken at face value as claimed ten years ago by Alan Cooper? Although they do not challenge the common reading of the end of Jonah as a rhetorical question, the results of recent studies on Jonah support Cooper’s contention. Reading “You had pity over the plant… but I will not pity Nineveh…” makes more sense and places Jonah on a par with Job. (41) See T.M. BOLIN, “‘Should I not Also Pity Nineveh?’ Divine Freedom in the Book of Jonah”, JSOT 67 (1995) 120.