The Prophet Jonah and the Repentance of Nineveh

Jonah son of Amittai prophesied in the days of Jeroboam son of Joash. He was told: rise, go to Nineveh and cry out against it. He rose — and went to Jaffa, boarding a ship for Tarshish, "away from before the Lord."

A storm nearly broke the ship. The sailors cried each to his own god; Jonah slept below. The lot fell on him. "I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land." He told them to throw him overboard; they did so only after failing to row ashore. The sea grew calm; a great fish swallowed him, and from its belly he prayed three days and three nights.

Cast ashore, he went to Nineveh and said five words: "Forty more days and Nineveh is overturned." The city believed. The king rose from his throne, sat in ashes and decreed a fast for all — and above all, "let each turn from his evil way and from the violence in his hands." The decree was annulled. Jonah sat outside, angry; God grew a plant over him and sent a worm to kill it, to ask: you pitied a plant you did not labor for — should I not pity a city of a hundred and twenty thousand people?