OF ALL THE MEN THAT EVER LIVED IN THAT BLOODY CITY, I was the bloodiest. As first executioner to the king of Nineveh, I plucked and flayed and hacked and skewered and even stretched an uncountable number of inferior men and women to death. The tomes of history have recorded my butchery of man. My likeness appears in many engravings on our temple walls. All I have done is attributed to the king, of course, but one cannot seriously think he would keep his divinely appointed hands soiled from the work of never-ending torture. Execution was a full-time occupation in Nineveh, and my king entrusted that responsibility to me and dozens of my assistants. He played a role in sentencing and was competent with the tools of the trade when the work suited his fancy, but I was always the master. When the chroniclers wrote that the king lined his palace walls with the skins of his enemies, I was the one who kept them breathing while also removing their hides.
But I made a mistake. On a night of drunken revelry, I took the wrong woman to my bed. I forced myself upon the daughter of my king's first lieutenant. Early the following day, while still hungover and barely aware of what I had done, the king sentenced me to death. My execution was to be carried out in three days; my torture done by my former apprentice.
My last day started as one might expect: with a final sunrise seen from a dungeon cell. I did not sleep the night before and was delirious from my deprivation. My apprentice arrived to take me before the king. I had, unfortunately, trained him well in the craft, and his skills with the flayer's flint were second only to mine. He took me out of my cell and led me to the king's chamber. It is a custom of the king to personally watch as the eyes are plucked out of his most despised prisoners so that the last thing the condemned see is his triumphant face, and after decades of faithful service, this was the thanks I was to receive. Of all the loathsome men that ever lived in that bloody city, I had become the most hated.
I took every step toward my doom as slow as my apprentice would allow. He was not a wicked boy, despite his occupation, and humored my pace. In my mind, I thanked him for the small kindness. We stopped for a moment outside of the king's chambers.
How many of the condemned had I led to this same threshold? How many did I have to drag or goad through these doors? Only a few walked to their final audience with the king under their own power. I once thought of those who went calmly unto death as foolish. They all died just the same, so why not face eternity with the blood of their tormentors beneath their fingernails?
But with my time quickly ending, I decided to be more like them. I decided to take my last steps on earth willfully instead of compelled. After all, did I not deserve my sentence? Perhaps even a thousandfold.
"Ready?" My apprentice asked. I nodded.
"Don't make this hard on yourself," I said. "Honor me with a slow death."
And I spat in his face before he could begin to feel remorse.
The doors opened, but the scene before me was not what I expected to see. Inside the king's chambers was not a regal monarch arrayed in his finest robes but a humbled man weeping in sackcloth and ashes, his crown cast aside. Even my apprentice hesitated, but he brought me forward anyway.
When we entered, a filthy man who reeked of fish and the briney sea walked out of the room. Though he was the one who smelled, he looked upon me with utter disgust. I did not recognize him as a king's courtier, and his dirty beard resembled that of the Hebrews of the south, though he was too filthy for me to be sure.
As we approached, the king looked up from his mourning with a woeful expression.
"My dearest executioner," the king said. His voice was that of a broken man. "The wrath of the Hebrew god is upon all of Nineveh. We are to be utterly destroyed in forty days. Who can tell if their god will relent and turn away from his anger? But I have ordered every man to abandon his evil ways and to mourn. Even the animals must be clothed in sackcloth, according to my words.”
My jaw fell open, but the king continued.
"As a sign of my commitment to my own decree, I pardon you, chief executioner, though you are more than deserving of a hideous death for your crimes. No man shall be put to death in all of Nineveh as we await our impending judgment."
Until that moment, I had carried my sentence with an indomitable spirit, but now that my burden was lifted, there was only one way I could respond to sudden clemency: I fell upon my knees before the king and wept. Great were my tears, and greater still was my gratitude. Of all the undeserving men who lived in that bloody city, I was the first to receive grace.
NEVER HAS A PEOPLE REPENTED OF THEIR DEEDS LIKE NINEVEH. There has never been a city as in need of repentance, nor will there ever be again. I humbled myself and showered my brow in ash daily, as did everyone else. Each man, woman, child, and beast did not eat or drink, and after forty days of incessant keening, we gathered in the city center to await our destruction. For the second time in less than two months, I watched the sunrise for what I thought would be the final time.
For that entire day, we waited for our end to come. Every hour that passed filled our hearts with hope; every hour was a little more time to lament and appease the foreign god. The morning turned into noon, and noon gave way to dusk. We held our breath, an entire city captured in expectation, as the sun went below the horizon.
But Nineveh's demise did not come that day. The fire and brimstone of heaven did not fall, nor did the angel of death wage war against us. The god of the Hebrews had seen our works. He saw that we had turned from our evil ways and relented from the disaster that he said he would bring upon us. He did not do it, and we were overjoyed.
As night fell, the city was secure in its salvation. Several returned to their homes, and not a few celebrated with wine and revelry, but what was I to do? I, who had escaped the judgment of both god and king, did not intend to return to my previous occupation. One cannot receive as much forgiveness as me and return to a life of condemning others to agony and death. But I was not welcome among my countrymen. After all, my sins were undoubtedly responsible for incurring a significant portion of the Hebrew god's wrath. Fate had forgiven me twice, yet I was still a pariah in Nineveh.
On the forty-first day after my pardon, I left. No longer would I be counted among the men of that bloody city.
I had yet to walk far beyond the east gate when I came upon a single man on a hill. He was sitting beneath a withered tree, and his countenance was sour.
"Hello," I said to the man as I approached. A most repugnant expression came over him at the sound of my words. Then I recognized him as the Hebrew I saw leaving the king's court the day my execution was stayed. He was just as filthy but no longer smelled of the sea and fish.
"Go away," he said. His voice was anything but kind.
"Are you not the prophet of the Hebrew god?" I asked, ignoring the man's displeasure with my greeting. While fasting and mourning within the city, I learned of the prophet Jonah, who brought the warning of destruction to Nineveh. Some wanted to erect altars and make many sacrifices in his name. I was fortunate indeed to be with him in the flesh.
"I am a prophet of God," he answered. He said something else under his breath but spoke in his own tongue, and I could not understand. I fell prostrate upon my face in his presence. This man's prophecy spared me, and I thought then that my second call in life should be to serve him and his god. No amount of my service could ever repay the debt I owed each.
"Good sir!" I said. My words were thick with choked-back tears. "Good sir, may I be your servant? May I serve you and your god, that I might please you who have spared me much misery and death? Please, show me how to forever please your god."
The prophet answered my plea by throwing his sandals at me.
"Get your face off the ground. It would be better for you to die than to serve the Lord," he said. I was confused and more than enraged by such treatment. Though I had left my tools of torture behind, I still knew many painful methods to end a man's life with only my bare hands. It would be easy to slip back into those old ways, but I was unwilling to give up on peace so soon.
"But I was doomed to die," I told him, "that day you spoke to my king was the day of my scheduled execution."
"Then I apologize for disrupting your plans. Go," he shooed me away like a child. "Live freely among your people. Stop bothering me." The prophet turned aside contemptuously, and the urge to throttle him with his entrails remained. It was better for me to continue down the path than to converse with such a detestable being. How could a servant of a most merciful god be so cross?
"How can you not marvel at such great works wrought by your own words?" I asked the foolish holy man as I stepped back on the path.
There was more I could say to him, but I contented myself to leave the challenge hanging in the air. Gravel crunched beneath my feet. A west wind blew over the city, and I realized no death was in the air. No one had perished in Nineveh for almost two months, and the breeze was clean and cool and tasted like rain.
"The words were not mine." said the prophet, interrupting my breath of fresh air. His voice had changed so that I hardly recognized it, but we were the only men on the hill. His back was no longer turned. "I spoke the words of the Lord to the city. They were not mine.
"I have faithfully served God my entire life, but when I received His words to give to your people, I fled, and in consequence, I was cast out of His sight. And yet, when the deep closed around me, and all hope was lost, the Lord delivered me out from the pit. So, I repented and obeyed," the prophet sighed. "But I still wanted to see your city's destruction, not your salvation. For forty days, I have sat upon this hill and prayed that your city would return to its old ways. I sat beneath this tree and hoped for your demise. Instead, I heard the unending wails of a city in mourning. The walls stand as strong as ever, and God has even taken my shade."
He gestured to the long-dead tree beside him. I didn't know what to say, so I held my tongue, and the prophet continued.
"Do you not understand? I, who have always served God, suffered greatly in my only act of disobedience. It makes sense that He would spare me from my undoing. But you and the rest of the Ninevites have never known God. You have only ever disobeyed Him, but in your single act of obedience, He has spared you from judgment."
"You are angry with your god because he spared a city but killed a tree?" I asked. He grumbled, and I knew our time together was ending.
"The tree be damned," the prophet almost shouted, "It is right for me to be angry even unto death. I shall be displeased until there is smoke on the horizon from your burning city." Jonah looked at me with rage back in his eyes. Another west wind blew past us.
"Do you smell that?" I asked, ignoring his wrath.
"Smell what?"
"The wind. Never in all my life has such a fresh breeze passed through this valley. There may not be smoke on the horizon from a city lain to waste, but neither is there smoke from the pyres of our slain."
"Leave me," the prophet said, but I had more to say.
"I once wrought death daily. Like every laborer, I was tired each night, but not from the work of creation was my body heavy. My hands ached from tearing flesh instead of building with bricks or wood. And there are many men like me in Nineveh, but they have tasted a new life for forty days and nights. I have tasted a new life and desire more of what your god can give.
"Look," I indicated to the path beneath my feet, "I have turned my back to the only city I have ever known. I am chief among those who deserve your rage, but here I am, begging you to teach me your god's ways. I have offered my life to you, but I can plainly see that I was wrong in doing so."
While I spoke, the prophet's angry expression remained on his face. We stood on the hill next to the withered tree and stared at one another. I hope my eyes were kinder than his.
"And still," the prophet finally said through a clenched jaw, "you deserve God's wrath."
I LEFT JONAH ON THE HILLTOP. I didn't take his life; his misery would punish him well enough. He stood sullen and stooped under his beloved snag, forever watching for Nineveh's destruction like a carrion fowl stalking caravans in the wilderness. I left the land of Nineveh and began a journey that would take me far away from there, seeking after my new Lord and those who could best teach me to serve Him. Perhaps that holy man of God was right. Perhaps I still rightly deserve judgment. But of all the men that ever lived in that bloody city, He has forgiven me the most.
Text copyright © 2025, Corey D. Evans. All rights reserved.
Audio copyright © 2025, Corey D. Evans. All rights reserved. Theme Music by Kris Wallace Music
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love the story of Jonah as I have related to it most of the common Bible stories. I was raised in one of the convoluted conservative homes that valued the appearance of religion over anything. I have a degree in theology and have come to my own religious beliefs, but I can’t say I’ve seen a story from this perspective before. Well done, I shall be watching this publication closely.