"Get up and go to Nineveh, that great city! Then cry out in protest against it, because their evil has come to my attention."

But Jonah got up and fled from the LORD to Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, secured passage on a ship bound for Tarshish, paid the fare, and boarded, intending to go with the mariners to Tarshish to escape from the LORD.

So the captain approached him, and told him, "What are you doing asleep? Get up! Call on your gods! Maybe your god will think about us so we won't die!"

"I'm a Hebrew," he replied, "and I'm afraid of the LORD God of heaven, who made the sea along with the dry land!"

Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from inside the sea creature.

I sank to the roots of the mountains; the earth's prison bars closed around me forever. Yet you resurrect the dead from the Pit, LORD my God!

"Get up and go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you."

So Jonah got up and went to Nineveh to do what the LORD had ordered.

The people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least important.

When the message reached the king of Nineveh, he got up from his throne, removed his royal garments, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat down in ashes.

No man or animal, herd or flock, is to taste anything, graze, or drink water. Instead, let both man and animal clothe themselves with sackcloth and cry out to God forcefully. Let every person turn from his evil ways and from his tendency to do violence.

Who knows but that God may relent, have compassion, and turn from his fierce anger, so that we are not exterminated?"

God took note of what they did that they turned from their evil ways. Because God relented concerning the trouble about which he had warned them, he did not carry it out.

So he prayed to the LORD, "LORD, isn't this what I said while I was still in my home country? That's why I fled previously to Tarshish, because I knew you're a compassionate God, slow to anger, overflowing with gracious love, and reluctant to send trouble.

The LORD God prepared a vine plant, and it grew over Jonah to shade his head and provide relief from his misery. Jonah was happy indeed, he was ecstatic about the vine plant.

But at dawn the next day, God provided a worm that attacked the vine plant so that it withered away.

When the sun rose, God prepared a harsh east wind. The sun beat down on Jonah's head, he became faint, and he begged to die. "It is better for me to die than to live!" he said.

Then God asked Jonah, "Is your anger about the vine plant justified?" And he answered, "Absolutely! I'm so angry I could die!"