Some critics think it incredible that the Ninevites, including the king, responded to Jonah’s preaching. (Jon 3:5-9) In this regard the remarks of commentator C. F. Keil are of interest: “The powerful impression made upon the Ninevites by Jonah’s preaching, so that the whole city repented in sackcloth and ashes, is quite intelligible, if we simply bear in mind the great susceptibility of Oriental races to emotion, the awe of one Supreme Being which is peculiar to all the heathen religions of Asia, and the great esteem in which soothsaying and oracles were held in Assyria from the very earliest times . . . ; and if we also take into calculation the circumstance that the appearance of a foreigner, who, without any conceivable personal interest, and with the most fearless boldness, disclosed to the great royal city its godless ways, and announced its destruction within a very short period with the confidence so characteristic of the God-sent prophets, could not fail to make a powerful impression upon the minds of the people, which would be all the stronger if the report of the miraculous working of the prophets of Israel had penetrated to Nineveh.”​—Commentary on the Old Testament, 1973, Vol. X, Jonah 3:9, pp. 407, 408.

Is it reasonable to believe that the Ninevites would repent in sackcloth at the warning of Jonah?