One day, the word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amittai:

"Get up, go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, for its wickedness has come up before me."

God was sending Jonah with a message. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, Israel's enemy — an enormous and very wicked city — and God wanted to give its people a chance to repent. But Jonah did not want to go. He did not like the people of Nineveh, who were Israel's enemies, and he could not understand why God would want to save them.

So Jonah decided to run away from God. He set out to escape to Tarshish, far from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa, found a ship bound for Tarshish, paid the fare, and went aboard.

But can anyone really run away from God, who sees everything and is everywhere?

The Lord sent a great wind upon the sea, and there was a storm so violent that the ship threatened to break apart. The sailors were afraid, and each one cried out to his own god. They threw the cargo into the sea to make the ship lighter. Jonah, however, had gone down into the hold, lain down, and fallen into a deep sleep, even in the middle of that terrible storm.

The captain of the ship came to him and said:

"How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will remember us, and we will not die."

The sailors said to one another:

"Come, let us cast lots, to find out whose fault this trouble is."

They cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. Then they asked him who he was, where he came from, what his country was, and who his people were. Jonah answered:

"I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land."

And he told them he was running away from the presence of the Lord. The men were terrified, and the sea kept growing rougher.

"What shall we do with you, so that the sea will calm down?" they asked.

And Jonah answered:

The men still tried to row back to land, but they could not, for the sea rose higher and higher against them. At last they cried out to the Lord:

"O Lord, do not let us die because of this man, and do not hold us guilty of innocent blood, for all this has happened as you, Lord, have willed."

Then they took Jonah and threw him into the sea — and the moment he touched the water, the sea grew completely calm. The men were filled with awe of the Lord, offered him sacrifices, and made vows. Those sailors, who had not even known the true God, began to worship him because of what they had seen.

But Jonah did not die. The Lord prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah stayed in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Imagine it: inside the belly of an enormous fish, in the dark, all alone. There, Jonah had nowhere left to run. And from the belly of the fish, he prayed to the Lord his God:

Jonah thanked God for saving him and promised to obey:

Then the Lord spoke to the fish, and the fish left Jonah safe and sound on the beach. God was giving him a second chance. And the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time:

"Get up, go to the great city of Nineveh, and preach to it the message I give you."

This time, Jonah obeyed. He got up and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Nineveh was an immense city; it took three days to walk across it.

Jonah entered the city, walked a whole day, and preached:

"Forty more days, and Nineveh will be destroyed!"

It was a simple, direct message. And do you know what happened? The people of Nineveh believed God. They proclaimed a fast and dressed in sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least. The news reached the king of Nineveh, who rose from his throne, took off his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat down in ashes. And the king had this proclaimed:

"Let neither people nor animals taste anything; let them not eat or drink. Let everyone be covered with sackcloth and cry out to God with all their strength. Let each one turn from his evil way and from the violence in his hands."

God saw what they did, saw how they turned from their evil way, and he had compassion: he did not send upon the city the punishment he had announced. Nineveh was spared, because it repented.

Jonah, however, was very displeased and grew angry. He did not want God to forgive Nineveh, and he said:

"O Lord, is this not what I said when I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish: because I knew that you are a compassionate and merciful God, patient and full of kindness, who relents and does not punish."

Jonah had run away precisely because he knew God was merciful and might forgive Nineveh. In a very special way — through a storm, through the belly of a great fish, and through a whole city that turned back to God — he learned that no one can run away from God, that God gives second chances, and that his mercy reaches all people, even the ones we do not like.