After Sodom and Gomorrah — the living funerals unto the age, and the fires of punishment sealed by the age of their ashes, and the apples born but for the eyes in vain, and there alike the death wrought of sea and salt — if man be anything, keeping the punishment in a changed body — the Almighty had well-nigh dashed down other fires from the shower of heaven upon Nineveh, the city that had transgressed the way of equity and justice. For what fear is there for a subverted mind? All the proofs of punishments are, among the common sort, void where error holds sway. But the good and long-suffering Lord, patient toward us and slow to strike, the Almighty will hurl no wrath, unless he first admonish and knock upon hardened hearts, stirring up the foreseeing prophets with his august mind. For the Lord had charged Jonah to foretell to the Ninevites the destruction they had earned;
but he, conscious that the Lord spares the submissive and remits the due punishment to the suppliant, and is easy toward the good, held back from going, lest he should sing in vain, since the threats would yield to peace. Soon his counsel was flight — if indeed there be any such power to evade God and escape the Lord's right hand, beneath which the whole trembling world is held in check. But what is the reasoning by which the prophet acts out of his holy heart? On the lip of the shore, most famous for its trusty harbour, over against the coasts of the Cilicians, is poised the city Joppa. Thence therefore, hastening, Jonah demands passage by ship to Tarshish, and that too through the signs of the same God; nor, in the end, is it any wonder, if fleeing the Lord upon the lands he found him upon the waves.
For a tiny cloud had suddenly stained the air with a sulphurous fleece, roused from the seed of the wind, and, little by little bringing forth its mass, clung fast to the sun, and shut off the beguiled day with a column of murk. The sea becomes a mirror of the sky; a black circuit dyes the waves; the ether rushes into darkness and the sea rises. Nor is there any middle place, while the billows touch the clouds — the glory of the winds, which the whirlwind mingles all together. A diverse fury raged, gnashing against the fugitive Jonah. One ship was the whole contest of both heaven and flood; it is battered on this side and that; the whole timber-frame trembles beneath the wave-breaking blow; below, the spine of the shaken keel quivers; the rigging, creaking with its labour, shudders on high; the very mast, wavering, is bent, uncertain whether to be broken.
Meanwhile a sailors' cry, born of the crisis, tries every means for the ship and for life: to fasten the delaying coils, to lash round the cable, to strain the effort of the tackle, or to drive back the reluctant windings with the breast. In turn they excellently bale out the burdensome bilge-water of the inner sea, grievous with its stench. Then they cast headlong the merchandise and all the cargo, and strive to conquer the perils by their losses. There are wretched cries at every fragment of the deep, and they spread out their hands to the divinities of no true gods, whom the might of sea and sky fears not — no less does it, drowning them, plunged in the raging whirlwind, hidden away in their sterns. Unaware of all this, the guilty one himself, beneath the hollow arch of the poop, was snoring out sleep with swollen nostril, even then in his slumber forming the figure of the Lord.
The man who directs the duties of the wave-cleaving prow pressed upon him — asleep in placid peace, proud in his rest — and, thrusting at him, said: 'Why do you snore out dreams amid this peril? In so great a whirlwind do you alone possess a harbor? Behold, the wave engulfs us; our only hope is in the gods. You too, whoever your god may be, speak your vows and prayers; calling upon him, bend as a suppliant your fatherland's deity.' Then it pleased them to learn by lot who was nearest the fault, who was the cause of the storm; and the lot did not lie about Jonah. Then they ask who he is, and whence among men, and finally of what affairs — among what people, in what dwelling is he known? He confesses himself the servant, and exceedingly fearful, of the God who raised the heaven on high, who set the earth in place, who poured forth the whole universe from himself; he reveals himself His fugitive and the causes of his flight. They stiffened with dread.
'What fault, then, have we done against you? What is to be done now? By what deed shall we appease the seas?' For the savage straits swelled more, and much more. Then the Lord's prophet, filled with the Spirit, begins: 'Behold, I am the tempest, I am the whole madness of the world; against me,' he says, 'the sky rushes upon you and the sea rises; because of me the land is far off, death is nearest, and there is no hope of God. Nay, cast the headlong cause overboard, and, lightening the ship, hurl into the deep this one great burden, willing to be cast.' But those men strove in vain to turn the course back toward return, for the rudder would not let itself be twisted, nor would the harsh balance of the yardarm consent to be shifted. At last, [turning] to the Lord:
'Do not deliver us into the gaping jaws of death for the sake of one soul; do not will that we be sprinkled with the blood of a righteous man, if thus your right hand leads —' And now, there, rising from the lowest gulf, a sea-monster, scaly with shells, unrolling the column of its body, pressed the waves nearer as the marble sea was shaken; and by God's own will it seized the prey, which, tumbled from the ship's height, it swallowed with its slimy jaws, and hastened the living feast into its long belly, and together with the man devoured the rage of heaven and sea. The wave of the sea is laid flat, the shadow of the sky is dissolved. On this side the waves, on that the breezes are made friendly; and as the placid keel marked out a safe way, white tracks bloom in the blue furrow. But then the sailor, revering his dread of death, sacrifices thanks to the Lord, and enters the friendly harbors.
And the prophet Jonah, taken up into another vessel, sails on and cleaves the wave beneath the deepest waves, making sail of the entrails, his life breathed into the belly of the beast; enclosed yet not steeped in the waters, innermost within the sea yet outside it, among the half-eaten shoals and the bodies dissolved by rotten decay, even then learning his own funeral. But being destined one day to be a sign of the Lord, he was not a witness of destruction, but of death driven away.