Jonah and the Great Fish

Yahuah told Jonah to go to Nineveh — the capital of Assyria, Israel's greatest enemy — and preach against its wickedness. Jonah's response was to board a ship heading in the exact opposite direction, toward Tarshish.

But you cannot flee from Yahuah's presence. He sent a violent storm that threatened to break the ship apart. The sailors, terrified, cast lots to find who was responsible. The lot fell on Jonah, who confessed: 'I am a Hebrew; and I fear Yahuah, the Elohim of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.' He told them to throw him overboard.

Yahuah had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah. For three days and three nights, Jonah was in the belly of the fish — a picture of death and burial that Yahusha HaMashiach Himself would later reference as a sign of His own three days in the tomb.

From the depths, Jonah prayed: 'I cried out to Yahuah because of my affliction, and He answered me. Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and You heard my voice.' He declared: 'Salvation is of Yahuah.' The fish vomited Jonah onto dry land.

This time, Jonah obeyed. He preached to Nineveh, and the entire city — from the king to the cattle — repented in sackcloth and ashes. Yahuah relented from the disaster He had planned.

But Jonah was angry. He wanted Nineveh destroyed. Yahuah gently rebuked him: 'Should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left?'

The book of Jonah is ultimately about Yahuah's mercy extending beyond Israel to all nations — and about our resistance to that mercy when it reaches people we consider undeserving.