Resen, between Nineveh and Calah, is described as the great city — the great city of the Assyrian region. The mention of the 'great city' anticipates the way Nineveh will be described in Jonah 1:2 and 3:2 as a 'great city.' The same city whose founding is traced to Nimrod the hunter becomes the setting for one of Scripture's most surprising stories of repentance. No city is beyond the reach of God's call to repentance, and no people are so defined by their founding that they cannot respond to God's voice. Ezekiel 18:23 declares that God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked but desires that they turn and live. The great city of Nineveh, built by a descendant of Ham from the line of a hunter, turns to God when God sends his reluctant prophet. The application: never write off a city, a culture, or a people as beyond God's reach based on their founding or their history. The great cities of Nimrod became the setting for God's mercy.

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