So Jonah arose, and went to Nineveh, according to the word of Yahweh. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days' journey across.
"Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city ..." "The past tense shows that the writing belongs to a period after the destruction of Nineveh in 612 B.C."[6]  We consider it a duty to warn young students of God's Word against observations like this comment from Interpreter's Bible.  It is a curious example of pedantic sophistry which pretends a discernment which is actually blindness, and which falsely alleges an intellectuality which is nowhere to be found in it.  To begin with, "The Hebrew has no true past tense, indeed has no tenses in its verb system.[7]  An argument from "tense" in this place is therefore worthless.  "All that is intended here is, that, `Nineveh existed in Jonah's day as a great city.'"[8]  The greatest scholars on earth have been pointing this out now for a hundred years, but the so-called "liberal" scholars go right on parroting the same old worn-out arguments that have been exploded for a century!  Dozens of writers have pointed out that the tense in this passage is synchronistic, that is, it corresponds with the whole narrative which is cast in the past tense.  "The statement that, `Nineveh was an exceeding great city,' need imply no more than that this is how it was when Jonah went there."[9]