The Book of Jonah is one of the prophetic books of the Bible. It is just two pages long (the whole book is only half as long as the Sermon on the Mount). It tells about a man named Jonah who was called by God to preach repentance to the city of Nineveh, a pagan city, an enemy of Israel, and 300 miles away (in modern-day Iraq).
Jonah's first reaction was to sail in the opposite direction from Nineveh. After his adventures with the "great fish," God called him a second time, and this time Jonah did go to Nineveh and preach repentance.
To Jonah's great surprise, the people of Nineveh took his words to heart and repented.
Nineveh was an ancient city located at the source of the Tigris River, across from the modern-day city of Mosul, Iraq. At one point, it was the capital of Assyria, but it was destroyed by the Medes (an ancient people from what is today northwestern Iran) in 612 B.C.
- Little Black Book, Diocese of Saginaw