Biblical Geography

Nineveh

City · Old Testament · Mounds of Kuyunjik and Nebi Yunus, Mosul

Scripture first

Jonah 3:1-5 · WEBU

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Jonah preaches in Nineveh, and the city, from the greatest to the least, repents.

Nineveh was Assyria's last and greatest capital, a city of palaces and libraries on the Tigris opposite modern Mosul. Jonah preached and it ; a century later Nahum foretold its fall, and in 612 BC Babylon and the Medes destroyed it so completely that later ages doubted where it had stood.

The great Assyrian capital on the Tigris: the city Jonah was sent to, and the city Nahum saw fall.

Biblical names
Nineveh
Modern identification
Mounds of Kuyunjik and Nebi Yunus, Mosul · Iraq

Nineveh stood on the east bank of the Tigris where the Khosr river enters it, on the routes between the and the plain, the position that made it a capital and the walls that made it think itself safe.

  • Jonah preaches in Nineveh, and the city, from the greatest to the least, repents.
  • Nineveh built by Asshur out of the land of Shinar
  • Sennacherib returns to Nineveh and is murdered there
  • The woe against the bloody city
  • Nineveh to become a desolation
  • The men of Nineveh will rise in the judgment

What we know

Certain

  • Nineveh's fall in 612 BC is recorded in the Babylonian chronicles and its ruins excavated at Mosul.

Probable

  • The repentance under Jonah rests on Scripture's testimony; Assyrian records do not cover it.