When the news ¹  reached the king of Nineveh, he got up from his throne, took off his royal robe, put on sackcloth, and sat on ashes.

Instead, Jonah immediately ¹  headed off to Tarshish ²  to escape ³  from the commission of the Lord. ⁴  He traveled ⁵  to Joppa ⁶  and found a merchant ship heading ⁷  to Tarshish. ⁸  So he paid the fare ⁹  and went aboard it to go with them to Tarshish far away from the Lord.

Instead, they tried to row ¹  back to land, ²  but they were not able to do so ³  because the storm kept growing worse and worse. ⁴ 

So Jonah went immediately to Nineveh, as the Lord had said. (Now Nineveh was an enormous city ¹  – it required three days to walk through it!) ²