Jonah
An original translation by David Price
Jonah 1
1. There came a time in the history of Israel when the Word of the Lord made Himself known unto the son of Amitay, who was the prophet, Jonah. This is what the Word said to him:
2. “Get your things together, Jonah, and get going toward the great city Nineveh. When you arrive there you will proclaim my message, pronounce my word upon her because her wickedness has risen through the heavens and is right in front of me.”
3. But, instead of following the Word, Jonah got his things together and headed out toward Tarshish which was on the other side of the Great Sea from Nineveh. He first went away from Nineveh as far as Joppa and there he found a small ship that would sell him a bunk on their voyage toward Tarshish. So he paid the fare and climbed down into the tiny berth and sailed away with the men toward Tarshish, with their backs to Nineveh.
4. Somewhere along the way, the Lord Himself blasted the sea with a powerful wind and stirred up a hurricane. The small ship was tossed about by the terrible storm until it seemed as though she would be broken to pieces.
5. All of the sailors were terrified and helpless to bring their ship under control. They began to pray and shout to their gods and shouted out to the god of the sea. They also started throwing their cargo overboard to try and appease the gods and to make the small ship lighter. But Jonah, who knew that there was no sea god, decided to find himself a comfortable place in the back of the boat where he could bed down during the brief calm that was coming. In a few moments, he was fast asleep.
6. When the ship’s captain found out that Jonah was napping below decks, he could hardly believe it. When he found Jonah, the captain shook him and called his name, “Jonah. Jonah! What are you doing? How can you be the only one sleeping? Get yourself up and do what we are all doing. Cry out to your god and ask for help. Perhaps he will be considerate and save us from death, from perishing in the sea!”
7. Meanwhile, all the others on board got together to decide what to do when the calm was over and the other side of the storm came over them. Someone shouted more loudly than the rest, “Come on, let’s draw straws and find out on whose account this disaster is happening to us.” When the captain came back on deck with Jonah, they drew straws and Jonah had the short straw.
8. Everyone stared at the short straw in Jonah’s hand for a moment. The captain finally began to ask him questions, one right after the other: “Tell us why this harm has come upon us.” “What sort of business are you in? What is your trade?” “Where do you come from?” “Who are your people?” “What land are you from?”
9. Jonah held up his hand. “Hebrew.” Everyone stared at the short straw in his hand as he said, ” I am Hebrew, from the land of the Hebrews, the people who crossed over the sea upon the dry land by the hand of God. I am one of those who fear the Lord, the God of the heavens. He is the Creator; It is He who has made the sea and it is He who has made the dry land. The sea does as he commands and obeys his will.
10. When they heard the words of Jonah, every man was gripped with fear as they remembered that he had told them before that he was running away from the presence of the Lord. “What is this that you have done to us?” they exclaimed in one voice. “How could you bring this disaster upon us?”
11) No one spoke for a short time. The boat began to move about as the waves began to swell again. The captain looked out to sea and then looked at Jonah. “What can we do unto you that will make him be quiet? The sea is starting to walk and toss again and the ship cannot bear up under the crushing waves.”
12) And Jonah said to the men, “You must lift me up and toss me overboard. Throw me down into the sea and he will be quiet, you will be safe. I know this is true because I know that this tempest is sent against you on my account.”
13) Without a word, the men ran to their oars and began to pull as hard as they could toward the shoreline that was still visible on the horizon. They rowed until they were exhausted and weak but the sea was tossing them back two lengths for every ship’s length they gained.
14) Finally, they succumbed to their fears and impotence and they cried out to the Lord as they lifted Jonah up to the side of the ship, “O Lord, we don’t want to die here because of the life of this man. We beg that you will not let us perish and that you will not hold us to account for the blood of this innocent man. We are trusting in the words of this man that you have done this thing, O Lord!”
15) So they lifted Jonah and cast him down into the sea. Immediately, the sea became calm and was not raging against them as it had been.
16) When the men reached the shore, they were still overwhelmed by the things that had happened and by the fear of the Lord that was unshakeable. They got together and made sacrifices and made promises and vows to do things that were good.
Jonah 2
1 Now the Lord chose a huge fish that could swallow up Jonah and that is how Jonah came to be in the belly of the fish for three days and for three nights.
2 While he was inside the fish, Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God and this is what he said:
3 I called out unto the Lord from within my time of trouble
and he listened to me;
From the very depths of Hell I hailed you.
You heard my cry for Help,
4 Since it was you who cast me down
into the depths,
into the heart of the sea;
(The flood of waters would not let me go.)
all of your crashing waves
and all of your rolling waves
washed over me.
5 That’s when I heard myself say,
“Even though I cannot be in your presence right now,
I will be able to feast my eyes on your Holy Temple again.”
6 Unto the depths of my soul itself,
the waters surrounded me;
In the heart of the great deep,
is where I drowned,
pressed to my brow,
the seaweed wound.
7 To the place where the mountains rest,
I sank that low;
The doors in the lowest parts of the earth,
were closed upon me
by an eternal hand.
But before my life slipped forever away,
You raised me up,
O Lord my God!
8 When my soul was shrouded within me,
I remembered the Lord;
And I sent to your Holy Temple,
the offering of my prayer.
9 There are many who forsake kindness.
The cause of this?
Being all too ready to depend on lies.
10 But as for me?
I will be singing God’s praises,
putting my tongue to good use,
as I get ready to sacrifice and
as I prepare to pay my vows:
There is Salvation in the Lord!
11 So the Lord directed the fish and made him throw up at just the right place; and Jonah found himself on dry ground.
Jonah 3
1 And that is where Jonah was when the Word of the Lord found him the second time and began to say to him,
2 “Get your things together, Jonah, and get going toward the great city Nineveh. When you arrive there you will proclaim my message, preach unto her the sermon which I have been telling you.
3 So Jonah pulled himself together and began walking toward Nineveh following after the Word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city unto the gods. It is questionable whether someone could walk from one end of it to the other in three days.
4 Now Jonah waited until he had come into the city about a days walk and then he cried out and said, “Nineveh has 40 days before it will be overthrown.”
5 And all the people of Nineveh trusted God and they declared a fast and put on sackcloth. All of them, from the greatest to the least of them, put on sackcloth.
6 When the word going around the city came to the king’s attention, he rose up from his throne and laid aside his royal robes. Then the king covered himself from head to toe in sackcloth and sat down in an ash pit to fast with his people.
7 When he had everyone that he needed with him at the ash pit, he spoke the following words to his nobles so that they would tell all the people, “People of Nineveh – Do not eat or drink any food or water, do not let your animals ear or drink and take your cattle and sheep out of the pastures.”
8 “Sackcloth is all that we will wear and the animals shall wear the same. Make as much noise as you can and cry out to God. Every man is to turn away from evil and from the cruel things you do and the places you go.”
9 “Who knows whether God will pity us and look at us again so that harm will be turned away from us. Perhaps His burning anger will not consume us so that we all perish.”
10 So God saw all that they did and how they truly turned away from the path of destruction. And God felt sorry for them because of the panic and distress that came from the proclamation He had made against them. He did not destroy them as He had declared He would.
Jonah 4
1 But Jonah was ill and distressed beyond measure, fuming and fretting at the outcome.
2 So he prayed unto the Lord and kept saying to Him:
O Lord,
O Lord,
O Lord,
“I knew you would do this when I was still at home. Wasn’t that what I said? That was why I ran away to Tarshish, because I knew that, of all things, You and You alone are a gracious and compassionate God. You are slow to get angry and full of loving kindness – even pitying those who are miserable and distressed.”
3 “And now, O Lord, I pray that you will take my life from me so that some good will come from my death; since I prefer death to life.”
4 And the Lord said, “How good of you to be so angry for Me!”
5 So Jonah walked out and left the city and camped out on the east side of the city. He made for himself a shed and sat in the scanty shade it gave so that he could watch the show of what the Lord was going to do to the city.
6 So the Lord God chose to make a gourd to climb up over Jonah’s head to give more shade to his head. And Jonah was relieved from his distress and rejoiced over the great blessing of the gourd plant.
7 Then God chose a worm to work at eating away the inside of the gourd until the dawn of the next morning. So the worm destroyed the gourd and it withered away to nothing.
8 And so it was when the sun rose, God made the east wind particularly hot. Jonah was overheated by the blazing sun. Jonah felt faint as he prayed that he preferred to die. Over and over he kept saying, “Death! Death! I would be better off dead!”
9 And God said unto Jonah, “Is it a good thing that you are angry about the gourd?” and Jonah said “I have a right to be angry, even if it kills me!”
10 And the Lord said, “You have loving kindness toward a gourd, which you did nothing to bring about and in no way caused it to grow. A gourd, mind you, which I made to last from one night to the next without any help from you. Should not I especially have pity upon Nineveh, that great city in which there are many more than 120,000 men who do not know their right hand from their left hand, along with many cattle?
