Jonah 2-3

Contemporary English Version

Jonah's Prayer

2 From inside the fish, Jonah prayed to the Lord his God:

²When I was in trouble, Lord,
I prayed to you,
    and you listened to me.
From deep in the world
    of the dead,
I begged for your help,
    and you answered my prayer.

³You threw me down
    to the bottom of the sea.
The water was churning
    all around;
I was completely covered
    by your mighty waves.
⁴I thought I was swept away
    from your sight,
never again to see
    your holy temple.

⁵I was almost drowned
by the swirling waters
    that surrounded me.
Seaweed had wrapped
    around my head.
⁶I had sunk down deep
    below the mountains
    beneath the sea.
I knew that forever,
    I would be a prisoner there.

But, you, Lord God,
    rescued me from that pit.
⁷When my life was slipping away,
    I remembered you—
and in your holy temple
    you heard my prayer.

⁸All who worship worthless idols
turn from the God
    who offers them mercy.
⁹But with shouts of praise,
I will offer a sacrifice
    to you, my Lord.
I will keep my promise,
because you are the one
    with power to save.

¹⁰^(A) The Lord commanded the fish to vomit up Jonah on the shore. And it did.

Jonah Goes to Nineveh

3 Once again the Lord told Jonah ²to go to that great city of Nineveh and preach his message of doom.

³Jonah obeyed the Lord and went to Nineveh. The city was so big that it took three days just to walk through it. ⁴^(B) After walking for a day, Jonah warned the people, “Forty days from now, Nineveh will be destroyed!”

⁵They believed God's message and set a time when they would go without eating to show their sorrow. Then everyone in the city, no matter who they were, dressed in sackcloth.

⁶When the king of Nineveh heard what was happening, he also dressed in sackcloth; he left the royal palace and sat in dust.^[a] ^7-9Then he and his officials sent out an order for everyone in the city to obey. It said:

None of you or your animals may eat or drink a thing. Each of you must wear sackcloth, and you must even put sackcloth on your animals.

You must also pray to the Lord God with all your heart and stop being sinful and cruel. Maybe God will change his mind and have mercy on us, so we won't be destroyed.

¹⁰When God saw that the people had stopped doing evil things, he had pity and did not destroy them as he had planned.

Footnotes

3.5,6 dressed in sackcloth … sat in dust: Sackcloth was a rough, dark-colored cloth made from goat or camel hair and used to make grain sacks. Sometimes people wore sackcloth and sat in dust to show how sorry they were for their sins.