Jonah and the Whale

Jonah was a prophet of the Hebrew people. One day God said to him, “Get up and go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it, because I have seen how wicked its people are.”

Jonah got up, but he did not go to Nineveh. He ran the other way. He went down to the port of Joppa and found a ship about to sail for Tarshish, far across the sea in the opposite direction. He paid his fare and went on board, to sail as far away from God as he could get.

But God sent a great wind over the sea. A terrible storm blew up, and the waves pounded the ship until it seemed it would break apart.

The sailors were terrified. Each of them cried out to his own god, and they threw the cargo overboard to make the ship lighter. Jonah, meanwhile, had gone below into the hold, where he lay down and fell fast asleep.

The captain found him. “How can you sleep?” he said. “Get up and pray to your God! Maybe your God will notice us, and we won’t die.”

Up on deck the sailors said to one another, “Come, let’s draw lots and find out whose fault this trouble is.” So they drew lots, and the lot fell on Jonah.

“Tell us,” they said to him, “why has this trouble come on us? What work do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country, and who are your people?”

“I am a Hebrew,” Jonah answered. “I worship God, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”

At that the men were more frightened than ever, because he had already told them he was running away from God. “What have you done?” they said.

The storm was growing worse all the time. “What should we do with you,” they asked, “to make the sea calm down?”

“Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” Jonah said, “and the sea will grow calm for you. I know it’s my fault that this great storm has come on you.”

The sailors did not want to do it. They rowed as hard as they could to bring the ship back to land, but they couldn’t, because the sea only raged harder against them.

So they cried out to God. “Please, God,” they prayed, “don’t let us die for taking this man’s life, and don’t hold us guilty for the death of an innocent man. You, God, have done just as you pleased.”

Then they picked Jonah up and threw him into the sea, and at once the sea stopped raging.

The sailors were filled with fear of God. They offered him a sacrifice and made solemn vows to him.

Now God had prepared a huge fish, and it swallowed Jonah. For three days and three nights Jonah lay inside the fish.

From the belly of the fish, Jonah prayed to God. “In my trouble I called to you, God, and you answered me. From deep down in the sea I cried out, and you heard my voice. You threw me into the deep, into the heart of the seas. The water swirled around me, and all your waves rolled over my head. I thought, ‘I have been driven out of your sight. Yet I will look once more toward your holy temple.’

“The water closed over me, the deep was all around me, and seaweed was wrapped around my head. I sank down to the roots of the mountains, and the earth shut its bars behind me forever. But you brought my life up from the pit, God, my God.

“When my strength was fading away, I remembered you, and my prayer reached you in your holy temple. People who cling to worthless idols turn their backs on the love that could be theirs. But I will sing my thanks and offer you a sacrifice. What I have promised, I will do. It is God who saves.”

Then God spoke to the fish, and it spat Jonah out onto dry land.

A second time God spoke to Jonah. “Get up and go to Nineveh, that great city,” God said, “and give it the message I tell you.”

This time Jonah got up and went to Nineveh, as God had told him. Nineveh was an enormous city; it took three days to walk across it. Jonah walked a whole day into the city, and then he called out, “Forty more days, and Nineveh will be destroyed!”

The people of Nineveh believed God. They announced a fast, and everyone, from the greatest to the least, put on rough sackcloth.

When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat down in the ashes. Then he sent out a decree through all of Nineveh, from the king and his nobles:

“No one is to taste anything, not people and not animals, not the herds and not the flocks. They must not eat, and they must not drink water. Let people and animals alike be covered with sackcloth, and let everyone cry out to God with all their might. Let every one of them turn from their evil ways and from the violence they have done. Who knows? God may change his mind and turn away from his fierce anger, and then we will not die.”

God saw what they did, and how they turned from their evil ways. He relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.

But Jonah was deeply unhappy about this, and he grew angry. He prayed, “God, isn’t this just what I said would happen, back when I was still at home? That is why I ran away to Tarshish in the first place. I knew that you are a kind and merciful God, slow to anger and full of love, a God who would rather not punish. So now, God, take my life away from me. It is better for me to die than to live.”

God said, “Is it right for you to be angry?”

Jonah went out of the city and settled down on its east side. There he built himself a little shelter and sat in its shade, waiting to see what would happen to Nineveh.

Then God made a leafy plant grow up over Jonah, to shade his head and ease his misery. Jonah was delighted with the plant.

At dawn the next day, God sent a worm, and the worm attacked the plant until it withered.

When the sun came up, God sent a hot east wind. The sun blazed down on Jonah’s head until he grew faint, and he wished he were dead. “It is better for me to die than to live,” he said.

God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?”

“It is,” Jonah said. “I am angry enough to die.”

Then God said, “You feel sorry for this plant, though you did not work for it and did not make it grow. It sprang up in a night and died in a night. And shouldn’t I feel sorry for Nineveh, that great city, with more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and so many animals?”