I am Jonah, son of Amittai, the prophet who ran from God - and discovered you cannot outrun the Almighty. My story is one of rebellion, rescue, and reluctant obedience.
The word of the Lord came to me: 'Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me.' Nineveh! The capital of Assyria, Israel's most brutal enemy. Their cruelty was legendary - they impaled their captives, skinned them alive, piled their skulls into mountains. And God wanted me to preach to them?
I rose, but not to go to Nineveh. I went down to Joppa and found a ship bound for Tarshish - the opposite direction, as far west as ships could sail. I paid the fare and went below deck, hoping to flee from the presence of the Lord. What foolishness! Where can one go from His Spirit?
The Lord sent a mighty storm upon the sea. The ship was about to break apart. Hardened sailors cried out to their gods and threw cargo overboard to lighten the load. Meanwhile, I slept in the hold - the deep sleep of one fleeing from guilt.
The captain found me. 'How can you sleep? Call on your God!' The sailors cast lots to find whose fault this calamity had come, and the lot fell on me. I confessed everything. 'I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. I am fleeing from His presence. Throw me into the sea, and it will become calm.'
They tried to row back to land, but the storm grew worse. Finally, they took me and threw me overboard. Immediately, the sea ceased its raging.
I sank into the deep, seaweed wrapped around my head, water filling my lungs. I was going down to the roots of the mountains, to the pit from which there is no return. But the Lord had appointed a great fish to swallow me. For three days and three nights, I was in the belly of that creature.
In that living tomb, I prayed. Not the prayer of a reluctant prophet, but the desperate cry of a drowning man. 'When my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to You, into Your holy temple. Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to You; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord!'
The Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited me out onto dry land. Seaweed-covered, stomach-acid-burned, but alive. The word of the Lord came to me a second time: 'Arise, go to Nineveh.' This time, I obeyed.
I walked through that great city crying, 'Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!' To my astonishment, they believed. From the king to the lowest servant, they repented in sackcloth and ashes. And God relented from the disaster He had planned.
I was angry. This was why I had fled! I knew God was gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. I knew He would spare them if they repented. I wanted them destroyed.
God taught me through a plant - a vine that grew up to shade me, then withered when a worm attacked it. 'You pity the plant,' God said, 'which you did not labor over or grow. Should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, with more than 120,000 people who do not know their right hand from their left?'
God's mercy is wider than our hatred, His grace deeper than our prejudice. I learned this the hard way - in the belly of a fish.