Jonah

Chapter 1

¹ It happened one day that Yahweh spoke to the prophet Jonah, the son of Amittai. This is what Yahweh said: ² "Listen! Go to Nineveh, the huge capital city of Assyria, and preach to the people living there, because I can see that they are doing many evil actions." ³ But instead of listening, Jonah hurried away towards Tarshish (which was in the opposite direction), trying to avoid doing what Yahweh had told him to do. He went down to the port of Joppa and found a ship that was about to set sail for Tarshish. So he paid the fare, boarded the ship, and went down below decks. He intended to go with the crew of the ship to Tarshish, in order to avoid doing what Yahweh had told him to do.

⁴ But Yahweh caused a strong wind to blow over the sea, and such an enormous storm happened that the waves were about to break the ship apart. ⁵ The sailors were so frightened that they started to pray to their gods to save them. Each one of the sailors prayed to the god that he worshiped. They even threw the cargo from the ship into the sea in order to make the ship lighter. By doing that, they hoped that the ship would not so easily turn over and sink. While all this was going on, Jonah was down deep below decks of the ship, lying down and sleeping soundly!

⁶ Then the captain of the crew went down to where Jonah was sleeping. He wakened Jonah and said to him, "Something must be wrong with you, to sleep during a storm like this! Listen! Get up and pray to the god that you worship. Perhaps that god will consider our trouble and save us, so that we will not drown."

⁷ Then one of the sailors said to the others, "We need to cast lots, to determine who has caused all this trouble to happen to us!" So they did that, and the lot indicated Jonah.

⁸ So one of the sailors said to him, "You must tell us who has caused all this trouble to happen to us. What kind of work do you do? Where do you come from? What country are you from? What group of people do you belong to?"

⁹ Jonah answered them, "I am a Hebrew. I worship Yahweh, the One True God who lives in heaven. He is the one who made both the sea and the land." ¹⁰ Previously, Jonah had already told the sailors that he was trying to run away from Yahweh in order to avoid doing something that Yahweh had told him to do. So when they learned that Yahweh was the one controlling the sea, they were terrified.

One of the sailors said to Jonah, "Something must be wrong with you, to do what you have done! Now all of us are in trouble because of you!" ¹¹ The storm continued to become worse, and the waves continued to become bigger. So one of the sailors asked Jonah, "What should we do to you so that the sea might calm down and stop threatening us?"

¹² Jonah told them, "Pick me up and throw me into the sea. If you do that, the sea will calm down and stop threatening you. I am certain that this terrible storm happened to you because I did not do what Yahweh told me to do."

¹³ But the sailors did not want to do that. Instead, they tried hard to row the ship back to the land. But they could not do it, because the waves became even bigger and threatened them even more. ¹⁴ Finally, all of the sailors prayed to Yahweh, saying, "O Yahweh, we believe that you are the One True God who controls everything, including this storm and the result of the lot we cast. If this man is innocent, we beg you not to punish us for killing him by killing us in return." ¹⁵ Then they picked Jonah up and threw him into the sea. Immediately, the waves stopped raging violently. ¹⁶ When that happened, the sailors worshiped Yahweh with great awe and wonder. They offered a sacrifice to Yahweh and made solemn promises to worship Yahweh as the One True God.

 

¹⁷ Meanwhile, Yahweh caused a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the stomach of the fish for three days and three nights.

Chapter 2

¹ While he was inside the stomach of the fish, Jonah prayed to Yahweh, the God whom he worshiped. ² This is what he said:

     "When I was deeply distressed, I prayed to Yahweh to rescue me, and he did.

         Even though I was in the belly of a fish where I thought I would die, yet even there you heard my voice and listened to me when I begged you for help.

     ³ Actually, you were the one who cast me into the ocean depths, deep in the middle of the sea where the currents swirled around me.

         You caused every single one of those huge and terrible waves to crash over me.

     ⁴ My response to that was to say, 'You do not care about me any more, not even to look at me;'

         yet I still had some hope of seeing your holy temple again.

     ⁵ Ocean water was surrounding me, and had even closed around my throat;

         seaweed was wrapped around my head.

     ⁶ I went down as far as the place where the mountains start rising from the bottom of the sea; I felt as though the earth was a prison with no possible way for me to escape.

         But you saved my life when there was nothing any living human could do to rescue me; Yahweh, I worship you as the One True God.

     ⁷ It was not until I had resigned myself to the fact that I would die that I thought about Yahweh,

         to ask you for help. And even from heaven, in the holy place where you live, you accepted my prayer.

     ⁸ Those who worship worthless idols

         reject you, the one who always acts toward them with faithful love.

     ⁹ But I will not do that. Rather, I will offer a sacrifice to you by audibly thanking you with my voice.

         I will do what I have solemnly promised to do.

     Yahweh, you are the only One True God who saves."

¹⁰ Then Yahweh commanded the huge fish to vomit out Jonah, and the fish vomited him out onto the dry land.

 

Chapter 3

¹ Then Yahweh spoke to Jonah again. This is what Yahweh said: ² "Listen! Go to Nineveh, the capital city of Assyria, and preach to the people who live there the message that I tell you to preach to them." ³ This time, Jonah listened and went to Nineveh, just as Yahweh had told him to do.

Nineveh was an extremely large city, one of the largest cities in the world. It was so large that a person had to walk for three days to go completely through it. ⁴ When Jonah arrived, he began walking through the city for about one day. Then he started preaching to the people in the city, saying: "Forty days from now, God will destroy Nineveh!"

⁵ And the people of Nineveh believed the message from God that Jonah was preaching. They all decided that everyone should refrain from eating and wear coarse cloth on their bodies in order to show that they were sorry for the evil actions they had been doing. So everyone did that, including all the important people in the city and all the unimportant people in the city. ⁶ When the king of Nineveh heard the message that Jonah was preaching, he got up from his throne. He took off his royal robes, put coarse cloth on his body instead, and sat down on a heap of cold ashes. He did all this to show that he also was sorry for the evil actions that he had been doing.

⁷ Then he sent messengers to proclaim a decree to the people in Nineveh. This is what the messengers said: "The king and his nobles have decreed that no person or animal may taste any food or drink any water. Even the cows and the sheep may not graze. ⁸ Every person and every animal must wear coarse cloth on their bodies. Everyone must pray fervently to God. And everyone must stop doing evil actions, and stop acting violently toward others. ⁹ If everyone does that, perhaps this God whom Jonah worships will change his mind and be merciful to us, so that he will relent from being so angry with us and we will not die."

¹⁰ When they all did that, God saw what they were doing, and he saw that they had stopped doing the evil actions that they had been doing. God had mercy on them concerning the disaster that he had said he would cause to happen to them. He did not do it.

 

Chapter 4

¹ But Jonah felt that it was very wrong that God did not destroy Nineveh. He became very angry. ² He prayed to Yahweh, saying: "O Yahweh, before I left home I told you that this would happen! You have done exactly what I thought you would do. I know that you are a God who acts very kindly and compassionately toward all people. You do not quickly become angry with people who do evil. You love people very much, and you feel compassion when you punish people who do evil. The reason I ran away to go to Tarshish was to stop this very thing from happening, because I wanted you to punish Nineveh. ³ So now, Yahweh, please kill me, because it is better for me to die than to live, if you do not destroy Nineveh."

⁴ Yahweh replied, "Is it right for you to be angry that I did not destroy Nineveh?"

⁵ Jonah did not answer, but went out of the city and sat down a short distance away on the east side of the city. There he made a small shelter to shade himself from the sun. He stayed under the shelter and waited to see what would happen to the city.

⁶ Then Yahweh God caused a plant to grow up very quickly over Jonah to shade him from the sun. Yahweh did that in order to help Jonah change his evil attitude. Jonah was very happy to have the plant over his head as a shade from the sun. ⁷ Then, at dawn the next day, God caused a worm to chew the plant so much that the plant withered. ⁸ Then, shortly after the sun had risen, God caused a hot wind to blow from the east. The sun shone very hot on Jonah's head, and Jonah began to feel faint. He wanted to die, and he said, "It would be better for me to die than to continue living!"

⁹ Then God said to Jonah, "Is it right for you to be angry about what happened to the plant?"

Jonah replied, "Yes, it is right for me to be angry! And I will not change my mind even if you kill me!"

¹⁰ Then Yahweh said to him, "You yourself felt very sad about the plant when it died, even though you did no work to take care of it, nor did you do anything to make it grow. It grew up in one night, and it completely withered at the end of the next night. ¹¹ In the same way, but to a much greater degree, it is right for me to feel very sad about destroying the huge city of Nineveh. There are more than 120,000 people living there, and they do not know me nearly as well as you do. There are also many animals. I have created everything, both people and animals, so it is right for me to be concerned about them and act mercifully to them."