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

"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!"

Jonah told them, "Pick me up and toss me into the sea. Then the sea will calm down for you, because I know that it's my fault that this mighty storm has come upon you."

He said: "I called out to the LORD from the midst of affliction directed at me, and he answered me. From the depths of death I cried out for help; and you heard my cry.

You cast me into the deep into the heart of the sea. Flood waters engulfed me. All your breakers and your waves swirled over me.

Flood waters encompassed me, the deep surrounded me while seaweed wrapped around my head.

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!

"As my life was fading away, I remembered the LORD; and my prayer came to you in your holy Temple.

But as for me, with a voice of thanksgiving I will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Deliverance is the LORD's!"

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

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.

Therefore, LORD, please kill me, because it's better for me to die than to live!"

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!"