Old/New Testament
1 The Lord sent this message to Jonah, the son of Amittai:
2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh, and give them this announcement from the Lord: ‘I am going to destroy you, for your wickedness rises before me; it smells to highest heaven.’”
3 But Jonah was afraid to go and ran away from the Lord. He went down to the seacoast, to the port of Joppa, where he found a ship leaving for Tarshish. He bought a ticket, went on board, and climbed down into the dark hold of the ship to hide there from the Lord.
4 But as the ship was sailing along, suddenly the Lord flung a terrific wind over the sea, causing a great storm that threatened to send them to the bottom. 5 Fearing for their lives, the desperate sailors shouted to their gods for help and threw the cargo overboard to lighten the ship. And all this time Jonah was sound asleep down in the hold.
6 So the captain went down after him. “What do you mean,” he roared, “sleeping at a time like this? Get up and cry to your god, and see if he will have mercy on us and save us!”
7 Then the crew decided to draw straws to see which of them had offended the gods and caused this terrible storm; and Jonah drew the short one.
8 “What have you done,” they asked, “to bring this awful storm upon us? Who are you? What is your work? What country are you from? What is your nationality?”
9-10 And he said, “I am a Jew;[a] I worship Jehovah, the God of heaven, who made the earth and sea.” Then he told them he was running away from the Lord.
The men were terribly frightened when they heard this. “Oh, why did you do it?” they shouted. 11 “What should we do to you to stop the storm?” For it was getting worse and worse.
12 “Throw me out into the sea,” he said, “and it will become calm again. For I know this terrible storm has come because of me.”
13 They tried harder to row the boat ashore, but couldn’t make it. The storm was too fierce to fight against. 14 Then they shouted out a prayer to Jehovah, Jonah’s God. “O Jehovah,” they pleaded, “don’t make us die for this man’s sin, and don’t hold us responsible for his death, for it is not our fault—you have sent this storm upon him for your own good reasons.”
15 Then they picked up Jonah and threw him overboard into the raging sea—and the storm stopped!
16 The men stood there in awe before Jehovah, and they sacrificed to him and vowed to serve him.
17 Now the Lord had arranged for a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights.
2 Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from inside the fish:
2 “In my great trouble I cried to the Lord and he answered me; from the depths of death I called, and Lord, you heard me! 3 You threw me into the ocean depths; I sank down into the floods of waters and was covered by your wild and stormy waves. 4 Then I said, ‘O Lord, you have rejected me and cast me away. How shall I ever again see your holy Temple?’
5 “I sank beneath the waves, and death was very near. The waters closed above me; the seaweed wrapped itself around my head. 6 I went down to the bottoms of the mountains that rise from the ocean floor. I was locked out of life and imprisoned in the land of death. But, O Lord my God, you have snatched me from the yawning jaws of death!
7 “When I had lost all hope, I turned my thoughts once more to the Lord. And my earnest prayer went to you in your holy Temple. 8 (Those who worship false gods have turned their backs on all the mercies waiting for them from the Lord!)
9 “I will never worship anyone but you! For how can I thank you enough for all you have done? I will surely fulfill my promises. For my deliverance comes from the Lord alone.”
10 And the Lord ordered the fish to spit up Jonah on the beach, and it did.
3 1-2 Then the Lord spoke to Jonah again: “Go to that great city, Nineveh,” he said, “and warn them of their doom, as I told you to before!”
3 So Jonah obeyed and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very large city with many villages around it—so large that it would take three days to walk through it.[b]
4-5 But the very first day when Jonah entered the city and began to preach, the people repented. Jonah shouted to the crowds that gathered around him, “Forty days from now Nineveh will be destroyed!” And they believed him and declared a fast; from the king on down, everyone put on sackcloth—the rough, coarse garments worn at times of mourning.[c]
6 For when the king of Nineveh heard what Jonah was saying, he stepped down from his throne, laid aside his royal robes, put on sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 7 And the king and his nobles sent this message throughout the city: “Let no one, not even the animals, eat anything at all, nor even drink any water. 8 Everyone must wear sackcloth and cry mightily to God, and let everyone turn from his evil ways, from his violence and robbing. 9 Who can tell? Perhaps even yet God will decide to let us live and will hold back his fierce anger from destroying us.”
10 And when God saw that they had put a stop to their evil ways, he abandoned his plan to destroy them and didn’t carry it through.
4 This change of plans made Jonah very angry. 2 He complained to the Lord about it: “This is exactly what I thought you’d do, Lord, when I was there in my own country and you first told me to come here. That’s why I ran away to Tarshish. For I knew you were a gracious God, merciful, slow to get angry, and full of kindness; I knew how easily you could cancel your plans for destroying these people.
3 “Please kill me, Lord; I’d rather be dead than alive when nothing that I told them happens.[d]”
4 Then the Lord said, “Is it right to be angry about this?”
5 So Jonah went out and sat sulking[e] on the east side of the city, and he made a leafy shelter to shade him as he waited there to see if anything would happen to the city. 6 And when the leaves of the shelter withered in the heat, the Lord arranged for a vine to grow up quickly and spread its broad leaves over Jonah’s head to shade him. This made him comfortable and very grateful.
7 But God also prepared a worm! The next morning the worm ate through the stem of the plant, so that it withered away and died.
8 Then when the sun was hot, God ordered a scorching east wind to blow on Jonah, and the sun beat down upon his head until he grew faint and wished to die. For he said, “Death is better than this!”
9 And God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry because the plant died?”
“Yes,” Jonah said, “it is; it is right for me to be angry enough to die!”
10 Then the Lord said, “You feel sorry for yourself when your shelter is destroyed, though you did no work to put it there, and it is, at best, short-lived. 11 And why shouldn’t I feel sorry for a great city like Nineveh with its 120,000 people in utter spiritual darkness[f] and all its cattle?”
10 Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, surrounded by a cloud, with a rainbow over his head; his face shone like the sun and his feet flashed with fire. 2 And he held open in his hand a small scroll. He set his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the earth 3 and gave a great shout—it was like the roar of a lion—and the seven thunders crashed their reply.
4 I was about to write what the thunders said when a voice from heaven called to me, “Don’t do it. Their words are not to be revealed.”
5 Then the mighty angel standing on the sea and land lifted his right hand to heaven 6 and swore by him who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and everything in it and the earth and all that it contains and the sea and its inhabitants, that there should be no more delay, 7 but that when the seventh angel blew his trumpet, then God’s veiled plan—mysterious through the ages ever since it was announced by his servants the prophets—would be fulfilled.
8 Then the voice from heaven spoke to me again, “Go and get the unrolled scroll from the mighty angel standing there upon the sea and land.”
9 So I approached him and asked him to give me the scroll. “Yes, take it and eat it,” he said. “At first it will taste like honey, but when you swallow it, it will make your stomach sour!” 10 So I took it from his hand, and ate it! And just as he had said, it was sweet in my mouth, but it gave me a stomachache when I swallowed it.
11 Then he told me, “You must prophesy further about many peoples, nations, tribes, and kings.”
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.