Jonah
Jonah flees rather than preach to Nineveh, is swallowed by a great fish, then watches the city repent. The book exposes a prophet’s anger and God’s compassion for the nations.
English Revised Version
Jonah 4
1But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. 2And he prayed unto the LORD, and said, I pray thee, O LORD, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I hasted to flee unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and full of compassion, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy, and repentest thee of the evil. 3Therefore now, O LORD, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live. 4And the LORD said, Doest thou well to be angry? 5Then Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what would become of the city. 6And the LORD God prepared a gourd, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his evil case. So Jonah was exceeding glad because of the gourd. 7But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd, that it withered. 8And it came to pass, when the sun arose, that God prepared a sultry east wind; and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and requested for himself that he might die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live. 9And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry even unto death. 10And the LORD said, Thou hast had pity on the gourd; for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night: 11and should not I have pity on Nineveh, that great city; wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?
English Revised Version (1885). Public domain. The 1881/1885 British revision of the King James Version; parent of the ASV.