Everyone loves Jonah. So I’m not really going to Abridge this one. i think it’s a fun story.
Our story starts with god getting pissed off at the Assyrian capital of Ninevah. God decided to make this guy Jonah go and let the Assyrians know this. (Quick history lesson, the Assyrians were, at the time, the most terrifying army in the world and literally believed that the entire fate of the planet depended on them conquering and slaughtering continuously.) So, Jonah decided that this was stupid fucking idea. He tried to escape god by sneaking down to the seaport named Joppa, and jumped a ship sailing to Tarshish. (which is in Spain according to some light googling) I do love how Jonah just decided that if he crossed the Mediterranean sea, god wouldn’t be able to catch him. And apparently he had the right idea.
This pissed god off, because it was a thing and everything pissed god off back then, and he decided to start a crazy storm. I don’t know why god didn’t just let him get to Spain and then fuck with him, but maybe Jonah was onto something here. So anyways, god released a giant storm to fuck with the whole ship worth of men, just to fuck with Jonah for disobeying him.
What’s funny about this is every single person on the ship was freaking out, praying to whatever god they knew of, and throwing their cargo overboard except Jonah. Jonah just decided to go take a fucking nap in the middle of a goddamn storm like the world’s worst sailor. After hopefully not that long of a time, the captain of the vessel went and woke him up, saying, “Get the fuck up you fucking nimrod! Why the shit are you sleeping right now? There’s a fucking storm and we’re in a fucking boat. That means that we die unless we do something drastic! Now pray to your god and ask him to stop this storm!”
Well all the sailors decided to cast lots to decide whose fault the storm was. (I tried to figure out what “casting lots” actually means and there’s not really any information. It seems to be the same as drawing straws or rolling dice or some random game of chance. So nice for gambling, but not so nice for decided whose fault a storm is.) The blame fell on Jonah.
All the sailors decided to make some quick mid-storm chit chat with Jonah; asking questions like, “Who are you? What do you do? Where are you from? What country are you from? What is your people?” I feel like the last three questions are kind of redundant. So Jonah was like, “I’m Jonah! I am from Israel, I am from Israel, and I am an Israelite. I worship Jehovah who is the creator of the land and the sea.” A bunch of the sailors remembered that he had mentioned that he was running away from Jehovah earlier and when they heard that he was the one who made the sea, they got scared. They were like, “You pissed off this uber powerful god of yours and then got on a boat with us? That’s fucked up, man!”
The storm kept getting worse and they were like, “Jonah! What the fuck should we do about this shit?” He just very zenly replied, “Throw my ass overboard. It’s my fault anyways.” Well the sailors were not trying to throw anyone overboard even if it was the guy who caused the storm and also tried to sleep through it like an asshole; so they decided to pull the sails and row the fucking thing to the shore. This pissed god off because he really wanted to see them throw Jonah overboard, so he made the storm way worse and caused a maelstrom so they couldn’t get their boat to land. After this shit went down, everyone agreed, “Yeah, fuck Jonah.” And they threw his ass into the Mediterranean Sea.
Well, I guess they prayed to Jehovah for a bit, asking his forgiveness for what they were about to do. But you know in their hearts they wanted to do it so bad. Anyways, Once Jonah was overboard in these unswimmable waters, everyone on the boat started feeling super guilty and offered to slaughter animals and all that shit in exchange for forgiveness from god. God didn’t really pay them any mind and just sent a giant fish to swallow Jonah whole. I’m sure this didn’t make the sailors feel any better.
When they say giant fish, Let’s just say this story is true. I don’t think it is, but I’m assuming it was probably a sperm whale. Because Sperm Whales are bigger than any fish in the Mediterranean Sea and the only fucking animal in the area that can swallow a person, and if you remember them talking about animals in Exodus and Job, the people who wrote the bible didn’t have a very good grasp on animals. Anyways, it says he was in there for three days and you can’t live inside a fucking whale for three days because they’re full of methane and not fresh air which we need to breath. It’s a fun story, but hopping around on google seeing people trying to justify this story with science is ridiculous.
So Jonah was inside of a whale for three fucking days. Just three days chilling inside a whale with nothing but his own thoughts to entertain him. He prayed a bunch, because being inside of a fucking whale will make you start thinking about your own life and the decisions you’ve made. Well, god made the whale swim up to the shore, which is a bad idea for whales, and the whale puked out a still living, not dissolved by stomach acid, and fully functioning Jonah onto dry land. With presumably a bunch of Ambergris which he could’ve sold as perfume and made bank!
God came down to Jonah again and said, “Go to Ninevah. And don’t even try and fuck with me again.” This time, Jonah listened.
So, Jonah went down to the Assyrians (keep in mind, terrifying) at their capitol city of Ninevah and began his Old Testament style preaching for three days. On the first day he was like, “Check this shit out, Ninevah! You’ve been pissing god off and he has decided that he’s going to fuck your shit up.” The Assyrians believed him for some reason and decided to declare a fast and started wearing burlap sacks instead of clothes for some reason. When they king found out about this, he also put on a burlap sack, sat in a pile of dust that was just chilling there, and he made a royal decree that, “Nobody can eat or drink anything for 40 days! I know this is longer than most people can go without food and definitely longer than anyone can go without water, but fuck you. I’ve decided this. Also, stop killing each other and pissing god off. Hopefully, he’ll change his mind on this shit. I mean, I did use the number 40 and god loves that shit.”
Well that did make god change his mind. He reluctantly decided not to fuck up Ninevah. This super pissed off Jonah. He yelled at god and said, “What the fuck? I knew you weren’t going to do anything! Because you’re a merciful chill god!” I have no idea what made him decide this. He got so mad that he declared, “Fuck everything! I want you to kill me right fucking now! It’d be better for me to be dead than alive.”
God was just like, “What the fuck is your deal? You really think you have the right to be angry?”
Jonah expressed his anger in a very strange way. He just stormed out a little bit east of the city, made a shelter, and just sat and waited for god to fuck Ninevah up in front of his eyes. While he was waiting a vine grew ridiculously fast and calmed him down. Then god decided, “Fuck this vine”, and sent a worm to eat the fucking thing. I’m serious. This is the story. It’s kind of ridiculous, I know. Anyways, so this giant vine grew overnight and calmed Jonah down. Then god made an either very large or very hungry worm come eat the vine the next night. So Jonah found himself just sitting in the middle of the desert with the hot sun bearing down on him and no vine to make him happy and he just got livid. “Fuck you god,” he said, “Just fucking kill me. I hate everything and I just want to fucking die.”
God said, “You think you have a right to be angry about this vine?” and Jonah was like, “Yeah! Fuck everything! I’m so mad i could just die!”
God said, “ You’ve been really concerned about this vine, even though you had nothing to do with it growing. It grew one night and got eaten the next. Ninevah has 120,000 people in it who don’t know their left hand from their right hand. Also there’s a bunch of cows. Should I not be concerned about this city?”
And that, ladies, gentlemen, and everything in between, is exactly how the book of Jonah ends.
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