The Lord said to Jonah son of Amittai,

Instead, Jonah immediately headed off to Tarshish to escape from the commission of the Lord. He traveled to Joppa and found a merchant ship heading to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went aboard it to go with them to Tarshish far away from the Lord.

The sailors were so afraid that each cried out to his own god and they flung the ship's cargo overboard to make the ship lighter. Jonah, meanwhile, had gone down into the hold below deck, had lain down, and was sound asleep.

The sailors said to one another, "Come on, let's cast lots to find out whose fault it is that this disaster has overtaken us." So they cast lots, and Jonah was singled out.

So they picked Jonah up and threw him into the sea, and the sea stopped raging.

The Lord sent a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the stomach of the fish three days and three nights.

Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the stomach of the fish

Then the Lord commanded the fish and it disgorged Jonah on dry land.

The Lord said to Jonah a second time,

So Jonah went immediately to Nineveh, as the Lord had said. (Now Nineveh was an enormous city -- it required three days to walk through it!)

When Jonah began to enter the city one day's walk, he announced, "At the end of forty days, Nineveh will be overthrown!"

This displeased Jonah terribly and he became very angry.

Jonah left the city and sat down east of it. He made a shelter for himself there and sat down under it in the shade to see what would happen to the city.

The Lord God appointed a little plant and caused it to grow up over Jonah to be a shade over his head to rescue him from his misery. Now Jonah was very delighted about the little plant.

When the sun began to shine, God sent a hot east wind. So the sun beat down on Jonah's head, and he grew faint. So he despaired of life, and said, "I would rather die than live!"

God said to Jonah, "Are you really so very angry about the little plant?" And he said, "I am as angry as I could possibly be!"