Jonah 1:3

In trying to run away from the Lord, you show up the fickleness of all who plan flight. A certain headstrong prophet also had run away from the Lord, crossing the sea from Joppa to Tarsus, as if he could escape from God. But God found him not on land or on sea but in the belly of a beast, where for three days he could not die or even in that way escape from the eyes of God. Is that man not better off who, though he fears the enemy of God, does not flee from but despises him? Who trusts in the protection of God or, if you will, has an even greater fear of God, having stood the longer in his eyes? He says, “He is the Lord, he is mighty, all things are his, and wherever I shall be I am in his hands. Let him do what he will, I shall not run away. If he wishes me to die, let him destroy me, as long as I faithfully serve him. Much would I rather bring odium on him, by dying according to his will, than to live by my own cowardice.”

Jonah knew better than anyone the purpose of his message to the Ninevites and that, in planning his flight, although he changed his location, he did not escape from God. Nor is this possible for anyone else, either by concealing himself in the bosom of the earth, or in the depths of the sea, or by soaring on wings, if there be any means of doing so, and rising into the air, or by abiding in the lowest depths of hell, or by any other of the many devices for ensuring escape. For God alone of all things cannot be escaped from or contended with. If he wills to seize and bring them under his hand, he outstrips the swift. He outwits the wise. He overthrows the strong. He cuts down the lofty. He subdues rashness. He resists power.

But there Jonah calls upon God, and marvelous as it is, on the third day, he, like Christ, is delivered.… In my own case, what could be said? What defense could be made if I remained unsettled and rejected the yoke of ministry, which, though I know not whether to call it light or heavy, had at any rate been laid upon me.… On this account I had much toilsome consideration to discover my duty, being set in the middle between two fears, of which the one held me back and the other urged me on. For a long while I was at a loss between them. After wavering from side to side, and, like a current driven by inconstant winds, inclining first in this direction then in that, I at last yielded to the stronger. The fear of disobedience overcame me.

He left Joppa, which in Hebrew it means ‘beautiful’.

"But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD." The Septuagint here is similar. The prophet knows by an inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that the repentance of the people is the destruction of the Jews. In this situation it is not that he is trying to save Nineveh, but that moreover he does not want to see it destroyed. In another place Moses prays for his people: "if you can spare them this sin, spare them; if not, erase me from your book that you have written" [Ex. 32:31-32]; to this prayer, Israel was saved and Moses was not erased from the Book: even better the Lord indeed profited from his servant by sparing his other servants. For when God says, "release me", he shows that he can be held. This is similar to what the apostle says: "I wished to be anathema for my brothers who are Israelites according to their flesh" [Rom. 9:3]. Not that he desires to die however, for whom to live is Christ and to die is a profit [Phil. 1:21]; but he deserves life more when he wants to save others. Besides, seeing the other prophets sent to the lost flocks of the house of Israel [Mt. 10:6] to incite the people to repent, and Balaam [Num. 23.24] the divine author of a prophecy about the deliverance of the Israelite people, Jonah feels himself punished by being chosen alone to speak against the Assyrians, the enemies of Israel, in the foreign capital where idolatry and ignorance of God still ruled. And what is more he feared that in spite of his prophesying they would still not be converted to repent, and that Israel would not be completely abandoned. For he knew by this Spirit which had entrusted him with the role of hero among the gentiles, that once the nations had come together in belief, then Israel would surely perish. And he feared that whatever was to happen in the future would not happen in his time. Thus Jonah does as Cain does: he flees from the face of the Lord [Gen. 4:16] and wants to flee to Tarshish, which Josephus interprets as that Tarsus of Cilicia, but changes the first letter. This can also be seen in the book of the Paralipomenon [2 Chron. 20:36-37], which says that there is a place in India which is called the same. According to the Hebrews Tarshish means more generally 'sea', according to this passage: "by a fierce wind you will break the ships of Tarshish!" [Ps. 47:8], or the ships of the sea. And in Isaiah: "cry out, O ships of Tarshish!" [Is. 23:1,14]. I remember that I have already spoken about this several years ago in a letter to Marcella. The prophet did not intent to flee to such a place, but throwing himself into the sea, he just wants to go anywhere. And this is more pertinent when talking of a fugitive or one who is afraid, that he does not choose carefully where he wants to flee to, but just jumps at the first opportunity to take to the seas. We can also say this: he thought that God was "known" only "in Judea", "and in Israel his name is great" [Ps. 75:2]. After he had seen that God was also in the waves he confesses and declares: "I am a Hebrew and I fear the Lord of heaven" [Jonah 1:9], who made the sea and the dry land. But if he had made the sea and the dry earth, why believe when you leave the land that you can escape the creator of the sea on the sea? At the same time when he sees the others sailors saved and converted, he learns that all the wickedness of Nineveh can be saved and converted by a similar confession. We can say too about our Lord and Saviour that he abandoned his home and country: at the incarnation he fled in some manner the heavens for Tarshish, the sea of that age, according to what is written in another place: "here is the sea, great and wide; there are numerous beings, animals great and small; there the boats come in and go out, and this dragon that you created to be crushed" [Ps. 103:25-6]. And he says too in his passion, "Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass me by!" [Mt. 26:39], lest at the unified complaints of the people, saying, "Crucify him, crucify him!" [Luke 23:21], and "we have no king except Caesar" [John 19:15], the crowd of people should enter all together; and lest the branches of the olive-tree should be broken, and in their place the shoots of the wild olive should grow [Rom. 11:17-25]. He had such honour and love of his country in light of the choice of the patriarchs and of the promise of Abraham, that he said on the cross, "Father, forgive them; they know not what they do" [Luke 23:34]. Or even since Tarshish can be translated as 'the contemplation of joy', the prophet, coming to Joppa, whose name means 'beautiful', hastens to hurry towards the joy and to rejoice in the pleasure of rest, to give himself completely over of contemplation. For he thinks that it is better to rejoice in beauty and in the variety of knowledge than to save the other people by letting that people die, from whom Christ would have been born.

"And went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD." LXX: "and he went up to Joppa, and he found a boat going to Tarshish; after paying his fare he went on board to sail with them to Tarshish, far from the face of the Lord." Joppa is a port of Judea [2 Chron. 2:16], and it has been seen in the book of Kingdoms [i.e. 'Kings'] and of the Paralipomenon. It was there that the King Hiram of Tyr transported wood from Liban by raft, then they were taken by chariot by road to Jerusalem. In this place even to this day rocks can be seen on the shore on which the chained Andromeda was saved by Perseus. The learned reader will know the story. And in light of the nature of the countryside, it is said quite rightly that the prophet came from a direction that is mountainous and precipitous, and went down to Joppa in the plain. He found there a ship that was moored and he went upon the sea. He paid his fare or the price of embarking, that is of his journey, according to the Hebrew, or the fare for himself, as the Septuagint has translated it. "and he went down into it" as the Hebrew itself says, (for iered in Hebrew is translated as 'went down'), for in his flight he took great care to find a hiding place. Or "he goes up", as it is written in the Vulgate edition, for going where the boat is going, thinking that he has escaped if he has left Judea. But our Lord is also at the edge of the shore of Judea, which is called 'very beautiful' because since he was in Judea, he did not want to take the bread of sons to give it to dogs. [Mt. 15:26] But because he had come for the lost flocks of the house of Israel [Mt. 10:6] he paid the price to those who transport him. Thus he who at first wants to heal his people, saves the inhabitants of the sea, and through great winds and storms, (that is his suffering and the reproof of the cross) he is plunged into Hell and saves those whom had not noticed by appearing to sleep on the boat [Mt. 8:24-5]. The wise reader will not want to try to make tropology and history concur. For the Apostle refers Agar and Sara [Gal. 4:22-31] to the two Testaments, and all the same we are not able to interpret everything that is recounted in this story in a tropological way. And when explaining about Adam and Eve to the Ephesians, he says, "this is why man leaves his mother and father to join with a wife, and both will become one flesh. [Gen. 2:24] There is a great mystery: I mean Christ and the Church." [Eph. 5:31-2] Are we then first to refer the beginning of Genesis, the creation of the world, the formation of mankind, to Christ and to the Church under the pretext that the Apostle has used regarding this text? Let us admit what is written here: "thus man will leave his father" [Gen. 2:24], we can apply this to Christ by saying that he left God his Father in heaven to unite the people of the world in the Church. But how can we interpret what follows, "his mother"? Unless perhaps we are to say that he left heavenly Jerusalem, that mother of saints, and other ideas that are more complicated? And this too is written by the same Apostle: "they were drinking from a spiritual rock which was accompanying them, and this rock was Christ" [I Cor. 10:4], but let us not try to relate the entire book of Exodus to Christ. For what can we say? That this stone was hit by Moses not just once, but twice [Ex. 17:6; Num. 20:11], that the waters flowed [Ps. 77:20] and that the floods were filled up. Are we to regard the entire story of this passage in this case as allegory? Is it nor rather that each passage ought to receive a spiritual meaning according to the diversity of history? Therefore just as these texts each in this way have their interpretations and do not entail the same allegory in their context, so the prophet will not be able to be taken completely to the Lord without difficulty for the interpreter. And if it is said in the Gospel, "O wicked and adulterous generation, that she asks for a sign? As a sign she will only have the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah spent three days and three night in the belly of a fish, so the son of man will spend three days and three nights in the bosom of the earth" [Mt. 12:39-40]. The remainder of this account does not concern Christ to the same extent. Indeed wherever this reading can be said to apply without discrepancy, we also try to make it fit.

[Daniel 10:6] "And his body was like chrysolite." For "chrysolite," one of the twelve gems inserted in the oracular breastplate of the high priest, the Hebrew has trs'ys (tharsis) , a word which Theodotion and Symmachus simply left unchanged in transcription; but the Septuagint called it "the sea," according to the usage in the Psalms: "With a violent gale Thou dashest the ships of Tharsis in pieces," i.e., "the ships of the sea" (Psalm 48:7). Jonah, also, was desirous of fleeing, not to Tarsus, the Cilician city (as most people suppose, substituting one letter for another), nor to some region in India (as Josephus imagines), but simply out to the high seas in general (Jonah 1:3).

In Hebrew, however, they speak generally of the sea as "Tharsis." Therefore, the prophet did not wish to flee to any particular place, but he embarked upon a ship which could take him anywhere, so long as he could hurry, not caring where chance led him.

Jonah, therefore, coming from the mountainous country of Judea to the sea coast and the plains, is rightly said to have went down.