The Hebrew Prophets

seeing the word doth come unto the king of Nineveh, and he riseth from his throne, and removeth his honourable robe from off him, and spreadeth out sackcloth, and sitteth on the ashes,

and he crieth and saith in Nineveh by a decree of the king and his great ones, saying, `Man and beast, herd and flock--let them not taste anything, let them not feed, even water let them not drink;

and cover themselves with sackcloth let man and beast, and let them call unto God mightily, and let them turn back each from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.

Who knoweth? He doth turn back, and God hath repented, and hath turned back from the heat of His anger, and we do not perish.'

And God seeth their works, that they have turned back from their evil way, and God repenteth of the evil that He spake of doing to them, and he hath not done it .

And it is grievous unto Jonah--a great evil--and he is displeased at it;

and he prayeth unto Jehovah, and he saith, `I pray Thee, O Jehovah, is not this my word while I was in mine own land--therefore I was beforehand to flee to Tarshish--that I have known that Thou art a God, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in kindness, and repenting of evil?

And now, O Jehovah, take, I pray Thee, my soul from me, for better is my death than my life.'

And Jehovah saith, `Is doing good displeasing to thee?'

And Jonah goeth forth from the city, and sitteth on the east of the city, and maketh to himself there a booth, and sitteth under it in the shade, till that he seeth what is in the city.

And Jehovah God appointeth a gourd, and causeth it to come up over Jonah, to be a shade over his head, to give deliverance to him from his affliction, and Jonah rejoiceth because of the gourd with great joy.

And God appointeth a worm at the going up of the dawn on the morrow, and it smiteth the gourd, and it drieth up.

And it cometh to pass, about the rising of the sun, that God appointeth a cutting east wind, and the sun smiteth on the head of Jonah, and he wrappeth himself up, and asketh his soul to die, and saith, `Better is my death than my life.'

And God saith unto Jonah: `Is doing good displeasing to thee, because of the gourd?' and he saith, `To do good is displeasing to me--unto death.'

And Jehovah saith, `Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for which thou didst not labour, neither didst thou nourish it, which a son of a night was, and a son of a night perished,

and I--have not I pity on Nineveh, the great city, in which there are more than twelve myriads of human beings, who have not known between their right hand and their left--and much cattle!'

A word of Jehovah that hath been unto Micah the Morashite in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, kings of Judah, that he hath seen concerning Samaria and Jerusalem:

Hear, O peoples, all of them! Attend, O earth, and its fulness, And the Lord Jehovah is against you for a witness, The Lord from His holy temple.

For lo, Jehovah is going out from His place, And He hath come down, And hath trodden on high places of earth.

Melted have been the mountains under Him, And the valleys do rend themselves, As wax from the presence of fire, As waters cast down by a slope.

For the transgression of Jacob is all this, And for the sins of the house of Israel. What is the transgression of Jacob? Is it not Samaria? And what the high places of Judah? Is it not Jerusalem?

And I have set Samaria for a heap of the field, For plantations of a vineyard, And poured out into a valley her stones, And her foundations I uncover.

And all her graven images are beaten down, And all her gifts are burnt with fire, And all her idols I make a desolation, For, from the hire of a harlot she gathered, and unto the hire of a harlot they return.

For this I lament and howl, I go spoiled and naked, I make a lamentation like dragons, And a mourning like daughters of an ostrich.

For mortal are her wounds, For it hath come unto Judah, It hath come to a gate of My people--to Jerusalem.