Esther 4:3
4:3 Throughout each and every province where the king’s edict and law were announced
there was considerable
mourning among the Jews, along with fasting, weeping, and sorrow.
Sackcloth and ashes were characteristic
of many.
Esther 4:16
4:16 “Go, assemble all the Jews who are found in Susa and fast in my behalf. Don’t eat and don’t drink for three days, night or day. My female attendants and I
will also fast in the same way. Afterward I will go to the king, even though it violates the law.
If I perish, I perish!”
Jonah 3:2-9
3:2 “Go immediately
to Nineveh, that large city,
and proclaim to
it the message that I tell you.”
3:3 So Jonah went immediately to Nineveh, as the
Lord had said. (Now Nineveh was an enormous city
– it required three days to walk through it!)
3:4 When Jonah began to enter the city one day’s walk, he announced, “At the end of forty days,
Nineveh will be overthrown!”
3:5 The people of Nineveh believed in God, and they declared a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them.
3:6 When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he got up from his throne, took off his royal robe, put on sackcloth, and sat on ashes.
3:7 He issued a proclamation and said, “In Nineveh, by the decree of the king and his nobles: No human or animal, cattle or sheep, is to taste anything; they must not eat and they must not drink water.
3:8 Every person and animal must put on sackcloth and must cry earnestly to God, and everyone must turn from their evil way of living and from the violence that they do.
3:9 Who knows? Perhaps God might be willing to change his mind and relent and turn from his fierce anger so that we might not die.”