Jonah Runs Away

“Salvation is from the LORD!” — Jonah 2:9

One day God spoke to a prophet called Jonah. “Get up! Go to the great city of Nineveh and warn the people there, because I have seen how wicked they are.”

Nineveh was the capital city of Assyria, the cruellest enemies of Israel. Jonah didn’t want to go there. He didn’t want God to be kind to them.

So Jonah got up and ran away from God. Nineveh was to the east, so Jonah went west. He went down to the port of Joppa, found a ship sailing to Tarshish, a faraway place across the sea, paid his fare and climbed on board.

But you can’t run away from God.

God sent a great wind on the sea, and such a terrible storm that the ship was about to break apart. The sailors were terrified. Each one cried out to his own god. They threw the cargo overboard to make the ship lighter.

And where was Jonah? He had gone down below deck, and he was fast asleep!

The captain went down to him. “How can you sleep?” he said. “Get up and call on your god! Maybe your god will notice us, and we won’t die.”

The sailors said to each other, “Let’s find out who is to blame for this trouble.” So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah.

“Who are you?” they asked him. “Where do you come from?”

“I am a Hebrew,” said Jonah. “I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” And he told them he was running away from God.

The sailors were even more frightened. “What should we do to you to make the sea calm down?” they asked. The storm was getting worse and worse.

“Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” said Jonah, “and it will become calm. I know it’s my fault that this great storm has come on you.”

But the sailors didn’t want to. They rowed as hard as they could to get back to land. But they couldn’t. The sea grew even wilder. So at last they prayed to the Lord, and they picked Jonah up and threw him overboard.

And the sea stopped raging. It was calm! The sailors were amazed, and they worshipped the Lord.

Meanwhile, God had prepared a huge fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was inside the fish for three days and three nights.

There, inside the fish, Jonah prayed to the Lord. “In my trouble I called to You, and You answered me,” he prayed. “You threw me into the deep, and the waters closed over me. Seaweed was wrapped around my head. But You brought my life up from the pit, O Lord my God! Salvation is from the Lord!”

Then God commanded the fish, and it spat Jonah out onto dry land.

Looking ahead to Jesus: Jesus said, “As Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40). Jesus was talking about His own death, and how He would rise again on the third day.

Read it in your Bible: Jonah 1–2

Dear God, thank you that I can never run so far away that you can’t find me. Thank you that you rescue people who call out to you. Amen.