Beginning

¹ The vision of Obadiah. Thus says the Lord God concerning ^[a]Edom: We have heard tidings from the Lord, and an ambassador is sent forth among the nations [saying], Arise, and let us rise up against [Edom] for battle!^(A)

² Behold, I will make you small among the nations [Edom]; you shall be despised exceedingly.^(B)

³ The pride of your heart has deceived you, you dweller in the refuges of the rock [Petra, Edom’s capital], whose habitation is high, who says in his heart, Who can bring me down to the ground?

⁴ Though you mount on high as the eagle and though you set your nest among the stars, I will bring you down from there, says the Lord.

⁵ If thieves came to you, if robbers by night—how you are brought to nothing!—would they not steal only enough for themselves? If grape gatherers came to you, would they not leave some grapes for gleaning? [But this ravaging was done by God, not men.]^(C)

⁶ How are the things of Esau [Edom] searched out! How are his hidden treasures sought out!

⁷ All the men of your confederacy (your allies) have brought you on your way, even to the border; the men who were at peace with you have deceived you and prevailed against you; they who eat your bread have laid a snare under you. There is no understanding [in Edom, or] of it.

⁸ Will not I in that day, says the Lord, destroy the wise men out of Edom and [men of] understanding out of Mount Esau [Idumea, a mountainous region]?

⁹ And your mighty men, O Teman, shall be dismayed, to the end that everyone from Mount Esau will be cut off by slaughter.

¹⁰ For the violence you did against your brother Jacob, shame shall cover you, and you shall be cut off forever.

¹¹ On the day that you stood aloof [from your brother Jacob]—on the day that strangers took captive his forces and carried off his wealth, and foreigners entered into his gates and cast lots for Jerusalem—you were even as one of them.^(D)

¹² But you should not have gloated over your brother’s day, the day when his misfortune came and he was made a stranger; you should not have rejoiced over the sons of Judah in the day of their ruin; you should not have spoken arrogantly in the day of their distress.

¹³ You should not have entered the gate of My people in the day of their calamity and ruin; yes, you should not have looked [with delight] on their misery in the day of their calamity and ruin, and not have reached after their army and their possessions in the day of their calamity and ruin.

¹⁴ And you should not have stood at the crossway to cut off those of Judah who escaped, neither should you have delivered up those [of Judah] who remained in the day of distress.

¹⁵ For the day of the Lord is near upon all the nations. As you have done, it shall be done to you; your dealings will return upon your own head.^(E)

¹⁶ For as you [Edom] have drunk upon the mountain of My holiness [desecrating it in the wild revelry of the destroyers], so shall all the nations drink continually [in turn, of My wrath]; yes, they shall drink, talk foolishly, and swallow down [the full measure of punishment] and they shall be [destroyed] as though they had not been.^(F)

¹⁷ But on Mount Zion [in Jerusalem] there shall be deliverance [for those who escape], and it shall be holy; and the house of Jacob shall possess its [own former] possessions.^(G)

¹⁸ The house of Jacob shall be a fire and the house of Joseph a flame, but the house of Esau shall be stubble; they shall kindle and burn them and consume them, and there shall be no survivor of the house of Esau, for the Lord has spoken it.^(H)

¹⁹ They of the South (the Negeb) shall possess Mount Esau, and they of the lowland the land of the Philistines; they shall possess the land of Ephraim and the fields of Samaria, and Benjamin shall possess Gilead [across the Jordan River].^(I)

²⁰ And the exiles of this host of the children of Israel who are among the Canaanites shall possess [Phoenicia] as far as Zarephath, and the exiles of Jerusalem who are in Sepharad shall possess the cities of the South (the Negeb).

²¹ And deliverers shall go up on Mount Zion to rule and judge Mount Esau, and the kingdom and the kingship shall be the Lord’s.^(J)

1 Now the word of the Lord came to ^[a]Jonah son of Amittai, saying,

² Arise, go to ^[b]Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me.^(A)

³ But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from being in the presence of the Lord [as His prophet] and went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish [the most remote of the Phoenician trading places then known]. So he paid the appointed fare and went down into the ship to go with them to Tarshish from being in the presence of the Lord [as His servant and minister].^(B)

⁴ But the Lord sent out a great wind upon the sea, and there was a violent tempest on the sea so that the ship was about to be broken.^(C)

⁵ Then the mariners were afraid, and each man cried to his god; and they cast the goods that were in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep.

⁶ So the captain came and said to him, What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call upon your God! Perhaps your God will give a thought to us so that we shall not perish.

⁷ And they each said to one another, Come, let us cast lots, that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us. So they cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah.

⁸ Then they said to him, Tell us, we pray you, on whose account has this evil come upon us? What is your occupation? Where did you come from? And what is your country and nationality?

⁹ And he said to them, I am a Hebrew, and I [reverently] fear and worship the Lord, the God of heaven, Who made the sea and the dry land.

¹⁰ Then the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, What is this that you have done? For the men knew that he fled from being in the presence of the Lord [as His prophet and servant], because he had told them.

¹¹ Then they said to him, What shall we do to you, that the sea may subside and be calm for us? For the sea became more and more [violently] tempestuous.

¹² And [Jonah] said to them, Take me up and cast me into the sea; so shall the sea become calm for you, for I know that it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you.

¹³ Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring the ship to the land, but they could not, for the sea became more and more violent against them.

¹⁴ Therefore they cried to the Lord, We beseech You, O Lord, we beseech You, let us not perish for this man’s life, and lay not upon us innocent blood; for You, O Lord, have done as it pleased You.

¹⁵ So they took up Jonah and cast him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging.

¹⁶ Then the men [reverently and worshipfully] feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.

¹⁷ Now the Lord had prepared and appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.^(D)

2 Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the fish’s belly,

² And said, I cried out of my distress to the Lord, and He heard me; out of the belly of Sheol cried I, and You heard my voice.^(E)

³ For You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the floods surrounded me; all Your waves and Your billows passed over me.^(F)

⁴ Then I said, I have been cast out of Your presence and Your sight; yet I will look again toward Your holy temple.^(G)

⁵ The waters compassed me about, even to [the extinction of] life; the abyss surrounded me, the seaweed was wrapped about my head.^(H)

⁶ I went down to the bottoms and the very roots of the mountains; the earth with its bars closed behind me forever. Yet You have brought up my life from the pit and corruption, O Lord my God.

⁷ When my soul fainted upon me [crushing me], I earnestly and seriously remembered the Lord; and my prayer came to You, into Your holy temple.

⁸ Those who pay regard to false, useless, and worthless idols forsake their own [Source of] mercy and loving-kindness.

⁹ But as for me, I will sacrifice to You with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that which I have vowed. Salvation and deliverance belong to the Lord!

¹⁰ And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.

3 And the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying,

² Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach and cry out to it the preaching that I tell you.

³ So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city of three days’ journey [sixty miles in circumference].

⁴ And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown!

⁵ So the people of Nineveh believed in God and proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth [in penitent mourning], from the greatest of them even to the least of them.

⁶ For word came to the king of Nineveh [of all that had happened to Jonah, and his terrifying message from God], and he arose from his throne and he laid his robe aside, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.

⁷ And he made proclamation and published through Nineveh, By the decree of the king and his nobles: Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything; let them not feed nor drink water.

⁸ But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and let them cry mightily to God. Yes, let every one turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands.

⁹ Who can tell, God may turn and revoke His sentence against us [when we have met His terms], and turn away from His fierce anger so that we perish not.^(I)

¹⁰ And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God revoked His [sentence of] evil that He had said that He would do to them and He did not do it [for He was comforted and eased concerning them].

4 But it displeased Jonah exceedingly and he was very angry.

² And he prayed to the Lord and said, I pray You, O Lord, is not this just what I said when I was still in my country? That is why I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that You are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness, and [when sinners turn to You and meet Your conditions] You revoke the [sentence of] evil against them.^(J)

³ Therefore now, O Lord, I beseech You, take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.

⁴ Then said the Lord, Do you do well to be angry?

⁵ So Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city, and he made a booth there for himself. He sat there under it in the shade till he might see what would become of the city.

⁶ And the Lord God prepared a gourd and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head, to deliver him from his evil situation. So Jonah was exceedingly glad [to have the protection] of the gourd.

⁷ But God prepared a cutworm when the morning dawned the next day, and it smote the gourd so that it withered.

⁸ And when the sun arose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah so that he fainted and wished in himself to die and said, It is better for me to die than to live.

⁹ And God said to Jonah, Do you do well to be angry for the loss of the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die!

¹⁰ Then said the Lord, You have had pity on the gourd, for which you have not labored nor made it grow, which came up in a night and perished in a night.

¹¹ And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons not [yet old enough to] know their right hand from their left, and also many cattle [not accountable for sin]?