Long ago, in the days when prophets still walked the earth, there lived a man named Jonah, son of Amittai. He was a prophet of God—one who listened for the voice of the Lord and carried His messages. One day, that voice came clearly and powerfully:

“Go to Nineveh, that great and wicked city, and cry out against it, for their evil has come up before me.”

Jonah stiffened. Nineveh? The cruel capital of Assyria? These were enemies of Israel—brutal, godless, and proud. And God wanted to warn them?

Jonah did not want to go. He feared their cruelty—but more than that, he feared God’s mercy. What if they repented and were spared?

So Jonah ran.

He boarded a ship at Joppa, heading as far in the opposite direction as he could: to Tarshish, beyond the edge of the known world. But you cannot run from God.

Out at sea, the skies turned dark. Winds howled, waves rose like mountains, and the ship groaned. Seasoned sailors cried out to their gods, casting cargo overboard to stay afloat. But Jonah?

Jonah was asleep.

The captain found him below deck and shouted, “What are you doing? Get up! Call on your god! Maybe He will hear us!”

They cast lots to discover who was responsible for the storm, and the lot fell to Jonah. The sailors turned to him.

“Who are you? What have you done?”

“I am a Hebrew,” Jonah said quietly. “I serve the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. I am fleeing from Him.”

Terrified, they asked, “What should we do to you to stop this storm?”

Jonah, resigned and heavy-hearted, answered, “Throw me into the sea, and it will calm.”

Reluctantly, they obeyed—and the moment Jonah hit the water, the sea grew calm.

But Jonah did not drown.

Instead, God appointed a great fish—a creature of the deep—to swallow Jonah whole. For three days and three nights, Jonah was in the belly of the fish. In darkness. In solitude. In death’s shadow.

There, Jonah prayed.

From the depths of his distress, he cried to God. He acknowledged his disobedience, his despair, and his hope that God still heard him.

“Out of the belly of Sheol I cried,
and You heard my voice…
Salvation belongs to the Lord!”

And the Lord, in His mercy, commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.

This time, when God’s word came to Jonah—“Go to Nineveh”—he obeyed.

Jonah walked through the great city, calling out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And astonishingly, the people listened. From the king to the poor, they fasted, repented, and begged for mercy.

God saw their humility and spared them.

Jonah, however, was angry.

He sat outside the city and sulked. “This is why I ran, Lord! I knew You are gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in love!”

God gently taught Jonah a lesson—using a plant that grew overnight to shade him, then withered the next day. Jonah mourned the plant, and God said:

“You pity the plant for which you did not labor…
Should I not pity Nineveh, that great city,
in which there are more than 120,000 people
who do not know their right hand from their left?”

Story and picture generated via ChatGPT