When most people hear "Jonah" they immediately think, "Jonah and the whale." Although only three verses of the 48 that comprise the little prophetic book of Jonah are about the fish, the fish aspect of the account has swallowed the whole book. Most people can't tell you anything about Jonah, except he was swallowed by a whale. But even that is inaccurate. The Bible says he was swallowed by a big fish, not a whale. A whale is not even a fish but a warm-blooded mammal which takes care of its young from the time of a live birth and gets its oxygen from the air rather than the water. There's a whale of a difference between fish and whales. That said, what about Jonah?

God gave Jonah an assignment he radically did not want or appreciate. God wanted him to go and preach a revival to a group of people called the Ninevites. The Ninevites lived in a place which many place in the area of modern day Mosul, Iraq's third largest city. It seemed that the Ninevites were so wicked that their wickedness became a stench to God and he could smell it all the way from heaven. God wanted to give the Ninevites a better life and a change in their ultimate future.

Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh because he hated them. It seemed that his parents and his forefathers had passed down a prejudice toward the Ninevites. In Israel's collective memory the Ninevites committed atrocities on the Hebrews to such an extent that they could not be forgiven. Jonah was prejudiced. And because he was prejudiced toward the Ninevites he did not want anything good to happen to them. He knew, deep down, that if he went and preached a message of repentance, they would in all likelihood repent and turn to God and God would save them. Jonah, deep down, wanted the Ninevites annihilated.

So rather than go and be obedient by preaching repentance, Jonah buys a one way ticket in the opposite direction, to a city called Tarshish. He ran from God (You can run from God, but you cannot hide. Adam and Eve found that out at the beginning of all things). Well, in order to accomplish his ends, God threw a whale of a storm on the Mediterranean that day. Through conversation and a throw of the dice, it was concluded that the storm was Jonah's fault. The solution to the whole mess was that Jonah had to be thrown overboard and God appointed a big fish to taxi him