The ship was rocking as if it were about to break in two, but in Jonah's mind the
sea no longer existed.
As the sailors prepared their lot on the drenched deck, the past forced its way into
him with cruel clarity. It didn't arrive as an orderly memory, but as fragments:
broken voices, smoke, screams that time had failed to silence.
Nineveh.
It wasn't just an enemy city. It was the origin of a wound that had never healed.
Jonah was barely twelve years old when he first heard the name spoken with
genuine terror. It wasn't during a religious lesson or a solemn reading,but in the voice of a man returning from the north with an empty gaze and
trembling hands.
The man had arrived in the village at nightfall, covered in dust and dried blood. No one
recognized him at first. Only when he spoke, when he asked for water in a voice that seemed to
come from another world, did they realize he was one of their own.
"They're coming..." she had whispered. "They're destroying everything."
That night, Jonah did not sleep.
He listened to the adults talking in hushed tones, thinking the children didn't
understand. But Jonah understood all too well. He heard words likeAssyrians,
army,impaled,erased citiesEach word pierced his memory like a thorn.
More survivors arrived days later. Some without arms. Others without children. All
without hope.
It was then that Jonah saw his father cry for the first time.
Amitai was not a weak man. He had faced droughts, disease, and loss without
shedding a tear. But that night, upon hearing that a distant cousin had been
executed at the gates of his city, he broke down.
"They have no compassion," he said. "They know no mercy."
Jonah learned that day that the world was not divided only between the righteous and the sinners, but
between those who suffered and those who enjoyed the suffering of others.
Over the years, the stories grew darker. Tales of children taken captive, of
women branded as spoils of war, of cities forced to watch as stakes were
erected with human bodies as a warning.
—That's how Nineveh rules—they said—. With terror.
Jonah grew up with those stories in his blood. When God began to speak to him, when He
called him a prophet, he never imagined that one day his mission would be linked to that
cursed city.
Until now.
A wave crashed violently against the ship, jolting him from his reverie. The
water reached his ankles. Sailors shouted orders, but their voices sounded
distant, as if Jonah were immersed in another reality.One of them lit a torch sheltered from the wind. The flickering flame illuminated
their tired faces, distorted by fear.
"Quickly!" shouted the captain. "Before the ship sinks!"
Jonah observed them with a strange clarity. They weren't cruel men. They were workers,
fathers, someone's children. None of them deserved to die for a decision he had made.
And yet, they were all there… for him.
The captain held a small wooden container where the lots were placed: marked
stones, carved with ancient symbols. A rudimentary method, but respected by
men who had learned to read signs in the wind and on the sea.
"Let the gods reveal the cause," said one of them, trembling.
Jonah felt a knot in his stomach.
Part of him still hoped that fate would point to someone else. Not out of justice, but out of
cowardice. Another, more honest part of him knew there was no escape.
As the captain shook the container, Jonah remembered the last conversation he
had had with his father before leaving.
"Be careful with your calling," Amitai had told him. "It won't always take you where you want to
go."
Jonah had smiled then, self-assured, convinced that obeying God always meant
protecting his own. He never imagined that obedience could require him to love
those he hated.
The container stopped.
The captain reached in and pulled out the stone.
There was a heavy, almost sacred silence as he gazed at the carved symbol. The
torch illuminated his face, and in that instant, Jonah knew the answer before it was
spoken.
The captain slowly raised his gaze.
- It's you.
The word fell like a verdict.The wind seemed to die down for a second, as if even the sea were waiting. The
sailors turned to Jonah, some in disbelief, some in anger, some with a mixture of
fear and relief.
"What have you done?" one of them asked. "Who are you?"
Jonah took a step forward. Water soaked his sandals, his cloak weighed heavily on
his shoulders. But for the first time since the storm began, his voice did not tremble.
"I am a Hebrew," he said. "And I fear the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land."
A murmur rippled through the deck.
"Then why were you running away?" demanded the captain. "If this is your God, why have you brought
this calamity upon us?!"
Jonah closed his eyes for a moment. He saw Nineveh again in his mind: its walls, its armies,
the smoke from the fallen cities. He felt the ancient anger, the open wound.
"Because he asked me to go to a place I hate," she replied with brutal honesty. "And I preferred to run
away."
The ship listed dangerously. A sailor fell overboard and was nearly swept
away by a wave, but others caught him in time.
"What should we do to you to calm the sea?" someone asked desperately.
Jonah stared at the black water that stretched beyond the gunwale. For the first time,
he fully understood the price of his disobedience. It wasn't just his life that was at
stake, but the lives of everyone around him.
—Throw me into the sea —he said.
The words came out of her lips with a calmness that surprised him.
"What?" shouted the captain. "No! That would kill you!"
"I know," Jonah replied. "But this storm is because of me. If they throw me overboard, the sea will
calm down."
There was a moment of absolute silence. Even the wind seemed to die down, as if it were
listening."We can't," said one of the sailors. "We will not shed innocent blood."
Jonah looked at them. He saw in them a justice that he himself had denied to Nineveh.
"I am not innocent," he said. "I have fled from the God who called me."
The sailors tried to row toward the shore, but the sea grew even more violent, as if
rejecting any alternative attempt at salvation. The waves crashed with renewed
fury.
Finally, the captain raised his hands to the sky.
"God of this man," he cried, "do not blame us for his life. You have done as you
pleased."
Jonah let himself be taken in the arms. He didn't fight. He didn't scream. As they lifted him up, he
felt something unexpected: not fear, but a deep sadness.
Not to die.
But not for having gone so far to understand what he had lost.
He looked one last time at the sailors' faces. Then he raised his eyes to the cloudy
sky.
"Now I understand," he whispered. "I never wanted to hate them less. I wanted you to hate them as much as I
do."
The sea roared.
And then Jonah was thrown into the abyss.