The Life
Jonah was a prophet from Galilee, the son of Amittai, who lived around 800 years before Christ. The Lord told him to go preach repentance to the Assyrian capital city of Nineveh — the cruelest enemy of Israel. Jonah did not want to go. He got on a boat going the opposite direction, was thrown overboard during a great storm, and was swallowed by a sea monster. After three days and three nights in the belly of the deep, the fish vomited him out alive on the dry land. The Lord called him again. This time he went, and the whole great city of Nineveh repented at his preaching.
The Lord told Jonah: get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, the empire that had been brutalizing Israel for years. Jonah did not want them to repent. He wanted them destroyed. So he got up, all right — and ran the opposite way. He went down to Joppa on the Mediterranean coast, found a ship sailing for Tarshish (the farthest port he could reach in any direction), paid his fare, and went down into the hold of the ship to sleep. He thought he could put the whole sea between himself and the call of God.
The Lord sent a mighty wind on the sea, and the storm was so fierce that the ship was about to break apart. The sailors were terrified. Each one prayed to his god. They threw the cargo overboard to lighten the ship. All this time Jonah was sound asleep in the hold. The captain came down and woke him: “What are you doing, sleeper? Get up and call on your God!” They cast lots to find out who had brought the trouble, and the lot fell on Jonah. He told them what he had done.
The sailors finally threw Jonah into the raging sea. The storm stopped at once. The Lord prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah, and he was inside it for three days and three nights. From the belly of the fish, in the depth of the dark, Jonah finally prayed. He prayed one of the most beautiful prayers in the whole Bible: “Out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice. The waters compassed me about, even to the soul. Yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O LORD my God.” The Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.
The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time. This time he went. He walked into Nineveh — a city so big it took three days to cross — and he cried out: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” That was the whole sermon. Eight words in Hebrew. To his astonishment, the city listened. The king came down from his throne, took off his royal robes, put on sackcloth, and sat in ashes. He decreed a fast for every man and beast. The whole population repented from the greatest to the least. The Lord saw their repentance and spared the city.
Jonah did not rejoice. He was furious that the Lord had spared the city. He went out east of the city and made himself a small shelter to wait, hoping the Lord would still destroy it. The Lord caused a leafy plant to grow up over Jonah, giving him shade. Jonah was pleased about the plant. The next day at dawn, the Lord caused a worm to attack the plant, and it withered. The sun beat down on Jonah’s head. He grew faint and asked again to die. The Lord said: you grieve over a plant which you did not plant or tend. Should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who do not know their right hand from their left, and many cattle? With that question the book ends.
These words are from the prayer Jonah prayed in the belly of the great fish. He had run from God, been thrown into the sea, swallowed alive, and was held inside the dark for three days. From that place — from the very belly of hell, as he calls it — he cried out to the Lord. And the Lord heard him. The Church loves these words because they belong to every soul that has ever cried out from a place of total darkness and discovered, to its astonishment, that the Lord is still listening.
Jonah’s tomb was traditionally at Nineveh — the very city he had not wanted to save. It was venerated by Christians, Jews, and Muslims for centuries until it was destroyed in the early twenty-first century. The Orthodox Church reads the entire short book of Jonah at the great Vespers of Holy Saturday, just before the Resurrection of Christ — because his story is the story of the Lord’s own three days in the heart of the earth. The Fast of Nineveh, observed in the Syriac and Coptic Orthodox traditions, recalls the city’s repentance. Jonah is remembered everywhere as one of the great prefigurations of Christ.
Jonah matters to every Orthodox Christian because his story is also the Lord’s story. The three days in the are the three days in the tomb. The coming forth alive is the Resurrection. The preaching to the pagans is the Gospel going out to the nations. He is read every Holy Saturday because he is the great Old Testament icon of Pascha. He is also the friend of every soul that has ever resisted what God was asking, run the wrong way, and discovered to its surprise that the Lord pursued it through the storm. There is no escape from the love of God. The Lord follows us into the depth of the sea if he has to.